E Young
1. http://www.google.com/profiles/playboyp
Just the good stuff
“140-character status updates to a network of followers.” That makes Twitter sound simple. But in fact, the social information platform has grown to be much more complex than its 140 character-limit suggests. The site not only connects people, but has also become an intricate information resource for everything from news to shopping deals.
Yet in many ways, the site’s actual functionality hasn’t exactly kept up with user interactions. Twitter’s interface has remained simple, which is why a lot of tweets take place through third-party sites and applications that make the experience more useful.
We’ve compiled a list of the top 20 third-party websites for making your Twitter experience more useful and easier to manage. Although this does not include the many desktop or mobile applications that are available for Twitter, we hope that it will make your browsing experience more enjoyable as you dive into the Twittersphere. Also, as a one-stop shop for Twitter apps, check out OneForty. We’d love to hear what’s missing from this list, including sites that you find useful in the comments.
With its recent update and HTML5 support, social media dashboard HootSuite has become one of the most useful Twitter web applications not only for individual users, but teams managing several accounts. In some ways, HootSuite has the look and feel of TweetDeck with the big differentiator of it being a web-based application, not requiring any downloads.
HootSuite enables you to update to multiple accounts at once, and supports Twitter, Facebook profiles and pages, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace and Foursquare. Similar to TweetDeck, these features make the application useful for maintaining your overall social presence. Moreover, you can allow other users to jointly update an account, integrate Google Analytics for your stats and schedule tweets and updates ahead of time.
The HTML5 interface enables you to easily include an image or file with your update by simply dragging it from the desktop into the message box, which will automatically upload the file with an “Ow.ly” shortener for sharing. The fast loading of the dashboard is perhaps one of the most notable improvements, making the site more usable for users who manage dozens of accounts. If you don’t like Hootsuite, you should also check out Seesmic, which has a lot of similar features, but a different interface.
Brizzly has a different functionality from Hootsuite, but may be more appealing because of its simple interface. Brizzly is specifically focused on Twitter and no other networks, which makes the experience somewhat less distracting. It also includes subtle, but worthy features like automatically expanded URLs, which shows you exactly where you are going if you click, and displays replies and direct messages in a threaded form, making it easier to follow the conversation.
After you log in with your Twitter username, The Twitter Tim.es creates a page that displays stories by filtering through what the people you follow have tweeted the most in a more presentable stream that is updated regularly. Though the design of the interface isn’t the best, The Twitter Times is effective in showing you who has tweeted the story along with the story headline and blurb to give you an idea of what it’s about. In some cases, the site shows you the full text of the post. It also gives you options to view popular stories on Twitter from media sources and Twitter Lists.
The site helps you filter through the noise and keep up with what is trending among the people you follow. If you’ve been off the grid for a couple hours, you can get a sense of what people are sharing and the news that is important among your Twitter community at any given moment.
Paper.li has similar functions but a different presentation. Users can create their own “newspaper” based on who they follow. Users can also create newspapers based on a Twitter hash tag or a Twitter list. Instead of a stream, Paper.li presents content by creating a custom homepage that separates content based on popularity and topics. The site does a great job of making the content visually appealing by including thumbnails, YouTube videos and blurbs.
TweetMeme is best recognized for its bright green buttons on websites (like this one), enabling users to easily tweet the article they’re reading. All of the information is collected at TweetMeme from across the web, giving a good sense as to what is trending on Twitter. The site enables you to filter by categories and topics (entertainment, gaming, etc.) and to showcase the most retweeted links. You also get a brief blurb from the link being shared and are able to filter by news articles, images and videos.
Trendistic also works well, but specifically for bigger Twitter trends and how they have performed over time. The site gives you an idea of current trends and presents them in a graphic format, showing you the percentage that the trends account for at any give time. For example, on July 8, “heat” accounted for 1.8% of all tweets at 9 p.m. during LeBron James’ big announcement that he would be joining the Miami Heat. You can also sort the trend based on timeframe, and get a code to embed the chart on your site.
Tlists is a Twitter Lists directory where you can search by list topic, view popular lists, and create your own lists. Users can also apply to join a list, and the creator is then notified and can approve them to join the list depending on whether they are a good fit. Lists are a great curating tool in rounding up like-minded tweeters in one place. It functions not only as a directory, but also as a stream of useful information around a specific subject. But after you have that list, how can you make it more presentable?
PubliTweet takes your Twitter Lists and makes them a lot more useful. It does this by providing a nice embed code that presents the lists in a handy stream that includes the text of the tweet, headline, thumbnail and blurb of the article they are sharing. You can take the code and plant the list anywhere on your site. Not only does PubliTweet make your Twitter Lists more useful visually, the tweets are also more shareable through convenient Twitter, Facebook and e-mail share buttons.
TwapperKeeper and Trendistic are great tools for getting some basic stats on how much a specific hashtag on Twitter is performing. Though there are several other sites that give you more options (often for a price), these two sites are simple to use in getting a general overview. TwapperKeeper lets you create an archive for tracking a specific hashtag, keyword, or username and collects the data and the number of mentions. If you’re interested in getting a sense for how many times a specific hashtag was tweeted, it gives you a total number, along with the ability to search precisely through the archive that you created, listing the recent tweets that have been tracked. The beautiful part is that you can also export the data and analyze it to your liking.
Though Twitter released a script that allows interactive tweet embedding, the code has had some issues and isn’t always ideal. QuoteURL seems to be the best option for creating embedable tweets. The app enables you to add multiple tweet URLs and embed them into a post. You can also embed an individual one, but if you want to get a stream of tweets to embed, this is the tool to use.
The application gives you a nice, clean embed such that users can see the text of the tweet, but it also preserves the interactivity of being able to reply, click on the username, or any links within the tweet. Essentially, it mirrors the experience a user has engaging with individual tweets on Twitter. This makes your tweets a bit more useful than just a screenshot, however, many sites and blogs have yet to adopt it because the embed doesn’t show up in blogger’s RSS feeds.
Though Twitter has launched its own location feature with Twitter Places, which will likely be expanded in the future, there are several other sites that showcase location-based tweets. Local Twitter Trends displays trends in major cities and allows you to click on the keywords to see what people are talking about. It’s very simple and to the point, giving you an easy way to track the conversation in a specific place.
However, if you want to track news on specific topics, monitter might be the better choice. This site allows you to not only search for a specific location, it also lets you track three specific searches within that area — in real time — and displays the results in an easy-to-view, three-column format. You can also adjust the radius of the area that you’re searching.
WeFollow is a Twitter directory from Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, that emphasizes topics that users associate themselves with. Anyone can easily add themselves to the directory by simply tweeting out the hashtags that will make their usernames searchable in the directory. The site is great for discovering new users that you might share common interests with. It also enables you to view the top users in each category.
Twellow’s tagline is the “Twitter Yellow Pages,” and aims to be the directory to search for Twitter users based on industries and topics like biotechnology, food, home and garden, etc. In a lot of ways it is the ultimate directory for Twitter, also enabling you to search for users based on area. It also offers a very useful search engine.
Type a username into Klout and you can get a sense for how influential that user is on Twitter and their behavior. Klout gives you a score out of 100 based on reach, amplification and network after being compiled from numbers like the total retweets, message reach, unique mentions, retweeters, and more. The cool feature is the influence matrix, which defines the user and gives you a brief description of their behavior on Twitter. Klout also tells you who the user influences and is influenced by, as well as a topic summary of their tweets.
TwitterCounter tracks the top accounts and lists on Twitter based on how many followers they have and gives you some more basic numbers of influence based on growth and rank of the user’s account. The site provides some basic graphs tracking the number of the follower, following, and tweet growth over time, even setting a predicting number for where you will be in the future based on your average growth. It also enables you to easily compare several accounts at once, and build a handy widget for your site that tracks and displays recent Twitter visitors to your site.
Among the first sites to make sharing photos on Twitter easy and popular, Twitpic is still one of the best. It’s also useful to browse through the public timeline of photos uploaded, and now you can even tie location to the photos you upload. It also lets you group photos into events, which is great for organization.
Yfrog lets you not only upload photos, but videos as well. The site is also extremely useful and easy to navigate. One simple Yfrog feature that Twitpic fails to include is a site search. Yfrog allows you to sort videos and pictures based on popularity, and showcases top search trends on the site. You can also easily share the photos across platforms and get an embed code for the image. Here’s an example of Glee star Mark Salling’s Yfrog post about a recent big catch:
PollDaddy has an easy integration for creating a quick poll that can be easily distributed on Twitter. The setup is easy. You create a poll question, select the answers (multiple choice, etc.) and the order you want them to appear, enter your username and post it to Twitter. The site sends a nice clean tweet with a link to the poll where users can vote. After setting the poll up, it is also quite easy to embed the poll into a post. It’s also worth mentioning PollDaddy has a great WordPress plugin that enables you to easily create polls within the content management system.
TwtPoll is similar to PollDaddy but has a different interface and allows users to answer questions through different formats, such as text, images or videos, Twitter handles or addresses.
When it comes to content farms, companies that churn out hundreds or thousands of new pieces of content every day, Demand Media has harvested most of the headlines over the past year. But it's not the only company out there betting on quantity of content - others include Associated Content (acquired by Yahoo! in May), About.com (owned by the New York Times), Mahalo (founded by Jason Calacanis, who sold his previous business Weblogs, Inc. to AOL in 2005) and Answers.com.
Suite101 is a relatively low profile site compared to the others mentioned above. Yet it produces 500 new pieces of content per day. I spoke to Suite101 CEO Peter Berger to discuss why it produces so much content, how it compares to Demand Media, and what Google is doing about content farms.
Suite101 is a publishing platform that hosts articles about niche topics. As its name implies, Suite101 focuses on '101' style writing - beginners articles on thousands of topics. Berger described Suite101 as "a service to help writers be successful online." It currently has 5,000 active writers and four different language sites. The biggest of these is the english language .com site, which he said currently has 24 million unique visitors a month.
In a search on Google, Suite101 came up with 6.5 million pages on the Web. That isn't far behind About.com, with 8.29 million. It isn't on the same level though (in terms of quantity) as Demand Media - which at last estimate pumps out 7,000 new articles every day (it was 4,000 back in November). At that rate, Demand Media is probably producing upwards of 2.5 million new pieces of content per year.
Berger said that the name of the game in this space is SEO: writing content "that search engines want to present their users." Like the Demand Media CEO when questioned him about their business model, Berger claimed that his company's model is not competing with traditional journalism. Rather, Berger said that Suite101 and others compete with "non-fiction publishing."
For example, he said, in the past if you were re-modeling your house you'd go buy a book on that subject. But now, people just Google it. He claimed that traditional publishers have "not woken up [to this] at all."
I asked what traditional publishers could do to 'wake up'? Berger replied that there has been "no response from publishing houses" to topic-based sites like Suite101. The best that traditional publishers have come up with, said Berger, is ebooks. However "the questions of the users are so much more specific" than what ebooks can address, he continued. "What rules in this space is topic expertise" - which he noted is what Suite101 is a platform for.
So is Suite101 worried about the sheer scale that Demand Media is working at and that they may dominate this space? Berger thinks that Demand Media is only interested in the "commercially lucrative space" and not the "more niche subjects" that Suite101 covers.
What's more, Berger believes that Google is a threat to Demand Media's business model: "Google is best at solving problems algorithmically."
"Finding niche requirements is becoming a commodity," he continued, "and Google - not Demand Media - is best placed to master that space."
What he means by that is that Demand Media has sophisticated software for identifying what content is 'in demand' on the Web (hence its name). But Google owns the dominant search engine, where millions of people go to search for content. So Google is in a position of power over Demand Media - its options include open sourcing the mechanism for identifying what content is needed on the Web (thus denying Demand Media its main competitive advantage), or it could change its PageRank algorithm to better account for quality over quantity (which based on what I've heard, is already happening).
Suite101 doesn't seem concerned with Demand Media vs Google. Berger says that Suite101 is focused instead on writers. He sees his company eventually moving beyond "professionalised niche writing" and becoming a "personal brand builder for qualified individuals." In other words, a place where subject matter experts can come to share their expertise.
Multiply this over hundreds of thousands of niche topics, and it's a potentially valuable business. But highly competitive - because others like Mahalo, About.com and Associated Content are also farming the Web for the big bucks.
Blogetery, a Wordpress platform, has seen its entire community shut down by its host, BurstNET. Subsequent statements by BurstNET indicated that the service was suspended at the request of an unidentified law enforcement agency.
"(Blogetery) was terminated by request of law enforcement officials, due to material hosted on the server. We are limited as to the details we can provide to you, but note that this was a critical matter and the only available option to us was to immediately deactivate the server."
The gist of the conversation on the discussion board initially indicated that copyright infringement might have been the motivation. Torrent services, like Bittorrent, are the frequent target of legal actions as they are an efficient way to share large amounts of information, such as television shows or movies. This does not appear to be the case, however. The owner stated that the service dealt with copyright issues without prior problems.
"(I) got C&D letters from copyright owners to remove pages with links to torrent/rapidshare. I always handle such abuse reports within 24 hours and remove such material."
BurstNET responded that "this was not a typical case, in which suspension and notification would be the norm." A spokesperson for the company later told CNET that this case had nothing to do with copyright violations.
On the discussion board, a BurstNET representative subsequently said:
"Simply put: We cannot give him his data nor can we provide any other details. By stating this, most would recognize that something serious is afoot...This is the last post we will make on this subject."
As things currently stand:
That "something serious is afoot" is a description, not an explanation. Keeping this sort of thing private may be warranted, at least when it comes to the details. But the sensible thing for this unnamed agency to do, if in fact it exists and is an actor in this drama, would be for it to issue an official statement with at least some verifiable information in it.
This is part 2 of the "All Things Twitter" book please add url favorite sites and apps in the comments.
I’ve always blogged for fun, and initially, like most of you, I had no idea that money could be made out of the activity. The fact is, people can earn a living out of blogging, and do it quite easily (after a while). It only takes 4 things:
Knowledge
You have to know things that people will want to learn about and are going to be searching for. Answers to the simplest questions are your best bet. How to blog? How to recover your windows password? How to recover data out of damaged hard drive? Yes, 10’s of thousands of people are asking Google these questions everyday, so you want to give them your best answer right? You also have to be knowledgeable enough in all things web to set up a proper blog. Just starting a free blogspot account to regurgitate your thoughts will not be enough; it takes a lot more then that to turn a site into a resource that will be both informative and profitable.
Persistence
Making money out of blogging takes time. If you want to blog for a living, you must be ready to write new and innovative content consistently (as in 5 to 7 times a week) for many months until you start seeing the fruits of your labor coming in. Yes, there are some exception out there (John Chow is earning $7000 per month after only 6 months), but in most cases, most of you won’t see a penny before 5 or 6 months of hard work.
Exposure
If nobody is reading you, where will you get the visibility needed to attract advertisers? Who will click on your ads? The answer is simple: no one. Being a good blogger involves a lot more than writing great content, it’s also about having good virtual PR skills. You will have to invest a lot of your time reading and participating to conversations on other blogs, submitting your articles to social networking sites and building yourself a large network of like-minded bloggers. Making friends in the blogosphere is the key to success. Friends will link to your articles, put you in their blogroll and talk about you wherever they roam. You’ll also do the same for them, not only because doing this will be profitable to you, but also because you care about the success of everyone.
Some basic english-writing skills
Yes, I know, my english isn’t perfect, but blogs are the realm of the people. Some of them excel in writing, others don’t, but does this stop Google from indexing your pages? Absolutely not. Does it stop people from being interested in what you have to say, as long as you know what you’re writing about? Nope. English is the language of the Internet. If you want to maximize the exposition of your content as an independent blogger, you’ll have to write in English.
After having done all this, your blog will be ready to be monetized. One of the most important things to consider when adding revenue sources to your site is to diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket! You need a good mix of “cost per click”, “Cost Per Mille” and “Cost per action” ads. Here’s a small definition of each term:
Here is a quick list of advertising services u should use to monetize your blogs.
The ability to write well is very useful for our personal and professional lives. It helps students, business people, politicians, writers, bloggers, marketers and everyone who has ever needed to arrange words together to convey ideas or opinions. The written word has become an essential means of social communication: mastery of it helps you to enthrall and persuade an audience that would look upon you favorably in return.
It goes without saying that learning how to create compelling content is a part of one’s success as an online publisher. Reading widely and deeply while consistently honing your writing skills helps a great deal in bettering your prose. Sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to read a few stylebooks/essays on writing by professional teachers or authors.
One of these essays on writing is Paul McHenry Roberts’s How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words, a brilliantly humorous introduction on writing college compositions. I discovered this essay today and read though easily in one sitting, possibly because it was so well-written and entertaining. It’s a perfect example of the writing techniques listed within.
Here’s a quick summary of the 9 main points mentioned. I’ve extracted some of the key paragraphs from the text but be sure to read the full essay because these points are elaborated in much greater detail with some excellent examples.
Learning how to create content using concrete, lean, colorful and vivid prose with unique perspectives will help you to get more readers, customers and supporters. But bear in mind that its not just about writing in a fancy way to entertain. It’s also a conscientious way of differentiating yourself from thousands of similar writers/thinkers in the same field.
Online media is exploding…and with it, a new class of creative people producing their own music, podcasts, professional-level photography and video shows. We’ve compiled the largest list so far of useful tools for self-made photographers, videobloggers, podcasters and musicians.
——————-
For photography gods, we’ve brought together more than 90 photo resources and tools. There are thousands of sites serving photographers these days, but we hope this acts as a good overview.
Fauxto – Advanced online photo editor with an interface similar to Photoshop’s
XmgImg- Image hosting service that provides an interface for users to manage, edit, and share their images online.
OnlinePhotoTool – Edit pictures taken from your hard drive as well as images that are already on the Internet.
MyImager – Upload images from your computer and from anywhere on the web and edit them freely with the dozens of tools and filters available.
SnipShot – Edit photos from your hard-drive, your Webshots account, or your Flickr account in one place, and then save them back to any of those locations.
Pixenate – Online photo editor with many special effects. You can also integrate Pixenate on your website and allow visitors to edit images.
Phixr – Edit your pictures and directly upload them to Flickr, Fotopic, Livejournal, Photobucket, Fotolog.com, Buzznet and Dropshots.
Pixer.us – Edit your photos online within your browser, add special effects and save them in the most popular formats.
Picture2Life – Edit pictures available on the Internet or taken from your hard disk. You can also import images from popular photo sharing sites.
Cellsea – Upload pictures from your PC or from an URL. It provides over 15 ways to correct color, exposure, and lighting problems.
Preloadr – Photo editor with good image manipulation functions that is connected with your Flickr account.
Picnik – Photo editor with many interesting features which is directly connected to many photo sharing sites.
Pixelmator – Pixelmator is a photo editing service for Mac users. The design is superb and intuitive. There are selection tools, paintbrushes of various size and shape, retouching tools, layering and much more. You can enhance photos, analyze colors, add text, create stylized scenes with halftones and image blurring.
Zorpia – Zorpia is like Myspace with some more photo features, you can upload you photos and share them on your profile.
Clickfriends -Document your life with your own digital photo essay, then share it with friends and family through ClickFriends.com. Now you can have the same site take care of your online photo albums and your Facebook or MySpace photo albums. Just upload your photos to the ClickFriends site, and then have them exported to your profile on your preferred social networking site. It´s free and easy to sign up.
Snappages – Snappages.com provides space for you to save and organize your photos, your online friends from virtual communities, and your events in one well-designed web page. It combines various web concepts, including online storage, file sharing, and Facebook-style friend communication.
Photorgy – Photorgy is photo uploading/sharing tool which works with AIM. Photo albums can be shared and owned by any number of friends, family members, and colleagues.
SlideShare – SlideShare is a content sharing site where you can host and display presentations. Maybe you would use it to show your professional work, or just for personal photo sharing, power point presentations about your latest entrepreneurial idea, or graphics you designed.
Zoomandgo – Contribute your travel photos, videos, or general advice to the Zoom and Go site, and they will reward you with cash. The site has a system of points which can be awarded to the content you submit according to what kind of content it is (written reviews receive less then photos, and videos receive the most).
Zooomr – Store, share, sort, sell, and search all your photos and those of other users at Zooomr. Users can post comments on individual pictures, therefore, gaining feedback on the photo, as well as gaining insight into the other photographers who use the site. Photos can be shared for free, or can be sold through the site.
BurstCast – Burstcast offers space for you to upload pics from your camera phone either by MMS or by e-mail, right from the phone. On the site, you can choose for your photos to be made public and shown on the home page (but it´s either all or nothing; you can´t have some photos be public and some private).
Mostrips – The photo sharing site is designed to let you create albums to be easily shared on mobile phones. It´s a useful way to send work if you are a photographer, or a head shot if you are a model or actor. Or it can just be a fun way to share photos from your vacations among friends and family.
DPhoto – DPhoto is a photo sharing service which offers well-designed graphics and a professional appearance. With DPhoto you can share your photos with friends and family in an ad-free, secure site.
Invitr – Invitr is a Flickr related application which simply extends your sharing capabilities. With Invitr you can share your Flickr photos with non-Flickr members; so photos that have been categorized as private can now be sent and shared with anyone you choose.
DigitalRailroad – Digital Railroad is aimed at aiding professional photographers connect with more fans and even help them connect to content providers and media companies who are looking to buy their work.
ContakMe – Contakme is a new site where you can upload an unlimited number of photos, create albums, and rate other people´s photos.
Flickr – The most popular photo sharing site. Upload photos, create sets and join one of the greatest communities of professional and unprofessional photographers.
Picasa – Google’s answer to photo sharing. The main application is a download, but there are also web albums.
Photobucket – one of the most popular image hosting services around, favorite amongst MySpace users. Makes it very easy to post your images to social networking sites; gives you 25 GB of monthly traffic and 1 GB of storage with images themselves being up to 1 MB in size.
ImageShack – The most popular image hosting service. Upload images up to 1.5 MB and embed them in any web page.
AllYouCanUpload- There is no limit to the image size you can upload. You can also upload up to three images in the same time.
ImageHosting – Upload multiple pictures at one time. The maximum filesize you can upload depends on what account you registered.
TinyPic – Upload pictures and videos and embed them anywhere. The direct link for your picture or video will be tiny (e.g. http://tinypic.com/1)
TheImageHosting – Upload multiple images at once and zipped image files. Maximum file size allowed is 1 MB.
BayImg – Free uncensored image hosting provided by the Pirate Bay. The max file upload size is 100MB and you can can upload about 140 different formats.
XS.to – Upload your images and embed them anywhere. You can also delete images you previously uploaded. Max file size allowed is 2.5 MB.
ImgPlace – Upload up to five images at one time. Maximum file size allowed is 1.5 MB
FreeImageHosting.net – Register to host your images for free. Maximum file size is 3,000 KB.
FileHigh – The free “Economy” account lets you upload up to three images simultaneously and the maximum size for each file is 512 KB.
VillagePhotos – Upload pictures straight from your browser and host them online. 1 GB monthly data transfer.
ImageVenue – You can upload up to five images in the same moment. The maximum file size allowed is 1.5 MB.
ImageCross – Free MySpace image hosting. You can upload images up to 2 MB in size.
SmugMug – SmugMug is a photo uploader, editor, and community portal all in one. You can upload and share your photos, then store the photos with up to four backup copies of each photo in three varying states.
Digital-Photography-School – Darren Rowse’s photo tips.
Thomas Hawk – Zooomr’s Thomas Hawk on photography, Zooomr, Flickr and general tech news.
PhotoCritic – A site for photography criticism, with the intention of allowing photographers to critique each others’ work and share opinions, suggestions, and professional tips.
FlickrBlog – While it’s not exclusively a photo blog, but from time to time the Flickr staff will pick a few photos and feature them on the blog and the users see this as a big honor.
DPreview – practically the only resource you’ll ever need for digital cameras; incredibly in-depth and timely reviews of most models available on the market
Shutterlog – some great photos here with attention to detail.
Chromasia – no words, only great photos
Stuck In Customs – blog by one of the greatest HDR photographers on the net
Black and White Photography – great photo blog focusing on B&W photos.
Flappr – A slick Flash-based Flickr interface that lets you do most of the actions you can do on Flickr.
FlickrVision – displays Flickr updates from various users on a Google Map.
Retrievr – an unbelievable mashup that delivers photos based on your drawings.
Flickr Logo Maker – Turns any text into a Flickr-style logo.
Spell with Flickr – this tool enables you to write text in letters based off Flickr images. Not all that useful but fun.
Tagnautica – a slightly weird visual way to browse through Flickr images.
Captioner – adds comic-style captions to your images.
Fastr – a “guess that tag” style game; you are presented with a series of images and you must guess their common tag.
PictureSandbox – Searches the Flickr archive (as well as that of YouTube and some other sites) based on the type of license; great tool for finding images you can actually use in a project
FlickrFling – presents an RSS feed through Flickr images. Completely useless but works as a fun experiment.
Colr Pickr – One of the most useful Flickr Mashups; enables you to search Flickr photos based on their color. Works surprisingly well.
FlickrBall – a six-degrees-of-separation scavenger-hunt game (yes, Kevin Bacon is mentioned), using Flickr thumbnails and tags for clues.
Photo Tag Mashup – Retrieves a number of Flickr images in a simple interface based on a tag you provide
Flickr Sudoku – a Sudoku game based on Flickr images.
SnapZone – An online service that lets you upload your photos directly from your mobile via a wireless connection. Snapzone allows you to free up space on your phone”s memory while also giving you an instantaneous way to share your images with friends. SnapZone is also a community site, so if your friends join you can use it to share your pictures easily in one place.
Fotochatter – network that enables you to share mobile pictures with your friends, as well as receive images from your buddies on your phone
Radar – creates picture conversations – you send your pictures to Radar and your friends can instantly see them and comment on them
Shozu – Mobile uploading to photo sites including Flickr.
Slide – create slideshows easily and embed them on your site or social networking profile.
RockYou – offers several free services, including slideshow creation, photo hosting, photo enhancement and more.
Scrapblog – An online service that lets you upload your photos from many of the popular photo sharing websites and mash them up with hundreds of stickers, shapes, text and YouTube videos to create a digital scrapbook
Vuvox – Vuvox lets you create online animated and interactive slideshows using a range of effects, theme templates and designs
Mixercast – Mixercast lets you mashup your photos and movies into animated, interactive slide shows and throws in ag ood library of stock photo, video and licensed music to use as a soundtrack
Flektor – Flektor has a great set of tools for adding transitions, text, stickers, effects and overlays into movies made out of your photos and online videos
Snapfish – Snapfish is run by HP, they let you store and share your photos for free, and prints are cheap with highest quality at 12¢ each. You can also have things like mugs and cards made with your pictures on them.
Fotki – A photo-sharing and hosting site, you can share you photos with others or use it with your blog. It has some unique features like FTP access, and users can choose to sell their photos. There is an integrated printing service that lets you print at many different sizes at good prices.
KodakGallery – Kodak Gallery is owned by Kodak (no surprise there), like the other they let you store and share photos and then make prints and have custom gifts made.
Shutterfly – Shutterfly not only lets you store and share photos and then have them printed, you can also pic up your prints right at Target stores.
Moo – Moo currently has partnerships with many social networks including Flickr, Vox, and Bebo, you can print small minicards and notecards with the photos you have uploaded to these sites.
PicSearch – image search with some interesting options; for example, you can choose to search only black and white or color photos.
YotoFoto – a search engine which claims to be indexing over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other ‘copyleft’ images.
Google Image Search – a resource so commonly used it doesn’t need a special explanation; still one of the best ways to find images of any kind on the web.
Pixsy – Image search engine that’s striking a lot of partnerships. Also provides PixsyPower, a custom video and photo search for your own site.
StockPhotoFinder – a search engine specialized in finding stock photos.
EveryStockPhoto – this site is indexing over 1 million completely free photos from various sources.
iStockPhoto – royalty-free images for low prices; there aren’t any completely free photos here, but photo quality is above average
Fotolia – Another cheap royalty-free image provider, with nearly 2 million photos in stock
SXC.hu – one of the best (and biggest) repositories of completely free stock photography on the net.
MorgueFile – provides completely free photos; no registration required to download.
PixelPerfectDigital – 5000+ free stock photos
StockXpert – the commercial arm of Stock Xchange; offers cheap but quality royalty-free material
Alamy – Alamy is a search engine for stock photos which boasts millions of images from thousands of photographers, picture agencies and national collections. The site does the editing and classification of the images.
——————-
Video blogging, live video shows and professional film-making are all blossoming now that almost everyone has access to webcams, video cameras and affordable editing tools. In fact, many of the tools for editing, mixing and sharing your clips are now completely free. Here’s a wide selection of video tools available online.
Stickam – The best site for live video communications with multiple people. There is no major competition for Stickam just yet.
Blogtv – Blogtv is a recent discovery to the public. It allows you to do a live video show, and you can stream it live, as well as archive it for later use.
ooVoo – This allows you to carry on video conversations with live video through a Skype-like program.
Mogulus – This site is basically an all in one broadcast solution for video. You can create, edit, and add things similar to broadcast companies could add.
Ustream – Allows you to stream live video and you can also embed the player in to your own website.
HeyCosmo – A downloadable application that allows you to connect with other people in many ways, even play games and more.
Operator11 – Go live with your camera and create your own channels. You can also send video comments and remix your videos.
Better YT Video Quality – This guide helps you with getting the best possible video quality on YouTube, can be applied to other sites as well.
Make Internet TV – This guide has step-by-step instructions for shooting, editing, and publishing videos on the Internet.
How to put your readers at the scene – A scene-setting guide for online web journalists.
Tips for shooting better online video – learn the equipment, shooting and editing basics from this collection of tips.
Online video tips – a Squidoo lens with several useful online video shooting and editing tips.
Home video tips – Chris Pirillo’s tips for shooting better videos at home.
Camcorderinfo – Every online video comes from a camcorder, so here is the best place to get opinions on your next camcorder purchase.
5 Ways To Create a Great Video Podcast – A great article that applies to both video podcasts and video production in general.
Eyespot – add effects and transitions to the videos you upload, or use some of the large amount of free video clips and music from Eyespot’s media partners.
MuveeMix – Upload your movie, mix it with music, add cool effects and share it on MySpace, Friendster, Blogger, and other networks.
Motionbox – This service features the ability to link to a very specific point or “segment” within the clip itself.
Cuts – Insert sound effects in your videos, add captions, loop the best parts and in minutes you can share your creation with the world.
JumpCut – a free service that enables you to upload, edit and share your videos. Offers keyframe-based editing, effects, transitions and actions.
VideoEgg – A video editing platform that you can add to create a social network and offers opportunities for monetization.
Mojiti – Select videos from popular video sharing sites, personalize them with your annotations and share them with others.
Photobucket – Edit videos within a browser using Flash and remix photos and home videos with other elements, such as music, video captions and transitions.
StashSpace – Upload, store and edit your videos online. You can also record videos directly from your camcorder or digital camera.
BubblePly – Video annotating service where anyone can add text bubbles that are synchronized with video.
Veotag – Service that lets you display clickable text, called “veotags,” within an audio or video file.
Vidavee Grafitti – add graphics and text into any video; the service is called a “legal form of artful vandalism” by the creators.
Vmix – Vmix is a community and a hosting provider for your videos, aimed at creative authors who want to create remixes of their music and videos.
MovieMasher – a combination of a video editor with a timeline and lots of various effects, a standalone player and a media browser.
MixerCast – Mix your media with professional video, images, music, and network your MixerCast everywhere.
Fliptrack – Make a free musical photo slideshow and music video. It’s easy to do and you do it online.
Zamzar – converts all sorts of file formats, including several video formats.
Media Convert – a media converter with a huge amount of options; resulting videos can sometimes be out of sync with audio.
Vixy – a simple converter that can only convert Flash apps from the web to several other video formats.
Hey Watch! – an online video converter focusing on file formats that works on portable multimedia devices, like the iPod.
MediaConverter – a video converter that can be slow and needs polishing, but can sometimes yield really good results.
Movavi – another video converter that allows you to upload videos and convert them to formats you wish to use.
YouTube – YouTube is the king of the video sharing sites, it has more users and videos than the others. Any video you can think of it probably already on YouTube.
Google Video – Since Google bought YouTube, Google’s Video player is mainly used for for-pay content like TV shows. Also there is a search here that indexes all of the video sharing sites on the internet (well, most of them).
Blip.tv – Blip.tv is the perfect video sharing site for video podcast makers. It’s designed to let them easily upload all types and qualities of media and then send them to their feed for the users. They also let you add ads to you video so you can make some money.
Ourmedia – A great site where you can upload audio, video, images, and text and share them with the world. The OurMedia community contains over 100,000 members.
Veoh – Watch long form, television quality content and publish your own videos.
DailyMotion – Video sharing platform with multiple video search options. You can join groups of people who publish videos based on a common interest.
Metacafe – A site that helps you discover the best videos through a community that filters, reviews and rates new videos every day.
UnCut – Video uploading and sharing community by AOL. Embed all the videos you want in your blog.
ClipShack – video sharing community that allows you to upload video clips, make friends, keep a collection of your favorite videos and comment on clips.
5min – Video sharing site with a particular vision: collecting videos that can visually explain anything in 5 minutes.
Brightcove – Search, click and watch. Music videos, news, travel, recipes, adventure. Thousands of channels, including the best in online video.
Viddler – Viddler lets add tags and comments to video that will show up at specific times. It also has unique features like flickr and twitter integration.
Revver – The first video sharing site that provides users with the possibility to earn money from the videos they upload.
Vimeo – Vimeo is a video sharing site that has an emphasis on it’s users. The video’s you find there are more likely to be home movies or shorts by aspiring film makers, and also a lot of lip dubs.
Yahoo Video – Yahoo’s version of online video. Similar to Google video, but done the Yahoo way.
HelpfulVideo – Share your knowledge and skills with others for free or little charge via video clips.
BroadbandSports – A video sharing site specifically for sharing sports related videos.
Travelistic – A video sharing site that allows users to post video content specific to travel.
Livevideo – Video sharing site that lets you create personal channels. Upload your own videos and share them with the world.
Kewego – A video sharing network where you can upload your own videos and view videos by others.
Godtube – It’s a Christian version of YouTube. All things Christian welcomed.
Coull.tv – An interactive twist to video, this site allows you to view video and add interactive elements to it by using your mouse.
Mediabum – Video sharing site focusing on funny videos.
VMIX – Another video sharing website; All content is screened, so be sure everything you upload is legit.
Grouper – Video sharing site with a big selection of content; enables you to create playlists and easily upload videos to MySpace.
Break – Break is a video site and more for comedic based content.
Videosift – a Digg-like site which lets you submit, vote, and comment on videos.
GeeVee – GeeVee is a video sharing site specifically for sharing videos of game play in video games.
Stage6 – A video site that uses the Divx player so you can upload High Definition video, of course this also means longer upload times, and you need DivX support (usually a browser plugin).
Tube Battle – vote for the best videos, organized by category.
TinyPic – Host videos and images for free; it is possible to upload videos in the most popular formats and link videos on MySpace, eBay, blogs and message boards
Vidilife – Upload videos and store them online. There is no limit in terms of length of the files you can upload.
Dropshots – Good site that lets you upload videos, share them and embed them on other sites.
ZippyVideos – Upload and store video files (maximum 20 MB) in the most popular video formats.
Supload – Free service to host video clips and images. Maximum video file size allowed is 20 MB.
Rupid – Another provider of free video hosting: you can host your videos and share them with others.
Pixilive – Free images and video hosting for MySpace, eBay, Facebook and other sites. Maximum size for videos is 10 MB.
Mydeo – store and stream your videos online. You will be able to embed a video on any website and send streaming video messages .
YourFileHost – Upload files anonymously and share them with others. You can upload any file format up to 25 MB.
Aggrega – create and organize your own music video channels and share them with others.
Feedbeat – a fantastic service that lets you create playlists with videos from different sources – YouTube, Google Video and others. Each playlist gets its own subdomain on feedbeat.net.
Ajaxilicious – an online movie catalogue which enables you to manage your movies and share them with others via RSS.
Cliproller - create custom video channels and add as many as you like to your personal Cliproller page.
CozmoTV – CozmoTV is a site that allows you to create and organize channels of video already existing online.
BlogCheese – a simple way to create and share a video blog – all you need is a webcam.
Revision3 – A video podcasting network that’s home to many well made video podcasts, including Diggnation, which is Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht’s video podcast about the top stories on Digg.
Jabbits – Social video blogging: Use your webcam to record your Post or Jab with an easy-to-use recorder.
Ask a Ninja – got questions? Ask a ninja! One of the most popular vidcasts in the world, and definitely the funniest.
Galacticast – a weekly Sci-fi comedy podcast, episodes usually consists of lots of really geeky parodies.
Scriggity – A news podcast, where the viewers send in the news that they think should be on the shows.
SuperDeluxe – A site to find videos that focus mainly on comedic content.
DL.TV – Some of the the old TechTV crew back at it again with their own own show on all things tech. One of the best video podcasts for tech geeks.
Webnation – Amber Mac’s bi-weekly video podcast with news and interviews relating to current events in the tech world.
Tom Green’s the Channel – A daily video podcast that is recorded live and is hosted by Tom Green. He usually has a celebrity guest on the show.
GeekBrief TV – a daily podcast hosted by Cali Lewis, it’s a 3-5 minute update on the latest tech news.
This Week in Tech – famous tech vidcast by Leo Laporte, one of the most viewed vidcasts in the world.
The Broken – tech show for teh 1337 h4×0rz.
Digg Podcasts – a long list of popular podcasts, containing most of the vidcasts on this list and many more.
Virtual Video Map – YouTube videos on a Google map. Find out where do all those cool videos come from.
RealPeopleStuff – a site that combines CraigsList and YouTube, offering video clips related to ads.
TagTV – enter a tag and get results from Flickr and YouTube. Clean and simple design makes TagTV a very neat way to browse photos and videos.
I Love Music Video – combines YouTube with info from your Last.FM account. Great way to get videos (at least until Last.FM signs an evil deal with all those content providers and starts offering music videos).
MusicPortl – information on bands and musicians containing biographies, Flickr images, related blog posts and YouTube videos.
Magg – aggregates videos from several video sites. Also works as a search engine.
RateMyDanceMoves – Hot or Not-style site, presenting you dance-related YouTube videos to vote on.
ReviewTube – a site that enables you to add captions to YouTube videos. Nice idea, but relatively poor execution – the captions frequently overlap, making the text unreadable.
Youtube mobile – a stripped down version of YouTube tailored for use on mobile phones.
Shozu – a free service for your phone that makes it easy to send and receive photos, videos and music
Abazab – a universal video player that also works on your mobile phone.
Srobbin Mobile Video – An unofficial search for Google video on your cell phone.
Yahoo Mobile – Yahoo mobile allows you to search, find, and play videos right on your cell phone.
MobiTV – MobiTV allows you to watch television video from popular networks of all kinds.
MTV Mobile Video – Anything MTV related all for download to watch on your cell phone.
ESPN MVP – If you are a Verizon Wireless customer and have the V Cast service enabled, you can watch sports clips and more.
Moblr – Moblr allows you to view videos uploaded to the site directly on your cell phone.
Mobunga – This site allows you to download videos to your mobile phone, as well as iPod and PSP.
Blinkx – Perform searches within the most popular video networks, such as CBS, Reuters and CNN. Users can search for content and create TV channels that splice relevant content together.
PureVideo – Search within the most popular video directories and video sharing sites. PureVideo features up to six channels and each channel contains about six source sites.
SearchVideo – Search engine and directory created by AOL. Users can also search within specific video channels like MySpace and YouTube.
Search For Video – search engine and video directory that displays results from hundreds of video channels. Search For Video also provides an add-on for Firefox.
Yahoo! Video Search – Yahoo! has a video search engine that gathers videos from Yahoo! directory and from many other online sources. You can also search within specific domains or sites.
TubeSurf – Video search engine that gathers results from popular video directories, such as YouTube, Yahoo! Video, MySpace and Google Video. TubeSurf is also available as an add-on for Firefox.
ClipRoller – Search across popular video sites, such as: YouTube, Metacafe and more. As you continue to search for videos, ClipRoller learns your preferences and delivers content you like to watch.
Pixsy – A video search engine that lets users search content across dozens of video sites. Users are allowed to save searches and single videos.
ScoopVid – Search engine that enables you to either search for videos or browse through channels and categories.
Google Video Search – Google’s Video search recently was updated and now searches many video sites other than just YouTube and Google Video.
AOL Video – once known as the great media search engine, the AOL-purchased SingingFish, AOL Video kept some traits of the crowd’s favorite place to look for hard to find videos, but true fans claim that the site is not as good as its predecessor.
Truveo – Search videos or browse by either channel or category.
Altavista Video – good old Altavista isn’t what it used to be, but it does have a video search section.
VideoRonk – Search and download your favorite videos from YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, DailyMotion, iFilm, MySpace, Vimeo, Blip.tv, Revver and more.
VideoDL – Download online videos available on YouTube, Google Video and Break.com stright to your computer.
Vixy – Grab videos from popular sites and convert them into various video formats (including iPod and PSP).
KeepVid – Download videos from many video sharing sites, including YouTube, Google Video, MySpace Videos, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Revver and other services.
VideoDownloader – Get videos from video sharing sites. VideoDownloader is also available as a Firefox extension, allowing you to seamlessly integrate it within your browser.
YouTubeX – Download videos from YouTube. It doesn’t have a lot of options in terms of video sites among which you could choose, but it is very easy to use.
DownThisVideo – This site lets you download videos from YouTube, GoogleVideo, MetaCafe, Vimeo and other services.
KissYouTube – A service that provides two interesting and effective ways to download videos from YouTube.
YouTubeDownloads – Another site that lets you download videos exclusively from YouTube (other sites are not supported).
Kcoolonline – Download videos on your hard disk from more than 90 sites, including YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, iFilm and MySpace, Yahoo and many more.
YouTubia – A YouTube clone that lets you download and save YouTube videos within your IE or Firefox browser.
MediaConverter – A platform that lets you download and convert videos straight from YouTube.
Hellodeo – Record videos from your webcam and post them on any web page.
Flikzor – Send and receive video comments on your profile, blog and more.
Flixn – Record a video message right in the web browser and share anywhere including MySpace and eBay.
GabMail – Service that enable users to send unlimited numbers of free video email messages.
Bubble Guru – A site for recording webcam video messages and getting them onto your website or sending to others.
CamTwist – Software package (for Mac computers) that lets you add special effects to your video chats.
WebcamMax – Software that lets you add videos, screen, pictures, flash and effects to virtual or real webcam and broadcast on all messengers (Windows
only).
StumbleUpon Video – Just press “Stumble!” and a random video is presented to you, you can also ask for random videos with in categories like Humor, or Cats.
CrowdRules – video answers to your questions.
ClipSync – interact with other users while watching the same video as them.
ClipSyndicate – publish broadcast quality news on your web site.
Broadbandsports – a big collection of sports-related videos.
——————-
Podcasting – distributing shows over the web for downloading to computers and mobile devices – has been a big trend over the past few years. While over-hyped in the early days, podcasting is proving itself to be a great communication medium. Many podcasters now make a full or part-time income from their shows: here’s a plethora of tools to help out all those self-made podcast stars.
How To Create a Podcast – About.com’s step-by-step tutorial for podcast beginners.
iLounge Guide to Podcast Creation – another guide for creating your own podcast for absolute beginners.
Podcasting Legal Guide – find about legal issues relevant to podcasting in this Creative Commons guide.
Pickstation – A Digg for podcasts and music.
Collectik – “Mixtapes for podcasts”: find, share and organize podcasts.
Podbean – Free podcast hosting and publishing.
Castpost – Free hosting for audio and video clips.
HeyCast – A tool to create video podcasts. Essentially, HeyCast creates RSS feeds from any existing video files on the web. It doesn’t provide hosting or sharing features.
Blubrry – A podcast network that lets you create a podcast and browse the podcasts of others.
Evoca – “YouTube for voice recordings”: create audio recordings from your computer mic, your phone or Skype, share them with others and embed them on websites.
ThePodcastNetwork – A network of podcasts on a range of topics including business, entertainment and comedy.
MyPodcast – podcast hosting solution offering unlimited storage, bandwidth, and free templates for your podcasts.
PodServe – this service is still in alpha stage, but everyon
1. http://www.google.com/profiles/playboyp
Theme created for Posterous by Obox
