Web 2.0

Track down old colleagues, roommates, or girlfriends with 123People

October 28, 2008 By Dan Perlman Leave a Comment

The Web seems like it would be perfect for tracking down old friends and colleagues. When I'm looking for someone my first thought is -- just Google them. Because of the sheer mass of information indexed by search engines like Google, that’s a surprisingly inefficient approach. 123People is a search engine just for finding people. Their approach is to search through popular sites like Flickr and Facebook to come up with all information possible including email addresses and phone numbers. I tried it with several former colleagues and found good results when their name was unusual. I also did an “ego” search on my own name and found me and several pictures I wish had never made it to the web. Search 123People [via webworkerdaily]

123people launches U.S. site to help you find anyone

Filed Under: How To, Web 2.0, Websites Tagged With: people search

PixnPals — A Digital Picture Service for Your Events

October 27, 2008 By Dan Perlman Leave a Comment

If you want to put your digital pictures on the Internet and share them, they are plenty of ways – Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums. Here’s a different service with a twist. PixnPals let’s you organize and share your pictures around events. I can imagine this as a potentially great idea and lots of fun. Remember the last wedding or picnic that you went to when everyone was snapping digital cameras? Why not put your pictures on PixnPals and invite other people to the same event to upload their pictures. The results would be fun to look at the event from many different perspectives. While I’m not sure I’d use it as a replacement for Flickr or Picasa Web Albums, both of which I really like, the site is free and very easy to use and can be a great place to collaborate on sharing memories. The name PixnPals might be a little hokey, but everyone can’t have something really clever like Enquiring Mimes. Give PixnPals a try [via mashable] pixnpals-screen

Filed Under: Digital Pictures, Web 2.0, Websites

Lazy Gmail Replies – Use Canned Responses

October 23, 2008 By Dan Perlman 2 Comments

In retrospect, I'm still kind of annoyed at myself for writing about the recent Gmail feature Gmail Goggles -- it really was kind of stupid (it challenges you with math problems if you try and send emails late at night when you might be worse for alcohol). I hope I don't feel the same way about Canned Responses. This new feature to Gmail is available through the Labs menu which showcases new “experimental” features that you can use in your Gmail. It allows you to save standard replies that you can give to your Gmail message. While I can’t see this feature being very useful in personal email. “Thank you for your proposal of marriage, but…” More useful might be if you use your Gmail for your business and need to send any kind of repetitive messages, like the kind that are often used in customer service situations. More about Gmail Canned Responses[via WebMonkey] Comment about whether Canned Responses is as stupid as Gmail Goggles. gmail_canned_screen

Filed Under: email, Web 2.0

Now’s the Time to Follow the U.S. Election

October 22, 2008 By Dan Perlman Leave a Comment

The U.S. General Election is soon upon us, and if you haven't been following it, now's a great time to start. Whether it’s right or wrong, the occupant of the White House does much to influence the quality of life around the world. Depending on your interest level here are some online resources beyond the news sites to keep you informed. Since the real answer as to who wins a U.S. Presidential Election is who gets the most electoral votes (ask Al Gore about that), not who gets the popular vote – many of the resources are variations on U.S. maps colored by which candidate appears to be getting the winner-take-all electoral votes for that state. Your choices are fivethirtyeight.com, www.electoral-vote.com, realclearpolitics.com, and pollster.com. They are all pretty similar and at least this year are fairly consistent (see below). Our favorite is pollster.com because we like access to the updated poll information and news that is included on their homepage. Whether you love or hate Barrack Obama and just want to know how’s he doing – go for the very simple display of howisobamadoing.com which literally answers the question -- how’s he doing and how long before this is all over. hod-screen

A useful website just released by Google gives you basic polling information about your own situation. You get this by supplying your address to a special version of Google Maps. Information like the location of your polling place and the last date absentee ballots need to be received by is provided. (Can you believe it? I vote in a bowling alley) google-locations

To see today’s versions of the electoral maps, follow the jump. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="370" caption="fivethirtyeight.com"] 538-screen