Virtually Here

If you’re a self confessed foodie and already enjoy sites like yelp.com you may want to check out foodbuzz.com the site for, and I quote; “the first-ever community site devoted exclusively to food and dining content—an unparalleled resource for searching, surfing and sharing with fellow foodies everywhere”.

Feeling that I’m personally part of their target audience (I love food and the internet…ok that sounded bad..I’m NOT 300lbs and living in my mom’s basement I promise!) I was rather excited to learn about this site as I’m already an avid yelper.

As we often do here, let’s sign-up on the site and see what it is all about and what it can do for me..I mean you.

Sign-up is pretty straightforward and you get the opportunity to put a lot of information about your gourmand traits into your profile such as favorite dish, restaurant and town.

Ok, so you got a profile there. Now what?

Foodbuzz.com is full fledged social networking site with features you’d expect to find such as the ability to add friends, tag for favorites and of course to submit content.

Content submission (or ‘buzz’) can be submitted as an exclusive review (written on-site), photos, videos, recipes, news and forum threads/discussions.

To keep things ‘interesting’ you also get a buzz-rating. It’s a numeric value between 1-100 and is based on how active you are on the site and how popular your posts get.

The site is very nicely done and the posts and profiles have a very attractive look to them (see a sample post here) but it is obviously content that makes or breaks a site like this and from what I saw during my hour there I was pretty impressed by the diversity of posts and also posts from my local area. Will it pull me away from yelp? No, but I don’t think it will as its offering is so exclusive with it’s food focus that I will be able to use both of them in parallel. There are certainly enough features to keep me busy for hours (the ability to submit links to your own blog being one of them) as I explore them.

Note: Thanks to Gina who let me know about this site.

I’ve mentioned sites here on this blog that aims at consolidating your own posts on multiple social networking sites into one place as well as sites that makes it easier for you to update all those sites you belong to. The site socialthing.com does the consolidation ‘the other way’ in that it allows you to track all your friends updates at one single site. You could think of it as an RSS feed focused on your friends updates to a number of social sites. Likewise - you set up your own site (you get a dedicates userprofile with URL) where you decide what information you want to push out.

The sites that can be hooked in to socialthing appears to be growing rapidly and you can already connect/feed from the more usual suspects such as Brightkite, Plurk, Twitter and more.

Socialthing also supports some updates that may be a bit more surprising - such as keeping track of your friends current scores in Guitar Hero

To quote the site:

“just integrate your console (XBOX360, PS3 or Wii) into the Guitar Hero site, then tell us your User ID and we’ll publish how well you’ve been doing lately on your tunes. Stats include star rating, percentage, oh, and what song you played in the first place.

I was personally really excited (sad but true) when I read that socialthing support Fluidapp and if you for some reason (shame on you) don’t know what fluidapp is I may just have to dedicate a specil blog entry to talk just about that site

Socialthing is still in beta (sometimes it seems as if every site I belong to is in some perpetual state of beta-testing (Hi Twitter!) but you can request a userid on their main page and if you’re in luck you may have your very own account setup in just a few days.

Today, July 24th 2008, 12seconds.tv (note, that’s .tv and not .com)  is opening their doors to the public Alpha testing phase of their new product…12seconds.

What is it and who cares?

To answer the first, and most likely easier, question it’s a - and I am totally borrowing this term from their own site as it’s a new for me - ‘a video status platform’. Damn, that sounds great and I will in the next day or so, casually, work that into a conversation (either that or ‘message status platform’ when talking about services like Twitter or Plurk). Anyway, this video status platform (yay, did it) allows you to post short (12 seconds) video clips where you show your friends, family, faceless on-line stalkers what you are up to. With so many mobile phones sporting web-cam caputuring and emailing capabilities recording and submitting such content will take little more than the forementioned twelve seconds.

After signing up at the site you’ll get your own email address where you send your clips to and within a few seconds the world can watch you in your PJ’s as you spill those beads (beans?) of wisdom that you previously were only able to convey over boring old emails or IM’s - as long as you keep it to twelve seconds of course.

You can find people in your area by the built in search function or just go to the main page and see an assortment of random and featured video-posts. Video uploads from the same user are grouped under a unique URL (http://12seconds.tv/channel/[name]/ and you can follow and be followed by others on the site.

So why twelve seconds? Why not.

Go play and find out if you by doing so can answer the second question I initially asked.

Walking downtown today I came across group of people passing out pamphlets for free massage sessions by, for some odd reason, some high-tech company that I couldn’t recall hearing about. Seeing its rather generic five-six letter one-word ‘trendy’ sounding name I started wondering how many information-based companies pick their name these days simply because the dot com address is available. I mean seriously, why meebo, beebo, dNeero, etc, etc if it wasn’t for that reason?

Tangent aside, let’s take a closer look at a company who’s name may - or may not - fall into the “Yup, that’s why we named it that”-category: Plurk.com

The sign-up is straight-forward and as part of the process you get a nowadays rather common option to see who else is using the service by seeing if any of your existing email contacts have subscribed.

Once your account is created you can take a short walk-through that takes you through some of the highlights of the site, then, the fun(?) starts.

A message in Plurk is called, well, a ‘plurk’. As you, and your friends, post messages they are displayed in a drag-able time-line (which is a rather novel idea for how to display these common non-immediate, public instant messages that so many social networks are based around).

Now, assume that you didn’t import any friends and the only plurks you are seeing are..well..yours. What then? That’s when the cyber interaction starts. Plurk allows you to do searches and display plurks (sigh..) from people that you may be interested in. As an example you can search for plurks by “Females in San Francisco between the ages of 21 and 28″. Not that I would know that of course.  And with one click of a button up comes a time line showing what these 21-28 year old females are talking about in San Francisco and when they did so.  You can join in the conversations by making comments on any plurk and/or hope that someone will ‘find’ your own.

Plurk also use something that they call ‘Karma points’. You earn more points by updating your profile and being active in general and the more Karma points you get - the  more…honestly I don’t know what you get in the end.

Regardless, if you for any reason find Twitter and the likes boring today go ahead and plurk something or find some existing Plurkers in your own city and ask them why they are plurking.

(Ok, I seriously need get the word plurk out of my mind now…).

Launched a mere four months ago (which sometimes in internet-time can be considered about four years..) muxtape.com sparked a lot of interest and hype around the web.

To quote muxtape:

“Muxtape is a living music platform in its early stages. Our goal is to redefine the mixtape on the internet as a model for music discovery and social interaction, and to do so in the most elegant way technology allows. We believe that music is better when it’s presented to you by a person with care.”

That quote sums up Muxtape rather well and as a music-loving websurfer (Pandora, last.fm, Muxtape (even iTunes..) I quickly found myself attracted to the underlying concept of Muxtape and have spent MANY hours on it mixing and sharing music with people as well as finding others ‘mix tapes’.

So, how does it work?

The very basic functions of Muxtape allows you to create an account that gives you your own permanent URL link. Once you have an account you can start uploading music (maximum twelve songs/mix) from your computer to create your own ‘mixed tape’.  Once uploaded you re-arrange the songs by simply dragging and dropping them in the order you want them played. Sharing your mix is as easy as having someone go to your URL. Done.

As an example, here is my own latest mix-tape: [Click to play]

You can also browse the front page for mixtapes created by others or, if you are feeling especially adventurous, you can use the random feature and see what you end up with. People can also tag you as a ‘favorite’ and you can with a click see who else these people like in hopes of finding other, similar music to listen to.

For those of you already hooked on last.fm you’ll be pleased to learn that you can port the listening history from Muxtape to last.fm as well

No site is perfect and Muxtape is the first to comment on that they are still in their early stages of development. Some features I would love to see added are for instance the ability to upload multiple files, progress bar(s) for file uploads, statistics on how many (and who) have listened to your music, multiple mix-tapes per account, etc, etc.

But if you’re looking for new ways to find and/or share music on-line give Muxtape.com a try - and send me your link so I can get some new stuff to listen to

The core social network for most people are your own immediate family and if you are looking for ways to further your understanding of your heritage at the same time as involving your family members in an exciting journey you may want to check out Geni.com.

Geni is a free on-line application that makes it very easy for you to construct your family tree. You can add information such as email address and even photos for each person in your family tree. Once you have a foundation start inviting your family members to review it and have them help you building it.

Depending on how much information you add you can view your tree in a traditional node-structure but you will also have the option of viewing timelines showing significant events in your family history (births, deaths, weddings, etc).

Trees that are connected to your main tree (through marriage, etc) are part of what is named ‘the forest’ and if you or your family members put some effort into the construction this could prove to be a very valuable and entertaining way to learn about your extended family - and who knows, maybe even re-connect people that lost contact years ago.

The site also features a discussion tool page that can be used to discuss family information or even to plan for future family events.

Privacy is taken seriously and only individuals you identify as members of your family can view the family tree you are building.

This is one site I am personally very excited about coming across and I can see myself spending quite some time on it and inviting core family members to add their pieces to the puzzle that makes up your family tree.

Sometimes you want to share your photos, videos, blog posts, etc - but maybe not to the big, anonymous internet population but to a more targeted audience consisting of your friends, families and other trusted recipients.

There are obviously a number of ways to do that but one that you may want to look into is multiply. com.

In short multiply is another social networking consolidation tool - but this time with a bit of a twist. Most social network consolidation tools are made to make things easier for you - the person who creates and maintains all your various sites. This site makes it easier for your ‘trusted people’ to follow your updates on one, single page that combines all your posts that you make across the interweb. Not all content is displayed on this site but rather provides links back to the original posts which makes the pages quick to load and easy to navigate through.

Another feature that can make using multiply valuable for anyone who wants to push out his personal updates to his close circle is that there is an option to have your friends notified as soon as you’ve made an update (posted a new blog entry, uploaded some photos, etc). Your friends can comment on the content which may lead to some rather amusing discussions depending on content discussed (company outing, drunken night out, annual family reunion, etc).

The site also recently started offering a paid service named Multiply Premium that gives unlimited (?) storage for your photos and videos (and the ability to organize and present them in an album) for $19.95/year.

Multiply has been around for a few years now and have close to ten million users. Check it out and see if you want to be one of them.

Let’s start with a quote from the site itself:

“Bored with watching others’ lives and showing yours when nothing really happens? Want a true digital social life with live feedbacks and real sharing experience with your friends?”

If you answer yes to one or more of those questions you may want to take a close look at yoono.com

As of June 18, yoono.com has been out of Beta testing and is now available for the public to play around with.

You can describe yoono as an online-social-interaction-control-center. It does require a download (hrmpf..) and once installed it attaches itself to your browser (works very well in Firefox which is really the browser you should be using anyway if you’re on a PC) and provides you with a one-stop-shop for IM’ing your friends, sharing media (photos/music/videos), receiving and making updates to social sites such at Twitter, etc.

One of the strengths of yoono is that through the use of widgets it becomes very customizable - just install and activate the features that you are interested in. You may for instance chose to install the FriendsWidget to follow and interact with your on-line friends through posts on Twitter, FaceBook, IM’s, etc. If you are feeling adventurous and used to concepts introduced by sites such as StumbledUpon you may enjoy the DiscoveryWidget that will recommend sites for you based on your browsing history (there is even a widget especially for finding videos that you may enjoy based on your viewing history). The WebNotesWidget will allow you to grab any text/video/picture and simply drop them into the yoono frame for you to either view later - or share with your friends. And the list goes on with more features for pictures and radio stations (yes it’s also plays radio).

It may be just ‘one more’ tool to help you keep up to date with your busy online-social life but it may also be the tool you need. Truth is,only you can tell for sure so if you got a few minutes you may want to give it a try and see how you like it.

As if we needed more applications that can aid the cyber stalkers in tracking your every move. Well, BrightKite.com may be a great tool for that jealous ex or creepy co-worker that will go out of his or her way to track your internet escapades  - but this time he or she may get some exercises out of it as well as brightkite will disclose where in the ‘real world’ you are currently located.

Similar to offerings from companies like WeFi.com Brightkite will allow you to disclose to the world where you are located. But unlike for example WeFi the service is not tied to a WiFi router as this application can also be run on your iPhone for instance.

To break it down, Brightkite has three main features;

1) Telling people where you are,

2) Allowing you to send notes/photos that can be read either by friends or by people near you, and

3) You can browse for people that are close to where you are.

For those of you that are already heavy Twitter users (article about Twitter way overdue) you’ll be happy to hear that Brightkite can interact with Twitter so that location announcements and notes automagically can show up in Twitter for your friends to read.

I’ve personally used Brightkite for less than two weeks now and my experiences may differ from others since San Francisco is such a ‘wired’ city but I have already received a few friends ‘Hello’s’ from people that were a few blocks away - and once from a person in the same coffee shop

Fun and entertaining? Absolutely.

Useful? Hm, the jury is still out on that one

EIOBA is an new venture into what seems to be a never-ending growing population of article publishing sites.

If you have used sites like digg.com, del.ico.us, etc you are well familiar with the basic concept of sharing content/articles with other like-minded people on the internet and have your submitted content receive popularity votes to push it further into the spotlight. EIOBA is ‘the same but different’. Each article submitted has to be exclusively written and published through EIOBA. This may of course sound as if they automatically cut themself off from 90% of the available content out there but if you have ever browsed through a high number of the submitted links at digg during some extremely lazy Sunday afternoon - then you may actually appreciate this.

EIOBA is attempting to promote is a combined [exclusive] article publishing site - with a ‘voting’ system built in.

The profile features at EIOBA is where the site really starts to shine and where the site starts to feel unique. Your personal profile keeps track of articles you’ve read, written, commented on, marked as favorites - and even a place for you to save articles that you intend to come back to later and read.

You don’t have to write your material at EIOBA as you have the option to upload your articles as long as they are saved in DOC, RTF or ODT format.

As you, through your articles and review work, gain more ’status’ on the site you can join/create groups with others that share your interests and if well managed this could be a great creative forum/tool similar to traditional writing groups.

A very interesting site, well written and with a great concept. Check it out over at www.EIOBA.com

To learn more about Social CMS and to keep up-to-date on trends in the area you could do worse than checking out SocialCMSbuzz.com that feature a number of articles on related topics. A good read on those insomnic nights when neither MySpace or BeBo does the trick for you anymore.