It was only ten days ago that Mashable first offered a brief peek into LaterLoop, a bookmarking service created by the Greg Hochmuth, founder of Mento and zoo-m.com, which offers easy online/offline access to pages saved for later reading or referral through the use of a FireFox add-on. Users can also integrate the service with […]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “LaterLoop’s New Airplane Mode: Zipped Bookmarks On The Fly”, url: “http://mashable.com/2008/05/31/laterloop-zip-bookmarks/” });
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What it does
From the acclaimed and successful language learning company RosettaStone comes SharedTalk. SharedTalk is a language exchange community solely based on educating its members and improving their language skills through communication with members who actually speak the desired language fluently. Practice can be done through voice chat, text chat, or through emails. Finding the right person you feel comfortable learning from is easy with their member search, so you can make sure to find someone you’ll have something in common with so that communication is only difficult because of the difference of first languages rather than personalities. They make sure to point out that the community is designed only as a practice arena for your language skills, and if you are out for just a penpal, a way to meet people from other countries, a date, or any other kind of service, there are plenty of other sites out there to use. They even provide a detailed list of these sites organized by what you are potentially looking for other than a language learning buddy.
In their own words
“Rosetta Stone’s SharedTalk is a community of people from around the world and is dedicated to language exchange and language learning. Rosetta Stone is enthusiastic about the opportunity SharedTalk offers language learners around the world to strengthen their language skills through immersion and conversation. Rosetta Stone is committed to making the SharedTalk users experience the best, most effective learning experience possible.”
Why it might be a killer
The amount of detail they go into to make sure that people with different motives don’t use the site, and the fact that they actually go through their members to make sure they are following through with the site’s objective and are not just passive members never utilizing the various tools, makes sure that the site retains its quality, which makes it very attractive. Many people know of RosettaStone and the fact that even the State Department uses it for its employees who need to learn another language, and this association definitely gives the site credit before you even visit it. It’s a good complimentary tool for people using their software who are serious about learning a new language.
Some questions
What exactly is their method for checking to see if people are using the site in the way that they designed it?
Updates
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What it does
PMOG, the Passively Multiplayer Online Game, is a fun way to continuously compete against other web users while just browsing through your various visited sites. The first step is to download the Firefox add-on that sits at the bottom of your web browser while you go about your day online. With each site there’s the chance that you will gain or lose points, find a mission through a whole new set of urls, or even find a treasure chest full of goodies. With each new site you visit, you gain points. These points allow you to climb the ranks of the game and create a more sophisticated PMOG profile. Based on your browsing behavior and the tools you tend to use, you accumulate three different associations. Tools available to you include mines that blow up when someone visits the particular site where it’s been laid, causing a drop in points for that person, armor to defend against those mines, crates that carry treasure in tools for some lucky players, portals that take browsers to other random sites, lightposts used to create a mission of sites for users to follow and discover, and St Nicks that stop a user from leaving one of their mines. It’s continuously played and a fun way to make your daily browsing online into a social challenge, while being introduced to new corners of the web that other players have enjoyed.
In their own words
“PMOG is an infinite game built on individual network histories, transforming our web surfing into ongoing social play. With a game head-up display in Firefox, players can bomb each other, wage war over web sites, and lead other users on web missions. Ordinary web sites become caches for items and currency. PMOG fuses an MMO into our WWW.
PMOG stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Players play without playing; clicking around the internet turns into experience points and currency.
This unconventional massively multiplayer online game merges your web life with an alternate, hidden reality. The mundane takes on a layer of fantastic achievement. Player behavior generates characters and alliances, triggers interactions in the environment, and earns the player points to spend online beefing up their inventory. Suddenly the internet is not a series of untouchable exhibits, but a hackable, rewarding environment.”
Why it might be a killer
It’s a unique way for people to explore the web and meet new people based on a game that doesn’t really require much skill. The game also helps you to understand your own browsing patterns and find likeminded people. The site is well designed and it’s possible to become invisible if you want a break from the game with relative ease.
Some questions
Will people start to get bored of the game since it never has an actual end and thus have a ton of inactive players? How will they control the quality of the portals and missions so that people aren’t having to deal with lame sites and thus not follow any of the suggested paths presented with the site?
Updates
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What it does
Climbclips is a new video oriented community for climbers. As a member of Climbclips, you can upload your own footage and show everyone your mad climbing, scaling and abseiling skills (submitted videos must be no larger than 300mb in size). Or you can browse through the collection to admire the feats of others. Videos are organized by date, views, categories (these include alpine, bouldering, big wall and trad, among others) and by rating. Each video displays time of duration, user and views. Members of the site get their own requisite profile space, where they can aggregate comments and display their uploaded videos. Other benefits of membership include personal favorites, groups and bookmarks. There are also the staple 2.0 features such as a tag cloud, search bar, blog, and chat box.
In their own words
“In a rapidly growing digital age, massive video sites like You-Tube lose our climbing videos among millions of other clips. ClimbClips provides a central location on the internet for user uploadable climbing media. It is our goal to bring climbing video to one website, thus making it easier to find entertaining video clips as well a build an online climbing community. All are welcome to signup and upload your video from professional videographers to cam toting boulderers. Click the green “register” link at the top of the screen and get started today!”
Why it might be a killer
ClimbClips offers a niche site for climbers. It’s more collective and communal then what you’d find on all encompassing video sites such as Youtube. With ClimbClips users can easily browse through climbing related videos to find just what they’re looking for.
Some questions
How is this site going to attract more users? Will users be able to submit photos as well as videos?
Updates
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If you’re part of the indie music scene, you’re often likely to hear that one of the best ways to get your digital media out to the virtual shelves of stores on the Web without much initial investment in distribution is to seek the services of CD Baby. The halfway house built to serve the […]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “SongCast Now Serving Indie Music To Five Top Web Outlets”, url: “http://mashable.com/2008/05/31/songcast/” });
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What it does
Adore fashion? Care to share your innovation in dress and wear with the rest of the world? Then ILikeMyStyle is just the site for you. This new fashion network is open to anyone and everyone who has a thing for clothes. As a member, you’re invited to post your outfits, to show off your duds whether you be at work or play, and to simply enjoy the spectacle of clothes. Users can label their outfits under any one of the following categories: favorite, daily, or most despised; they can provide more details such as label, fabric, and place of acquisition. The site itself is categorized into three main views: view by most, view by piece, and stylistics. Registration is free.
In their own words
“Ilikemystyle.net is a Social Network for people who love fashion. And a place for people who want to be seen.
Ilikemystyle.net shows fashion worn on the streets, in school, in the club, at the beach, in the movie theatre, in a palace, in bed, on top of a mountain, on a date.
Ilikemystyle.net is the platform for people who like themselves (and their clothes)”
Why it might be a killer
Streetstyle blogs and sites have risen in popularity of late. They’re everywhere. People like to dress up and to show off, which is why ILikeMyStyle is very zeitgeisty; it fits with today’s younger generations’ penchant for exhibitionism and independence.
Some questions
The site feels rough. It doesn’t have an established look or feel yet, which is important for a network dedicated to appearances. How will it market itself?
Updates
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What it does
TheTravelEditor is a travel site which aims to be different from the myriad of other similar sites on the web. The team behind the site wants to bring back the mystique and the marvel to travel that seems to have been lost with the proliferation of bargain airlines and travel blogs. In order to achieve this, TheTravelEditor is exclusive; they don’t do the crowd sourced thing. Instead, they handpick travel writers, film makers and artists to share their travels and add their insights. The content on site is available in a number of handy formats—you can download their audio casts to your iPod for on the road info, or you can print out their comprehensive guides. There are reviews, pocket guides, maps, and even top ten lists. You can pick your favorite articles and save them to create your personal travel guide. Sign up to feeds of your favorite writer, or give it a try yourself and join the team. TheTravelEditor can also be accessed from your mobile.
In their own words
“At TheTravelEditor.com, we want to bring back the excitement, mystery and discovery to travel. We want your trips to be new, utterly personal and always enriching.
We want the world to be big, again.”
Why it might be a killer
TheTravelEditor aims for class. It’s got a slick, glossy design. It handpicks its authors to offer top quality reviews and writing. Articles cover everything from luxury spas to hidden lakes and cool country houses. This will do well with the high end crowd.
Some questions
TheTravelEditor really doesn’t offer anything that new. It’s a tough market to be in. The travel site industry is heavily saturated. How will TTE attract new readers and get its numbers up?
Updates
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Do you recall that tax bill sent into law in New York State which requires some Internet retail businesses to require customers to fork over some cash and coin? It received the designation of “the Amazon tax” as a result of sheer caliber of business conducted by the online sales giant. Oh, and the fact […]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “People Of New York: Shop Today, Because Tomorrow You’re Taxed”, url: “http://mashable.com/2008/05/31/new-york-tax/” });
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What it does
TurnItUpMedia is an ad-based media, mostly music, distribution system. The company offers what they call Tri-play, a service model in which users can freely enjoy legal downloads after watching short video ads, no longer than a minute in length. These ads permit users to access a range of genres. After users fill out their registration info and a quick questionnaire, they’ll be able to search for music and add it to their download queue. Downloads are activated after you’ve watched the advertisements. Tracks on TurnItUp come in both DRM free and DRM flavors. The revenue collected from the ads is shared with artists and musicians who distribute their songs on the site. Registration is required.
In their own words
“TurnItUp Media started out in 2003 as MediaXcess. The vision then was the same as it is today: to create a system where individuals can easily and legally download media files for free. This was the start of what we call the “Ad-Supported” model. The market was obviously not ready for this model, so the project was put on hold as we watched the digital world try the 99cent download philosophy. Over the past few years, we have observed piracy eating away the profits of labels, artists, and publishers.”
Why it might be a killer
With P2P sharing rising and record sales declining, TurnItIUp gives both artists and listeners with a new model for distributing and listening to music. Fans will be able to access their favorite songs legally, and they don’t have to worry about DRM. Artists can get their music out there while enjoying ad revenues from the video spots.
Some questions
The music distribution system is constantly being challenged and changed, will ad based distribution systems work? Are fans willing to watch ads to access their favorite music?
Updates
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There are a number of technologies whose origins could be found in NASA’s history books. But microblogging most definitely is not one of them. Still, the space agency has developed its own little fascination with Twitter, and Veronica McGregor, the news services manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is spending her evenings […]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “@MarsPhoenix Twitters From Foreign Soil. Sort of.”, url: “http://mashable.com/2008/05/31/marsphoenix-twitter/” });
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