Cool Hunting: Alife Pump Tennis – trainers made out of tennis ball material. And they’re Pumps too. Yoiks.
Geeks Gotta Have It
An amazing multi-charger cum light – imagine a world free of chargers, where cables are neatly stored away, out of sight. And, in its place, a wonderous ambient light source. This is the item that a whole planet of geeks’ girlfriends have been waiting for.
43 – The Magic Number
Well there’s 43 Things which I’m a huge fan of – a community based around ambitions and things we’d like to do, genius. And really nicely done. Then there’s 43 Places – a community rooted in the places that we’ve visited (or would like to visit). And now there’s 43 People – a community based around the people we’d like to meet.
All the sites are incredibly smartly put together using all the latest Web 2.0 must haves. Robot Co-op I salute your brilliance.
Backstreet Mime-a-long
Who? Why? 2 Chinese dudes, sing along to the Backstreet Boys. It’s funny. It gets funnier as you watch it for longer. The guy in the background appears to be just going about his business, unperturbed by the maniacs freaking out to boy-pop behind him.
Via BoingBoing via the Today Show via Sina.com.cn – yoiks that’s a lot of via-ing.
Collaborative writing online
Collaborative writing software online with Writeboard. Write, share, revise, compare. Well that’s what they say! It really is a lovely little collaborative app – great if you’re trying to do the old ‘to and fro’ with a bit of copy.
Those 37 signals chaps really do produce some cracking stuff. Check Backpack and Ta-da lists too.
Powerpoint Tip
MS Office Tip: Black out your Powerpoint Slideshow this really is a top tip. If you’re doing a PowerPoint presentation (I know that it’s pretty much like handling the wand of satan, but lots of us have to do it), and you want people to stop staring at the screen like ritalin-laced teenagers whacked out on MTV. Just hit B, the screen goes blank. hit B again, the pres comes back. Simple, but useful. Like the site I pinched the tip from – Lifehacker
PC Magazine: Top 101 Web Sites
PC Magazine: Top 101 Web Sites – really annoying laid out. But a good reminder of some of the best sites out there, and you might even discover one or two new ones. I did.
BugMeNot.com
After running around excitedly telling everyone how much I love BugMeNot, someone told me I’m way behind the curve on this one. I was slightly crestfallen for about a nanosecond, then I remembered that I’d just found one of the most useful and brilliant things ever. BugMeNot.com – is a user generated database of logins and passwords for registration websites.
OK, so it’s morally reprehensible, and if I use your site more than once I promise I will still register properly, so they you can get my demographics, opt-in permissions, etc. But for that one little article that I want to read once, it’s a huge timesaver. Comes into its own when you install the bookmarklet.
The State of the Blogosphere
David Sifry (the founder of Technorati) gives his view on the state (and size) of the blogosphere. Some interesting numbers in there. Perhaps naively I had no idea of the scale of fake blogs as used by spammers.
It’s true that you learn a new thing every day. Tangentially, The thing I learned yesterday is that a key part of ‘The Knowledge’ that London cab drivers have to go through is a test of temperament. If you’re a moody git, you fail. I reckon some of them need retesting ;-)
Growing pains for social bookmarking?
Broadband Stars – Covering the social media revolution: Growing pains ahead for social bookmarking? Interesting comment on the growth of web 2.0 apps and how the democratisation of them may ultimately lead to problems. Also refers to the ‘old guard’ worrying about non-geeks co-opting their technology. Strikes me that one of the beauties of tagging is that if geeks want to keep their links (or whatever) pure, all they’d need to do is add special tags that only their acceptible community know and use. Thus weeding out tags of the great unwashed.
Smacks a bit of elitism to me though. But I guess being able to slice information based on who’s submitted it is a key part of social software. It’ll be interesting to watch anyway…
Also liking the use of del.icio.us for reader submissions (see coolhunting.com for examples.