*blend

Here are some of the sites I am currently reviewing:

(Beta) Spotplex provides internet users with real-time ranking of blog articles based on actual impression count.
In other words, you can find what is the hot news today, this week, or this month in real time at Spotplex. This is not a list of articles people recommended or voted for, but a list of articles read most in a given timeframe.
Bloggers can track and analyze their blog traffic with a simple Spotplex code or widget. Not just how many people visit the blog, they can even find which articles people read most and how many people read them. Whenever an article of the blog is read, it will show up at Spotplex in real-time and get noticed by Spotplex users.

RevolutionHealth.com, a free, comprehensive health and medical information site, specifically designed with the Family’s Chief Medical Officer — women and other caregivers — in mind.RevolutionHealth.com offers best-of-breed health information as well as more than 125 online tools aimed at helping individuals take control of their well-being. Revolution Health has partnered with more than 50 companies and teamed with a number of leading health nonprofits and experts to make its innovative approach to health a reality.

Slacker is a new kind of music company. We deliver personal radio that is customized for every listener. Slacker is effortless to use and the music is accessible at home, in the car, or on the go. Slacker Personal Radio has millions of songs with the breadth and depth increasing continuously. The extensive Slacker music library is organized into numerous professionally programmed genre and sub-genre stations and over 10,000 stations that are built around specific artists. Personalization options include adjusting your stations to play more popular vs. more eclectic music, newer vs. older music, or even to play more tracks you tagged as your favorites. Other features include:

• Log in from any PC or Mac to hear personalized stations in CD quality
• Playback through web player, jukebox software and portable devices
• Create stations by combining favorite artists
• Select favorite tracks/artists to play more often and ban other tracks/artists
• Click through album cover art, band profiles, reviews and artist photos
• Easily share stations with friends

I Heart Movies - beta.
A place to organize your DVD collection and view it in several ways, share information and discuss films with movie lovers.

Flektor. Beta. For all the hype about user-generated content, it seems like most of what people post is a vast wasteland of copycat Mentos®-meets-Diet Coke videos, bad parodies, and shaky videos of themselves crashing their cars. Flektor was designed to change that, and bring quality to the user generated content world, even for people who don’t have great artistic skills. Flektor allows you to quickly and easily create, remix, and share your photos, videos, with others via email, on mySpace, or in your blog. “Flektor is completely FREE until the end of our beta period. You may upload and publish as much as you want. When the beta period ends, we may announce a pricing plan for heavy users. ”

Fixya. Beta. FixYa was founded by two entrepreneurs who decided to take advantage of the fact that consumer products manufacturers are not providing adequate support through their web sites. Although these products become more and more technologically advanced, their manufacturers are not allocating the necessary resources that are required in order to provide good technical support. Like any other consumer out there, FixYa’s founders had a hard time finding relevant and updated support information for their printer or digital camera, and therefore decided to create this site. The idea behind FixYa is to aggregate all support information that is scattered throughout the internet in a single user friendly location. In addition, FixYa is a huge knowledgebase that is constantly updated by a live community of users who share their experiences of technical problems and solutions. Through the site’s unique rating system, FixYa is allowing users to find the best solution for every problem and even offer a new solution. Our aim is that over time, FixYa will offer the best solutions for the most common problems of each and every product the site is covering. The best thing about our knowledgebase is that it’s based on true user experience rather than on projected FAQs by the manufacturer.

A comment on a previous article led me to an awesome article about 2 boys getting their first computer for Christmas in the early 80s. I wanted to comment on his site, but had to sign up, so I thought I’d say something here. The 80s were THE perfect decade to grow up geek. Home technology was new, and full of promise. Nothing was taken for granted, and kids all over the world treated as fun and games what many others labor away at (and pay for!) in college.

Their story inspired me to write about one of my first computers I got for Christmas. One that is nearly forgotten today: a Tomy Tutor. While it sounds like a toy, it had AMAZING graphic and animation capabilities, far ahead of it’s time. I locked myself in my room and honed my BASIC programming skills to a razor edge on this baby. The soft keys and purple space bar sure didn’t hurt it’s appeal, either.

Every now and then I come across a quote that makes me want to shout “OH YEAH”. I’ll start sharing them. Today’s quote is attributed to Edward Murrow, host of This I Believe in the 1950s:

A nation of sheep begets a government of wolves.

I couldn’t fine much to substantiate just where he said this, so I have to be a little wary of stating matter-of-fact that he did. It’s a great quote, and one Americans should think about.

Using an IMified widget, it’s possible to post to your Wordpress blogs via your instant messenging client. I typically use Meebo, and don’t IM ‘on the road’, so I’m not sure this is an awesome find, but I do occasionally use Mundu away from home on my Palm, and since my Palm doesn’t play nicely with most of my web applications, I think it might be handy, just in case, to keep this cool little widget in my IMified menu. You never know when inspiration will strike…

I was goofing around and somehow, don’t know exactly how, but somehow, I came across this page about a UFO sighting in Fort Stockton in 1972, complete with mockups of what was seen. I couldn’t help myself, I had to look, and here’s what I saw:

Okay. Gee, that looks like the school right down the street… why do I get such a kick out of seeing a photoshopped alien ship hovering over it? Who knows, but seeing how there is so little ‘out there’ about my community, this was a fun find. Too bad it’s so, um, well, ‘out there’ !

Original images and sighting info can be found at HBCC UFO Research.

Moments after my previous post about viralinks, I received a comment from Culture Shiok! with information about another viral linking system. Here is the tag-based link matrix and instructions:

Instructions:

1.) Copy and paste the matrix of ViralTags below courtesy of Founders Cafe (to support Jimmy’s quest of launching his own Internet Startup with a shoestring budget, please consider subscribing to his Full RSS Feed to see his triumphs and struggles in real time).

2.) Substitute the Host Tag and one of the Viral Tags in the matrix with your anchor text of choice with your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a max of 3 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their Viral Tags, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Tags anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your Viral Tag below.

4.) Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

Host Tag: Daily Life Technology

Revellian | Investing Women Online| A Great Pleasure | Tech at Hand | Overseas Filipino Worker | Internet Marketing Austria | Anything and Everything | Mariuca’s Perfume Gallery | Technology Music Life | Mariuca | Manila Mom | Good Jokes | JohannTheDog | Startup Entrepreneur Money | RescueMe | Webtools | Make Money Blogging | The Third Eye| Agloco Internet Marketing | TECH LOCK-RAHUL | Tech Gadgets Stocks | EMOI | Computer Seventy-Five | Learn about e-Learning | Sexy Celebrity | Jack Book | Butterfly Feelings | Yoeru | DIGITAL I.T BLOG | LifeIsRisky.Com | Disjointed Intelligence | ViralTags | Earn Money Online | ViralTags | Earn Income Online | Daily Mind Xpression | Entrepreneurship Internet Web | Huma B | Create a Blog | ViralTags | start a blog | ViralTags | ViralTags | Tech Startups Web2.0 | ViralTags | ViralTags | Plugins TV Blogging | Mrs Sparrow | Hot Buzz | Weight Loss | Really Funny Jokes | ViralTags | ViralTags | Internet Marketing German | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Business Blog Web | ViralTags | Anitokid Chronikos | ViralTags | esofthub’s web finds| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | The Broken Bow | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Daily Life Technology | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Sarah Pauline Cada |

Important: Once I get a ping back from you (I promise to do the best I can), I will add your anchor text and the associated link you designate as Host Tag here, replacing one of the ViralTags from the matrix above. As more and more bloggers copy and paste this matrix, the more backlinks you will have with your anchor text. If everybody who copy and paste from your blog does the same, pretty soon this will spread and go viral. So, the sooner you participate, the more links with anchor text you will receive.

This one has the added benefit of tagging to make click-throughs MUCH more likely to happen, but it sure does take up a lot of space. Perhaps a smaller matrix would look better, even though it would result in fewer link-backs.

It’s been quite some time since I have posted to either of my blogs, and while I have plenty of excuses, I won’t bore you with any of them. Somerset Bob poked me with a sharp stick and I thank him tremendously for it. I need to get back on track!

So, I only used Live Writer once. Haven’t looked into getting Andrew Grant’s Keyword tags working on my site in order for tagging from within Live Writer to work right, and now I see that all of my tagging is currently broken anyway. While the lack related posts links and Technorati keyword links really won’t affect my content, they sure are nice to have. So that’s what I’m going to work on right now. Perhaps when I have more time, and ambition, I’ll look into getting Live Writer working correctly with my blogs, but right now, there are more important things to do… like actually blogging.

While surfing, I came across this interesting way to build cross-links to your site. I think this is a much better plan than others I have seen (and refuse to participate in!). This is less obtrusive, doesn’t require any special accounts or javascript, and I have more control over who links back to me (sort of). I mean, ANYONE can copy the grid from here and they will be linking to me, BUT more than likely, the only people reading this are the folks who already visit my blog, and therefore, we have something in common.

So, here’s how it works:

Below is a matrix of 120 stars, I have already added a link to my blog onto one of the stars, all you need to do is copy and paste the grid into your blog and add your own link to one of the other spare stars, and tell others to do the same!

 

Viralink

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When I receive a ping back once you have added the Viralink to your site I will add your link to this grid, and each person who copies the grid from here will also link to your site!

Rules
No Porn Sites
Only 1 link per person (i.e don’t hog the viralink!)
Please don’t tamper with other peoples url’s
Enjoy!

If you’re going to use the virlink matrix, just copy the grid and the instructions into your own.