Archive for category Site Of The Week

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week

Jun 18

Posted by Davis in Site Of The Week, Technology, VOD, Web 2.0 | 3 Comments

This week’s winner of the site of the ~~week~~ (cough: weeks) was Tube Battle. I’m not sure why I like competitions so much, but Tube Battle is a lot like another favorite site of mine, PickTheHottie.com TubeBattle puts two videos up against each other and the audience votes for their favorite ones. They have categories ranging from comedies, to movie trailers, to viral videos, they even have a sexy category for the Break.com crowd.

One drawback to using the site was that it does take a bit of a time commitment, if you really want to play the game right. If a video was really lame, I wouldn’t watch the whole thing, but for a lot of the videos I found, they weren’t the sort of things I’d look for normally.

By finding a new way to organize videos, Tube Battle has been able to create it’s own community beyond YouTube. It’s another neat example of how the web 2.0 community is using existing technology, in order to create a unique experience. By taking embedded content from other sites and rearranging it for their users, Tube Battle has created a new way to discover video content.

Congratulations to Tube Battle on winning this week’s site of the week award. The nominations for next week’s award are listed below. You can vote in the sidebar. If you know of a good site that should be nominated for site of the week, please feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to take a look.

iJigg

Go 2 Web 2.0

Guerilla Mail

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week

Jun 4

Posted by Davis in Site Of The Week, Web 2.0 | Comments off

This week’s winner of the site of the week contest was Tower Blaster. Tower Blaster is a game that is very simple, yet surprisingly entertaining. It wasn’t until I had been playing it for a half an hour, that I realized there was an education component to the game.

The goal of the game is line up a series of blocks in numerical order. You don’t have to get them exactly in order, you just need to make sure that each block has a higher value than the one above it. Once you get all of your blocks in order, you win that level. During the game, you compete against various opponents who have unique skills that they bring to the game. Some opponents have the ability to block you from seeing their progress, while other opponents, are more organized, but let you see what you are building.

The game starts off by letting you use blocks numbered 1 – 50, in order to build your tower, but as the game progresses, they limit the number of blocks that you can use. In total there are 8 levels for you to work your way through. This gives you a good number of levels to play through, yet still keeps it so that even a casual gamer can beat the game with a little practice.

Congratulations to Tower Blaster on winning this week’s site of the week award. The nominations for next week’s site of the week are listed below. You can vote in the sidebar. If you’d like to nominate a site, feel free to contact me and I will add it to the pool of nominees.

Museum of Hoaxes

Opinmind

Tube Battle

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week

May 28

Posted by Davis in Site Of The Week | 3 Comments

Given the technology focus on my site, I never thought that a woman’s magazine would win site of the week, but Queendom’s great tests won this week’s award. Queendom is a site that hosts lots of polls and tests that you can use to answer all of life’s riddles. Most of the polls are for the types of things that you’d find in woman’s magazines, but the have polls for men too. I’m probably the wrong demographic for the site, but I still thought it was entertaining. My favorite tests were some of the more random ones. When I took the test for whether or not I had baby fever, here is the advice the site gave me.

“Although one day you may consider becoming a mother, presently it is the farthest thought from your mind. In fact it may not even exist in your five-year plan. Whatever your opinions on motherhood are, one thing is certain. You are not anxious to endure the agony of childbirth, the sleepless nights, nor sacrifice your freedom for next twenty years. Perhaps the idea of dirty diapers dampens your spirits or you may simply feel that you are still not ready to appreciate the pleasures of motherhood. You could be at the pinnacle of your career, finishing a degree or focusing on becoming a better person. You are wise enough to realize that being liable for another life is a huge responsibility. Being a mom is great â€¦ when you are ready! “

They are right about the dirty diapers, but I’m not too worried about the agony of childbirth, I plan to leave that up to somone else. The site also has more in depth tests, but you have to pay to get the detailed answers for the report and what’s the fun of answering 200 questions, if you can’t see what it means.

The nominees for next week’s site of the week award are listed below. You can vote in the sidebar. If you know of any good sites, you can send them to me and I will add them to the pool of contestants.

Tower Blaster

Blood Gut’s and Gore

SonicX

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week

May 22

Posted by Davis in Search, Site Of The Week, Technology | Comments off

This week’s winner of the site of the week contest was Every Stock Photo. Every Stock Photo is a site that is especially helpful if you happen to be a blogger, because it allows you to search Flickr, StockXchange and other photo sharing sites, for images that are available under the creative commons license.

I love the creative commons license because it allows me to use other people’s photos by giving them attribution for the work. The photo I used above for example, was originally taken by Grant Mitchell on Flickr. Some artists would prefer to lock down their content, but if someone wants to use Mitchell’s photo’s, he doesn’t mind sharing his content with the rest of the community.

All of my own photos have also been licensed under creative commons. Some artists might worry that other people will use their photos for free, but my opinion has always been, that there isn’t much value to my photos anyway, if other people don’t have an opportunity to see them to begin with. If someone wanted to use one of my photos in a marketing campaign, I’d probably request some type of payment, but if someone wants to share one of my photos with a larger audience, I certainly wouldn’t want to stop them from presenting my work.

Flickr also has a creative commons filter that you can use to find photos, but by default, their search field includes a lot of all rights reserved photos and it’s frustrating when you find a great photo, but someone doesn’t feel comfortable letting you use it.

Another perk of using Every Stock Photo, instead of Flickr directly, is that you can search more than just one service, for photos that people are willing to share. Currently, the site indexes over a million creative common photos, from a number of different sites.

Every Stock Photo is a great resource, but there are a few ways that they could improve the site. I’d like to see them add more sources to their filter. Right now the service relies pretty heavily on Flickr, but looking through the search results, I didn’t see any hits from Photobucket, Zooomr or Webshots. Because Flickr already offers their own creative commons content search, by adding extra sites, it would significantly enhance the value proposition of using Every Stock Photo’s portal instead.

The site also doesn’t offer much in the way of sorting photos. One of the cool things that you can do on Zooomr is sort photos by how awesome they are. Zooomr and Flickr both use an algorithm to figure out which photos are good and which ones are junk, but Every Stock Photo doesn’t seem to take interestingness into account. This makes it harder to find the best photos on the site, unless someone has specifically tagged the photo for the term that you are looking for.

Overall though, the positives of the site, more than make up for the negatives. There are a lot of people out there willing to share their photos with the rest of the world, but sometimes finding people open to sharing, can be more difficult than it’s worth. Every Stock Photo, helps you get around this problem by making sure that every photo you see, has already been approved for people to use on their own sites.

Congratulation to Every Stock Photo for winning this week’s site of the week contest. The nominations for next week’s site are listed below, you can vote in the sidebar. If you know of any good sites that should be considered for nomination, feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to check them out.

Area Code Database

Queendom: Land Of Tests

Bootleg Subtitles

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week

May 17

Posted by Davis in Site Of The Week | 5 Comments

Most of the sites that win the Davis Freeberg site of the week award tend to be focused on the positive things in life. Whether it’s a site that gives you quick access to information, some kind of a game or a neat community that has developed, it is the ones that contribute something positive, that tend to do the best in the voting. This week was a little bit of an exception though. Instead of a feel good winner, we had a dark horse canidate take the weekly award.

This week’s winner was the complaint generator. The site allows you to enter in anyone’s name and it will randomly “customize” a complaint against that person or business. The site was originally created by Scott Pakin as a gag, but I’m sure that there are plenty of frustrated customer service reps, who didn’t get the joke. When I entered in my own information on the site, here is the letter that it sent me.

Okay, let’s do it. Let’s exercise all of our basic rights to the maximum. One of the first facts we should face is that Mr. Davis Freeberg wants us to believe that we can solve all of our problems by giving him lots of money. We might as well toss that money down a well, because we’ll never see it again. What we will see, however, is that at this point in the letter, I had planned to tell you that the pragmatist position is that stereotyping and victim-blaming is not more respectable when it is performed by a member of the group being demeaned. However, one of my colleagues pointed out that he has made a big mistake. Hence, I discarded the discourse I had previously prepared and substituted the following discussion, in which I argue that Mr. Freeberg wants us to emulate the White Queen from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, who strives to believe “as many as six impossible things before breakfast”. Then again, even the White Queen would have trouble believing that honesty and responsibility have no cash value and are therefore worthless. I prefer to believe things that my experience tells me are true, such as that Mr. Freeberg does not tolerate any view that differs from his own. Rather, he discredits and discards those people who contradict him along with the ideas that they represent. Mr. Freeberg knows how to lie. It’s too bad he doesn’t yet understand the ramifications of lying. Imagine a world in which he could create new (and reinforce existing) prejudices and misconceptions whenever he felt like it. I would like to go on, but I do have to keep this letter short. So I’ll wrap it up by saying that Mr. Davis Freeberg finds it easier to discuss other people’s problems than his own.

What’s funny about the letter is that if I really received this as an email or a comment, I would think that it was real and that I had actually upset someone. The letter goes off on a few tangents, but it is ambiguous enough, that it would make me wonder who I had offended. While the site is really a joke, I could see how people could take this seriously, if they received it from someone that they didn’t know. I can also see how the social networks could use this site as a new weapon against businesses that they are upset at.

A few years ago, I never would have thought that an online mob was possible, but it’s starting to become increasingly common for mobs to form at places like Digg and use their numbers to go after businesses that they are upset with. These mobs extract their own brand of justice by crank calling companies and posting slams against them in online forums. If one of these mobs got ahold of the automatic complaint generator, things could really get dicey. There are many businesses that are legally required to respond to complaints and if someone started snail mail spamming complaints, they could come up with some really crazy letters, that would be hard to respond to. I’m not advocating that someone should do this, but I still bet that we do see someone use the complaint generator in this way.

Overall, I found the complaint generator to be very entertaining, even if I could not understand half of what it randomly writes. Congratulations to Scott Pakin on winning this week’s site of the week contest. The nominations for next week’s site of the week are listed below. You can vote in the side bar. If you know of any sites that should be considered for nomination, please feel free to email them to me at Davis at DavisFreeberg.com and I will add them to the pool of weekly canidates.

Veegle

Every Stock Photo

Domain Hacks

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week

May 10

Posted by Davis in Site Of The Week, Technology, Web 2.0 | Comments off

FreeSound Hosted on Zooomr

It’s a good thing I’m not a paid blogger because I do terrible with deadlines. Once again, this week’s site of the week is a little bit late in coming out. Rather then try and bombard you with all the sites I need to get caught up on, I think I’m just going to make the site of the week less structured and will sneak in the few I’m missing at irregular intervals throughout the year.

This week’s belated winner was The Free Sound Project. Free sound is a great site, where it’s users can upload sound effects and then allow others to use the effects under various creative commons licenses.

Lately, I’ve been getting more and more involved in video and one of the things that is a huge pain in the neck is having to track down sound effects that you want to use in various clips. There are a number of paid services where you can pay royalties to use their content, but most of the services look pretty spammy and I’ve got a suspicion that these sites are very trustworthy and are using a little blackhat SEO magic to get to the top of Google’s search results.

When it comes creating videos, I’m anything but a pro, so the prospect of paying someone, just so that 10 of my friends can watch a vacation video, isn’t really all that appealing. At the same time though, it can be really frustrating to want a certain sound, but not be able to locate one for free. That is where the Free Sound project steps in. With most of the clips that are uploaded to the site, all you need to do is give attribution to the individual who originally recorded it and you can mix, mash and burn to your heart’s content.

What’s really nice about the site is that because they have such a diverse community, you’ll find all kinds of neat effects that would be harder to find on the more focused paid services. It’s also very easy for users to contribute sounds to the site. Unlike stock video footage or even photographs of newsworthy events, you don’t have to be in the right place at the right time to get an effect that someone might be interested. You don’t even need expensive equipment, you just need a sound recorder and a healthy interest to classify and upload various noises that you come across during your day.

Of all the features that our included on the site, I had the most fund playing with their random sound button. Given how many sound clips that they have, you never know what to expect and it’s a good way to find new sounds for videos, that you wouldn’t have thought of using otherwise.

Congratulations to the Free Sound Project for winning this ~~weekend’s~~ ~~week’s~~ week and half’s site of the week. The nominations for next week’s site of the week are listed below. You can vote in the sidebar. If you’d like to nominate a site for consideration, send me an email at Davis (at) DavisFreeberg.com and I will add it to the list of nominees.

Stockpickr

Weird America

Complaint Generator

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Weekend

May 1

Posted by Davis in Search, Site Of The Week, Technology, Web 2.0 | Comments off

This week’s site of the week(end) contest was really close, but in the end the Hype Machine ended up winning the honor, despite a last ditch write in campaign to try and give Viva Radio the spot

The Hype Machine is one of the more controversial picks to win site of the week because, one of the many things that the site lets you do, is search and listen to pirated music on the internet. Hype Machine takes the position that they aren’t pirating themselves because they do not provide downloads to listeners, but they are rather just pointing streaming links to .mp3′s that other bloggers have loaded onto the internet.

Regardless of whatever ethically grey issues people have with the site, the Hype Machine is a great tool for finding new music and they really do encourage their listeners to support the bands by buying their music, if they like it. In addition to being able to stream many songs, you can also download ~~an mp3~~ a crappy DRM infected file from either Amazon or iTunes, directly from the site. If you aren’t willing to pay for a DRM file, then the Hype Machine also lists upcoming performances for each band, so that you can support your favorite bands by seeing them live.

Hype Machine is a lot like TechMeme, only for .mp3s. They have a pretty extensive list of bloggers that regularly blog .mp3 files and whenever one of the bloggers adds a song, it automatically gets added to the front page of their site. Unlike Techmeme though, the hype machine actually tries to strip out the duplicate links to try and keep the site clean.

One bad part about the Hype Machine is that they only have .mp3′s and don’t do podcasts. Most people using the site are probably looking for music to begin with, but it would be neat to be able to see which podcasts were being talked about. It would help listeners better figure out which ones are worth taking the time to listen to and which ones we should take a pass on. There are of course other sites that specialize in podcasts, but personally, it’s a feature that I think that the Hype Machine should have.

Getting access to a bunch of great songs is cool, but one of my favorite parts of the Hype Machine is that they let you monitor the music by creating RSS feeds for bands or songs that you are looking for. This is a great tool for finding b-sides, covers or new music by your favorite artists. It also helps to serve as a good reminder to keep coming back and checking out the new stuff that shows up.

Congratulations to the Hype Machine on winning this shortened site of the week contest. The nominies for this week’s contest are listed below. You can vote in the sidebar. Voting will close on Friday morning, so get you votes in early. If you have a site you’d like to nominate for the site of the week, send me an email to Davis AT davis freeberg . com and it will be considered for nomination.

The Freesound Project

All Star Skate Park

Ratepoint

Davis Freeberg’s Sites Of The Week

Apr 27

Posted by Davis in Site Of The Week, Technology, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment

Full Size Mattress Like New Slight Urine Smell Hosted on Zooomr

This week’s winner of the site of the week contest was What the F . . . . ?!?! What the F is a collection of funny classified ads that have shown up in various papers over the years. The ads were uploaded to Scribd.com by someone with the handle of Sanctifyer. Sanctifyer has also uploaded several other documents that are worth checking out as well, including a collection of funny things that people say in court and a well written inspirational piece on happiness.

In reading through the various ads collected on What the F, my favorite had to be this unique description for someone looking to get rid of their dog.

“Free To Good Country Home – 3/4 Rotweiller, 1/4 Shepherd. 3 years old, female, spayed, very intelligent. Loves to eat live rabbits and kittens.
Loves to play ball with kids. Call after 5pm.”

Congratulations to What the F on winning this week’s sites of the week contest. The ads really were better than anything that I’ve ever seen on the Tonight Show and offered great entertainment for the week.

The nominations for the site of weekend are listed below, you can vote in the sidebar. If you’d like to nominate a site for consideration, you can email me at Davis at DavisFreeberg.com.

The Hype Machine
Strange Vehicles
Viva Radio

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Weeks

Apr 22

Posted by Davis in Site Of The Week | 1 Comment

Scrible Hosted on Zooomr

I am sorry to my friends and readers, but my posting has been light for the last few weeks. I’ve been taking a bit of a break from blogging and while that is ok for my regular articles, when it comes to the Site of the Week contest, it puts me behind on my master plan. To compensate for my laziness, I have decided to double the pleasure by hosting two sites of the week contests, until I catch up. The contests will run much shorter, so get your vote in now, but their will be twice as many sites for you to be able to check out.

This weeks winner of the site of the weeks was Scribble. Scribble is a website where you can make drawings online and then share them with other people. I’ve never been very good at drawing with a mouse, but it is still a great way to kill time and do something creative.

One of the things I like about the site is that you can see Scribbles that other people have made. Unfortunately, there are no permalinks to the drawings, but I had more fun looking at what other people were making, then trying to draw my own. Scribble was designed by Grant Robinson, who also has a great page filled with links that he finds on the internet. Congratulations to Grant on winning this week’s site of the week contest.

The nominies for one of this week’s contests are below. You can vote in the sidebar. If you know of a great site that should be included in the site of the week contest, you can email me at davis at davis freeberg dot com and it will be considered for nomination.

Pac-Xon

Fax It Nice

What The F

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week

Mar 23

Posted by Davis in Site Of The Week | 1 Comment

Useless Info Hosted on Zooomr

So far, most of the winners of the site of the week contest have been internet sites that help people find useful information on the net, but this week’s winner is a 180 degree turn from the past sites that have won. Instead of helping you find useful information, Useless Information specializes in finding obscure facts that people don’t normally come across.

Other then using the information to impress your friends, there isn’t really much that you can do with the facts that you find on the site, but they are entertaining nonetheless.

For example, had it not been for Listerine, Band-Aids wouldn’t have been created. While interesting, I think I can safely say that I can’t imagine any scenario where I may have needed to know that tidbit.

Not every article is filled with fun facts though, some of the articles written on the site are just plain bizzare. Reading the story of Mike the Headless Chicken made my stomache a little uneasy, but it’s a pretty incredible tale.

Congratulations to Useless Information on winning this week’s site of the week contents. The nominations for next weeks contest are listed below. Please vote in the sidebar. If you’d like to nominate a site, shoot me an email at Davis @ DavisFreeBerg . Com and I will be happy to check it out.

Scribble

Quantcast

Secret Fun Spot