Good ideas for websites
Sean and I have had some good ideas for businesses and websites during our radio show, so it is only fitting that we share a source for similarly stellar ideas from online – Good website ideas by Simon the Web Genius.
Simon is the alter-ego of David Thorne, the man we talked about in 2008 for trying to pay a bill with a picture of a spider.
I have had a number of his other online pranks float through my inbox in recent weeks, so he is clearly tickling the funny bones of people in my friends network.
David’s site is 27bslash6.com, and it is not for the kiddies. It is for people wanting some silliness and amusement.
You can find the spider story there along with Simon’s web ideas. Here are a few:
- everything.com – This would be a website where instead of having to look all over the internet for what you want, it would all be in the one place. This would effectively end the need for search engines so I would have to be careful that google representatives do not kill me in my sleep.
- whereaboutsami.com – This would be a website where users can write the name of the city and street they are on and I would tell them where they are.
- whatkindofcoughisthat.com – A website that contains sound files of different coughs. Each cough would have a description to allow the user to sound match and determine the kind of cough they have before going to the chemist and buying either dry or wet cough medicine.
- screensavingpage.com – A website that is a black page so that people can go there instead of buying a screensaver.
- amihavingaheartattack.com – A website for people having a heart attack.
For more site ideas, some laughs and a healthy dash of black humour, visit Good Ideas for Websites.
Adelaide Fringe
It is Fringe time in Adelaide again, so it is worth checking out the Fringe website. Lots of information is available about every show and my favourite part is the part that lets you see YouTube clips of the shows and performers who will be appearing. Follow this link to watch Fringe 2009 YouTube Clips – click on the show of iterest and then, in the show’s profile page, click on the television icon and the video clip will pop up.
Passport Photos for Free
I needed to attach two passport-sized photos to some papers through the week and my Google search brought me to ePassportPhoto.com. It describes itself as “the Internet passport photo booth, empowering people around the world to make free and valid passport photos.” The site claims to, “put an end to the passport photo rip-off,” and I must say I have always thought the passport shoot was a money-for-jam job for photo labs and photographers. My Fringe media pass photo was snapped by a friend on a cheap digital camera, trimmed to size in photo editing software and emailed in. However, this website makes it even easier – as long as you have photo paper and a colour printer. You simply choose your country and the service sets the size your picture needs to be, upload your picture, you move your picture around so your forehead and chin are in the right place, choose how many images you want printed per sheet, then hit print.
The site is free but move through it carefully – it is set up to make it easy for you to simply send your image to Snapfish for printing for money (which is the site owner’s right, of course).
You can create images for your fake Ids, whoops, no, I didn’t say that, I meant, for a range of legitimate reasons at ePassport Photo.
Sweet Cron
There are many social networking sites out there today and many of us find we have our virtual selves spread across numerous sites. There are some aggregation solutions available – places or tools for tying your many profiles into one place – and FriendFeed springs to mind as a popular option in this category. However, some programmers led by Yong Fook in Tokyo have come up with a free, open source tool that you load onto your own website to gather your various manifestations into one place. If you comment on Facebook, upload a picture to Flickr, or do many other similar things, those fragments will all be displayed and archived on your own site in what the makers call a Lifestream.
The name, SweetCron, is, I imagine, a play on the word “sweetcorn” because a cob of corn holds many kernels into one place and a “cron” is a “time-based scheduling service in Unix-like computer operating systems”. At least, that is my guess and I might be reading too much into it!
As of February 2009, you can join the public beta by registering your email address at Sweetcron.