Online Insights with Steve Davis on FIVEaa, Sunday, February 22, 2009
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.
Online Insights on fiveAA, Sunday, January 25, 2009
Ants, ants, ants
Through the week we battled an ant invasion. I mentioned it on Facebook and got told how wonderful ants are (in other people’s houses).
In particular, there were two great links. One is actually for a software company that has based some software on the way ants search for food and lay trails for the rest of the nest to find the food. The site is http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/howAnts.shtml. The insight this site gives, as pointed out to me by Liz, is that using boiling water on your benches and wherever you see scouting ants will cut the scout off from the nest and leave you in peace. It is quite involved and includes diagrams. In particular, it shows how ants are not very efficient because when one ant crosses another ant’s path, it cannot tell which direction is the home direction and which is the food direction. It means there are many wasted trips.
The other site is dedicated to ants and in particular the “diet” section is eye opening. Did you know they can eat small insects (some nests in the UK go through 100,000 insects per day), the bodies of insects and animals left behind by other insects and animals, fruit, vegetables, and sugary substances. They sometimes eat their own dead and even ant eggs.
But the most amazing thing is that some ants keep “herds” of aphids just like we keep cows. They place the aphids onto stems of roses and similar plants and allow them to feed on the sap. Hungry ants then stroke the aphid on the back, producing a drop of “honeydew”. In return, the ants protect aphids from predators and even create shelter for them in the nest.
You can read more about this at Ant Nest.
Pixenate
I have found the perfect online photo editing tool for people who are not tech-heads or savvy photo software users already. It is pixenate and it has come to the web with a very simple interface for playing with your photos online.
You can crop, change exposure, and all the usual things, plus you have access to some fun tools that are very popular these days, such as rounded corners, polaroid effect, and even the “lomo” effect which is part of a fad at the moment of shooting shots on film with a “lomo” camera – they are like cheap cameras with “toy” lenses that do lend a sense of fun to photography.
You can see it for yourself at Pixenate.
Baby Gamer
Well, it had to happen. Children are starting with computers at a younger age and now there is babygamer.com – a site dedicated to online games for babies. You might go crazy after hearing “boing” for the 2,000th time but you might also have enjoyed a distracted child for five minutes.
Fisher-Price is behind a number of these games along with Crayola and many of the big baby names. But the site is not made by a corporation. In fact, it has been put together by some parents who wanted to pool all the good, free, online games for babies into one place.
Along with the boing-boing games, Crayola’s fireworks show is fun, as you plan a fireworks display – probably not for the really little babies because it has a small degree of complexity as you set fireworks to go off on a timeline, but it is in the “infants” category so maybe I am reading more into it than there is!
My favourite is Pom Pom’s Shell Game – a bright, colourful version of the pea in the cup game.
On the whole, these games are simple and delightful and worth a visit by parents. You can find them at Baby Gamer.
Adelaide Now’s Viral Images
Every now and then, you find an interesting list or gallery of material that makes you think or is entertaining. This one is both. It is a collection of 100 images collected from viral emails.
There are plenty of classics here and I am sure there will be many you have not seen. My favourites include:
- The “dogs allowed” photo
- The film crew standing in the path of a rally car that has lost control
- The sheepdog leapfrogging over sheep
- The baby monkey hugging a dove
- The two window cleaners dressed as spiderman
- The classic is the battery powered battery charger from NaiveTek J
You can see all the pics at Adelaide Now Viral Image Gallery.
Listen to Steve
- stevedavis: “@Twillyon: @stevedavis @Prakky Your secret would be safer if you only told your Foursquare friends #checkinathome” safer still with Google+ February 6, 2012
- stevedavis: @nicthenolan @kevcorduroy You two gents are both dear to me: play nicely please ;-) February 6, 2012
- stevedavis: “@malchia: @Prakky @stevedavis @twillyon Subdermal implant opens the door for you?” I just time my homecomings after others have arrived :-) February 6, 2012
- stevedavis: “@Prakky: @stevedavis @Twillyon You mean you leave the doors unlocked?” Yes, but I only tell friends and the Twitterverse #secretissafe February 6, 2012
- stevedavis: Some red lights mean 'go' http://t.co/47B2QgCm February 6, 2012