Site of the Week: Make a Difference By Instant Messaging
Microsoft has launched a really cool program called “i’m making a difference” that gives money to charity every time you send an instant message using their Windows Live chat client. It works like this.
Every time you start chatting, a portion of the revenue that Microsoft makes in advertising is given to a charity. They’ve said they have not set any cap on the amount of money they’re willing to donate, so make the most of spending Bill Gates money while you have the chance:)
So what’s the catch? Other than the fact you have to be using Windows Live 8.1, I have yet to find one. All you have to do is tell it what country you are in and what charity you want to donate to. You can choose from the American Red Cross, Boys & Girls Club, National AIDS Fund, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, ninemillion.org, Sierra Club, StopGlobalWarming.org, Susan G. Komen for the Cure or The US Fund for UNICEF.
Site Of the Week: Part X
Ok, so after last weeks fiasco, I promise to redeem myself.
This weeks site was actually fueled because I’m sick of getting JPGs from family members that are 3456X2304px and almost 2MBs in size. I guess since I use Photoshop on a daily basis, I never realized how much of a hassle it was for most people to resize images. If you’re not a computer graphics artist, this task doesn’t seem to be worth it and off you go sending emails with attachments close to a gig in size. No thanks.
Enter ResizR. The tagline says it all, ” Image Resizing is Soooo Easy”. Once you have the picture you want to resize, simply go to the website, browse to the image, choose what size you want it–you can use the slider or type the pixel width in–and click on the “ResizR” button.
Site Of the Week: Part IX…Continued
So I’ve decided to give MediaMax another chance. The reason is because I found out that they were “dugg” the day before (or the day of, don’t remember) on the popular social news site Digg.com. I’m guessing the files I uploaded took so long to show up because their servers were being pounded by all the new traffic.
So if you didn’t read the previous post, the site of the week is called MediaMax. I attempted to review it on Friday and ran into problem after problem and I finally gave up.
Well, let’s try one more time. The service used to be called StreamCast until they were bought out by MediaMax. This is where all hell broke loose last time and I ended up ranting for about 30 minutes on how MediaMax ruined StreamCast. I can only hope I’m completely wrong.
Site Of the Week: Part IX – Well, Kinda
Alright, here’s the deal. The site I had picked out for the site of the week ended up being the shittiest site I’ve ever come across. The site used to be called StreamLoad until they got bought out by MediaMax. I used to use Streamload all the time to share and store large files via the handy Firefox extension. Not sure when they were bought out by MediaMax, but I do know that they have completely destroyed this service.
They are now offering 25 GBs of free storage and I couldn’t believe it when I first found out. Well, after attempting to review the site, I can see why…you CAN’T upload anything! I attempted to upload a Photoshop PSD, a JPG and an MP3 in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Nothing worked.
Site Of the Week: Part VIII
Wow, this week came and went much too quickly. I must have gone through a hundred different web sites trying to find a site worthy of being site of the week. But, after all the searching, I think I’ve found something that most people will find well worth their while.
The site is called Zoho.com. Zoho offers a multitude of online tools that they have broken up into two categories called the ”Office Suite” and “Productivity Tools”.
The Office Suite includes Zoho Show (PowerPoint clone), Zoho Writer (Word) and Zoho Sheet (Excel). The Productivity Tools include Zoho Projects, Zoho Creator, Zoho Planner, Zoho Chat, and Zoho CRM.
Now if you’ve missed the boat when it comes to all the online applications, they have their ups and downs just like anything else. Some of the good things about them is all your stuff is online, which means you can access it anywhere. You also don’t have to install anything on your computer and the functionality is very similar to what most people are already used to.
Site Of the Week: VII
Are you sick of watching today’s music videos that are full of sexy, half-naked women? Me neither. But just in case you are, 1500 Videos has compiled a list of all your favorite 80’s hair-band music videos.
You can listen to just about anything from 2-Live Crew’s “Me So Horny” to Wilson Philips “Hold On”…and seriously people, who doesn’t love Wilson Philips.
These videos are definitely much better than all that bling and booty in today’s videos, right?
…Oh don’t forget to check out the Flans “Timido”. Look for the scary goth girl in the background clapping like a retard. Kind of like a gay version of Where’s Waldo.
Site Of the Week: Part VI
How cool have web pages become? Never really given much thought about it have you…you ungrateful little…just jokes people.
Anyway, web developers now have so many tools at their disposal to keep their pages from looking like crap, there’s really no reason to have pages that look anything like these:
qualitycollisionservices.com/ ; ridertown.com/ ; caseyforsheriff.com/
Who the hell thought those looked good? Did they have the deaf, blind and dumb kid down the street bust out old reliable, Notepad, and whip those badboys up or what.
I’ll give you a second to take that all in…
So lets fast forward to today. Webmasters can now implement CSS, AJAX, PHP, Javascript, ActionScript, PERL, Python, Ruby On Rails, DHTML, the list could go on all day. And these are really just tools being used on the back-end.
Site Of the Week: Part V
Ever wonder if your ISP is screwing you over when it comes to your internet connection speed or just plain throttling your bandwidth? This information is more important than ever with all the talk of net neutrality and Ted Stevens getting rid of all the dump trucks on the internet. How are we going to move all that data?
Anyways, a new beta site was released this week called SpeedTest.net. Even though broadband speed testing sites are nothing new, there has never been a site that did it as visually appealing as SpeedTest.
SpeedTest has taken the already simple process and made it idiot-proof. Once you are at the site, you simply click a server located on the map and watch the magic happen. Your speed will be shown by a racecar-like speedometer as well as an animated orb that travels from your computer to the server, and back.
Site Of The Week: Part IV
Everyone has that one friend who enjoys singing along with every friggen song that comes up on the radio. Unfortunately, no one said anything about their passion for singing and their ability to sing, being equal. In fact, I’ve found the ones who sing the most, suck more than, well…pretty much everyone. So how can we get them to shut up? Make fun of them.
This leads us to the site of the week: The Archive Of Misheard Lyrics. Now you can dig around to find all those songs that people are butchering and nail your friends after they belt out that off-key, annoying tune.
You can browse the site by artist name, the last 100 entries, funniest lyrics (where users can comment on the time when they looked like a retard), or you can have them send you a new one everyday to your inbox. My personal favorite?
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band: Blinded by the Light
Site Of The Week: Part III (Plus a bonus, oooh)
I know, I know. I slipped up and missed a week…or two. But I’m back on track and I’m coming back strong.
This week’s site is called WhereDidTheTimeGo.com. Sticking with the tradition, it is absolutely useless and does nothing but waste time. It’s perfect.
When you first go to the site, you are greeted with a grim reminder that we will all be the proud owners of our very own gravestone someday. The good thing? They are going to tell us what we wasted our meaningless lives doing. Thank God, because I was wondering what I’ve been doing the last 21 years.
After you click to enter the site you see a simple form with 9 items you need to fill in: Name, age, gender, kids and then some “personality” sliders if you will. I turned out to be 80% busy bee, 0% cat nap, and 20% sloth…what the hell is sloth?
