SocialSiteCreator – Your Own Social Network
These days it seems you have to have social network features to add real interactivity to many types of website. In fact if you have a website and a social network site to back it up you can soon find that the social network is the one getting most of the traffic. With a social network for a specialist interest it’s possible to encourage networking between members, and also links to other sites, in a way that’s complicated on Facebook due to its massive scale. It has never been easier to set up your own social network, although getting members to join may be more tricky unless you already have access to a group of potential members, so SocialSiteCreator has plenty of competition.
With SocialSiteCreator you can quickly set up your own fully customisable social network starting off with their templates. It doesn’t take great technical skills to use this kind of social network creation tool to get a social network up and running and to tailor it to your own needs, both visually and also in terms of what you want to allow members to do. Do you want them to be able to upload photos and videos and comment freely, or do you want to give approval and moderate to a greater extent?
There are major competitors – mainly Ning.com and Socialgo.com – and these start at free subscription subsidised by Google ads. With Ning and Socialgo you can opt to upgrade to a monthly payment and sell your own advertising. SocialSiteCreator has no free option on offer on the website, and starts with a similar monthly subscription to its competitors. For this users can fully customise the site, sell advertising themselves, and also charge a membership fee.
Some social networks don’t allow adult content, and this includes Ning. Others direct anyone with adult content to Zocku.com. SocialSiteCreator seems to leave it up to the user, and it’s worth checking which social network platforms allow the content you want to include. There is also more cross-promotion between social networks on some established platforms, and this may be an advantage or a limitation depending on your content.
PDFmyURL – Instant PDFs From Webpages
This is a straightforward site that looks very simple but performs an incredibly useful task. It does exactly what it says in the title – you can use it to make a PDF file of any webpage. To do this you go to PDFmyURL.com and type in the URL of the page you want converted to PDF. Within seconds you have a PDF. There are many reasons you might want to do this, and particularly because it’s easy to share PDFs with others. Anybody can open and look at a PDF, and this type of file doesn’t change format when passed to somebody else and opened using their software.
PDFs of webpages can also be useful in reports, as well as for book illustrations and for many other purposes, so I’ll definitely be using this site again. I do have the ability to convert to PDF with other software I have, but this type of online tool is so much quicker and simpler to use when I’m in a hurry. One of the main reasons I’ve needed to convert to PDF recently was in order to have a document printed out that changed format at the printers, and PDFs are great for retaining their layout. There are extra options available, such as changing from portrait to landscape and adding headers, and as a quick way of storing webpages as PDFs it’s a very handy online tool.
ScorePage – International Soccer Fan Info
With so many football enthusiasts around the world this site should be popular. It’s main feature is that it provides live scores while matches are being played around the world, and it also provides league tables and the main statistics needed so you can see at a glance how each team is doing overall. For those interested in each team’s history when playing against their rivals there are details on the results when they’ve played against other teams in the past. This is sure to be popular with anybody betting on the results.
Apart from the live coverage in terms of goals scored ScorePage also gives information on who scored each goal and at what time, plus other incidents including penalties and missed goals. Each significant moment is displayed live, including red and yellow cards, so it’s an interesting approach to letting fans keep up with the games online as they’re being played.
CompareMyDocs – Compare, Combine and Merge Documents
This is an online tool I’ll be returning to many times. It lets you easily upload various versions of a document to compare and then work on them. I tried it out with a few versions of an article I had written, and it showed me one version in main text with any differences from two other articles clearly displayed in a wide right margin. This is essential for anybody working on an edited document, especially if they have received comments and editing back from other team-mates.
This is the beta version and it worked perfectly on my documents, but it does warn that it’s best for text only and not documents with tables or images. To use it you go to the CompareMyDocs site where you will be prompted to click on the Choose File button for up to 7 files. Once the files are uploaded they will appear on screen automatically and you can scroll through to see any differences.
CompareMyDocs offers suggestions for editing which you can accept or scrap and you can also type your own additions and combine document versions. The Help page is particularly well laid out to take you through each process step-by-step. There are various document comparison and merging packages available, but this online tool is so easy to use it should appeal.
WhoReadMe – Track Your Emails
This online service lets you sign up for free and track your emails to see if they arrive, when they get opened, if they get deleted without being opened, if somebody else opens the email rather than the recipient, and if any attachments were opened. One of the most frustrating things about email is not knowing whether or not they arrive and if the person is deliberately not responding or if they never received your communication.
WhoReadMe can go beyond tracking what happens to your emails. It can also tell you the recipient’s IP Number, their browser and also their location on the map. This will all be invisible to the recipient. To use WhoReadMe you sign up on the website, click on an activation email and then you can send any emails you want tracked via the website, but your usual email address will be given to the recipient. There is a limit on the number of emails you can track per day, but they can have a number of CCs on them.
An Example of Bootstrapped Success – Twitpic
Here’s an example of a profitable business built on the back of twitter. Twitpic is doing more than $1.5 million in ad sales a year, with 70% profit margins. They never raised any funding either.
A great example of a side project that turned into a nicely profitable business, the link has the full interview which is well worth listening to.
From the original interview on mixergy:
“- In 2009, the site did over $1.5 million in ad sales
- For every million in sales, the company keeps $700,000
- The site has about 6.5 million registered users
- Noah was recently offered 8 figures for the business
- There are only 4 people working on the site (including Noah’s parents)”
SageSpark – Business Community and Help for Small Businesses
Starting up as a small business doesn’t need to be as hard as people think, but keeping track of the finances and dealing with all the tech and promotion can be offputting. SageSpark is an online business community that gives help in many useful ways. It even has free downloads of invoicing software and accounting software – two of the main things needed by small businesses or sole traders setting up.
SageSpark also has plenty of advice on the topics people starting out in business want answers to, with articles, discussions, and also some subscriber services which can be added. As a subscriber you can register your business quickly to create a domain name, a webpage and have your details sent to about 20 local directories including Google Local and Yahoo! Local.
Subcribers also have the use of a helpline and tech support for their system, including remote diagnostics where they can link into your computer and sort it out while you watch. SageSpark members don’t need tech knowledge, so it’s a very helpful service for many people who would like to start a small business but are intimidated by the technology and the financial paperwork.
Google Likely To Pull Out Of China Completely
We usually just report on startups, but today saw an announcement by Google that they are no longer censoring the Chinese version of Google. This comes after much debate as to the ethics of self censorship and whether it was right for Google to make money in a market where they are forced to censor politically sensitive material. It seems like the final straw was the discovery that the Chinese government have had a hand in hacking into Gmail accounts used by human rights activists.
The timing is very interesting, a cynic might suggest that the Chinese authorities staged the recent attack on Baidu yesterday to distract from their attacks on Gmail. Or to allow them to shift blame onto someone else perhaps. It certainly seems unlikely that the “Iranian Cyber Army” would attack a Chinese company over an American or even British one, as China is not routinely used as a scapegoat in Iran, as the USA and UK are.
In any case it’s a sad day for those who believe that companies like Google and cross border business might be allowed to foster freedom of speech and political freedom in repressive countries like China. Google’s share price is likely to take a dip (it already has), taking a stance against this kind of thing is also likely to cost them at least $1billion in 2010, as well as many tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars of future revenue by counting themselves out of the world’s most populous country.
CulinaryCulture – Share Recipes and Restaurant Reviews
Good cookery websites can be among the most popular on the internet and Culinary Culture has many of the features people look for. Members of the Culinary Culture community can share recipes and photos of their food from the comfort of their homes with no need for fancy kitchens and glossy magazine styling. The chat forums let people also become friends and plan dinner parties and get-togethers.
The website isn’t just a recipe-sharing social network, it also encourages members to list their local eateries and review them so that visitors to their area will know the best places to dine. The information is presented under Places, Recipes, Events and Community, and the website makes it easy to upload photos to illustrate each section. The recipes can be sorted by levels of difficulty, relevance to you, and also by date so you see the most recent.
The photos of the locations look inviting, the plates of food mouth-watering, and there are interesting events of various sorts listed – including a Whisky Fest, a World Festival for food lovers and a Vegan Bake Sale on the first page. This website is definitely my kind of thing and should appeal to many others.
FreeGameToyz – Free Interactive Games Online
The games on this site are all free, with many selected from the web and others submitted by users. There’s a massive selection with all sorts of games: action, adventure, dressing-up, driving, fighting, educational and more. It links to other associated sites with more specialised games just for girls or just for specific activities like shooting or driving.
The games are broken down by category so you can find your favourite type on the menu, and players getting high scores have their name and score broadcast on the main page. Users can vote on the games and review them, and low-rated games will be removed. Soon the site will be adding integration to the main social networks and other features in development include high score tracking, awards and achievements. The search facility helps find games easily on this site, and soon this will be extended to cover all the linked sites too. Multiplayer and downloadable games are also on the way, which will make this a comprehensive games site.