March 3rd, 2010
They say that there are no guidebooks to tell you how to be a parent, but with the internet that’s no longer true. Moms4Mom is a great example of how the internet can be used by pregnant mothers and parents at all stages in their children’s lives to find out everything they need to know by asking the real experts – other parents. I wish I could have seen a site like this when I first had my children as the main questions I would have wanted answered are right up there in the frequent discussions.
Why do toddlers stop eating? When do you start taking children to the dentist? Are there problems with colic medecines? As if that isn’t enough there are even tips about how to get on with the parents of your children’s friends. And if your questions aren’t here you could join and ask them yourself, plus give your own expert advice if you’ve been through any of the other parents’ dilemmas. Dads can also ask questions too, despite the name of the site. Any parent will know that this is the type of site that’s really needed and I’ll certainly be coming back to it as it ranges from pregnancy right up to questions about leaving older kids alone and teaching them to ski.
Tags: babies, children, parents, pregnancy
Posted in Niche Content Sites | No Comments »
February 16th, 2010
RefrigeratorArtist gives parents the chance to share their children’s artwork online, making it possible to keep a permanent record of all the favourite pictures produced by the family. These can go into an individual gallery with the name of each child, and you can select pictures to go into the voting to try to win $400 in US savings bonds each month. Vote for your favourites from the children on Refrigeratorartist to help select the winner.
Keeping a digital record will help a lot of parents because the actual pictures really do stack up over the years and families can only keep a few. The site also has products available to purchase with the children’s artwork featured, including t-shirts and mugs. I can’t help thinking there will be plenty of competitive voting going on, with friends and relatives nagged to vote for children, and more nagging will come from the children to get the t-shirts and mugs. So it should be a financial success for the designers while still being a lot of fun and a useful resource for families wanting to keep an archive of their children’s artwork.
Tags: Art, children, competitions, Education, parenting, parents
Posted in Niche Content Sites | No Comments »
January 18th, 2010
Whether you like to review movies, books, music TV programmes or something else you can do it here. The site specialises in mini reviews, so a glance at each page lets visitors instantly see which ones are of interest. This is good for viewers, but also makes it more tempting to get your ideas down quickly, add a picture, and share them. You can also give a star rating to go with each review.
Like many sites this one it going the way of building a community and that seems to be an increasingly popular approach. Users are encouraged to invite friends and look at each other’s reviews. With so many people preferring to Tweet short comments rather than commit to longer blog entries, and with visitors liking to get their information in quickly digested chunks, ShortReviews should appeal.
Tags: books, critics, entertainment, Movies, reviews, shows, TV
Posted in Niche Content Sites | No Comments »
October 27th, 2009
These days there seems to be so much text to get through that speed reading is a skill well worth acquiring. Spreeder provides a free online speed reading tutorial and also lets you copy in your own text to be read. So it doubles up as a method of learning to read faster and also a tool for reading your own documents quickly. To try Spreeder out you can copy and paste a document into the window on the main page and start reading it one word at time at speed. Then you can click on settings to read the text in larger chunks and at different speeds. Gradually it should be possible to read larger chunks of text at increasing rates.
The main ways this works are to get the brain to scan and read faster, and also to stop the habit of drifting off or continually reading back over text. With one chance to read a chunk of text you get in the habit of taking it all in at one glance. Spreeder has extra facilities, including a ‘bookmarklet’. This lets you select text in your web browser, open the Spreed bookmarklet in another browser window, and there you will find the text preloaded with no need to copy and paste. Some types of reading are best when done at a leisurely pace, but for much of the work we need to do it would be better to be able to get through it quickly, making Spreeder a useful tool and training resource.
Tags: Speed-reading
Posted in Niche Content Sites | No Comments »
September 14th, 2009
This is a simple website which allows people to create and manage tournaments. Its not a complex system rather it gives you only the ladder chart system where you can graphically show how the tournament is progressing along with the scores of individual matches.
This site doesn’t even require a sign up like others and you can just go and create your own tournament ladders. The site supports around 70 games including football, cricket, snooker and other favorites. Once you choose the game and the number of players just hit create and enter the names of the players on the next screen. Plain and simple. Later on the site allows users to add results which can be viewed using a nice graphical layout.
Tags: Ratings, Sports, Tournament
Posted in Niche Content Sites, Web Apps | No Comments »
September 4th, 2009
This would have been science fiction a couple of decades back but with the advancement in technology, you can preserve your memories and yourself for generations to come.
SwissDNABank is a new service which claims to hold your actual DNA and your life memories in a secure location in Switzerland. The DNA collection procedure is very easy and simple and can be done by any adult person. Besides the DNA, they also provide you with an electronic lock box for personal documents, pictures and anything of importance which a person will want to present to the next generations.
The service is fairly cheap at $99, a one time fee. If you want to never truly leave this world, try this service and you can live on forever.
Tags: DNA Storage, Electronic ID
Posted in Niche Content Sites, Web Apps, Web Marketplaces | No Comments »
August 17th, 2009
Sitepie is a recently launched website targeting potential businessmen and entrepreneurs who are planning to have their presence on the Internet but don’t want to be bogged down with legal or administrative tasks. This will lead them to focus on their ideas and monetize them to the maximum.
The entire process is user-friendly and allows anyone to quickly launch the idea using the expertise and tools provided by the site. The site holds templates to quickly build social network sites, blogs or video channels.
The pricing is affordable although the site is in beta and doesn’t allow direct signups yet. You can contact the administrators via signup link and they will review and invite you on board. There is not much activity and no demos to look at the moment but the idea looks promising. We will have to see how they fare in the crowd sourcing niche.
Tags: Crowdsourcing, Domain Name, Entrepreneurship
Posted in Niche Content Sites, Web Apps | No Comments »
August 14th, 2009
A resource which could become indispensable if you are in the great state of Missouri or are planning a visit there. This community portal offers a smorgesboard of services like ads, information and email.
As soon as I opened the site, I found a wealth of information which included business ads, travel information, weather reports and even lottery and carrier information. The email service caught my eye and I checked it out to find that they offer around 500 MB space with a .missouri.me account.
The classified section is free and sellers can put anything under the sky up for sale. Let’s see if this site is able to monetize their presence by offering services to the local community and make itself a one-stop-shop on the Internet for Missouri citizens.
Tags: Ads, Information, Jobs, Portal, Travel
Posted in Mashups, Niche Content Sites, Web Marketplaces | No Comments »
August 2nd, 2009
Bliipa is a new search engine recently launched in 2009. Its not the usual run of the mill engine but rather has a nice and clean interface and provides two types of results based on the query submitted.
The main results are gathered using Yahoo’s API and social site content. Sites such as Twitter are probed for the search query and the results displayed column wise next to the normal results. Its somewhat similar to universal search in Google. The added benefit is that its sort of a multiple site-wide search and the normal search merged into one clean package.
I should point out that with competitors like Google, Bliipa has to come up with some really cool stuff if it wants to place itself near the top in the search engine market.
Tags: search, Search Engine, Social Search
Posted in Niche Content Sites, Web Apps | No Comments »
July 30th, 2009
ConsumerMate is a relatively new website launched to specially cater for the electronic lifestyle of people living in India. The website offers help and advice in selection of electronic items. Currently it catalogs laptops, mobiles and TVs of renowned brands like LG, HP and Sony.
The concept, though not new, is presented through an easy to use interface. I liked the ‘GURU GYAN’ feature, a wizard which asks you the questions relating to a product and then fetches the results based on your answers. The questions are not overly technical and are designed to keep in mind what the end user wants. The choices can also be made by using the slider control presented.
Once a selection is made, an inquiry can be forwarded which is sent to the local dealers allowing them to get in touch with the buyer.
The site also hosts information articles about the technological aspects of these products and what a buyer should look out for. In short a nice resource which allows buyers to make informed decisions before they actually commit to buying a product. It would be nice if more categories are added to give the site a more diverse audience.
Tags: Articles, Information, laptops, Mobiles, Opinions, TVs
Posted in Niche Content Sites, Web Apps | No Comments »