Raymond Selda | PHP, MySQL, XHTML, CSS Website Developer

My Top Undiscovered Websites

I selected some of the websites listed here from PC Magazine’s Top 100 Undiscovered Websites article (I felt that I haven’t seen all of the websites from PC Mag’s review because their slideshow was acting a little weird). I was inspired by the ideas and concepts presented in each of the websites that were reviewed. I liked the fact that some of the websites targeted a smaller niche in order to avoid the heavy competition with already established websites. Well I hope you enjoy and find some inspiration in some of the websites (no particular order) presented here.

Drop

The simplest most efficient file sharing site that I’ve seen so far. It lets you create your own url, upload your files (up to 100MB), set a password, and have the option to choose how long the drop link should be live. You can then pass the drop url around to share files. There’s no registration, no cost, and no limit to how many URLs you can use.

Jott

Jott is a speech to text technology application. Once you sign up for a free account, call Jott on your phone and you can leave a message which will be converted to text and posted on your blog, twitter speed or to do list.

Mux

Mux is an excellent video conversion/sharing site that lets you enter in the URL of a video clip (or its location on your hard drive) and specify what format you’d like to receive the video in (iPod, PSP, DivX, MPEG-4, and lots more). Give it a few minutes and Mux will send you an e-mail with the location from which you can download your newly formatted video.

Plurk

This Twitter-like microblogging service goes beyond Twitter by letting users share images and video clips through their Plurk feeds. The interface is also a lot more fun to use, and guess what: It rarely crashes (sorry, Twitter).

CreateDigitalMusic

Whether you’re a ProTools wiz, a GarageBand hobbyist, or just like to jam on your iPhone, Create Digital Music can point you to the right tools to perfect your sound. The site includes product reviews and announcements, music-production tips, and an active community offering helpful music-making advice. I’m generally a drummer so you can’t leave this site behind.

CriminalSearches

Criminal Searches provides the scary-but-useful data on how many criminals live in your neighborhood, what crimes they were convicted of, and, in some cases, their names and personal info. It’s all culled from public records, and is presented as a Google Maps mashup. You can restrict your search to sex offenders, search on a specific name to get a criminal history, or do a general search for criminals by city or ZIP code. This kind of data is certainly not for the faint of heart but can be useful in assessing the safety of your neighborhood. (I wish we had this kind of application here in the Philippines.)

Someecards

Not your everyday e-card service website. If you want to send out funny e-cards I would recommend Someecards for you.

Totlol

Totlol is a video website especially designed for kids. All the videos were submitted, screened and rated by parents. Suitable for kids ages 6 months to 6 years.

YouTomb

YouTomb, a research project by the MIT Free Culture student group, tracks the top videos removed from the service for copyright violation, and retains the metadata about the videos so we, the public, can make our own decision about whether the removal was justified or not.

ExpoTv

Before I spend some amount of money on something I make sure that I look at reviews for the product that I’m planning to buy and see if its worth buying. Most of the time product reviews are only textual and mostly because its the easiest way to provide opinions on a product but sometimes it can get a little boring. ExpoTv provides videos of real unbiased consumers doing their own product reviews. And if you make a video review of a product and submit it, ExpoTV may pay you $10 if they run it, with an extra penny each time it’s played on the site (all via PayPal). Your video review may even make it on ExpoTV’s video-on-demand shopping spots on cable TV.

Howcast

Howcast has the best-looking how-to videos on the Web. Includes topics like “How to booby trap a coworker’s chair”, “How to speak in public”, “How to make a martini” and many more. Sign up to get a How-To Video of the Day via e-mail, as well as to be able to edit their how-to wikis, talk to experts in the community area, or upload your own videos. The user-generated stuff is okay, but the Howcast-produced vids are particularly great.

Searchme

Searchme is an innovative search engine that essentially uses Apple’s Cover Flow interface to present your search results. To search, enter a term and then scroll horizontally through full previews of each relevant Web page until your find what you’re looking for. You can also create “Stacks” of bookmarked Web pages to revisit later. Its weird because they did not have the updated design of my site. hehehe. Anyway Searchme still looks cool.

Whatthefont

To find out which font is being used in an image or on a Web site, upload a scanned image of it to WhatTheFont, or submit the URL. The service analyzes your submission and sends you the name of the font so you can use it in your own design projects.

Oddee

Oddee collects and archives the weird photos blowing around the Internet, broken down into Digg-friendly and easily digestible lists.

Songza

Songza is a search engine that gives you easy access to streamable MP3s across the Web. Enter a song, artist, or both and Songza serves it up free of charge—you can even build playlists. I tried to enter one of my favorite rare drummers and just like that Songza displayed and played it right in my face! Awesome app!

Picapp

PicApp is a free stock-photo service that lets you quickly and easily grab photos of whatever subject you need for use on your blog. PicApp has quite a large image catalog, and photos range from run-of-the-mill stock photos to celebrity pics.

TypeRacer

Put your typing skills to the test with TypeRacer, which pits you against other players for the chance to win money, fame, women, and a slot on TypeRacer’s leaderboard! (You actually get only one of those.)

TypoBuddy

Want to save money on eBay auctions? One tip is to look for auctions with the fewest bidders. TypoBuddy helps out by searching for commonly misspelled words on eBay, pointing you to hidden gems in the eBay catalog. Less competition for these typo entries means better deals for you.

SafeSurfer

Protecting your kids on the Internet and teaching them safe browsing habits doesn’t have to be dull—so says Safe Surfer. The site is jam-packed with games, news, and resources aimed at helping kids protect themselves against the dangers of the World Wide Web.

EarthAlbum

This isn’t the first mash-up of Flickr and Google Maps, but I think it’s one of the best. Earth Album fills your browser with a full map of the world, courtesy of Google. Click on any location, and geotagged photos appear in a strip on the top of the interface. Click one to see it larger and get a description from the photographer. Naturally, you can zoom in on the map to get more specific choices. Big cities and tourist destinations have the most photos associated with them, but click around to get a variety. You can even search for photos at specific addresses.

Did you like any of the websites listed above? Much better question is do you have any interesting, informative, weird, bizarre, nutty or just pointless websites that you would like to share? Hope to hear from you. Thank you for reading.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Website Showcase. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.