It’s a simple service to use too with two ways to find out what font is being used on a website or in a logo (or any other graphic come to that).  You can either upload an image to the service, all the main graphics formats and files up to 2Mb are supprted, or you can point the service at a particular website.

Once you’ve done that the site will dissect the text and images and presents you with a series of images, within each one it tries to recognise a single letter, number or symbol.  If it does it will automatically insert the correct character in a box underneath, but it will give you blank boxes for any images it doesn’t recognise a character in, just in case its missed one.

In the tests I put it through it proved extremely accurate, not failing to spot any letters in images and providing several excellent alternatives for the font families used, giving me a choice of which one I thought was most appropriate.

So if you want to find out what font A or B has used on X or Y, now you can as easily as uploading a single image.

So, a very interesting question is how does such technology work?

They consult a service called Skyhook Wireless. They drive around settlements in several countries and record the GPS co-ordinates of where they pick up certain wireless access points, so when users send the access point’s MAC to them, it can return the co-ordinates. Many areas aren’t covered but if you would still like to use it, and let others use it, one can manually add details to the system. The same system is used to correct erroneous listings.

Many services already make use of WiFi-based location services.

For example, GPS units may struggle to provide an accurate location indoors or in an urban environment, but Skyhook Wireless doesn’t have this problem. Software like Google Maps on the iPhone use WiFi-based location in such scenarios.

Several online websites also use WiFi-based location services to return information based on the locality. Some are social networking, like brightkite and Fire Eagle to local search, although these services tend to be American. MyLoki is another service which relies on geolocation, and this allows location data to be exported to RSS feeds, Facebook or even Twitter. It can also grab data from ‘channels’ and plot things nearby on a map. These ‘channels’ include everything from Starbucks coffee shops to geotagged photos, Yelp reviews and cinemas.

Google Gears uses its own geolocation service, which websites like ITN use, but this is much worse than Geode/Skyhook, being accurate for me to about 150 miles instead of 15 meters!

Skyhook-based locations are built into the iPhone, the Opera web-browser and Mozilla Geode.

Privacy concerns are put to ease as data is only sent if you confirm the website can have access to it, and the software lets you specify how accurate a location you’re willing to send.

The idea of geolocation and WiFi positioning is fantastic. Eventually, it will allow you to open your laptop and then share your location with others, should you choose, or find the nearest restaurant in a distant city!

Commenter reactive pointed out ping.fm, a website which in fact I use. ping.fm allows you to update one site, through a variety of means, which will then pass those updates on to 32 other websites.

ping.fm amazingly allows updates to be textual or graphical (you can set ping.fm to upload images to Flickr etc.). The ability to send videos is going to be launched soon.

The site will ‘ping’ most major social networking sites updates: Twitter, Pownce, FriendFeed, Facebook, MySpace, del.icio.us and Jaiku. Smaller ones like Kwippy are also supported.

Updates can be sent through instant messaging (GTalk, MSN, Yahoo! or AIM), unlike Twitter at the moment, from iGoogle, Facebook, an iPhone, WAP or SpinVox (a service which allows a voice to be converted to text on a phone). This is in addition to email (and therefore MMS, and on some carriers SMS) and the web.

With ping.fm it’s just as quick to update all your social networks as it is one. It is only one way however, and other peoples’ updates will not be received using it. Another similar service, which is a little more complex is imified.

Could also be a nice way to determine if you are really the father of a baby.. Sorry, just kidding. The user simply uploads at least one picture and either uploads a second picture or picks the face of a celebrity from the celeb database.

If you ever wondered how your baby with Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton or Johnny Depp would like then here is your change to find it out.

The user can pick a baby frame, select a gender and name for the baby before the baby morphing technology steps in and creates the face of the could be baby.

This is an interesting idea for couples who like to discuss how their children will look like but also for others who love to find out about it. Neat idea.

What you need to do is to follow me on Twitter so that I can invite you to Kwippy. Yes, that sounds pretty strange but from what I can tell the only real option to invite other users is to invite the Twitter followers. I’m also not sure if I can repeat that indefinitely or not.

So if you want an invite you need to follow me on Twitter. Use the following link to my profile. I’m not really sure about the differences between Twitter and Kwippy, if anyone is using both services feel free to post a comment to explain things.

The only valid reason for using any of them would be to receive tips from readers that way.

Update: I can also invite by email. Just discovered the option on my profile page. If you prefer that way let me know here in the comments. Below are two screenshots as requested by Dark Kosmos:

My public Kwippy profile for those who already have a Kwippy account and would like to follow me.

More sites are going live each day and it’s a complete mess to keep up with your friends and make them your friends on those new sites as well. Lockr is a Facebook application that tries to create a central administration for your social networking sites. It currently supports only Flickr and Facebook but more are planned and will follow.

The basic principle of Lockr is to give non-members access to your private content. Non-members are your friends who do not want to join that social networking site but still like to see the pictures that you upload at Flickr for instance.

Since Lockr is a Facebook application your friends need to be member of Facebook but that’s it. From there users can give permission to access private pages on other social networks. You need the Firefox add-on if you want to share private pictures with your friends at Flickr.

The next release will be Lockr for Bittorrent which adds Lockr to Azureus. I think that this is one service to look after in the coming months.

Update: Lockr appears to be no longer available

You can basically do two things at FontStruct. The first and probably most exciting function is to create your own font set and share it with other users on the website and Internet. I really thought I would never say that but it’s actually fun to create your own font. Besides that it’s easy as pie to do it. You can select a letter set at the bottom, say Latin, Greek, Arabic or Hebrew and work your way through the letters, numbers and special characters until you are finished. You can always take a look at the results so far and correct any mistake that you might have made.

It does take some time if you consider that you have to create more than 80 characters for the Basic Latin font set alone but as I said it is well worth it and fun. A set of tools is available that should be known from image editors, you can copy and erase pixels, draw lines or rectangles and use special shaped pixels that are available in the left pane.

The second great function is the ability to share and download fonts from the website. Since the website is more or less unknown only 46 fonts are available right now, some of them however are fantastic. The website offers the typical community based functions like commenting and rating fonts or user avatars.

FontStruct is great fun combined with great value, what else could you want ?

I guess the best application for a service like Linkbunch is if you are restricted to a certain amount of characters. Twitter for instances comes to my mind or sending someone an SMS.

The principle is easy to grasp. Just add as many links as you want into the text field at Linkbunch and click on the Bunch button afterwards to create a random link pointing to that link collection. Take a look at one of the links that I have created to get an idea of the concept.

The links themselves are really short, always starting with http://linkbun.ch/ and random chars afterwards. The only thing that needs to be taken care of is that everyone may access those links by guessing the random chars. They seem to be using three chars for the links currently which means a very limited amount of possibilities.

Users can import friends from other popular sites like Facebook or Twitter which are then added automatically to yet another network. I’m a bit unsure about the difference to Instant Messengers though and can’t really find why I should be using Pownce instead.

Anyone got an idea let me know please. I’m a bit tired of all those web two point O websites that do not really add something unique that could justify their existence. I know that I won’t be using Pownce and other services like it. If I want to keep in touch with my friends I use an Instant Messenger, Skype or E-Mail. Call me old fashioned.

In case you are interested, everyone may join now.

Of course the more people participate in suggesting what comes next the more accurate the suggestions can become. In order for this system to work, you need one place where anyone could express their idea about the future. There is such place and it’s called FutureScanner, a website (kinda Digg clone but with original idea) for collaborative future forecasting. Individual submissions are separated by category and a year when they’re expected to come true.

On the main page you can display the most popular or new items and also use advanced filters to only display some particular ones. Each of these can be voted up or down thus filtering the waste out and keeping the most interesting forecasts at the top of the list. IMHO Memebox still needs to work on the design a little bit, especially to make it work properly in Opera (!) but it appears to be quite promising project now. Commenting and RSS feeds are already implemented.

Interestingly enough, this is a third case of an event that happens quite often to me. This time, about half a year after having an idea of making a website that would allow people to work on guessing the future, I hit on a brand new startup that does exactly that. Though, I must admit they did quite a fine job. Weird how different people come to the same ideas, sometimes I feel a little like being plugged into some kind of network. Oh wait a sec, I am.. :D

For people who do a lot of converting, it’s okay to install special conversion software on your computer. However, if you only convert files once in a while, it does not make much sense. To solve this issue, a whole host of online conversion sites have sprung up.

One of these sites is aptly named youconvertit. This site is definitely one of the better ones out there. It has lots of options and can convert between a ton of formats. The first option allows you to convert a file on your machine itself. This is great because sometimes you just cannot get a particular file in your preferred format. Another plus is that you can convert up to 5 files at one time.

The second option lets you convert an online file. This is especially handy for online videos that are in flv format and cannot be played on all media players. You can enter the url of the file and then either convert it directly or download it to your computer.

The site even lets you send files to a recipient’s email address. Just type in the address, select up to 5 files and press ‘send’. A final bonus is the unit conversion software, which lets you convert between different quantities and other units. However, this is not that big a deal since you can do this with plain old Google as well.

The big advantage is that Youconvertit offers plenty of conversion options. A look at the supported formats revealed options for images, documents, audio, video, and archives. I have not even heard of half these formats. I tried converting a test file and the results were pretty good. The conversion was fairly quick and the resultant file played fine.

I’ve bookmarked the site since I think this is bound to come in handy once in a while. Have you tried any online conversion sites before? Were you satisfied with the performance? Do let me know.

My two favorites are Go2Web2.0 and Listio. Bot sites are great for finding new companies, but I recommend subscribing to their feeds to get the latest news. Actually Go2Web2.0 is a very poorly designed site, and navigating is quite hard, RSS is way easier. It’s pretty, but it’s really slow and full of weird bugs. Listio is better designed, it is a good place to just browse around.

Another site I have used in the past is eConsultant‘s page on web 2.0 sites. It has over 1.200 sites, but is not really updated, at least of what I’ve seen. It is a huge directory, so you can browse through it and try any service whose name catches your fancy. I think this was the first directory I ever visited and I can thank it for my obsession.

Listable is a good resource as well, but it’s very hard to find what you’re looking for. It is a bit riddled with spam, but if you can get to a good entry here and there. I recommend searching for specific web 2.0 apps, but even then it’s hard to find relevant lists. I assure you that when you do though, you will have a good time.

Everyone may access your profile page on Snapfoo and look at the recent images that you send in. Photos can not only be added by mobile phone but also by uploading them via email or with your computer. If you want to post something fast you might choose the mobile phone option, if you have more time at hand you better choose email or computer upload to save some money in case you are not running an unlimited data plan.

Both email accounts and cell phone numbers have to be added to Snapfoo before you can begin to use them. The creator of the picture can write a short description that will be added to the profile page and all other registered visitors can leave comments.

I think Snapfoo is a great idea, something unique that has not appeared yet on the Internet. The integration with popular web 2.0 communities makes it more attractive and it could very well become the next Twitter. It’s nothing for me though because I do not like to reveal my life to the public.

I have five Snapfoo invites. The first five to comment on this blog requesting an invite will get it.

The essence of this web 2.0 app is the two pane layout it uses on each page to show your ideas. Ideas go on the left, and notes attached go on the right. This is a bit refreshing, since most apps actually force you to put in more info, assign tasks, navigate away to view notes and so on.

Pages can be used as categories, each having the layout above. You can actually pretty effectively manage projects if they require only a few tasks. I also found it of some use when I was developing ideas, it’s nice to be able to aggregate them in this form, I just like the way Wridea presents it, full stop.

There are also some advanced features available, but due to the limited use of the app, I am not sure these are of great importance. There the ability to have friends in the Wridea community, adding notes via email and so on. If you need a simple idea or task manager and you don’t want any added extras this app could be the one for you.

At first I turned my back, the name sounded to wacky to back a useful product. Just pop the hood and you’ll see how wrong I am. Remember The Milk is an advanced to-do list manager with smart searches, geo tagging (awesome), tags, list sharing, list publication, adding tasks by email, the list just goes on and on.

If you just need a simple to-do list it will do fine, but if you are a GTD freak, I believe you could still set it up so that it accommodates your needs. It has some shortcomings (you can’t share smart lists, no nested lists), but just put it up on the suggestion board (I already have) and if it’s popular, you have a good chance of it getting in.

The creator has just created a pro version, which is available for a $25 price. The reason I will actually buy it is that the guy was super nice. He introduced the pay version before he had any pro features. He said that RTM now has a pro feature. He has a load of ideas for it, and if someone feels they want to help him, he welcomes them. He also said that some future developments will only be for pro members. This is a very friendly way to go pro, three cheers to Bob the Monkey.

Visitors can choose from nine categories ranging from Art to Life and Tech. Each category contains a lot of how to instructions, most of the time several hundreds that address such a variety in topics that it is hard to classify them at all sometimes. I was especially interested in the Food category which showed me how to harvest bananas (not so interesting), tetris ice cubes (warmer), easy perfect pancaces (even warmer) and Han Solo in a carbonite chocolate bar! (fantastic).

A lot of how to instructions can be found that work well with kids. They either please and delight them because you have created something that looks nice and interesting (no not the Barbie Doll Electric Chair) but Write or Draw with Light, Ice Gems and the
Pop-Up Pyramid.

This is a great website that has lots to offer, check it out. Thanks to Make Use Of for finding this gem.

Related tags are shown as a circle around the thumbnails making it easy to explore more pictures by simply clicking on another tag. A click on an image loads that picture on the same site giving the user the option to visit the Flickr photo page to see or discover more from the user who uploaded the picture to Flickr.

Some tags have no related tags which essentially means that no related tags are shown around the thumbnails. Images are displayed pretty fast, it never took longer than a few seconds to display all 25 thumbnails. Guess it depends on the connection of the connected user though.

Read More:

Flickr Related Tag Browser

There is a choice of six template layout. Although, that is too little compared to powerpoint, I feel it is enough for normal usage. You can change your font (20 font types to choose from), change background color or even use a image as a background. Speaking about images; There is a option for you to load a picture from your desktop. I have seen too many web 2.0 sites that require you to load the picture/photo from a url which is very inconvenient.

You can view your slides in the normal view (powerpoint view) or the slide sorter view (see above). Within the slide sorter view, you can drag and drop the slides to change the order. Nice for a web app.
Slide show

You are able to view your slide show directly as you do your presentations by going to “view show”. The other 3 options are

1. Email Show – share you presentation through email
2. Publish Show – Publish your presentation for live viewing
3. Embed Show – Embed a presentation on your blog, like I have done below (only 3 slides for testing)

There are even cool slide transitions for you to play with. Good Stuff.

My main gripe with Preezo is that it cannot open existing powerpoint from your desktop. But to create a presentation from scratch, I totally recommended it. I think I will use this from now on.

This has been an entry from Yeong who runs his own blog Blogmunch.

Read More:

Preezo

Over the past year several web 2.0 porn sites, lets call them social porn sites – emerged and became incredibly successful over a short period of time. Even censorship like the removal of the successful site Youporn from Google’s index could not stop the rise of a site that is currently placed 85th in Alexas ranking. Remember, a site with no help from Google makes it under the top 100 sites worldwide sitting there in front of Apple Inc. for instance which got a rank of 90.

Megarotic, another of those sites is just one place behind currently placed 86th in Alexa.

Youporn (Alexa:85, Pagerank 4)

Megarotic (Alexa: 86, Pagerank 5)

Pornotube (Alexa:198, Pagerank 5)

Xtube (Alexa: 326, Pagerank 4)

Redtube (Alexa: 528, Pagerank 0)

Yuvutu (Alexa:583, Pagerank 3)

Fantasti.cc (Alexa: 31722, Pagerank 2)

Nipplebyte (Alexa 117385, Pagerank 4)

Only X-Rated (Alexa: 118291, Pagerank 0)

X-Digg (Alexa: 422190, Pagerank 0)

Emergency Porn (Alexa: 559306, Pagerank 3)

Sin 2.0 (Alexa: 1279022, Pagerank 0)

A sweat little object is popping up in front when you visit Fichey and you can use that to take a look at all the sites that were popular at those websites in the past. Since Fichey is relatively new you can only access sites that were popular beginning with July the 6th of 2007.

Every site that was popular in the past is opened in the same browser tab which means that you browse one site at a time and can flip through them. It looks like Ajax was used to create the effect, looks pretty nice. Pretty good way to flip through many popular sites in a very short period of time.

Update: The Fichey website is no longer accessible. It is not clear if this is a temporary situation or if the project has been abandoned by its developers.

I’m not aware of any comparable service. An alternative that shows trending topics and what’s popular right now is Popurls. The srevice displays popular stories on Digg, Reddit, Chime, YouTube, Flickr and a lot of other popular websites.

Content blocks and other parameters on the site can be customized on the site. Users can furthermore hoover over topics to get a one paragraph description of the linked article. It is also important to note that a click on the title links to the media directly (which can be an image, video, text or other media), while a click on the comment icon loads the actual page the media link was posted on. The two can be the same destination but they do not have to be, especially not on voting style sites.