What is new today?

Hmmmm..... beautiful sunshine outside, and, as predicted, yesterday afternoon the weather was miserable, although it cleared up in the evening. Dublin, 4 seasons each day.....

So, last night I decided to go over my old favourites and also see what the CNN Money 25 start-ups to watch list holds. First on their list was Stumble Upon. It describes itself as allowing you to channel surf the web through a browser button, finding websites, videos, pictures etc. that matches your interests, a collaborative webtool. On the front page is a great review from those illustrious media institutions Wall Street Journal and BBC singing its praises. So, typically, I signed on. Signing on is easy enough, and if you use FireFox, which I do, then it adds a easy little toolbar and buttons. Only problem, *Sigh*, is that I am running out of browser space with all my buttons and add-ons! So I set my choices of categories that I am interested in when I registered, and, when FireFox had restarted, off I went, stumbling around the web to random sites, based on my preferences. The first was a timezone site, which I wasn't clear about, so I moved on. Next was a speedtest site, appropriately named Speedtest, which had various servers around the globe. I selected Dublin, and the results seemed reasonable, so I bookmarked it and rated it a thumbs up. The next site was a photography site of wild life. Right up my ally. OK, so I think I understand this one now. Interesting and different. This would be interesting if you are simply browsing around for something different. I can certainly see it getting a following. I suppose this is like Digg with buttons that could allow random surfing, instead of going to specific titles. Concept seems solid. Will keep the buttons for a while and see what comes up next. Very appropriate name I must say - Stumble Upon.

I must say this whole concept of more and more community sharing and interaction will probably allow the better and more interesting sites to get improved exposure.

The next start-up on the list was Slide. As the name says, it is about slide shows, but not on Microsoft's good old PowerPoint. This allows you to easily assemble slideshows for insertion into your blog, MySpace page, RSS feeds, or desktop as a screensaver. Useful, but I have no real application for it right now myself. My blog is simple, and I want to keep it that way. It is really just my diary of all the things I try and how or if it impacts my life, useful or otherwise. I do not send out RSS feeds, I subscribe to them, so no use there. Don't do YouTube or MySpace, so no need there. What could be nice would be the screensaver function, although there are several utilities out there doing that already. However, I suppose having the utility with the functionality to send out slideshows into RSS or your blog would be useful to a lot of people, but more where your blog is family or personal friends oriented or your MySpace page with a similar function. It would be great putting up a collage of recent holiday pics or family or friends reunion or event up in a slideshow without having to click through all the pictures. A quick browse around the website could get you drooling, if you like publishing your personal and family or group photos. Seems like it has Yahoo Group support as well, which would be great for school reunions etc. I know my wife went to a school reunion and they use Yahoo Groups to publish their photos. It is painful having to click on each, then close it again, then go to the next one etc. etc. OK, I can definitely see use for this! I will recommend to my wife that their group uses this before their next reunion, so I won't have to sit and go clickety click with her through dozens of pictures. Should halve the time needed to look at them!

One of the sites I still enjoy is Blinx. It allows you to search the web for videos, then mount them on a videowall, giving you thumbnail videos available on the web, based on your search. You can then click them and watch the videos. Sort of like Google for video. I will have to compare Stumble Upon's channel facility for video to Blinx. Two different uses and applications, but dedicated to video on the web. Must say, with the advent of sites like YouTube, Flickr and the host of similar sites, or other genres such as Bebo, even with personal blogs, video on the web has become as prevalent a words and images.

There is just so much to learn, to see and experience. I guess that is the gap that these new sites and tools fill/try to help fill. Through community rating and recommendations we build up an idea of where to find information and sites that are a closer match to our tastes and interests. So much better than stumbling (pardon the pun...) through the web and trying to muddle your way through it by Googling keywords and hitting 1.2 billion possible matches, isn't it? At least this way someone else is helping you go through the hundreds of millions of sites out there, helping to sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak. And is many hands make light work, then a million hands out there should make light of even 1.2 billion sites I guess.

Speaking of wheat and chaff, listening to my BBC podcasts last night and this morning, had two interesting stories from their archives, one about the first leader of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and his rapid rise and fall from power after independence, and the second is The Rice Bowl, looking at China, and the consumption of rice, its impact and interviews with young people in Shanghai, then with farmers in the rural areas and the way in which improvements in the yield per crop has benefited the country.

Lovely interesting human interest stories for the day, to break the stream of technology we face each day, and to remind us about the rest of the world and how they live.