All My Faves

In case you haven’t noticed, All My Faves has been offering its users the Mini Faves feature for some time now. It’s a great personalization tool allowing you to showcase all your favorite bookmarks in one easy to access page, already including all the Web’s essential websites you visit on a daily basis (Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, etc.). Check this out for a quick example.

What’s even more exciting about our Mini Faves feature is that we’ve developed an iPhone compatible format of this cool service. This makes accessing your personal faves on the go an absolute breeze. To activate this free service on your iPhone, all you need to do is create an account and access your personal page through your iPhone browser (click + to add All My Faves to your Home Screen). See the below screen shots for a glimpse.

 Boxee – Once you install Boxee on your computer, prepare yourself for a full featured, free media center. This super cool service works with all your locally stored movies and music.

The best part about Boxee is its integration with online content; not only can you view your own private collection, but you can also browse for music on last.fm, or watch your favorite shows through hulu. Connect your computer to the TV to achieve the ultimate home media center experience.

Whyzz – As a young boy growing up, I used to drive my parents crazy with all the questions I had: why this? why that?
In most cases my parents had the answers to my repeated inquiries, or at least they did their best to make me think they had it. For all those awkward moments when you are not sure about your kids’ questions, whyzz is here for the rescue.

Whyzz is the place where parents with curious young children can find and contribute to kid-ready information about how the world works! Questions range from Why don’t cats cry? to Why do my ears “pop” on an airplane?
Embedded below is a funny sketch by Katt Williams. You should know in advance that it contains some explicit language, so viewer discretion is advised.

 Look and Taste – Unlike my brother Shachar, I am a really lousy cook. Whenever I come across a cooking site, I wish I could find the time or the energy to sit down and try out some of the recipes (practice makes perfect, doesn’t it?). Look and Taste (formerly iFoods.tv) is yet another cooking site, but it stands out from the rest. Not only do they give you the complete recipes for their mouth-watering dishes, they also show you how to do it, step by step.

Their fun and instructive video archive of over 300 entries (featuring professional savvy chefs) give you a complete cooking show right at your fingertips. Another cool feature Look and Taste offers which many other cooking sites lack is their glossary of over 400 relevant terms. Don’t forget to check out their show, which is just as enjoyable and motivating.

 Gdgt – These days, it is getting quite difficult to track down all the info about the endless amount of gadgets that are launched on a practically daily basis. Gdgt is all about providing you with useful, contextual information — both from gdgt and around the Web — to help you get more out of the devices you already own, as well as to help you discover that next great tech toy to add to your collection.

 Viral Video Chart – Know how when you watch a great video online it immediately becomes obvious that you’ll send it to all your friends and family members right away? Viral Video Chart allows you to stay on top with the hottest videos currently buzzing online.

In addition to watching videos, you can find interesting statistical information about them. See when the video first became ‘hot’, how many mentions it got on the blogosphere and many more fascinating data. I can only hope YouTube will add a similar feature to their web site as well, because more often than not, I find the latter’s video recommendations irrelevant.

 Sense of Fashion is an online home for indie fashion designers, trendsetters, fans and shoppers. Packed with vintage and one-of-a-kind apparel and accessories, this luscious site offers a refreshing and chic locality where anyone can show off their creations, personal style and trendy picks. Users can easily sell, shop, interact with others, influence and be inspired.

Whether you’re into old school gold earrings and necklaces, unique retro sneakers or fabulous sensual dresses, Sense of Fashion has it all. Visit these guys and you won’t be disappointed!

 Passive Aggresive Notes – Sharing a space with others can often get ugly; a roommate who stays clear from doing the dishes; a co-worker who constantly eats your lunch; and the worst, a flat mate who leaves hairs in the bath’s drainage hole… Since we’re all human and there’s only so much we can take, we must find a way to vent all these frustrations that have to do with that ‘other’ person.

Passive Aggressive Notes was created specifically for this reason and it offers one of the best and funniest solutions to this problem. It compiles “painfully polite and hilariously hostile writings from shared spaces around the world.” Pay them a visit, add your own disgusting/nerve-wracking/obnoxious experience and see what others have to say. In addition to the photo below, my favorite is Going up? What’s yours?

 RunPee – Don’t you just hate it when you’re watching a movie and then get that sneaking sensation that you have to go and pee? RunPee tells you when is the best moment to run to the restroom while a movie is playing without you missing a crucial plot moment. Don’t worry; it will also fill you in on what happened during your absence. You get to see the movie at its fullest and enjoy a quick break for the restrooms.

For ease of use, RunPee recently released an iPhone app which lets you check the info instantly while in the theater. How cool is that?

 JPG Magazine – JPG is a magazine focusing on photography. The content of JPG is user-created and submitted via the magazine’s website. When photos are submitted, they are voted on by members of the site’s community for inclusion in the next issue. To watch their amazing photos, you can browse either their Theme or Photos categories (for photos: submitted, from contacts, spotlight, etc.).

Photos on JPG are extraordinarily impressive and captivating, to the extent that they surpass the quality of other photo browsing services online. I personally love the stories behind the pictures, you should take a look at that as well.

 Neon Maze – Guide our hero through the neon maze on his way to freedom. For more great games, check out the Weekly Games page. We do our best to bring you only the best games every week, and don’t forget that you can always fall back on Bubble Shooter if you can’t find anything to your liking….

At the moment of writing this, Google Chrome is all the hype around the net. Though, at the same day that Google Chrome launched, Google also launched a new version of their popular Picasa and PicasaWebAlbums. Which is considered as one of the top destination for image uploading on the Internet. I don’t believe that the launch of this two services together happened by a chance. Google knew that all the hype will be around the new Google browser. No one seems to mention anything thoughtful regarding the new face recognition that they launched.

First, I would like to introduce you to the new service. When you login to your Picasa web account. You get an option at the right bar of the screen to perform name tagging. Which at first seems to be harmless. We all know the face tagging done on Facebook. In which you personally recognize your friends and tag them with a name, thus, an algorithm isn’t used to scan additional pictures.

Google Picasa is different. When selecting the name tag option, you receive a message stating that you have to wait for about half an hour until all your pictures are processed. Once processed, you will be able to view all your loved ones grouped together in a beautiful way which only Google can provide. So slick and simple.

(Click image to enlarge)

So what scares me… You’re asking? Well, Google’s main business model is through advertising. Google controls most of the Internet advertising market, it’s their main business and frankly they perform it unexceptionally. In addition, Google is also trying to infiltrate the old-school media TV and Newspapers. (You can read more about it here and here).

Did you ever stop and think what will happen if Google will find a way to show us ads on our daily routine. On our way to work, while shopping or just hanging out with friends at a local bar.

I think that the day which Google will shows us ads on the streets is closer than we think. Now, that they are able to recognize our faces. All they need is a camera to recognize us on the street. Oh, guess what!? They already have it!

What will happen when Google will have all the information about us? Isn’t that too much power for one company?

When Gmail started reading our mail and showing us relevant ads. There was a big privacy fuss around the issue. Now, when it comes to recognizing us in person, it seems as if no one is raising up these issues.

At first, Tagging yourself on Picasa seems harmless, but think about what will happen ten years from today. Privacy won’t exist when stepping out of your home.

I am a big Google fanboy. I even believe that I will try their new tagging option because I am way too curious. I also believe in Google’s moto – “Don’t be evil”. Though, we have to raise these issues before it is too late. We should have control over our privacy.

Am I just being paranoid or is this our future?