All My Faves

Uproxx – Your first visit to Uproxx might be confusing. It took me a while to get the gist of this entertainment site. Essentially, Uproxx is the venue of cultural and entertainment news, or, as the site explains, “from exclusive entertainment news to original sports satire, UPROXX covers the biggest names and events in pop culture with humor and insight.”

Uproxx works in collaboration with other media venues such as Gamesqaud to cover news on gaming and technology, and Filmdrunk, to cover film news, among others. This website might come across as too fresh to some, but entertainment -real entertainment- has to get down and dirty sometimes, right? Here’s an interesting news update I found on Uproxx, A-List Time Travel: Celebrities Re-Imagines in Different Eras.

Hooked on Houses – Julia is a freelance writer who loves houses. Not because of their design or architectural structure, but because she believes each has its own personality. Hooked on Houses is Julia’s spot for writing about houses she loves as a form of entertainment – something we rarely consider when looking at buildings.

Hooked on Houses has no real estate agenda per se, but Julia will throw in posts on home decor or house sale tips every now and then. Above all, Hooked on Houses is about appreciating and sharing photos of unique and interesting houses. Here are two examples.

Houses as Art: The Heidelberg Project in Detroit

A Hamptons-Style Home on Bainbridge Island

One Life – Aside from being one the world’s leading news providers, BBC is also well known for its natural world and wildlife series and films. One Life is yet another beautifully shot film about planet Earth and its rich diversity of organisms and ecosystems. Brought to us by BBC Earth, the One Life website is the brilliant introductory venue for the soon-to-be-out film.

The breathtaking trailer you will find here is not the usual play and watch video. While watching, you can use your mouse to pause the video and transition to the behind the scenes section (showing videos of the film’s production crew, each telling their inside story about making the film and the animals shown in it). When you’re done, simply drag your mouse upwards and the trailer will play where it left off. This is a mesmerizing experience, and I’m anxious to see the One Life film once it’s out. BBC Earth always delivers top-notch, mind-blowing films with rare shots and unbelievable close ups.

Zapd – This wonderful app offers an amazing free service. Create your very own website using Zapd’s system of templates and styles, add your mobile pics and voila, you are now the proud owner of a website. Zapd allows you to do all this on your iPhone, and the entire process from start to finish is fast, simple and fun.

Each website or “Zap” you create is automatically adapted to the device you used to make it, which means Zaps can be done via your iPhone, PC or tablet. And you can create as many Zaps as you wish, which is a great tool to use for simply sharing your interests and experiences, but also for special events such as birthdays, party invites, weddings and many more. Want to see some examples? Check out recent Zaps users have created.

To be honest, I’m surprised Zapd offers their sweet bundle of site creation for free. In other words, you’d better get this app now and start expressing yourself online! To learn more on how to use Zapd, see this intro video.

BookDaily – Where do you go to learn about new interesting  books? NY Times’ bestsellers list? That’s a good start. But there’s now an even better way to tap into book discovery via BookDaily.

BookDaily lets you find great reads by giving you access to the entire first chapter of each featured book (over 80,000 titles!) via email. The obvious added value is that you can actually ‘taste’ the book before deciding to buy it. Sign up to start exploring the books on 1st chapter-basis, and get regular updates on your preferred genres and publishers. The BookDaily platform also offers book reviews by other readers like you, and weekly columns from credible sources.

When it comes to books, I’m more of a sci-fi fan, and I gave BookDaily a try to see if they have my personal must read for August, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Sure enough, I found it and was immediately offered to read the first chapter. Why, thank you very much!

Redux – It seems everybody’s talking about content curation these days, and many see this as the next level of social interactions online. What it means in simpler terms is that users worldwide share things they’ve discovered on the Web in various venues, in addition to the conventional social networks and blogs. Redux is yet another content curation hub where everyone’s invited to share entertainment finds in the form of photos, music, videos and websites.

Here’s a video I found on Redux that is particularly enchanting. Think of it as your daily chill pill.

Drive & Seek – This interactive, action packed movie is an engaging campaign advertising Mercedes-Benz’s luxurious C Coupe car. Drive & Seek screams 007: the handsome man in the tux dodging bullets and doing car chases, along with beautiful models wearing super tight clothing are apparently the winning formula for getting men all over the world psyched about the C Coupe.

Simply start the movie and play along. That’s all there is to it.

WOW!collector – Here’s a nice Web spot that’s filled with enticing wonder and thought. The WOW!collector blog features fascinating posts in different categories including So Nice, Very Informative, Quite Funny and Wonderfully Weird. It’s a special venue where you will be spending long moments, and probably find yourself emailing and sharing on Facebook some of the entries here. To give you a taste of WOW!collector, here’s an interesting poster series by Viktor Hertz (the man who created Honest Logos), his own representation of various jackpot films.

Trip Your Face – This brilliant interactive campaign by Hotels.com invites users to experience the “what happens in [city] stays in [city]” for themselves in a whimsical and well-made adventure.

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GoRankem – I’m always on the lookout for new music and artists, and thanks to an abundance of music discovery tools online virtually anyone can expand their music repertoire. GoRankem is yet another music discovery player offering honest artist recommendations based on the taste of artists’ fans. The active contribution of users is what propels GoRankem, and I much prefer the suggestions of true fans than being handed down the ‘check this out’ of doubtful taste makers (i.e. music sites’ founders).

To see GoRankem in action, and as my personal tribute to the recently deceased singer, here’s the artist page of Amy Winehouse who passed away last Saturday. I found some interesting similar artists thanks to GoRankem’s user rating system.

Say100 – What used to be VideoEgg and Six Apart is now a sexy and sought-after vertical media company, Say Media. And what a a better way to show off the modern media company’s power than by showing off its most creative customers? Say100 is “a list of influential voices in 10 content verticals, including food, entertainment, style and technology.”

Remember the awesome looking women’s online lifestyle mag xoJane we reviewed last month? Its creator Jane Pratt is one of the Style voices featured on Say100. Other fields featured on Say100 include food, parenting, business (marketing expert Seth Godin is also a customer), tech, design, travel and others. So what do the “voices” on Say100 mean, exactly? Each field’s primary professional has his or her own page with a bio paragraph and links to his or her respective website and social network venues. See Foodie expert Amanda Hesser’s page as an example.

So what’s in Say100 for you? Even if SayMedia’s mighty powers of advertising haven’t managed to impress you, at the very least you will find great sites in numerous categories. In addition, each channel includes a post feed on the right side of your screen which offers high quality updates from relevant blogs and sites. You can’t argue with great content.

Doggelganger – The Pedigree Adoption Drive in New Zealand came up with a genius project to encourage and increase dog adoptions in the Kiwi country. Together with NEC Technology, Pedigree’s Doggelganger offers a “human to canine pairing software.” What does that mean, exactly? It’s quite simple, really. All you have to do is upload a clear photo of your face (you can also take one with your webcam), make sure the Doggelganger’s face model matches your facial features and hit Begin.

Now the fun begins. The software will match your facial features with those of dogs available for adoption in New Zealand’s SPCA centers. Once a match is found, you’ll see the adorable dog’s face right next to yours. When you think about it, this creates an immediate emotional bond and an instant increase of both the dog’s exposure and the likelihood of finding these dogs a home. Pedigree should do this for the US crowd as well. Most definitely!

What do you think? They really do resemble one another, don’t they?