What is Web 2.0 Marketing?

This article seeks to explain how user-generated content can help you create an online marketing campaign.

Web 2.0 Marketing

What is Social Software?

This article seeks to explain it.

Social Software

Add Affiliates Easily

Here are a couple of ways to easily support an affiliate program on your website. Just let the experts handle the affiliate relationship.

ShareASale.com
AffiliateFuture.com

Practice Your Programming Skills 2

Code Kata - Dave Thomas, one of the Pragmatic Programmers, took the idea of coding practice and made
something....well, pragmatic out of it. He created a series of what he
calls Code Kata, which are small, thought-provoking exercises that
programmers can do in the language of their choice. Each kata
emphasizes a specific technique or thought process, providing a concrete
flexing of one's mental muscles.

Practice Your Programming Skills

TopCoder.com is a long-standing programming competition
site. You can register for an account and compete online for
prizes. Even if you're not interested in competing with others, Top-
Coder offers a practice room with a large collection of practice problems
that you can use as excellent fodder for your practice sessions.
Go sign up and give it a try.

UShip: Who Wants to Ship This?

Let shipping carriers compete for your business. Just list your shipping need and get bids from interested shippers, then go with the cheapest. Supposedly shippers often have extra room in their trucks which they would like to fill up but their problem is finding stuff to carry there. Now these same shippers can go to this site and try to win your business so they can fill up their trucks.

UShip.com

Fotolia.com

Here is another great photo resource:
Fotolia.com is the revolutionary image bank that is fast, easy and always on. More than 3.2 million images starting at $1 are ready for downloaded. 1000 new members a day are inspired by our spirit!

• Over 3.2 million professional images
  
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• Free membership
  
• Revolutionary images
  
• Industry disruptor

Join now for a free Fotolia account and get 3 free images. Visit Fotolia.com and enter promo code VAU3IEZN during registration.

Adobe Lab's Color Schemes

Check out Adobe Lab's own version of what a color scheme picker should look like:
kuler.adobe.com

FlirtingInTraffic.com

I think this is a nice concept with lots of potential. ABC News Nightline did a story about it. However, there are some security issues to be concerned about. Would you want a predator who saw you to know who you are?

On the Fast Track to Love
FlirtingInTraffic.com

Openkapow

You have to see this to believe it. You can now create "robots" which can navigate anywhere in the web and feed you back the info as REST, RSS, etc.

Openkapow.com

Review by Infoworld

MySpace for Kids

There are various sites for pre-teen, pre-MySpace kids who are too young to blend in with the older kids on MySpace. Here is a NYT Review:
My Daughter, the Burger-Flipping Penguin

Some of the mentioned services are:
ClubPenguin.com
WebKinz.com
Imbee.com
Whyville.net
Nicktropolis.com
Disney Xtreme Digital

Catalog All Your Stuff

New services aim to be your online catalog of all the stuff you own. Then you can share all the stuff you own with your friends and eventually buy/sell with each other. Online retailers also can automatically register the stuff you buy with these services and then advertise related items to you when you view your stuff.
NYT Review: Got Roomfuls of Stuff? Now Sitew Will Help Keep Track of It

Zebo.com
MyThings.com
iTaggIt.com

Another Shopping Experience

Here is yet another online shopping experience which aims to ease online comparison shopping and searching.
Glimpse.com
NYT Review: A Narrow Window Into the Future
Here are my previous shopping experiences I discovered.

Upload Your Cell's Videos

Upload all your videos and photos from your cell and let others watch them, even live.
Kyte.tv
NYT Review: Social Networking Leaves Confines of the Computer

Trend Hunters

Here is another site to keep track of trends.
TrendHunter.com

Mapki: Google Maps Mashups Wiki

For help on anything concerning the Google Maps API this wikipedia-style site has all the info and links you will need to create your own Google Map Mashup.
Mapki.com
For seeing examples of Google Maps Mashups visit the Google Maps Mania blog.

JSONER: Library for JSON

The next hottest thing in dealing with JSON is a new Javascript library called JSONER. And if you don't know what JSON is yet, you better start finding out. It is a more efficient way to transfer data with AJAX instead of using XML.

Human-powered Local Search

Here is another service that is moving away from software to human-powered. It is local searching, which basically means searching for business info, attractions, events, history, etc. at a localized level usually from a local expert. Here is one of the first services to attempt this with real humans, presumably available thru chat 24x7:

AskPoodle.com

Human-powered Transcriptions

Normally one would expect for computer to automatically transcribe voice to text, but because of accuracy problems and having to "train" the software to your voice, there is an effort to get a human network of transcribers to be available 24x7 to alleviate all these problems.

One of the first to do this is Jott.com. They have a toll-free number you call and speak for up to 30 seconds. Real humans then transcribe your message to text and send it to your destination(s) which you will have previously setup in your free account at jott.com.

This is a very interesting trend of using human networks to usurp the normal role of computers. Can you think of other industries or services where this is happening?

Human-powered Searching

Obviously computers by themselves are not smart enough to answer all our search request, so now some folks are using real humans to power searching. Some searching is done in real-time by humans over the phone, for example Scott Jones's ChaCha.com. Other searching will apparently be an amalgamation of user recommendations of the best search results, for example Jimmy Wales' Search Wikia.

On Wikipedia I searched for "human search engine" and also found Jatalla.com

These new services depend on a network of people doing all the work. If I were building a network of people I would definitely get pointers from these two big players.