community

Meet EverLapse, a new photo sharing app with a community twist. It is quite fun!

Gigaom

A week ago I started playing around with Everlapse, a photo sharing app (for the iPhone) from Seesaw Decisions Corp, an app development company co-founded by Aaron Gotwalt, Kyle Sollenberger and Jesse Engle. That’s the trio that co-founded the Twitter-focused service, CoTweet, which was acquired by ExactTarget (which is in the process of being gobbled by Salesforce itself.) EverLapse is actually a side project for the company, but if I was them, I would shut down whatever else they are doing and instead focus on this new photo app.

Why? Because instead of trying to mimic, say, Instagram, the new app has taken a very communal approach to photo sharing. Engle said it is doing so by bridging the gap between photos and videos. SeeSaw has raised about a million dollars in funding from FreeStyle Capital, Betaworks, First Round Capital and Baseline Ventures (also an early investor…

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BookYap: Book Recomendations

I am about to start using a new web application called BookYap. Put simply, BookYap is an application that recommends books based on criteria you enter. There are over 650 000 books in its database, so chances are it will find a book for you.

You can search for a book by using keywords or the filters it has available (based on personality types). By becoming a registered user, the application learns more and more about you and your reading habits, improving the recommendations it makes for you.

Books appear with thumbnails of their covers and book ratings. A brief description appears by hovering over the thumbnail. You are able to interact with the application and associated community by sharing books you have read and your reviews of them. There is connectivity with both Facebook and Twitter also.

You are also able to add books to a reading wishlist if you like. Books can be purchased from Amazon when you choose a book to read.

Visit BookYap at:
http://bookyap.com/

 

Shelfari

If you are into books and sharing your thoughts about them, whether that is by book reviews, lists, what you own, etc, then Shelfari may be a social network for you. I am on Shelfari and I am using it to catalogue my entire library (both hard copy and digital) – it will take me a while to complete the exercise. You can embed your bookshelf into your website, start a book group and share with others within the Shelfari community, plus much more. Well worth a look.

http://www.shelfari.com/

Digg

Digg has been in the news a bit over recent months, with stories of its demise and failure to stay relevant. Personally I think such talk is premature, though certainly it did fail to listen to its members and its membership dropped as a consequence. This has all changed now and the site has again been overhauled, more in keeping with the wishes of its users.

Digg is a social network where members ‘Digg’ news stories that appeal to them as they surf the web. This can be done by posting the link of the story on the Digg site, in browser extensions/plug ins, etc. Digg is a very user interactive site, where the users likes/dislikes help to promote stories or bury them. If you are a website owner, you can integrate Digg into your site with various widgets and buttons. In short, Digg allows the users to share web content with friends and others within the Digg community.

You can also use Digg to explore news articles and content, simply by visiting the site and looking at the current listings.

Visit Digg at:
http://digg.com/

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a social network for web surfing and sharing webpages and sites that you particularly like and find useful. You can easily surf the web by ‘stumbling’ along – that is, by clicking the stumble button on the toolbar that you can install, allowing you to visit random sites in the categories you choose to explore. As you visit sites, you can like/dislike them, allowing StumbleUpon to learn your likes and dislikes as you surf the web via StumbleUpon.

Being a social network, StumbleUpon allows you to share the sites you visit with friends and others within the StumbleUpon community. Of course, StumbleUpon can be used as a bookmarking type of site, by adding the sites you like to StumbleUpon in a similar way to that of adding favorites/bookmarks to Delicious or your browsers favorites/bookmarks. It’s up to you.

I tend to use StumbleUpon as a surfing tool and haven’t really added a lot to my favorites (I generally forget to do that). For this purpose I have adjusted the settings within StumbleUpon to reflect the topics I like to explore while surfing the web. So it isn’t such a sharing tool for me, as a recommendation tool for the various categories I have checked.

See more at:
http://www.stumbleupon.com

101in365

It has now been a month since New Year’s Day and perhaps a bit under a month since the New Year’s Resolutions that many sought to undertake fell by the way-side. Now is perhaps the time to have another look at those resolutions (and perhaps others we have thought about and done little with) and plan to do something about them. This is where 101in365 comes in. 101in365 is a web application/social network that provides a tool to assist tn meeting goals – 101 of them in fact, in 365 days.

The first thing you need to do (after registering of course) is come up with a list of 101 things you would like to achieve in a year (365 days). You enter these into your listing of 101 aims/goals. Once this is done you can lock your list in and begin the work required to bring them to past. You are able to update your list by marking each item as in progress and then to mark off each item as it is achieved.

With 101in365, you are able to keep your list of goals private or you can share them with the wider 101in365 community and/or your friends and family. It’s up to you. You are also able to interact with others via both Twitter and Facebbok if you like.

The tool itself is rather simple to you and before you know it you can have it all up and running. It is somewhat more difficult to actually achieve the goals you set yourself. At least this tool is a welcome way to assist in reaching your goals and is certainly able to be used as a means of encouragement and stimulus.

Visit 101in365 at:
http://www.101in365.com/

skinnyo

As I try to get back into Blogging on a regular basis again (yeah, I seem to be struggling with that at the moment), I thought I might use my daily posts on this Blog to offer up some links to some more web applications and social networking sites. I generally think that most of these are applications of some type or another, even though some of them will have a social aspect to them.

The first is skinnyo. Skinnyo, as the name probably suggests, is about getting ‘skinnier.’ It is an application to assist the user in loosing weight. Skinnyo gives you a personal weight loss diary that includes embeddable graphs and a photo history for tracking weight loss – which also includes a target goal that you can set and aim at.

If however you are unable to find the motivation to stay on track by being a private user of the application, you can also pull in friends and other users to assist in your weight loss efforts. This is done by setting challenges and/or joining other challenges set by others. This is where the social side of the application and community comes in. Of course there is also a status and news feed of others within your circle of skinnyo friends, so you can keep track of your friends weight loss efforts and share your own with them – setting up something of a support network.

As for showing others your weight – that doesn’t happen. Skinnyo will only show your differences in weight (that which has been lost – or perhaps gained). So no need to be too embarrassed by it all.

There is interaction available with both Facebook and Twitter accounts as well – should you wish to do so.

There is also a widget that is available allowing you to embed your weight loss efforts in a website or Blog (only showing the weight loss – not your weight).

Did I mention it is free to use?

Me? Well, I’m on my way loosing weight and to reaching my goal.

Check out the site at:
http://www.skinnyo.com/

The Fridge

If you’re interested in setting up a group/community/social network, perhaps you might like to check out ‘The Fridge.’ The Fridge is a place where you can set up a free group/community/social network. There are plenty of places these days for setting up a group and/or a social network. You could of course try Google Groups, Grou.ps and/or Yahoo Groups. If you are happy to pay there are other possibilities including Ning. The Fridge is not a site I had even heard of until a few days ago, but it could be worth a look or worth experimenting with for a while.

A member of a Fridge group gets a personal profile, which has a wall similar to Facebook. You can also post a photo for your profile. It really is a very simple social network providing a very basic service. It really seems to be a way of having very basic communication with other members of the group. You can post a picture with a post. So basically it provides a secure and private place for communicating. I guess email really accomplishes the same thing to some degree.

Have a look at:

http://www.frid.ge

Qhub: Create a Question and Answer Community/Forum

Qhub is a site that allows you to set up a free question and answer community/forum. There are seemingly endless possibilities for using a site like this – you could use it for visitors to your website to ask questions about your site, you could use it for your business, etc. Worth a look at:

http://qhub.com/