This week it’s about snail mail. I don’t know about you, but I still love good old postal mail. There’s nothing quite like waiting for something in the mail; the anxiety, the excitement. Unfortunately, in this day and age very few people take the time out to write a letter, and the only mail most of us get is bills and bank statements. Let’s try and change this.

Easypost – let’s you send printed paper mail to anyone in Canada, free (for now at least). All you have to do is enter a name and address, type your message, and your message will be printed and sent to the person via regular mail. What if you don’t know anyone in Canada? Easypost provides you a tool whereby you can simply look up any particular name and get their address. Then, you can send someone (a stranger) something nice. Maybe you’ll even get a reply.

This quote from Easypost FAQ puts today’s post in the best light: “I don’t really like hand writing letters to my [parents, grandparents, in-laws, pen pals, etc] but I do find myself sending about 200 emails a day – is this the service for me?
Definitely. Those people you mentioned are WAY more likely to give you a birthday present or put you in the will this year if they get a letter from you. Hand writing is for chumps… Go EasyPost!”

Take Note – This is really nice. You can send a handwritten note to anyone in Australia. This can be yourself, a friend, or a complete stranger. It’s just a note so the message has to be short. From site: “Got something to say to someone? A message of love, or a naughty secret…? You write the note, we’ll provide the pencil & paper, then send it for you to anywhere in Australia“
I think this is really nice, and I spent almost 20 minutes sending notes to strangers.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find such services for any other country. Have you? I suppose, though, that if you send your note/message just right, you can get a reply back. Have fun trying!

Remember BookMooch? Here, you don’t just wait for a letter but a whole book in the mail! Also, when you send over your book, you can include a nice little note.

Alternatively, you could get a penpal. This is relatively easy to do as there are many places you can go to find penpals. However, have you ever thought of getting a penpal who really really cherishes your letters? Go Meet-an-inmate. These guys/gals need someone to talk to and will probably be pretty interesting. Go for it!!

Finally, some random fun with File Swap. Upload one file and get a random file back in exchange.

What do you think of today’s sites?

Today’s cool site is actually a really cool tool; a tool that I have been after for ages. Have you ever wanted to record live video off the internet? Maybe you are talking to someone who has their webcam on and you would like to record some of the video or maybe it’s just another live internet stream. Personally, I have come across quite a few live video streams that I would have loved to record for keepsakes.

There are a number of ways to do this, depending on what type of video stream is in question. For example recording msn webcams is quite simple compared to live video off a site. IS there one single tool that can do all and any recording free and easy? There is, and I found it.

ZD Soft Screen Recorder records screen activities to a replayable video file. It uses unique screen recording technology to gain the best recording performance. It outputs lossless screen video in extremely small file size. It is very easy to use. You can use ZD Soft Screen Recorder to create:

• Screen demos
• Training videos
• Teaching demos
• Animated tutorials and presentations
• Animated help files

The easiest way to record Internet streaming video is to use a screen recorder: a program that records what ever is on the screen and makes it playable as a video file. So if you have a video stream on the screen, it will be recorded. With ZD Soft Screen Recorder, you can choose specifically which part of the screen to record thus making your life easier. And, as you can see, you can do quite a lot of other interesting things as well. Enjoy.

If you’re interested in knowing more about this topic, click here to find out all you want to know and more.

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The Best of the Best

So far, we’ve had 16 editions of This Week’s Cool Sites on this blog. Since it is the start of yet another month and because I am concerned that some of the coolest sites featured here didn’t get enough exposure, I thought I’d do a nice little round up of the coolest sites featured here so far. So without much further ado, I bring to you Joe.

“Hi there. My name is Joe and I’m your average internet geek. I use the internet extensively and can confidently say that I am pretty much dependent on it. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. The following are some of the coolest sites I found through Let’s Explore!

Zuula – This is probably the king of search and comes in very handy at school or whenever I’m looking for something on the internet. Basically, every query made on zuula brings up results from all the major search engines, each on their own little tabs. Very nice.

Pandora Internet Radio – the future of radio. Enough said.

Meebo – absolutely nothing beat meebo when it comes to instant messaging. You can log on to all im services in one window, as well as a host of chatrooms. A very cool way to kill time and/or talk to friends.

Flash movies Extractor – a nice tool that allows you to download youtube videos as well as anyother flash objects, including games.

Ustream.tv - I’m still checking this one out but it looks good. It lets you set up your own live cam. I’m planning on livestreaming. Hopefully I will achieve Justin.tv fame. Joe.tv sounds nice, eh?

MyCyberTwin – this is meant to be a tool that let’s you respond to instant messaging even when you’re offline. I love it for a ‘different’ reason. I like getting online to find my friend spent hours talking to a machine, thinking it was me. I especially like it when the talk gets nasty.

TrendHunter Magazine – always intersting; always quirky.

BookMooch – swap books with friends and strangers worlwide. I’ve set up an account and I’m already waiting for a book that I have been looking for for years. The book comes to me free – all I gave in exchange was some books I had got for my birthday but never read, not once (sorry, mom).”

Which sites do you like?

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Once you really get to like the internet and use it consistently, the worst thing that can happen probably is your internet connection going down. We all hate it, but it does happen. Maybe you were expecting an important email, or need to make a blog post or, like me, need to sign in to the game you play. What to do, what to? Well, you can drive to town and get online there or you can check out some of the following sites on your mobile device.

Mobile Survival Kit

Opera Mini – this should be the first thing you get for your internet-enables mobile device. Opera mini allows you to surf the web on mobile devices with some degree of normalcy. As far as I can tell, you can visit any site using Opera Mini. “Superb web browser for almost any mobile phone that supports Java and WAP/GPRS internet connection! And I could never have imagined that there could be a web browser that is made with Java and still runs fast on the notably slow processors of this kind of phones – but this does. Not only that, but it also shows the pages amazingly well considering that the screen is really small for webpages – even a bit complicated and large pages can be viewed relatively painlessly. I would not expect it to be even possible ” by Robsku.

Unfortunately, Opera Mini does not wor on all mobile devices. However, there are still other options:
mDog – this is a mobile portal for your device’s web browser. With mDog, you can do anything you would do using an Internet browser. Surf your favorite websites, search for information – even read and update blogs in real-time… from anywhere. It provides access to the Internet in a cleaner, faster-loading, easy-to-browse mobile format. mDog formats websites so that you can view them on your device. You can read your favorite blogs, check your email, and even visit sites like Craigslist and Facebook. Morever, register as a member and you can customize mobile editions of the most popular sites.

Finally, we have movamail. Movamail is an application that you download to your mobile device. It gives you pretty fast and efficient access to your email. It works with Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, POP3, and IMAP.

Have you ever been to a site that you just can’t stop talking about? Meebo is one such site. It’s so cool that I am going to talk about it again. Yes, I have already covered meebo here. The idea behind meebo is simple: instant messaging(im). I think it’s the best im website on the internet. At meebo, you can log in to any im platform (msn, yahoo, google talk…) free of charge, free of any downloads, and from anywhere with a internet connection. What’s more, you can log in to all your yahoo, msn, google talk accounts at the same time! What does that mean? Take me, for example, I have aim, msn, and three yahoo accounts. I log in to all FIVE using one meebo username and password and voila! I’m chatting away with my contacts in no time.

But that’s not all. Admit it, there are times you log in to chat and find no one online. There is no one to talk to(all your contacts have lives, you know). What to do? Meebo recently introduced Meebo Rooms. Yup, now when I log into those FIVE accounts using ONE username, I also log into lots of chatrooms that I can join whenever I want to and chat away! It gets better, though. You can make your own meebo chatroom and invite people into it or even embed it on your website.

Meebo is awesome. It is useful, and fun to use. I have to say the design is pretty and very friendly. Now, does anyone wonder why meebo is always ranked top 10 as far as web 2.0 websites go?

It seems web-based im is catching on. Yahoo! recently introduced a web-based messenger service. If you so wish, you can get rid of your yahoo messenger software and do all your chatting on that website. It’s no competition to meebo but, having tried it out, it is quite nice. Though I dislike that your conversations are sent to your inbox. Is there a way to turn this off?

Do you know the easy way of finding and keeping online friends? You may want to check that out before you head over to meebo.

some jargon

aim – America Online Instant Messenger

msn – used to mean microsoft’s instant messenger

I decided to write yet again about meebo because my meebo experience keeps getting better and better. I want to share my enthusiasm.

“If you’re passionate about books, you know how emotionally difficult it is to throw a book away, even if you will never read it again. You want to find a good home for your books, have them find someone who appreciates them. Also, you may be interested in trying a lot of books out, and keep the ones that are great. It’s a great crime to have a book disappear, out of print, for none to read. BookMooch keeps books in circulation, and finds new readers for them.” (From Site.)

The idea behind bookmooch is real simple: give away your old books in exchange for new ones at absolutely no cost except postage. Once I read a book, I cant really re-read it so I have a ton of books that just lie about the house. Now that I have found bookmoch, I can exchange these books for others that I want to read but I can’t find or won’t buy. Students need textbooks, right? I’ll also see if I can get free textbooks. I don’t know about you, but I think bookmooch is awesome!

Judging by the reviews here, the bookmooch model seems to work perfectly: “I just signed up for this site this very morning, and already I’ve unloaded three unwanted books, and am expecting two of my wishlist items in the mail! Heaven! So this is a book swap site, and just perfect for all those books the Montclair Book Center inexplicably won’t give me store credit for.” By Stephanerd.

Don’t think book exchanges are for you? Well, there are sites that offer free books: The Assayer, Fullbooks, Project Gutenberg, and your online library: ReadPrint.

Or maybe you want to write your own book? Well, you can get help with that too. The Proppian Fairy Tale Generator does just that, it generates fairy tales for you. This is real cool, I liked my fairy tale – though it didn’t make much sense but, hey, it’s fun. Do you like your fairy tale?

Finally, what happens when a proud admissions office(MIT, no less) meets an even prouder prospective student? The result is hilarious. Check it out.

Want to find out what the latest trends are in electronic gadgets, pop culture, business, or anything else? See something you think will become a trend? Trendhunter – tracking and reporting trends – always interesting and bizarre.

I really like this site, as you probably know, it will definitely keep you up to date on everything, including simply weird ‘trends’ like watching cheese mature. One of the things that I like most about it is that it features a lot of content but all of it is screened and therefore your are likely to find more relevant content than you would at Digg, for example.

However, I like it best because it actively recruits trend-hunters. Yes, anyone can submit a ‘trend’ which may then be listed at trendhunter. Not only is this good for the ego, but it also sends some traffic your way. Earlier this week, I submitted this post (Predicting the Next Billionaires) to trendhunter and it was approved – and is now listed in “this week’s hottest trends”. While the incoming traffic I got from trendhunter isn’t a lot, it is welcome all the same. As trendhunter gets more popular, I expect it to be able to drive much more traffic to its trend-hunters’ sites or blogs.
I think it’s only a matter of time before trendhunter becomes widely popular as it truly is a cool site. Become a trendhunter today, don’t miss out on yet another gravy train.

The people over at trendhunter should, however, work on their servers as www.trendhunter.com is currently unavailable. UPDATE: problem fixed.

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In Lakeview (New Orleans), a neighborhood devastated by the breach of the 17th St. Canal AFTER Hurricane Katrina, our grassroots recovery group is using Google Spreadsheets to track the progress of neighborhood recovery of over 7400 homes. Read Full Story.

My own cousin in Mississippi runs a small fishing fly business. His dad left it, the family business, to him. The only problem is that my cousin is only 17 years old and doesn’t have any family in Mississippi. Friends are cool but for some things, you can only trust family. So my other cousins and I help him out. We help him prepare letters, quotations and all manner of correspondence. Having studied a bit of accounting, I specifically hep out with the accounts. I’m not anywhere close to Mississippi so helping the guy out has been quite challenging. Dealing with email attachments generally pisses me off. see, I have a slow computer which can get (and is) crashed very easily. Downloading Yahoo! attachments seems to do that, every time. Besides, none of us is a trained writer so the letters have to be authored, edited, and re-edited by 3 to 4 guys half way round the world from each other. Something as simple as helping out my cousin and friend used to be pure hell and somewhat costly. Until we discovered Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

It’s no Ms Office as far as extensive word processing features go, but I love it all the same. Take the tour, you will too. Besides, do you ever even use half of Ms Word’s features? Google Docs and Spreadsheet is the future: Do your work online, store it online and have it accessible from anywhere in the world. The coolest thing, however, is the ability to invite people to collaborate in your work. For my cousin, I write the first draft, then my other cousin in England looks at it and improves on it (if he can, hehe) then finally the guy in Mississippi applies the finishing touches. Neat, huh?

There’s nothing to download; you access your documents and spreadsheets from any computer with an Internet connection and a standard browser. And it’s free.

Some people say that Google Docs and Spreadsheet is too basic and not ‘feature rich’. I think such people are probably trying to compare it to Ms Office. No, it’s not Ms Office! Don’t compare. Just because it different doesn’t mean it’s not good. Personally, I like it that they didn’t set out to copy MS Word and Excel (I am definitely ABM ). Obviously, Google Docs does require a little getting used to but all in all, it’s wonderfully simple, beautifully crafted, and quite a lifesaver.

If you want an online office suite with a little more firepower, try thinkfree. It’s basically an Ms Office clone, but online.

By the way, this post was written using Google Docs. I also published it without signing into Blogger. I did have to insert the label later, though.

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Ever thought that you need to split yourself into two so that you can be in two places at one time? How about wishing you could stay online longer…like 24/7? In that case, it may be time for you to get a cybertwin.

Meet MyCybertwin, an early version of software that let’s people create and customize a virtual personality that can chat with others while they are offline. The software can be embedded on blogs, dating sites or social sites like myspace (or anywhere else, really, since it’s as easy as cutting and pasting code). The best thing about it: it can log in and impersonate you on msn (windows live instant messenger).

What can you do with this? Well, now you’re friends-that-don’t-sleep can talk to you as long as they want to. Seriously, though, webmasters and bloggers will want a cybertwin so that people can learn about them when they are away. Companies will want them so that they can learn more about customers without direct conversations. Or you can create a totally new you, different from everything you stand for in real life, like Mike Arrington(of TechCrunch) did here. (Read the full Story.)

Talk to my cybertwin here. (No there’s no evil version of Kayliz.)

Chat to my CyberTwin online now!

Did you hear about the recent earthquake in Mexico? Where did you get the news? CNN? Guess where I got the news! I got the news on a twitter link which led me to an Ustream live video where a blogger was interviewing a Mexico-based blogger concerning the earthquake. I have to admit, that’s pretty cool – as cool as it gets. Trying to figure out what I’m going on about? Here’s the low-down:

The earthquake hit Mexico. Local(Mexico – based) twitterers started twittering about it. Indeed, the earthquake was first reported on twitter. Before long, a Mexico City blogger was connected to the Ustream chat. Chris Pirillo requested his Skype ID for a video chat. More people tuned into the live A/V stream, more people re-twittered the link, more people became active in the Ustream chat room, and the whole thing went viral.

As Chris puts it, “Dozens of people were talking to one another in real-time, while watching me speaking with a man in another country about an event that was unfolding quicker than could be covered by traditional media outlets.” (Read the rest of his account by clicking here)

What say you? New media rules, doesn’t it?

That said, this week’s cool sites are:

Ustream.tv – This is like a youtube of web-cams. It is a free platform that let’s anyone broadcast anything live, and for free, to the whole internet. Basically, now you can make your own justin.tv (see below). Ustream is a service that let’s anyone create their own 24/7 live web-cam show.

Twitter – A site that answers the question, “What are you doing?” The answer may very well be something spectacular or mundane like, “Oh, I’m filing my nails.” Twitter let’s you tell the whole world what you are doing RIGHT NOW.

LiveOffice Free Conferencing – “LiveOffice FreeConferencing sets the standard for innovative and reliable conference calling. It’s quick and easy to set up and manage, and free to use anytime—there’s absolutely no catch! Setup a free conference calling account now and instantly receive dial-in information with your conference call number and access code. You can invite as many as 250 attendees to your free conference call. Invite as many as 250 attendees to your free conference call session!” (from site)

Justin.tv – Watch as Justin lifecasts his life 24/7. As he says, “I am broadcasting live video of my life 24/7 to the internet. I started Justin.tv because I thought it would awesome for people to see what it was like to be Justin. I convinced three of my friends (Emmett, Michael, and Kyle) to join me out in San Francisco. Now, we’re starting a company to make broadcasting live video on the web easy.”

Go ahead, sign up for your twitter, ustream, and liveconferencing accounts and let’s change the world. I don’t think the old-skool media will recover from this new trend, do you? Then again, isn’t all this a bit too much? Now everyone with a computer and an internet connection can track his/her whole life and put it on the web. I’m not sure whether that’s an entirely good thing.

Now, to bust Some jargon:

Twitterers – people who use twitter.
Twittering – the act of using twitter.
lifecasting – broadcasting your life. Remember jennicam?