Moodstream: Mood Driven Slideshows
July 20th, 2008
If you've ever found yourself rifling through photos and losing track of time, you'll enjoy the new streaming photo webservice, Moodstream. Getty Images, the stock library and image archive, has created a Flash driven and highly addictive stream of music and image, based on your input. Cater the image stream to the speed, duration, transition, and content. You choose if it is more humorous or serious, calm or lively, nostalgic or contemporary, warm or cool with unobtrusive slidebars. For the visually inclined or the curious, this is an amazing way to enjoy history and image. Read More »
Local web resources such as Yelp have become standards for local searches and directory assistance, but as interactive as such a webservice is, it falls short on integration. Cue the music for Praized, the Canadian network that has bridged the gap between publisher and local directory. 
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the web, it’s that people are happiest when expressing themselves.
A recent addition to the beta set, Slantly allows people to do just that, offering a streamlined opinion platform for bloggers and hosts. Through a simplified and prompt-light interface Slantly guides the opinion maker to their own page (yourname.slantly.com), and then to a series of tools to participate in the opinion and comment frenzy that is the internet. 
HP Labs has been working overtime to bring some innovation to publishing, and they seem to have found another area to mine in the DIY and self-publish field.
MagCloud is a tool for publishing magazines on demand, which enables small presses and publishing hopefuls an opportunity to realize what could have been an expensive dream; their own magazine. 
Maybe you love languages, like to meet people, want a refresher, or are ready to admit that our globalized world demands unique cultural skills, but whatever the reason you seek out language exchange, web 2.0 has the tongue of your choosing. Language lesson marketplace Linkua has an impressive range of languages, and, since there are a finite number of places to pick up Basque, Cebuano, and Zapotec, an excellent place to look for less common languages.
The benefit of paid lessons are that you can guide your education as you like, but if the bill seems too much or you want a more social experience, head over to iTalki, where the learning can be done in 97 languages, by group or individual. 
For collegiates, professionals returning to class, or for worried parents it's a question that comes up every term - how do I find a good teacher?
Rate My Professors gives you that tool with a user driven community of students and faculty that rate professors. Search by name, school, or keyword to find the right professor. 
Just in time for the release of the iPhone, comes Loopt, one of the latest applications to take advantage of location technology and apply it toward social networking. Balancing cell id, wi-fi/gps, and a web based interface, Loopt tells you the location of your friends, mashing it up with a map for easy discovery. This sounds like a lot, and it is. Billing itself as a "social compass," Loopt offers many of the features we've come to expect from a social network (texting, blogging, IM), yet its the map and positioning mashup that puts this social network in a class of its own. 
