The Next Big Web Thing - Loving Teh Web !!!1!1!11

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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

The First Next Big Web Thing Vote Is A Go!

Ok! The inaugural Next Big Web Thing monthly vote is now underway. As the site started in the latter end of January and February's so short, its a little bit more than a monthly vote. The poll ends on the 14th March - if you're in there feel free to tell people to come and vote for you - grab a vote for us badge from the Nominees page if you like.

The winner when the poll closes will proudly be able to display a custom badge on their site if they choose. Nominations for March are now welcome, so if you see something you think we'd like, or if you know your newest site is destined to be popular - let us know and we'll consider it for the March nominations.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Farm Notebook

In my dream world I'm typing this on a laptop powered by a wind turbine, munching on a nice stick of celery pulled this morning from the family vegetable plot. My dreams of being self sufficient are often hampered by my complete lack of knowledge when it comes to growing and producing, so for the time being they will remain dreams. However, if I did take the plunge (and one day I will) then I would have added confidence that I could aid my management of the lot with a handy web tool.

Farm Notebook is plot management Web 2.0 style, suitable for both vegetable growers and the common-a-garden gardener. Behind the simple and elegant layout is a powerful tool for organinsing your crops, managing seed details and suppliers, planting, harvest and growing details as well as the ability to share information supplied by other users. It allows you to create a website to share (or show off) your current crops and harvest details, pictures of your garden and all sorts of green fingered goodness. And what's more its powered by fellow nominee Ruby On Rails. There's a free 30 day trial available after which there's a more than reasonable annual fee of $25. If it helps you get a bumper crop of organic salad, it should soon pay for itself.

Google Twatted

Fans of Google Whacking will remember the many hours spent searching for the magic result. Many of us have moved on and forgotten the thrill of the chase, the hours of typing silly words into the google search and cursing people's use of obscure words.

Google Twatted gets a nomination for helping the last few remaining Google Whackers by supplying them with fresh meat for the quest. Find two 'proper' words that yield 0 matches - it'll be added to the site thus giving Google one result and Google Whackers a score. Simple in concept, but incredibly trickey and fun. I'm sending one future Google Whack to them next. Thanks Google Twatted for keeping me up this late hour and reminding me of days when Google's index was slightly less all encompasing, and finally for giving me the thrill of the chase again!

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Ninja And Zombie

We love Ninjas and we love Zombies. What could make for a more entertaining evening's viewing than sitting down with a film featuring either, or better still, both together! Whilst the subject matter is not particularly fresh, the genre is still ripe for much more entertainment and exploration, having been heartily ignored by mainstream cinema and media - much to their unending shame.

Nicely slicing the ninja sword into the putrescent flesh of a major gap in the market, Ninja And Zombie brings you the serialised adventures of flatmates Ninja and Zombie. Follow them as they stumble through the mundanity of modern life and the joys of a house share. OK, the audience for this one may be limited, but if its a niche genre related moment of heaven your looking for, then Zombie and Ninja delivers in small but tasty chunks.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Qwika

One of the great collaborative and open source tools over the past few years has been the Wiki - community driven and editable databases of information from every imaginable field of human endeavour and learning. The best known implementation of the Wiki form is the Wikipedia - which has spawned multiple language versions and many imitators.

Hoping to improve on Wikipedia's problematic search tool, a brand new search engine, called Qwika steps up to the challenge. As well as Wikipedia, it searches the multiple language versions and other large Wikis (one at present with more planned to be added in the future). As a great new tool for easily finding information at one of the biggest and freest encyclopedias there is, we applaud you Qwika and nominate you to be a next big web thing.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Stuff And Me

You may have spotted I'm a fan of off-the-wall advertising ideas. There seems to be some new idea or spin coming through all the time. Some are truly unique, others a simple variation on a unique idea and others just make you smile, turning an old tradition into a money spinner. There's also the other type which slavishly imitate a once original idea and lose any of the charm that made the original interesting (yes PixelAdvertising - I'm looking at you!) but we won't go there now.

Stuff And Me falls into the old tradition turned into a money spinner category, with the added benefit that it makes me smile. We've all seen sites in the past where you can ask the respondent to pose or do things to your request (take that how you want!) Aric McKeown is following that tradition and offering to take a photograph of himself advertising the product of your choice. Nice eye catching graphics, simple web friendly layout and mirth inducing photographs of studied irony make Stuff And Me a potential next big web thing.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Video Sift

One of the big Web 2.0 hits of recent months has been the tech article by user apppreciation site known as Digg.com. Their model is a good one, and one that is increasingly being developed, copied and expanded.

Our next nomination is Video Sift - it takes the basic Digg model of user appreciation referencing, and applies it to the many videos being posted to Google Video and You Tube. It gives users the chance to vote on the best of the latest crop of viral videos and inbox cloggers, allowing the most popular and regarded to make their way to the top of the index. A simple and effective reworking of an already good model, it won't be long before Video Sift is responsible for an increased number of video link emails in your inbox. Believe it or not, that's not a bad thing IMO...

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

One Red Paperclip

This stands out as another one of them simple ideas that is both effective at generating money, but will only work the once and for the originator - but will no doubt be immiated much with little success. Follow Kyle MacDonald's adventures as he attempts to trade up, starting with the one red paperclip of the title to a house.

Canny marketers are already seeing the potential exposure the site could bring and offering trades for getting copyspace and URLs in the blog entries. Already, he's gotten himself up to a truck. I wonder how long it is before Golden Palace jump in on the act and offer to trade the truck for advertising space on one of its many walking adboards. Which ever way you look at it, the idea is simple, the possibilities (for Kyle at least) are huge, and like all good one offs, set to grow and make the owner a nice niche in net history.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Zillow

The openess of Google maps is leading to some interesting ideas of adding data to the maps displayed. Zillow.com is one such innovative use of the technology. The site maps the prices of houses for sale to Google maps, so you can browse the map and see an ariel view of the prices of available houses.

Currently in beta and currently only for the US, this service will no doubt be a popular destination for house buyers. They already seem to be anticipating a lot of traffic, and have approximately 60,000,000 house in the Database available for sale (according to their search status bar). I can see this being picked up by various national house vendors and applied to their database, and it shouldn't be too long before we see a similar search for the UK.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Guimp Arcade

Guimp is the 2nd smallest website in the world - measuring in at a miniscule 18 x 18 pixels. It has a nav, and now it has a miniture arcade full of pint-sized classics like Pac Man and Pong - complete with sound effects and game play.

I've nominated this as it will no doubt be a favourite of furtive office workers the world over. Pac Man in a window so small colleagues would need a telescope to see it. I can see this one landing in office inboxes the world over before to long. Now, if they could just figure out an online multiplayer version of Pong, they'd be onto a goldmine.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Web Design From Scratch

The best of modern web designs seem to be effortlessly simple and effective - hi-tech and graceful, simple and easy to navigate. Web Design From Scratch takes a look at some of the best of modern designs and analyses what makes them tick and common themes.

I've nominated it as I believe it will become popular with webmasters who want to expand their design capabilities and get away from some old habits. I've bookmarked it myself and will be plundering some of the ideas there in future designs. I'm sure they can expect a lot of interested traffic in the coming months.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Six Degrees Of Wikipedia

The principle of degrees of separation is an old one. Basically, according to Wikipedia, Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. Our next nomination has taken that principle and applied it to articles on Wikipedia itself.

Six Degrees Of Wikipedia allows you to see how many degrees of separation there are between one Wikipedia article and another, via individual pages. I'll be honest here, I'm not expecting this to revolutionize the web or anything major. However, I'm certain this will be a meme styled success in the coming months. Before too long you'll be seeing lists derived from the search on sites and blogs everywhere - proudly displaying the number of steps from the Goatse Man to Cottage Cheese.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Subtitles Online

Accessibility has become an important issue for websites especially in the UK. Businesses are now trying to fullfil some of the needs expressed in the Disability Discrimination Act. Some clever people involved with Click Online (shown BBC News 24 and BBC World) piloted a subtitling feature. This enabled deaf and hearing-impaired viewers to benefit from the facility to watch the programme on the website. As well as helping the BBC's sensory-impaired audience it is hoped it will be of use to people learning English as a second language.

You can have a look at the programmes at the link provided. While I couldn't get the service to work in Firefox (could be my system) it worked well in IE and I was most impressed by the subtitling feature. Subtitling for video and web streams could be The Next Big Thing.

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