ThingsAmongMany

Sitting somewhere between tongue-in-cheek and overtly serious is newcomer to the social web, Be Fucking Awesome. Enter every awesome thing that you do and everyone else in the system can vote on it, creating your “Awesome Quotient”. You have 150 characters to enter each deed (no idea why they opted to make it 150 instead of 140 for easy Twitter integration, but I digress). You can then sort your own (and everyone else’s) deeds by “most recent” or “most awesome” and sort by everyone, or just your friends.

Useful? Eh, maybe not. Fucking awesome? Yeah, gettin’ pretty close.

We all know and love Craigslist by now (especially here in NYC where it trumps even eBay for finding…anything). And, of course, one of the more humorous aspects of the old Cl is the Missed Connections section. Unfortunately, if you want anything further than a humorous respite from your day, you’re probably relatively SOL on Missed Connections. It’s a jumble of difficult to navigate listings that are poorly described and lack much chance of making any real connection.

That’s what newcomer Blinka.me aims to fix. While they try to bill it as a bit more, Binka.me seems to be - at its heart - a more robust version of Craigslist’s Missed Connections:

blinka.me helps you meet people you’d like to meet again. By sharing your moments on blinka.me you get a second chance to connect.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If Missed Connections had a better shot at working, it’d actually be a pretty cool savior for all of those moments when we can’t stomach up the gumption to speak to the person we’ve been eyeing for the last fifteen minutes of our commute.

The site seems to be in its infancy and is still collecting “moments” from around the world - for example, I was surprised to find that there’s nothing in NYC. But as it grows, it certainly has the potential to start connecting people in ways that only dumb luck might have managed before. It would be nice to see them integrate data from Craigslist as well since (despite its humorous nature) it’s still the de facto dumping ground for these moments. Between it’s own robust system and everything being sucked in from Craiglist, they might well have a winner on their hands.

Let’s face it. Video sites are a royal pain to sift through. When was the last time you went to the YouTube homepage and actually found a worthwhile video by simply searching? And then, of course, if you factor in all of the other places you can find video - other sharing sites or social bookmarking sites - it’s pretty clear that the world of online video can become messy pretty fast. But now there’s a new site that aims to sort it all out for you.

Mag.ma collects video content from all of the major sources and allows you to rate it, share it, etc. in a dashboard that makes it easy to see what’s on top. And it doesn’t just pull from the biggies, but from the New York Times and TED as well (to name a couple). Throw in a bookmarklet for good measure and you’ve got a solid video collection point that’s clean and easy to use. Have a look here.

So, I guess I’m on a lending kick or somthin’. My last post highlighted ICanLendYouThat.com, a site that allows you to connect with your Twitter friends to share your books, CD’s, and DVD’s. Well, not long after that post, I came across LendAround, a perfect alternative for those of you who haven’t migrated over to Twitter yet (and what the heck’re ya waiting for??).

Though limited to specifically DVD sharing - and really, who has CD’s anymore anyway - LendAround offers a pretty slick web interface for listing out the DVD’s in your library. Plus, it has an integrated FaceBook app to make your lending and borrowing chores even easier - once you manage to get it set up that is. As with everything FaceBook, getting the tab up and running on your profile requires a little bit of hunting. Or you can just stick to their web interface. However, my big complaint there is that there doesn’t appear to be any means of connecting with friends who might already be using LendAround without just sending an invite.

Regardless, this would be a great thing to set up in your office, for example, to create a personal Netflix service. After all, how often do you really need to re-watch The Matrix? If you want it that badly, you can borrow my copy.

I’m always interested in new services that use digital means to bring people closer in the offline world. I’m not talking about random hookups here, but the idea that our digital presence - something that can travel with us anywhere and be updated at any time - can effect interpersonal relationships is pretty interesting. And, of course, it’s manifested in a multitude of ways, especially of late.

The newest version that I’ve stumbled into is ICanLendYouThat.com. Think of this one as a digital manifestation of your personal lending library - books, CD’s (if you still have them), DVD’s, etc. You sign up for an account, enter a list of what you have to lend, and “follow” your friends to see what’s in their library. The site will connect you based on your needs to the people who have what you’re looking for. Very cool, very simple idea!

I do have a couple of thoughts that might make the site easier to use:

1. Integrate with existing networks (Twitter? Facebook?). I don’t want to have to encourage all my friends to sign up for another social network unless it’s uber-simple.
2. Partner with someone who will make it easier to update what I have to lend. These guys would be an awesome choice!
3. Why limit the offering to books, CD’s, and DVD’s? Other than books, movies and music are almost easier to get online than in person. How about hand tools? Or whatever other random stuff I might have that’s worth borrowing?

A few tweaks could make this a really useful resource!

According to the crew at Contxts, business cards are “SO 2007″. Why bother with paper when we can do it all digital these days? Though apparently they’ve been around for about a year, Contxts has been taking off over the last couple of weeks. And with good reason (especially with SXSWi only a day away).

Jump on the site and sign up for an account using either a username or your mobile number. From there, anyone can txt your username or number to 50500 and they’ll receive an SMS in return with your predefined personal information (whatever you’d like to share up to 140 characters). Pretty simple, right?

Want to give it a shot? I’m “AmongMany”… (no prank calls please!).

After compiling The Ultimate List of Twitter Tools, it struck me that the list is a little overwhelming. So here are my choices - generally speaking, one from each category - of the Twitter tools that are the best of the bunch.

If you’re into it, please feel free to tweet/retweet the list and gimme a follow/shout @AmongMany. I’ve also cross-posted on BrandsAmongMany.

Ad Networks

I have personally used any of the ad networks, but from going through each one, I was most drawn to Be A Magpie:

Be A Magpie - Our customers sign up and create campaigns which consist of magpie-tweets (i.e. ads). Twitterers allow us to post magpie tweets among their tweets and for them to get paid for it.

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Not too long ago, I started bookmarking Twitter-related stuffs as I came across them. Then the “big Twitter wave” hit, and I’ve been adding 3-4 listings per day over the last couple of weeks. I figured it was about time to share everything I’ve come up with so far. I’ll continue adding to it as I find more. If you know of something I’ve missed, PLEASE call it out in comments so I can get it added to the list!

If you’re into it, please feel free to tweet/retweet the list and gimme a follow/shout @AmongMany. I’ve also cross-posted on BrandsAmongMany. And, since this list is about 285 items, it’s a little tough to crawl through. So I’ve culled it down to the 15 apps (by category) that I think you should look at in a separate post.

Looking for the list? It’s after the jump…

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I recently saw a tweet from someone I follow (sorry, I can’t remember who it was) about an interesting little device that I wasn’t familiar with. The tweet mentioned how excited that person was to use their new Poken (as do many other tweets). Being digitally web-curious person that I am, the first thing I did was hunt down the Poken to see what it is. I should not that I probably hadn’t heard of the Poken because it appears to be a primarily European phenomenon right now.

Turns out, it’s a cross between a Tamagachi and a business card. A Poken is a little USB-based character that you carry around in your pocket. It stores your personal social media information for whichever networks you choose to enter (I can’t seem to find a comprehensive list of supported networks). When you meet someone new, you “high-four” (like high-five, but a Poken only has four fingers, so…) your Poken with theirs and the devices automatically exchange whatever information you’ve chosen to share. When you get home, you plug your Poken into the USB slot on your computer and it uploads all of your new contacts to their respective social networks.

Despite the admitedly corny act of sharing information – how many adults really want to be seen “high-fouring” little keychain toys in public – the Poken does provide an interesting look at the collision between the phsyical act of meeting new people and our newly-found tendency to immediately “connect” with those people in the digital space. It will be interesting to see how this trend plays out over the next couple of years, and whether it takes off in a more adult format.

Ok, its official, Twitter is taking over the world. Not only can you tweet your eats (check out @having), but now you can tweet…the results as well. Something that I’d never have thought about adding to Twitter, though I can’t really say I’m surprised that someone else did: Pooptag!

Pooptag allows you to either covertly, or openly, Tweet your Poop habits to the world. Part game, part…social experiment, all fun? Here’s what they have to say about it:

How to win

• I wouldn’t necessarily call it winning
• The idea is to “tag” someone pooping at the same time you are
• You can’t really lose, since PoopTag strives to be both encouraging and enlightening

Why?

• Think of it as a sort of “digital laxative”
• You’ll enjoy all the benefits of a social defecation network, e.g. Poop Cycle Compatibility Matching
• It gives you something to do — plus some people to be with — while you poop

[Flickr credit to Lawrence Whittemore]