Rev2.org

Sorry about the lack of WWW posts over the last couple of weeks, hopefully this one will make your Saturday a little bit better. This week’s winner is the oh so informative Las Vegas Strip History Website. For anyone who wonders about this ambiguous title, this is a safe for work website (although a Google search for the title might lead you elsewhere).

The first thing that caught my eye about this site was the horribly annoying warning on the top of the page. Evidently, we all need Internet Explorer to view this site. Being the curious type, I opened the site in Internet Explorer, and I can’t see anything different than I see in Firefox. Here are some quotes from the warning at the top of the site that interest me.

“My site has been stolen five times - no, not parts - the whole thing - downloaded on their computers/servers and uploaded to their sites then calling it their own.” - How could someone live with themselves after downloading the Las Vegas Strip History site to their computer, the whole thing, and then uploading it to their site and calling it their own? I wonder if they took this warning message too.

“…this site was once wide open and the pictures large and beautiful, but unfortunately, due to the scum of the Earth also having access to the internet, I had to take these measures.” Evidently the scum of the earth likes to visit Las Vegas Strip History sites to steal big beautiful photos to sell on Ebay.

” I’ve filtered my e-mail program to automatically delete e-mails containing certain “complain” words. The only ones who have a right to complain are the individuals who have made a monetary or informational donation to this site and those e-mail addresses have been accepted by the filters.” I feel like I am complaining, but I haven’t been added to any e-mail list.

“This seems to pertain to men more than women. 99% of the complaints I received were from men, totally ignoring my previous warnings before I put the filters on like I want to hear what they have to say because they are a “Y” chromosome. Please gentlemen, trust me when I say I really truly don’t want your opinion, warnings, sarcasm, etc. Unless you have paid over $25,000 to put up a site just to have it stolen, your comments are next to nothing on my caring scale.”

Although I am fairly sure she doesn’t care what I have to say, I created a graph just to be sure:

Uloop is a meeting place for college students started in January of 2007 at the University of California Santa Barbara. Uloop “empowers students to buy, sell, promote and trade with their classmates.” With Uloop, students can meet online to exchange textbooks, to find roommates, find cool events, new jobs, or even rides.

Signing up for Uloop is really quick and does require a university email address. The main page separates each of the main categories (e.g. events, for sale, housing) into sub-sections. Lost something? There is a lost and found section. Need tutoring or computer help? That is covered.

Think of Uloop as as Craigslist with a Facebook twist. I really like Uloop, and I do recommend it. It seems to have taken off at some schools, but many others still have 0 users. If you are interested in working for Uloop, they are hiring campus representatives.

Employers and landlords can create Uloop accounts. The jobs and rentals they list are accessible to the students at the local university. Uloop has done a great job bringing together a lot of very useful functionality that I think is lacking in many of the other popular student applications like Facebook.

These days you can’t flip through T.V. channels without seeing professional poker tournaments.  For those of you who prefer actually playing poker to watching other people play it, RubyChip helps you organize your poker events and leagues using a simple web interface.

With RubyChip, poker addicts can organize contacts, leagues, events, points and locations. Registration is quick and easy. Only the creator or manager of the league needs to register, all players are sent a key via email they can use to view event and league information.

Events are created as either “single events” or a series of games known as a “league.” After a new event is created, players are invited and can comment on a publicly accessible board. Registered players can receive notifications prior to events, and RubyChip tracks player responses to these notifications. For league play, graphs are available to back up player bragging. The developers of RubyChip are also integrating a new money manager which could make handling player transactions more transparent and simple. If you play a lot of poker, RubyChip could help you bring a very old game into the web 2.0 world.

Planning international travel is a headache. Whether you are flying round-trip or jumping from city to city on a whirlwind tour, Vayama will be your best international travel companion.

Vayama is a unique travel web site that gives Americans a new way to plan international air travel. With Vayama, you input your travel destinations in the way you are used to on most other travel sites choosing either a direct flight, a round trip, or a multi-city trip. As you select destinations and dates, Vayama displays a very slick interactive map with your travel routes superimposed. In addition to this “traditional” search method, Vayama has added a deals section which lets you find great deals on flights when you are open to new destinations and travel times. This is a great feature for the travel lover looking to save some money while still finding new and exciting travel destinations. The list of deal destinations is short right now, but I expect Vayama to expand this list.

Vayama also has a great “getting around” section which provides relevant information for each of the destination cities in its database. Very detailed bus and taxi information is included with prices at pick up locations. Detailed city information and even relevant travel blog entries are available here on Vayama as well. After planning your trip, Vayama is available via 24/7 phone support. If you are looking to plan domestic travel I recommend giving Kayak a try.

JotForm is a really great WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) form builder for the masses. Using JotForm’s drag and drop user interface, building forms and integrating them into your site is a simple process.

Without any kind of HTML or design experience, you can use JotForm to create many different kinds of forms. If you need a contact form for your personal site, a document uploader, a reservation form, bug tracker, or an event calendar, JotForm is your best friend. The creation of forms is really easy using the intuitive wizard interface. Jotform has made some serious changes since JotForm 1.0 and has added features like payment integration, CSS styles, spam protection, SSL encryption, and PDF forms.

A basic account is free, and the premium account costs $9 per month, allowing you to make unlimited form submissions, payment receipts and a larger file upload limit. Before you search through the thousands of form scripts online, give JotForm a try, it could save you a lot of time.

For some of our readers, this time of year means a new job search. One of the most tedious aspects of finding a job is creating and distributing the perfect resume. If you are struggling and working through the resume creation process, fret no more, Resolio can make your life a little bit easier.

Resolio’s resume creation process is full of AJAX goodness. The resume is divided into categories just like it would be on paper, and the resume builder walks you through the step-by-step process of creating all of the necessary sections. After filling out all of the required personal information, hobbies, job information, etc., you can choose from a wide variety of very well designed templates. No longer do employers have to suffer looking through a stack of bland white and black templates, Resolio includes many colorful and bold resume templates.

After you have put the finishing touches on your resume work of art, you have a few choices for publishing. First, you can publish to Resolio’s servers (e.g. http://resolio.com/list/rev2.html). Second, you can embed your resume into your own page using javascript. Third, you can copy the html or XML and paste it into your own page. This is a well designed, feature rich resume builder. I would definitely recommend it.

If Chris Hansen has taught us anything, it is that there are some crazy people online. With the great array of social networking tools available to ever younger groups of children, some parents are looking for ways to monitor their childrens’ online conversations. The developers of Oh, don’t forget are also working on a new project called IMSafer, a service which monitors kids online activity and notifies parents of troublesome conversations.

ImSafer is a small download and a quick install. If IM content is flagged by IMSafer, an email notification is sent to the parent within 90 seconds that includes the screen name of the person speaking with your child, the community rating of that person and the category of the flagged content. IMSafer even understands slang and leet speak.

As more parents get involved with IMSafer, the quality of the feedback will increase, and the service will become even more useful.

Time.com has put together a list of their top 50 websites for 2007. One that caught my eye because of its simplicity and usefulness is Oh don’t dorget. Oh, don’t forget is a very simple tool used to send text message reminders.

After entering your cell number, the date and time you want the message to be sent, and the message, Oh, don’t forget sends out the text message to your phone free of charge. This is a really handy tool for keeping track of those fleeting thoughts and random appointments that are thrown at you each day.

As explained in the F.A.Q. of the site, the service works without knowing the cell phone provider because “ohdontforget is actually one half web application, and one half magic voodoo potion. Even I’m not sure how the magic voodoo potion works :)” Makes sense to me.

Geobeats is hands down one of my all-time favorite sites. I first visited Geobeats quite a while back, loved it, and accidentally lost the address. If you enjoy traveling, you probably like to learn about the places you plan to visit prior to taking your trip. Although text-based travel sites help, Geobeats has taken that extra step by adding relevant and entertaining travel video content.

The developers of GeoBeats probably explain their technique best: “On the production side, we incorporate innovative production methods to produce short form professional travel content.” That is what makes this site stand out above other travel video sites. The videos are all very well and professionally done.

GeoBeats features videos ranging from quick overviews of cities to video detailing certain dishes at famous restaurants. The facts in the videos are thoroughly researched and well organized. The hosts of the videos travel to multiple cities and detail some of their favorite aspects of the locations. As of now, GeoBeats hosts have visited popular destinations in 70% of the world’s most visited countries. This great selection of very well done videos is a must see for any traveler.

To leave you with an idea of the type of content hosted at GeoBeats, here is a short list of some of the videos on GeoBeats from a few of my favorite cities:

• Barcelona - Sagrada Familia
• Italy - Overview
• London - Piccadilly Circuis

Intervals is a new hosted project and time management service for businesses by Santa Barbara-based web design firm Pelago.

After creating an account with Intervals, you are given your own sub-domain for one of two domains (I picked rev2.projectaccount.com). Intervals is nothing like the simple “to-do list” site you may be used to. The site includes many advanced features and settings you may not get with other services. Similar to other project management services, you can create tasks and assign them to other members of the project team. Time spent on each task can be calculated out into billable and non-billable hours.

Intervals also features a handy timesheet feature allowing for calculation of real time spent for all members of the project team for all tasks involved in the project. Intervals also tracks clients, and can handle multiple projects at once. The free membership only includes one project, all other levels are not free. Many different types of graphs are available to help your team manage its time more efficiently.

At first, Intervals may seem a bit daunting, but the interface is actually very intuitive and includes many features you would expect from a great time management service. If you are managing a large project with multiple members, multiple clients, or have to juggle time sheets and billable hours, I recommend Intervals. They’re one of the few services to give the popular 37signals’ Basecamp a run for its money.