Disqus

I'm intrigued by this service. It looks like you can easily add a comment section to any page; and you don't have to install or maintain any software, or maintain the comments repository - it is all hosted on disqus servers. All you have to do is add a JavaScript snippet to your pages.

On the other hand, I have to wonder how long they're going to be around - so far they have no business model. Seems to me they ought to be able to charge for this service, especially for larger web sites.

Vyser RoamAbout - browser widgets

Do you every find yourself looking at a web page containing an address that you want to map, but there's no map on the page and no link to have it mapped? So you open another page to display Google Maps, MSN Maps, or Mapquest, go back to the original page, cut the first line of the address, go to the map page, paste the text into the search field, go back to the original page, cut the second line of the address, go back to the map page, and paste the rest of the text into the search field, and then click on the button to display the address on the map - whew!

Or you are reading about a company, and you decide you want to look up the company's stock price, or get other information about the company. So you cut the company's name, then go to one of the myriad of business sites (e.g., Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, Google Finance, SmartMoney, etc.), paste the name of the company into the search box, and then click the button to display information about the company.

How would you like to display an address on a map just by selecting it and clicking a button? Or display information about a company just by selecting it and clicking a button? You can do these things and more with Vyser RoamAbout (though admittedly -for now - only if you are using Firefox).

RoamAbout puts an icon in the lower right corner of your browser window. You click on it to open or close a sliding icon bar displaying icons for the functions it provides. The picture below shows what your browser window looks like after you select an address and click on the "map" icon:

The picture below shows what your browser window looks like when you select a company name and click on the "stock quotes" icon:

iVideoSongs - music lessons by the masters

There is just too much great stuff on the 'net!  It would be easy to spend my life watching, reading, learning, and participating with these sites.

With that said, you'll love this if you're learning how to play a musical instrument.  Video lessons, some by the musicians who originally recorded the songs.

iterasi - snapshotting web pages

I'm curious to see if I find this useful.  The product's not ready yet, but I've signed up to get it when it is.  It's an IE and FireFix plugin that allows you to snapshot the web page you're on (they call it "notarizing") so that you can get back to it later.

Sounds like bookmarking, right?  But it can save the state of the page you're on, whereas bookmarking can't always do that.  An example they demo uses Google Maps.  As you browse different geographic areas in Google Maps, watch the url in your browser.  It doesn't change.  So if you were to bookmark the page,  the bookmark wouldn't take you back to the page as it was when you bookmarked it (yes, I know that Google provides you a way to do that - this is just an example).  But the iterasi plugin will save the page, just as it was when you were looking at it, on their server, allowing you to look at it again at a later time.

Their service will also allow you to schedule automatic, periodic snapshots of pages you choose.  So you could monitor how a page changes over time.

Again, I look forward to seeing if this ends up being useful to me.