Social network and groups

Although the once-exclusive social networking site Facebook has since opened up to the general public, its user base still largely consists of high school and college students who are prone to procrastination. In fact, Facebook's facilitation of voyeuristic procrastination is one reason that it probably caught on so virally in the first place. And now, Facebook users can integrate procrastination right into their Firefox 2.0 browsers, with the just-announced Facebook Toolbar. It really gives the service an always-there presence on your Web surfing experience. Paranoiacs might find it a little Big Brother-ish, kind of like they did when … Read more

Want to get on the front page of Digg? Everybody does. Digg drives massive amounts of traffic to tech stories, video clips, and new companies. Here's the best recipe yet for getting coverage: Write about Digg itself. To wit: Elinor Mills' story on News.com about gaming Digg through the use of other social sites, paid placement, and shills. No sooner did it post than it rocketed to the front page of Digg itself. The story is here: The big Digg rig.

On Monday, Oodle will officially launch its personals service. Oodle is a classifieds aggregator: it parses and collates results from thousands of sites in response to search queries. And now it's adding personal ads.

A little background: If you're looking for a used sofa or car, Oodle will scan classifieds in your area and link you directly to listings. It's a great way to make sure you're not missing out on a good deal. (It would be much better if Oodle scanned Craigslist, though. Unfortunately, Craigslist forbids it.)

With personals, the game is somewhat different. Many … Read more

The deal with Zoodango is it will attempt to combine the over-sharing personal elements of MySpace or Facebook ("lifestyle information"), the impressive-credential listing and resume jargon ("professional information") of LinkedIn, and the time-honored coffee-shop get-together. Yes, Zoodango has a fairly novel approach to … Read more

Are you one of those people who needs a new digital camera but who's a little insecure about where to plonk down a few hundred bucks? Perhaps you should let the wisdom of crowds chart your course.

Flickr, Yahoo's popular photo-sharing site, provides a Camera Finder site that details what cameras are most popular among its users and which produce the most photos on the site. The company bases its figures on camera data that's embedded in about two-thirds of photos.

The answer, if you're curious: The Canon Rebel XT, a digital SLR, wins hands down, … Read more

Planypus is a new service that lets you set up a group event or outing without knowing all the details. For example, you can create a "Drinks tonight" plan and send it to a bunch of friends with several different places and times to meet. Your friends pick the options that work for them. You, as the organizer, select the one combination that's best for the group (or for you, depending), and when you press Finalize, everybody gets an update with the plans, which they can import into their calendars.

It's the social counterpart to the … Read more

It's odd that Google gives away so many services for free--even 3D modeling and mapping software--but Google Answers charges $2.50 and more to pose questions to its experts. After four years of operation, Google Answers is cutting off new questions this week, although it will allow answers to stream in until the end of this year.

Since people have grown to expect free content on the Web, Google's fee felt like a fortune. That's partly why I didn't review Google Answers when looking at other similar but free services, such as Yahoo Answers, Answerbag, and … Read more

Anybody who's done it knows that looking for a job is a full-time job in itself. So how can you better manage all the information the process generates? One start-up, JibberJobber, is building a relationship management service for job seekers.

On the site, you can manage records for companies, contacts, and job openings. There are separate categories for direct job contacts and recruiters, and the system will do things for you that you're likely to overlook: It will remind you of when you need to follow up with people, for example. There's also a lot of related … Read more

WhoToTalkTo is a job finding site that walks a line between a typical job board, such as Monster.com, and a personal referral engine, such as LinkedIn. On this service, you don't post jobs, you post your connections to people who have jobs or who are inside companies and know the lay of the land there. For example, say you wanted to work in CNET's editorial department. I can tell you who to butter up--and that's all I would say on WhoToTalkTo. When somebody contacts me for that information and I deliver it, I get a "… Read more