SimilarSites.com (not to be confused with SimilarSites.net, which I find to be useless) lets you search for a domain name and find sites with similar keywords/phrases in their makeup so you can easily find websites that are similar to the one you’re own (or the one you’re using as ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/07/02/similarsites-com-find-well-similar-sites/ Alright, you may not be making a physical prototype of the next Tesla Roadster or NASA space station, but your project is just as important to you as those were to their creators. Right? Prototyping apps is not easy, though, and can often involve countless hours of labor just to make something visual for a 15 minute presentation.

JustProto.com hopes to step in to make the process much easier. This is a boon for those of us who might understand what “return function ($y) use ($x)” means, but have ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/30/justproto-making-prototypes-just-got-easier/ While Wolfram Alpha might be the revolution in search for scientific research, Socrata.com might be the revolution in search for publicly-owned data.

The site combines data sets from over 200 public sources around the nation, aggregating them into one site and usable format. While most sites that deal in public data sources are unwieldy, sometimes broken, and often impossible to navigate, Socrata is simple.

It works similar to a standard search engine using cloud computing in a way similar to many apps made for Twitter or Facebook data collection. This ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/27/socrata-%e2%80%93-social-data-network-for-government-data/ RingRevenue.com is a new service that allows advertisers, affiliate networks, and the like track purchases that are made by phone. So if your affiliate network tracks products for online sales, but a customer makes a phone call instead, the affiliate still receives credit for the sale.

They call it a “pay-per-call” platform and it makes it easy for publishers to track campaigns that are carried over over the phone. Both online and offline advertisers will definitely like this addition.

RingRevenue includes a lot of targeting and tracking as well, including demographics, ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/25/ringrevenue-affiliate-tracking-for-the-telephone-gets-3-5m-injection/ The much-buzzed Sirius XM iPhone app received a critical bitch slap from geek-chic basement bloggers and high-tech webzines when it was made available to the public last week.

The complaints included the fact that much of the premium branded content, like Howard Stern and NFL Play-by-Play, isn’t available for streaming through the app. Additionally, there are already a bunch of music apps that let you listen to a D.I.Y playlist sans fees. (While the app itself is free, Sirius XM charges $12.95 a month for its basic services, plus another $3 a ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/24/defending-the-sirius-xm-iphone-app/ Tweeting on the go is the new thing. Nothing shows you’re hip and with it like an iPhone imbued with the ability to send tweets about anything and everything you’re doing. Of course, some people actually need to do this, so there are legitimate reasons for a Twitter-enabled mobile device too.

Whatever your reasons for doing it, it’s not likely you’re going to be happy just using the Twitter Mobile website from your iPhone or Blackberry. Unless you only follow four or five people, you probably won’t want to use ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/22/best-mobile-twitter-app/ Remember the print-your-own biz card kits at Office Max that used MS Word templates to make business cards you could print on your printer? Then came VistaPrint with their online business card designer software. Now there’s Business Card Star, which mixes the two ideas together.

To nutshell it, Business Card Star is a Web-based biz card designer similar to VistaPrint, but instead of being stuck with their system and having to use them as your exclusive printer for your card designs, you can download the finished product as a PDF ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/20/businesscardstar-design-business-cards-for-free-online/ When Facebook announced that they were going to implement user names (vanity names) on the site, some buzz started amongst users. When Facebook started promoting the change by giving it a virtual “countdown” to the implementation, the buzz became a real roar.

Twitter was aflame with “OMG! Have you chosen your Facebook name yet?” and “Facebook announces vanity names. Y U need one for your social marketing.”

These were endlessly retweeted and nearly every Facebook profile started sporting status messages like “My new name’s gonna be CAPTAINX” ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/19/facebook-usernames-are-used-for-what/ With that 140 character limit, Twitter definitely became fertile ground for the URL shortening marketplace. When Twitter first released, it included TinyURL as its built-in short URL service, but recently changed it’s preference to bit.ly. That was a move that some saw as the precursor to a Twitter buyout of the little URL shrinking company. Of course, that hasn’t happened. Yet.

Until Twitter came along, most people had heard of TinyURL and that was about it. Used for “hiding” web addresses in posts, shrinking addresses so they’d fit on one line of a page, ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/18/the-best-url-shorteners-for-twitter/ The ever-popular VOIP and chat client, Skype, has released a new beta version for Windows that adds screen sharing. This was added to the last Mac beta in January, but the Windows version also includes integration with Gmail, Windows Live, AOL, Hotmail, LinkedIn and Yahoo for contact imports.

The new update allows both PC and Mac users to share screens (not just video) to make it something like GoToMeeting, though not as multi-user functional. With it, though, one-on-one tutorials and meetings can be done relatively easily.

Although some popular third-party plugins ...]]> http://www.rev2.org/2009/06/17/skypes-new-screen-sharing-addition/