Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

The world of social media is a lot of fun, and can be incredibly useful – it’s a great place to find new things, have conversations, and be a part of worlds you’d never get a chance to know otherwise.

Sometimes, though, being social isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes I don’t want people wading through and commenting on my bookmarks, or looking at pictures I only want my friends to see. I don’t want all my thoughts exposed to the world and discussed by the public at large. I just want to take advantage of all the things that the Web offers – universal access, synchronization, control over sharing (and not “control” like Facebook gives you). I want to be opted out, not opted in.

If you ever have that feeling, or sometimes don’t feel particularly social, here are four excellent, useful and productive apps that aren’t social, and don’t make you be.

Pinboard

Pinboard calls itself “bookmarking for introverts,” and that’s exactly what it is. It’s a super-minimal bookmarking service that makes adding bookmarks easy, finding and reading them even easier, and makes keeping them to yourself really, really easy. It’s got a great mobile app, support in a lot of RSS and news readers, and most other features you’d expect from something like Delicious or Diigo.

Most social applications give you a way to be private, but they make it hard – that’s because they are working to improve the experience of the crowd as much as the individual. Pinboard, like all of the applications in this post, flips that – it wants to make your experience the best it can, and then make it possible to share things if you so desire.

You’ll pay to use Pinboard – they charge (number of users * $0.001) to sign up – and if you sign up right now it’s $6.48. It’s a small price to pay for a great bookmarking system, and one that’s all yours and no one else’s.

Penzu

What’s more private than your journal? For most of us, nothing – that’s why we’d never dream of making it digital. Penzu’s looking out for you, though – it’s an incredibly privacy-sensitive application that lets you maintain a journal from your computer or your cell phone (or both), and then keep it all safe and sound. It’s probably more private than your journal, actually – it’s got powerful encryption. Your journal’s just underneath your mattress.

Penzu doesn’t just offer privacy, though. It auto-saves your writing as you type, meaning you’ll never lose anything. You can share entries if you want, and people can comment on the entry if you share. You can add pictures, text, and more – but most importantly, it’s your-eyes-only unless you say otherwise.

Simplenote

A lot of note-taking applications are designed for single users (I’m a huge Evernote fan, if you didn’t know), but most show front-and-center their social, collaboration, “do stuff together” features. Not Simplenote. Simplenote is all plain-text lists that you can add to and access from almost any device you can think of other than a Palm Pilot. But if you’ve got a Palm Pilot, you don’t need Simplenote – you’re the man already.

Simplenote deserves a much longer review than I can give it here, and a guy I like a lot, Shawn Blanc, did such a review. In short: Simplenote offers version history so you’ll never accidentally lose data, sharing (if you want it), and above all a simple way to store all your information and ideas.

Picasa

Photo management is an odd thing – you want to share some things with everyone, some with just your friends, and some with only a few people or no one. For the first two there are a million options, from Flickr and Facebook to any number of photo-specific sites. But when you want to share with ten, five, one, or zero other people? Picasa’s definitely the best move.

Picasa is one part desktop photo manager, finding and handling all your photos and keeping them easily accessible and organized. It’s also one part Web app, where you can upload your photos, see them in all their high-resolution glory, and share them with as many or as few people as you want.

The point of all these applications is to do something for you – save bookmarks, store a journal, store everything else, or manage your photos. They can all be as social as you want, but you’ll never have to worry about things being too public or who can see what. You’ll never be pressured to be social, never have to opt-out. You’re in complete control, and all these apps exist just for you.

What’s your favorite anti-social app?

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

First, let me just get this out of the way – I’m not suggesting that you travel digitally. Second Life is fun, and some websites have really realistic pictures of vacation spots, but nothing replaces the real thing. Yet.

What I am suggesting is that travel doesn’t have to be as stressful as it is. From the planning of the location, to the booking of the tickets, to the traveling itself, there are all kinds of annoying and frustrating obstacles that you’ll encounter. Luckily, there’s a digital answer to almost every one. With a new job myself, one that’s likely going to have me traveling a fair amount, I’ve been on a hunt for the best solutions to make every phase of the travel experience better.

I haven’t solved every problem (you’re still going to have to walk on the nasty floor without your shoes at some point), but the apps below will certainly help. If you digitize all these parts of your travel, you might not need a vacation to recover from your vacation.

Finding Your Destination

Frommer’s is best known for their guide books, but they’ve got a fantastic website to go along with them. You can find destinations all over the world, and see  where you can stay, what you can do, where you can eat, and so on and so forth. If you’ve got an idea of where you want to go, Frommer’s lets you scout it out ahead of time; if you’re looking for the perfect spot, there’s a whole “Trip Ideas” section and a ton of expert advice on the subject.

Booking Your Flight

There are a million places you can book a flight, and they’re all (literally, every one) stupidly complicated. Hipmunk gives you the same flights as anywhere else, but it presents the data in a way that actually makes sense.

Pick a date, two airports, and a preferred airline (if you want), and you get a timeline of flights. It automatically deletes the flights that take 94 hours because of layovers in Chicago, and lets you sort your options by everything from price, to the number of stops, to agony (how much the trip will suck – a combination of price, duration, and stops). I love the agony rating, because it weighs for me things like “well, it’s cheap, but takes longer. Is it worth it?” Hipmunk is the smartest and simplest way to buy a plane ticket, and makes sure you’ll always get the right one.

Storing Your Info

Tripit’s not new to anyone who reads this site, but it’s worth mentioning here again just for how simple it is. It works like this: you get a confirmation email for flights, hotels, cars, whatever. You forward that email to plans@tripit.com. Tripit pulls out all the relevant information, and then shows your whole itinerary to you on your smartphone. It’s a crucial thing to have when you’re checking in, confirming reservations, or trying to charm your way into a Hertz upgrade.

Getting There, Getting On, Getting Comfortable

The single most brutal part of any travel is the actual traveling. You get lost on the way to the airport, get “randomly” selected to be searched in humiliating detail, you get lost in the airport, and then you fly with a gross snoring person near you. But there’s something for (almost) every step.

Before you ever leave home, the first thing you should do is check in online. Most airlines will let you do so, and you can skip the long lines and annoying kiosks. Go to your airline’s website, and you should be all set. While you’re checking in, make sure to consult this seating chart to find the right seat (want more leg room? Head to the back).

Once you get into the airport, finding your way around is easy if you’ve got the iFly app for iOS – it’s got layouts of airports, alerts for flights, restaurant lists, and more.

Once You’re There

Once you’re on the ground, it’s time to make the most out of your vacation. You will, of course, need a guide – but not a creepy guy in a Hawaiian shirt and a sombrero. None of those guys. What you need are the right apps to get you around. There’s a million out there, but I’ll give you five good ones – try WikiHood, Instant Cities, HearPlanet, Frommer’s, or Spotted By Locals. Use one or all, and you’ll find yourself getting the most out of wherever you are.

All those apps and sites will make your travel less difficult, frustrating, and complicated – and none will hurt your pocketbook, either. Now go somewhere!

But first, tell me: what’s your favorite digital travel resource?

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

Reading websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and the like in a magazine-style format has become all the rage recently. The format is something of a reversion back to the layout we’re all used to, after reading newspapers and magazines (the dead-tree type. I know, old. But it’s cool and retro now, kind of like using old-timey headsets for your iPhone), but in a way that takes advantage of the new, faster technology we’re getting used to as well.

The basic function of a number of different apps (Flipboard, Early Edition, and Feedly to name a few) is the same – take your feeds or streams from sites like Twitter and Facebook, and lay them out like a magazine. The result is easy to read, much better to navigate, and makes a lot more sense to a reader than the never-ending streams that these apps normally default to.

One app, which I’m increasingly enamored with, goes a little further. It’s called Paper.li, and has that same basic function – it takes a Twitter stream, and turns it into something resembling a newspaper. What it really is, though, is a super-personalized newspaper or magazine that’s updated all the time, and is perfectly tailored to a single person or subject.

All you have to do with Paper.li is give it a subject. Subjects can be a person on Twitter (say, @piercedavid if you want to see what I’m sharing), a hashtag (like #justinbeiber if you want non-stop Biebs lovin’), or a Twitter List (my personal favorite is @palafo’s “Linkers“). Paper.li parses all the links shared with that hashtag, by that person or from that list, and creates a magazine out of them. That magazine updates once a day, with all new material for your perusal.

Here’s what Paper.li came up with for the aforementioned Linkers List:

It’s a nice-looking way of seeing not only the links that people are sharing, but to see the content that’s being shared. No more clicking hundreds of http://bit.ly/somethingorother links until I find something interesting – everything’s right there on the page, easy to see. If I’m interested, one click takes me to the original site so I can read more.

Paper.li is super-basic and easy to set up. Log in using your Twitter or Facebook account, and then creating your own newspapers is as simple as clicking “create a newspaper” in the upper right corner, and typing in a username, hashtag or list. You can also search or browse the huge number of already-created newspapers on the site, which is a great way to discover new stuff. If you’re in discovery mode, a click on any blue tag on the page will take you to tons of great Twitterers and content about whatever the heck you’re into.

Twitter is a wonderful medium for sharing and discovering information – but it can be incredibly hard to parse the massive river that’s constantly flooding over you to get out what you want to see and check out for yourself. Paper.li takes advantage of the speed of Twitter, and presents it in a way that makes a lot more sense for readers. I’m a huge fan, and it’s starting to be the site I go to to find cool stuff that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle.

Are you using Paper.li? How do you find the good out of everything on Twitter and Facebook?

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

There’s no shortage of places to find cheap stuff on the Web – in fact, it’s hard not to find cheap things when you look for more than a quarter of a second.

The frustrating thing about those sites is almost always one of two things: there are either hoops that you’ll have to jump through to get these great deals, or the deals are for really, really crappy things. If you know what you want, finding a deal on it is usually possible (always, always Google “yourproductname coupons” before you buy something), but it’s harder when you’re not so sure. So how do you find cool stuff?

A few sites (including the fastest-growing Web company ever) have nailed the combination of great deals, and stuff you’d actually want. You’ll save a ton of money, and find yourself opened to new things, new experiences, and a whole lot of fun times and cool stuff through these sites. Here are a few of the best ones:

Groupon

The aforementioned fastest-growing Web company in history. Groupon offers deals based on where you live, and gives you one deal per day. If enough people buy in, the deal “tips,” and everyone gets to use it. There’s a lot of food, eating and activities, and fewer gadgets and gizmos – this is the one to subscribe to, if you’re looking for cool stuff nearby.

Gilt

Gilt is all about fashion, and mostly about high-end fashion. They have spectacular deals on brand-name (and better) designers and clothing, and deals change every 36 hours. Stuff’s still expensive through Gilt, but if you’re a fashionista it’ll seem like a bargain bin.

DailyCandy

DailyCandy is largely about finding things around you, not necessarily giving you deals on them. They’ve got a keen eye for deals, though, and there’s almost always a lot of free and cheap fun to be had thanks to the suggestions of the DailyCandy editors. It’s organized by city, so everything you see will be avialable near you.

Woot

Woot is the original “One Day, One Deal” site. They were recently bought by Amazon, but they’re still doing what they’ve always been doing – offering one product, per day, at crazy-low prices. They have a limited quantity every day, and once it’s gone it’s gone. What they offer ranges hugely, but the price is always right and the descriptions are worth reading even if you never want to spend a nickel.

Whiskey Militia

Whiskey Militia‘s a lot like Woot, but with a bent toward outdoorsy-ness and all things extreme. If you’re a skier, snowboarder, or just like rugged-looking flannel shirts, Whiskey Militia’s got a ton of great deals on a ton of great things. Their inventory is limited, but they’re often faster getting up the next deal than Woot is.

Steep and Cheap

We’ve moved down the spectrum towards total outdoors-love, and that’s what Steep and Cheap is all about. Anyone who camps, gets lost in the wilderness, or watches Man vs. Wild knows how expensive all that gear is, and that’s where Steep and Cheap comes in: they’ve got huge deals, one per day, on backpacks, boots, tools, camping equipment, and so on and so forth. You’ll be geared up in no time.

MidnightBox

MidnightBox has three deals per day, and they’re almost all tech-related. They work with a site called iCraveit, and come up with deals on everything from TVs to iPods to GPS units. A lot of the tech tends to be higher-end, and thus expensive even on sale, but there’s some seriously great stuff on the site.

Amazon’s all well and good, but the real fun of buying online is jumping on great deals, and getting all sorts of fun experiences and stuff you’ve never seen before. I’m not saying buy everything because it’s cheap, but I will say that I’ve had some remarkably fun experiences thanks to Groupon that I’d never have known about otherwise.

I’d recommend subscribing to a few of these, and see what tickles your fancy. Some might, some won’t, but when it does the price will definitely be right.

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

The advent of the Web has brought on ways to create content that are better and more available than ever before. That’s a great thing, and has led to an enormous amount of great content being produced. It’s also, unfortunately, led to the production of so much terrible content that it’s harder than ever to find the good stuff.

Books, movie-theater movies, and record-label albums are vetted for quality, and you can more safely bet that those things are worth your time (though those processes are obviously a long way from perfect). Blogs, YouTube and the like have no such pre-evaluation – again, pros and cons, but it can make the great stuff harder to find.

Thankfully, all that noise has led to the rise of some excellent curators. Whether they’re people, apps or services, there are a number of sources that do their best to point out the best of the Web, while weeding out all the junk crap nonsense videos that hurt my eyes and ears other stuff. These resources bring to light the best, and keep us from getting overwhelmed and distracted by the rest.

As with my last post, I’m partly writing this because of my curiosity about this subject – there are many more curators out there than I can possibly know about or highlight, but I want to know about them! So please, after reading this post, leave a comment with your favorite people or apps that help you weed the signal from the noise.

But first, my curators:

Jason Kottke – arguably the grandfather of Web curation, Kottke’s got no discernible rhyme or reason to what he posts, but he tends to highlight a broad, diverse group of excellent and unique content from all over the Web.

Daring Fireball– If you don’t like or care about Apple, don’t read John Gruber’s Daring Fireball. If you’ve got even a passing interest, though, Gruber’s one of the most interesting and intelligent people discussing the subject. He posts a lot, and a lot of his posts are links elsewhere – he’s a great source for excellent techie content, as well as original thinking (plus, he’s a Yankees fan. So he’s awesome).

Boing Boing – Also a site without an obvious guideline for content. I go back-and-forth on how useful I find what Boing Boing posts, but they’re a long-standing and respected source for indie, niche-type content and people. If nothing else, Boing Boing is an excellent “resource of resources,” constantly linking to other interesting people and websites.

Bobulate – Liz Danzico’s blog is heavily design-focused, but I’ve found that designers tend to see the world differently and often become great sources of new perspectives on things. Liz discusses and links to everything from music theory to Web design, and she finds great new thoughts on each.

Neatorama – More of the same, lots of fun and interesting content, this time with a heavy dose of “woah, that’s cool!” thrown into the mix. There’s a lot of art displayed, a lot of videos, and a lot of funny and bizarre things for your enjoyment. Neatorama’s not the source for great writing, but it’s a great place to spend a few minutes looking at fun and cool things.

3quarksdaily – 3quarksdaily is updated three times per day, and is nearly always the first site I go to looking for something to read. They generally link to longer-form writing, and have exposed me to new and fascinating things more than a few times.

Damn Interesting – They don’t post very often, but the folks at Damn Interesting do a fabulous job of uncovering some bizarre, funny and generally damn interesting things, and then writing about them really, really well. It’s mostly original content, so it only half counts as curation, but they’re culling from the fascinating world around, so I’m counting it. Because I can.

The Morning News Headlines – It’s all links, but a couple of times a day the Morning News posts some of the best of what they’re finding and reading around the Web. It’s the most breaking news-heavy of the bunch, but is a frequent source of great content and headlines.

Devour – Devour is brand-new, and fits somewhere between the “app” and “people” categories of curators. It’s from the folks at Uncrate, one of my favorite blogs, and is a hand-picked collection of the Web’s best videos. I only discovered it today, and I already love the things they choose – it’s a great mix of funny, cool, popular and niche.

Mag.ma – Magma takes all the video sites on the Web (or at least the most popular ones), figures out which videos are the most popular, and displays them for the world to see. Instead of wading through YouTube or Vimeo to find out what other people are watching, stop it. Just go to Magma.

Instapaper – Instapaper takes the articles that people are saving into their Instapaper accounts the most, and displays them for easy reading and saving. A great resource, especially since pretty much everyone uses Instapaper these days. I would’ve done that cool “link every word to an article about Instapaper to prove it gets a lot of coverage” thing, but there’s too many. Just know there’s good stuff on Instapaper.

Today’s Big Thing – If I ever need a laugh, Today’s Big Thing is the first place I go.  The folks at TBT pick one video, per day, in a bunch of categories (Sports, Music, Pets, and more) – they’re usually funny, often involve adorable pets or people getting hit in the crotch, and are almost guaranteed to make you laugh. I include TBT on the list because it’s great, and also because it was the place I found what will forever be my favorite video ever in history.

Listorious – Listorious is a huge repository of Twitter Lists, and is arguably the most complete, solution-for-anyone curation option out there. Basically, Twitter Lists work like this: someone puts together a list of people who have interesting things to say about a certain subject – technology, music, Renaissance museums – and with one click, you can follow the whole list. Listorious is a directory of those lists, and a great way to find cool people and subjects on Twitter.

(Update: In poking around during and after writing this post, I found this thread on MetaFilter with a huge number of great sources for curation, filtering, and generally awesome content. I highly recommend reading through the thread, and checking out a bunch of the sites. I was certainly glad I did.)

As much as I read original news sources these days, I find myself relying on curators at least as often. These people show me what’s interesting, and I largely trust them to find the right thing and show it to me. I get to avoid the noise, and they bring out what’s worth knowing.

What curation tools or people do you use?