website review

Daylife is a lot cooler than one its own financial backers says it is. It has plenty of problems, but the interface is nice enough and the majority of the site is so well put together that missing a few things like RSS on every page can be overlooked.

Daylife at its most basic level is a cleverly designed news aggregator, and viewing it in that way it may not be the most impressive thing on the web. What I love about it is the ability to really narrow down topics and follow specific issues. For example, I’m working on a large research project about Russia and the WTO - I’ve been using Daylife to keep up on current Russia / WTO news with this saved search. Can I do this with other services? Maybe, but do they provide the ease and style of Daylife, no. For a great example of the wonder of the daylife style check out the highlights page.

I believe it will get even better. I imagine I will be able to have RSS for all searches before long. I imagine the blog won’t be so ugly in the near future. I know it has some room to grow, but as good as it is in its current state - after navigating around the site for a few minutes you’ll understand what I’m saying - I think it’s going to be a great site before long.

A new standard in office apps? I don’t know about that, but there are a lot of things I like about Scrybe. Scrybe is an online calendar / task manager / web clipboard (called ThoughtPad) that also works when you’re offline. You can open the site offline, and next time you’re on the web it will sync your changes. That’s a pretty cool thing for a web app to do but… when am I offline and using my computer? Certainly not often, maybe when traveling and I’m sure many people do spend time with their computers offline…right?.. So yes, I’m sure this feature is something many will love, even if it is lost on me. But forget about that feature, the product as a whole has to be great for a feature to mean anything, and it is pretty nice… but it’s just another calendar, and right now I don’t really need a new calendar.

I use Google Calendar, which is great because I also use Google’s custom start page, and Gmail - all of which integrate with each other. My calendar shows up on my homepage, and when there are events in my emails I can quickly add them to my calendar. Google also attempts to integrate Google maps into my calendar which has on occasion been very helpful. This type of integration will only come from a company that offers more than just a calendar — Scrybe can’t do that right now. It’s better than 30boxes, it may even be better than Google Calendar when you take away the integration, but Google’s integration is likely too much for me to give up. However, I’m going to try to switch, just as I did with Megite and Techmeme (I use Megite more than Techmeme nowadays). I like to root for the underdog, I’d like to see Scrybe succeed, because as a pure Calendar I think it’s better.

Try it for yourself…Scrybe. It is currently closed beta, sign up and you’ll see what I’m talking about soon enough, or watch the video below.

My plan for next week is to write 4-5 posts about different start-ups that you may or may not know of. My list is currently at 4, but if any reader would like their site reviewed, I will gladly make changes to the list. If you don’t have a site and just want to make a suggestion that’s fine too.

Thinkature is a new app that combines collaborative productivity tools with instant messaging. It’s really pretty cool, I’m just trying to figure out who will use it.

Thinkature gives you an open workspace on which you can use the mouse to draw on screen, upload photos, and attach notes in a style very similar to how MyStickies works. Since you can share the workspace and simultaneously work there’s also a very useful built in instant messaging feature (something more sites should have). The focus on images and drawing would seem to imply that this will make its inroads with designers - but the potential is way beyond that.

I like the combination of elements, but to really be successful I’d like to see it do even more. I can add photos and little notes, but I’d also like to be able to add a table. Drawing on screen is cool, but I’d like to be able to erase parts of what I’ve drawn (you can delete an entire section, but not parts) and I’d like to draw in different colors.

It’s actually really an amazing product and things seem to be working very smoothly, I just want to see a few more things added so that Thinkature doesn’t get swept away as a feature rather than a company. Right now it seems to have a few things that other online collaboration tools are missing, but it’s missing some that the others have.

Grade: This will change how I use the web, though it might not be with this particular site.

I didn’t want to miss two website Wednesdays in a row - so here’s a quick look at a service I recently started using. Warning: I have no idea if this works in ie, though I imagine it does. Warning 2: If you’re using ie, stop.

MyStickies is a newish service that lets you put sticky notes all over the web. When you hear that it may seem kind of boring, but it’s really helpful. I’m using it to help critique both my own sites and sites that I’m helping people with. It’s a great on the fly way to make notes of things you would (or need to) change on a page without having to actually do the editing - very helpful if you need a client’s approval first. I’m sure there are other uses, but I’d bet this would be the most helpful, and where MyStickies will find its niche. I don’t know if MyStickies knows or thinks that - the site itself says ’say goodbye to bookmarks’ - but I have no intent of using this as a bookmarking system.

So far I really like it and if you’re in the business of web consulting or SEO/SEM I think it’s a must have.

Grade: This will change the way I use the web.

Smalltown.com launched the other day, and I’ll call it Yalp! Yalp, is an acronym for “yet another local player” - but unlike some of the good local players I don’t really like what Smalltown is doing.

To me it just doesn’t make sense. Smalltown is built in Flash and can be an intense page load. Yet it’s targeted at small towns. Sure small towns are coming around to this whole broadband thing, but in general people in small towns spend less time online and are more likely to have dial-up connections. Furthermore, flash is a tricky issue for search engines. Smalltown seems to have some of that figured out, but with such a heavy amount of local traffic coming from search I don’t think it makes sense to risk the search optimization.

My website wednesdays can only get one of two grades either “this will change how I use the web” or “fail”

Grade: Fail.