Pipl : What Google Think about you - EgoSurfing

The most comprehensive people search on the web

Do not Google your next date. Try Pipl search instead - big surprises there!

Contrary to the name, Pipl is not a place to search for people, it's all about finding facts about a person on the internet. And Pipl is amazingly accurate.

Type in the person's name (or even your name) and Pipl.com will extract every bit of information about that person from the web in seconds. In most cases, you will also get the contact details (postal address or even email address) of the person.

Other than one line bios and contact details, Pipl also shows related profile summaries (from Flickr, Amazon, Yahoo! People, etc), research publications, web search results and recent news stories related to that person.

Do not confuse Pipl with Googlism - Pipl is all about relevant and meaningful information while Googlism is more for fun and satire.

Pipl.com - People Search that really works. [egosurfing]

Email Traceroute : Plot your email trajectory on Google Maps

Wondering what physical path an email message (from a friend or some spammer) had followed before reaching your inbox ? Try the Email graphic traceroute service.

You copy-paste your email headers in the Email Routemap web interface and the service draws the path of your email message on Google maps.



For the above screenshot, we used a test mail sent via yahoogroups.com.The orange icon (destination) denotes the location of Yahoo! Mail servers while the green pin indicates the origin or the location from where that email message was sent.

Another very interesting Google Maps mashup is Google Maps Traceroute - type in any IP address and the service will show the exact physical location of that IP on Google Maps.

Scribd : Embed Docs, Excel Spreadsheets, PDFs as Flash Paper

If that sounds just too confusing, here's a one-size-fits-all kind of solution called Scribd that makes it extremely easy for you to embed any kind of document (including PDF) in your blog.

Upload your documents to Scribd and the tool will convert them into printable Flash SWF files using Adobe FlashPaper 2 technology. Site visitors can zoom, search for text or print these embedded Flash documents using the onscreen controls.

These Flash Documents can then be embedded inside any webpage like other Flash files using simple HTML. As the converted file is in vector format, it looks the same everywhere.

Scribd Home | FAQ [Embedding documents in webpages was never so simple]

There's another advantage of Scribd - Flash produces files of the smallest possible size. Hence your webpages will load faster.

Picnik: The Best Online Image Editing Tool

Picnik.com, the most popular online photo editing suite, has added some new features today. That includes support for Picasa web albums and ability to add frames and rounded corners to your pictures.

With Google making the Picasa API public, Picnik can now load and save photos to and from your Google Picasa Web Albums account directly. Earlier, this feature was available only with Flickr images.

Even will all these nice photo editing features, Picnik and others will be under tremendous pressure to innovate as Adobe is gearing up to change the rules of the game.

Vixy.net : Download Youtube Videos as Quicktime Videos or MP3 Audio Files

While there are tons of tricks that let you download flash videos from Youtube or Google videos in either FLV or AVI format, Vixy.net is a new player in this game with a difference.

With Vixy, you can download Youtube videos directly as a Quicktime video or a audio-only file (MP3 format). Vixy will effectively extract the audio portion from the Youtube video for you.

When you submit an url, this service will download and convert the video format. Then you can download the converted file.

And like Keepvid, you still have the option to download in the standard Windows AVI format with the DivX codec or the MP4 format for the video iPod.

Apart from Youtube Videos, Vixy can help you covert any FLV file to AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3 format online.

FLV Online Converter

Search Video Clips from Popular Video Sharing Sites In One Place

How do you find videos on the web related to some topic? The Youtube website is probably a good place to start but if you confine the search only to YouTube, you will miss so much exciting stuff that exists in other places.

Google Video, MySpace, DailyMotion, iFilm, Metacafe, Revver, Veoh, Reuters, Yahoo! Videos, BrightCove, MSN Soapbox, AOL, Grouper...these video sharing websites may not be as big as YouTube but they still have a great fan following and host tons of video clips that may well be of your interest.

We often ignore searching video content on these "non-YouTube" sites because of lack of time - fortunately, this problem is now a thing of the past with uLinkx - a comprehensive video search engine to help you conveniently search multiple video websites from one place.

uLinkx provides RSS search feeds for your video search queries. And you can also watch any of these videos without leaving the uLinkx website - no more hitting the back or forward buttons in your browser.

My favorite feature is the Live Video search which is like a common wrapper for all video sharing sites. You execute a live query on YouTube or sites right inside uLinkx.

Other than video search, uLinkx can be used for bookmarking video clips from multiple sites or organizing them in video playlists. [image a single playlist that streams videos clips coming from different sources like YouTube, Metacafe and Google Video]

Wishlist - more customizable RSS feeds and support for BrightCove and Blip.tv. I also faced problems subscribing to the Video search feeds in Newsgator but they worked fine inside Google Personalized homepage.

uLinkx.com | Bookmarklet | Developer Blog | All In One Search

Toondoo: Create Your Own Comic Strips

Toondoo is a new service from the developers of Zoho Office where anyone can create comic strips in seconds.

Drag-n-drop the characters on the canvas, change backgrounds, add speech bubbles or even upload your own pictures. Everything is packed inside a very intuitive Flash interface that even a three year old can get started in minutes.

Like Youtube videos, users can rate and comment on your cartoons or embed them in blogs. With ToonDoo comic creator in town, professional cartoon artists may soon feel the heat.

ToonDoo.com | ToonPress

Widgetbox: Cross promote your blog on other websites with these professional looking widgets

Widgetbox is the world's largest widget marketplace, with widgets for Facebook, Blogger, typepad, myspace, Bebo, wordpress, Piczo, Xanga, Freewebs

Widgets (aka Gadgets) are now found everywhere on the web - people use them for cross promoting their blogs, running picture slide-shows in the sidebar, sharing favorite music or video clips, displaying Amazon Shopping wish-list and more.

Two of my favorite blog widget providers are YourMinis and Widgetbox - both offer detailed stats and an option to embed widgets in your Blogger, MySpace, FaceBook, Netvibes, Google IG, PageFlakes or other accounts automatically.

www.widgetbox.com

Vuvox: Create Stunning and interactive multimedia presentations

Vuvox creates extremely impressive Flash presentations from your videos, photos, music like you've never seen before.

To create your own Vuvox presentation, simply collect the media files into Vuvox from your hard drive or pull them direct from the web (Flickr, YouTube, PhotoBucket, etc), choose one of the 3D styles and publish.

The final presentation will look stunning though it took only couple of minutes if not seconds to create it from scratch.

In one of the styles, your pictures and videos appear on the branches and leaves of a tree and they grow as you add more media. Another style reminds me of the Microsoft Coffee computer table - you move, resize and rotate pictures on the computer screen with your mouse instead of your fingers.

Each presentation can be viewed directly on the Vuvox website or you can embed them in web pages. If you have to showcase you portfolio to clients, look no further than Vuvox. Presentation does matter.

www.vuvox.com | Sample | DEMO Launch