Some Cool Web Sites

I get so busy doing what I do I find myself surfing the internet less and missing out on some amazing and interesting web sites, concepts and tools so I thought I would expose you to a few that I have found recently.  While they have little or nothing to do with marketing, life is not all about marketing…

Surfing Without Clicking a Mouse
There is a web site from the DONTCLICK.IT Institute for Interactive Research that has a demonstration site where you never click your mouse to navigate around a web page. (Actually you click one last time on the home page) They survey visitors to see if people miss the click or not and 952,699 people do not miss clicking while only 545,265 miss it.

I found not clicking to be easier in some ways as I was not distracted by trying to get my mouse on the right spot to go to a new menu.  They are experimenting with three ways of replacing clicks.

1) A left to right movement across a button.
2) Circling the button that you want to activate.
3) Holding the mouse over the button and activating in a set number of seconds.

I think this would be a great feature for high end fashion sites or sites where people take the time to enjoy the content.

New Web Browser from Google
The Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows
Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

• One box for everything – Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.
• Thumbnails of your top sites – Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.
• Shortcuts for your apps – Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.

It is a collaboration using parts of Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others – and they are making all of their code open source hoping to “collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.”

Learn more about it by clicking here.

Feel Like A Pilot – Cool Time Waster
There is a web site from Electric Oyster, an interactive Design, Development and Consulting comapny that I know nothing about, but they have this 3D animation where you can use your mouse to pilot a plane through snow-capped mountains.

Create Your Own Crossword Puzzles
It’s never been simpler—just give EclipseCrossword a list of words and clues, and it does the rest. In seconds, you’ll have a crossword puzzle with just the words you want. EclipseCrossword has been downloaded more than two million times by people just like you. There are lots of others available through a web search.  I have used crossword puzzles as part of a direct mail program and they can be effective tools.

Create, Share and Present 3D Models
Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create, share and present 3D models. Whether you want to design a new deck for your house, build models for Google Earth, or teach geometry to your fifth-graders, you can use SketchUp to see your ideas in 3D. And when you’re done, you can export an image, make a movie or print out a view of what you made.

Create Panoramas From Multiple Photos
Autostitch™ is the world’s first fully automatic 2D image stitcher. Capable of stitching full view panoramas without any user input whatsoever, Autostitch is a great new technology for panoramic photography, VR and visualisation applications. This is the first solution to stitch any panorama completely automatically, whether 1D (horizontal) or 2D (horizontal and vertical).  Autostitch is incredibly simple to use! Just select a set of photos, and Autostitch does the rest: digital photos in, panoramas out.

I use this all the time and it really works and it is free!

Panorama I Made of Coal Harbour, Vancouver

Pick a Color
Ever had to pick a color for a web site or marketing material.  A really easy to use tool is available from Color Picker.  You can just move your mouse around until you find the color (colour in Canada, the UK and Australia) you want and it will give you the hex code which you can give to your printer.

Find a Sample of Virtually and Document You Need
There is a web site called DocStoc that offers the following:

1. Download Legal, Business, Tech & Educational Docs
2. Store Your Documents Privately Online for Free
3. Get Your Documents Indexed by Search Engines

There is nothing you can’t find to get you started.

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