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Blog Entry 15 of 24 My Life: Beer and Blogs
I'm a new media guy who happens to live in the Napa Valley of beer. This blog will chronicle my adventures through beers, blogs and everything else. Cheers!

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~justinian

My Fav web sites/apps of 2007
Contributed by: Justinian Hatfield   on 12/27/2007

I'm a sucker for year-end lists. I think it goes back to the days when I was a reporter and could spend hours and hours combing through the year's issues to find the good stuff for the annual year in review issue.

So here's a list of my favorite Web sites or Web applications that I discovered or used in 2007. Many of the sites on this list weren't new in 2007, but were used by me in 2007.

1) Facebook. Hands down the site I've used the most this year. I missed the whole college thing, but joined when they opened the site up to others. Facebook is a better, more user-friendly version of MySpace. It's a social-networking site where you can keep up with what your friends are doing. The ability to upload photos and set your status from your mobile phone means that I'm always connected to Facebook. Once they opened the platform and allowed other people to create Facebook applications it got even better. I've managed to keep it relevant by only "friending" people I've actually met.

2) Scrabulous. Scrabulous is my favorite facebook application. It's basically an online scrabble game that you can play against your friends or against total strangers. The one problem with it, is that it makes cheating very tempting. All my opponents will be glad to know that I don't cheat (unless you count trying to play letter combos until they make a word cheating). If you're on Facebook, I'd love to play a game of Scrabulous with you. There's also a non-Facebook version.

3) Instructables. I ran across this site and just love it. The basic premise is that people create tutorials on how to make things. These "instructables" range from How to get Rid of Fruit Flies to How to build a Microwave Transformer Homemade Welder and everything in between.

4) 43places. Talk about a time sink. 43places allows you to tag where you've been and where you want to go. You can then rate each place and also comment about it. While not a true travel-rating site, I actually used this site to research various locations when planning a trip last spring. More than anything it's a way to escape reality and dream about traveling the world. Its siblings 43things and 43people are also good times.

5) StumbleUpon. I recently started using this social bookmarking service. It's a browser plugin for Firefox and IE. you tell it what kind of topics you are interested in, such as travel, crafts, sports, etc... and then when you want to surf the web, you press the "Stumble" button and it loads a random website which other users have added based on your interests. It's a great way to find new sites (and waste a lot of time).

7). Gmail. Yes, I know Gmail isn't new, but if you don't have a gmail account yet, get one. It's got incredible spam filtering, Huge inbox size (6 GB and growing!) and lots of forwarding and downloading options. Plus all the cool kids use gmail.

8) Vonage. I switched my office line from Qwest to Vonage and I'm saving about $36/month and getting more services. I really like that I can listen to voicemails in my email. I also like the way I can log into Vonage.com and easily set up a call forwarding number or see my call log.




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Showing 1-10 of 10 comments
Submitted By: Justinian Hatfield
posted on 1/4/2008 @ 3:13:59 PM
(Not Rated)
Yeah, I've got an account over at Pownce, but I've never used it.
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Submitted By: John Zwick
posted on 1/4/2008 @ 12:21:19 PM
Rated Blog Entry
Have you given Pownce a try? I know it's panned as one of the biggest failures of 07, but I'm pretty sure that's because it failed to completely upend the internet. As it is, it's still a fairly useful little tool and I share crap on it all the time.
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Submitted By: Justinian Hatfield
posted on 1/2/2008 @ 7:51:44 AM
(Not Rated)
Hey Charmaine, Facebook is much, much better than MySpace (IMHO). Go and sign up right now! That sucks that your work computer didn't like StumbleUpon, but it's probably best since it can be a hue timesink :)
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Submitted By: Charmaine Robledo
posted on 12/31/2007 @ 9:55:09 AM
Rated Blog Entry
Getting on MySpace was a big endeavor for me, so getting on Facebook will take some time. But most of my friends are on it, so I will eventually. I tried using StumbleUpon on my work computer, but it created a huge error and I had to get our IT guys to fix it and uninstall it. :-(
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Submitted By: Michael Rule
posted on 12/30/2007 @ 8:00:17 AM
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I got a Facebook account so I could stay tuned into my son. Thanks (I think) for the other sites. I have nothing to do for the next 4 hours....
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Submitted By: Justinian Hatfield
posted on 12/29/2007 @ 8:27:26 AM
(Not Rated)
Hey Karin, Paul Hughes doesn't know what he's talking about :-) Facebook isn't just for kids. Facebook is really about interacting with people, so the more friends you have, the more things you can do. Maybe Erin o Travis or one of the other YourHubbers will create a YourHub facebook group.
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Submitted By: Nikki Britain
posted on 12/28/2007 @ 11:36:58 PM
Rated Blog Entry
I am also a big fan of StumbleUpon!
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Submitted By: Karin Malchow
posted on 12/28/2007 @ 6:44:19 PM
Rated Blog Entry
I, too, would play Scrabulus. Except blogger Paul Hughes thinks its ridiculous that a 50-year-old like me signed on to Facebook. Maybe he's right. I'm still not quite sure what to do with it.
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Submitted By: Justinian Hatfield
posted on 12/27/2007 @ 9:27:39 PM
(Not Rated)
Hey Gladys, I'm always up for a game :-)
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Submitted By: Gladys Mercier
posted on 12/27/2007 @ 8:37:26 PM
Rated Blog Entry
I love to play scrabble but didn't know about scrabulus. Maybe I will try it soon.
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Showing 1-10 of 10 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Justinian Hatfield

Lakewood , CO

Justinian Hatfield has posted 24 blog entries and 51 comments since joining on 7/12/2006. Justinian Hatfield's average blog rating is 5.
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