We don't get much summer here in the UK, but take advantage when the weather allows and get outside to do some gardening. MyFolia is a social gardening tool that helps you get organised by tracking what you’ve planted and what jobs need doing to keep your flowers flourishing, and share your progress with the green-fingered community.
Spin the bottle is no fun on your own. So why not play spin the android instead with A World of Photo. This is a free worldwide multiplayer social game… which is a lot of marketing-type words to describe an app that’s a lot of fun. Spin your handset on a flat surface to determine a direction from which the app will find another player who wants to snap you a picture on their mobile handset, then wait for someone to request an image from you.
There is a fairly obvious caveat here for younger players and those of a sensitive disposition – this is after all an unmoderated game so you can never be sure of what you will get back. But I’ve played it quite a bit and have been thoroughly intrigued & never shocked or disappointed.
It might be hard being a parent, but growing up wasn’t exactly a walk in the park either as I remember it. It can be a walk in the online park though if you join the community at Tinkatolli.me. This is an online virtual world for kids, created by parents to be a safe, fun & importantly a challenging place for young minds to start experiencing exploring & socialising online. The world is really fun to explore with games and quests littered around. But what makes this site special is the way it encourages children to play away from their computers too, providing craft projects that you can complete in Tinkatolli & build in the real world too.
Many of the craft items – or makeables – have been designed by Tinkatolli players using actual junk – there’s a weekly competition to add more. Some games & features require a premium sign up but there is plenty of free content too. With appropriately moderated chat & all the safety precautions you’d expect from a team who are parents themselves, this looks like a great introduction for any new citizens of the world wide web.
user: katejustkate@hotmail.com
connected through FB
(OOV)
I’ve always wanted to be Dr Who’s side-kick, and thanks to a new browser-based multiplayer roleplaying game, Dr Who, Worlds in Time, I can be. You create a character, make friends, join a guild & battle all of the Doctor’s favourite enemies. The mini games are simple but fun & as you level up you can kit out your avatar & room with upgrades. Or you can pay real cash for credits that let you jump ahead – but I kind of like running around in my PJs.
Following on from yesterday's post, Path is another social network you should be aware of. It's an app-based service for iPhone & Android handsets. It’s been around for over a year but recently had a major revamp and is looking pretty promising. Apart from having a very lovely interface, I like the focus of this service, asking you to create a ‘path’ through your life and populate it with pictures, places, music and conversation. It’s kind of what Facebook was trying to do with their Timelines feature, only a lot less cluttered because it’s been designed this way from the bottom up. Linking posts to FaceBook, Twitter and Foursquare means you don’t have to opt out of these networks completely, which is good news for social junkies. This service is simple and elegant enough that it might just make a respectable mark on the social media genre.
There are plenty of social networks taking the web by storm. Pinterest.com is an image-based social network & discovery tool that asks users to create boards around a particular interest – such as recipes, fashion or football – and then post links & upload images to create an online mood board of interesting content. You can find & follow other users, like any other social space, and by linking your posts to Twitter and Facebook, you can again automatically send any content collected to these social streams.
Using the service is made easier with the browser bookmarklet allowing you to pin items to your boards as you surf. And there is an iphone app, of course there is… Android users will have to make do with browsing the boards through a mobile browser, but there is an app available for posting pictures from your phone’s camera called Photo to Pinterest.
The Internet doesn’t recognise boundaries… if you meet someone on a social network they are as likely to come from the other side of the planet as the house next door. When it comes to Twitter you can see exactly where your followers come from at tweepsmap.com. Just link your account & then share the results. It’s a great conversation starter… View the results as a map of a list with accompanying pie-chart for that extra geek-factor. You can even check out a follower’s tweepsmap and share the results with them – a great way to make them aware of the service, but it might also get you blocked for being a little bit creepy.
Ever had a burning question, an intellectual itch that needed scratching but you don’t have hours and hours to ask your friends and trawl through the Internet looking for answers? Quora.com hopes to be the finger you scratch that itch with, becoming the best destination to hear a range of theories & opinions, crowd sourced & rated by the webizens of the world. All pages can be edited by anyone & the information on any given topic should grow and change organically over time. Like Wikipedia then, only geared towards answering questions with commentary & debate rather than just delivering pages of straight forward data.
It’s early days yet so the community isn’t huge, but there is already some interesting content building and some really influential people, like Stephen Fry, taking part. I like the addition of their first mobile app for iPhone – let’s hope it won’t be too long before the other handsets are covered. And with Facebook integration it's a great way to engage in meaningful discussions with your social network
Follow Kate Russell on Quora
It can be hard working up the enthusiasm for a healthy jog, but if you have a GPS enabled smartphone you can turn it into personal trainer & motivator with a free download from endomondo.com. Log in with Facebook and download the app from a more than impressive list of supported handsets, and you’re off and running… quite literally if that is your fitness activity of choice.
This is a kind of fitness social network rather than just an application. The app tracks & records your activity using GPS – and if you have a supported GPS watch you can use that too – but what’s really nice is the way it hooks you into a community so you can share & compare results, getting that much needed boost from a little friendly competition & support. As well as being able to challenge friends or participate in site-wide open challenges, there are analysis tools to help you find better ways to work out.
Air travel is pretty cheap these days, but getting to and from the airport can often be a sting in the financial tail. Transferwithme.com is the home of a brilliantly simple service that connects people looking to make the same journey so that they can share the cost of a ride to the airport.
You can save up to five profiles depending on whether you’re travelling alone or with family. Then just register the journey you’re looking to make, including a start point & destination airport, or vice versa for inbound flights, and hope that someone in the site’s community can become your travel buddy.
