useful links

September 5, 2007 11:04 PM

40 Unusual Websites you should Bookmark. Entries include Yak4Ever - make free international calls from US, UK and Ireland to 50+ countries, ListenToaMovie, Nutsie - takes a copy of your iTunes library file and creates an online copy of your library etc.
posted by nickyskye (29 comments total)

Thanks, but damn, I hope the exposure doesn't kill ListenToAMovie -- I've been using that site for years, and happy it's been pretty much under the radar. Not sure how legal it is to do what they do. stupid lawyers
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:24 PM on September 5, 2007

seconds stavros' concern...
posted by squasha at 11:31 PM on September 5, 2007

And here I was hoping Yak4Ever would be some sort of Yak-devoted website. That's something worth bookmarking!
posted by taursir at 11:57 PM on September 5, 2007

I am pro-Yak.
posted by trip and a half at 12:21 AM on September 6, 2007

Thanks for this post! very informative ..although half of the links are to mobile phone related sites. I really liked www.qipit.com.
posted by Hollow_MarkeD at 4:33 AM on September 6, 2007

I am decidedly anti-yak.
posted by Pollomacho at 4:36 AM on September 6, 2007

RateMyDrawings sounds horrible.
posted by fuzzypantalones at 4:54 AM on September 6, 2007

This is a comment not about Yak.

Uhh....retailmenot looks useful. And eSnailer seems like it'd be fun. Once.
posted by DU at 4:58 AM on September 6, 2007

Ixnay on the eSnailer. It's just an address harvester.
posted by DU at 5:00 AM on September 6, 2007

And the one store I tried on RetailMeNot had "coupons" that were actually worse deals than the site itself. So....yeah.
posted by DU at 5:03 AM on September 6, 2007

Not to mention, everybody knows you replace vowels with asterisks, not consonants.
posted by Citizen Premier at 5:38 AM on September 6, 2007

This is entirely unrelated to the post but I – recently – saw "s*** up" somewhere.

I think some people are very confused about how and where to be polite. Or, they are 5. I'm not sure which.
posted by blacklite at 5:59 AM on September 6, 2007

I was hoping Yak4Ever would be somehow related to yak shaving, but sadly no. I have no idea what a yak shaving site would do, other than something only tenuously connected with its real purpose, but it still sounds like a good idea.
posted by plant at 6:05 AM on September 6, 2007

Yay, another busy work list to click through to find more crap I don't need! Thank you internet!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:21 AM on September 6, 2007

Drat, Listentoamovie only has the voiceover-free version of Bladerunner available.
posted by Molesome at 6:46 AM on September 6, 2007

Wordie was fun! :-) Been "collecting" words there.
posted by the cydonian at 7:24 AM on September 6, 2007

Thanks, there were some interesting sites there. The list itself seems to way over-value doing various things with SMS, though. Does anyone even use SMS?
posted by majick at 7:29 AM on September 6, 2007

It's obviously a Euro/UK centric list, hence the overabundance of SMS sites.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:25 AM on September 6, 2007

Beacuse mobile data rates in Canada are so bizarrely high, yet SMS are dirt cheap (I get a couple thousand free each month, pennies each for going over), I use Goggle SMS daily. My only gripe is that they won't do weather.
posted by bonehead at 8:38 AM on September 6, 2007

i can get weather via google sms....but i'm in the us.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:21 AM on September 6, 2007

Foonz? Is quonsar aware of this?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:01 AM on September 6, 2007

And Nutsie's great if you only have major label releases from the last five years in your playlists. I get an average of 4 songs per playlist (you can see it here, I think).
posted by klangklangston at 12:02 PM on September 6, 2007

Does anyone even use SMS?

I hope you're joking, but in case you're not: all that typing on phone keypads that people are doing these days? They're not just playing Jingle Bells.

620 million messages were sent in the first quarter of 2007.

Do you have a cell phone?
posted by blacklite at 12:22 PM on September 6, 2007

hmm...no porn...wierd.
posted by Wonderwoman at 12:38 PM on September 6, 2007

There is some really nifty stuff here. I wasn't aware of ListenToAMovie, but I sure am liking it.
posted by quin at 1:02 PM on September 6, 2007

Retailmenot is deliciously useful, I got a few bucks off a Threadless t-shirt thanks to them just the other day. A lot of those other links look pretty neat, too, can't wait to give 'em a try.

It's hard to resist the urge to offer additions to their list, though - e.g., I'd have added absurdlycool.com to it just 'coz I loves me some freebies ...
posted by zeph at 2:33 PM on September 6, 2007

"Do you have a cell phone?"

Yeah. I've carried one since before SMS was widely available in the US, when most cells were analog-only; let's call it 13 years. I think in that time I've seen SMS used... five times? Be generous and call it ten?

"I hope you're joking..."

Up to a point, yes.

I do hear a lot of talk about how SMS is a big deal, but I don't actually ever see it in use. It's too easy to get an SMTP-capable handheld device to need to do crazy things like pay to receive and send each message, be subjected to message length limitations, and be restricted to phone numbers as an address space.

Thanks for the numbers, though!
posted by majick at 5:36 PM on September 6, 2007

For what its worth, majick, I send and receive about 5-10 sms messages a day. Where do they come from/go?

*My girlfriend and I are always exchanging short notes. Sometimes small affections, sometimes "I'm at this party. Its great!"

*Two of my best friends also use it all the time. They will also send "Going to X tonight with Y. Interested? I'm making reservations this second." and stuff like that. Short realtime messages. Who wants to craft an email?

*I have some alerts set up from: my bank, a caltrain list to alert me about late trains and low balances.

*I use Google SMS to get a business phone number.

I could get an smtp enabled device but I hate devices. I prefer my slim razr i can carry in my back pocket. I agree SMS seems to make no sense, until you actually use it....

I only started using SMS a couple years ago. Regarding bragging rights, I got my first cell phone in 1992. It was also a Motorola flip phone (but heavier and using LED) oddly enough.
posted by vacapinta at 9:39 PM on September 6, 2007

I think it's only you weirdo Americans who get to pay to *receive* stuff. Here in the UK only the senders pay, at least on every plan I've seen. The very idea just seems utterly obscene :/

I've used SMS for the past 5 years or so to receive Nagios notifications. Funnily enough, sending messages via a South African SMS gateway to a cheapo PAYG phone seems to be a lot more reliable than using a real pager.

The odd time I'm out and want to contact someone with a mobile, I normally use SMS too; I prefer it for the same reasons I prefer email - it's asynchronous, the other person doesn't have to pick up and talk to me immediately, and vice versa. SMTP? SMS is generally more likely to be receivable by another mobile, which is normally the entire point.
posted by Freaky at 4:42 AM on September 7, 2007