Some Sites I'm Checking Out

Me.dium: My nephew invited me to this one. It lets you have conversations with connections who are on the same website as you. I’m wondering how useful it is, especially since so many of the sites I go to involve conversations already, like Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail. Could be fun on sites like ESPN and Mets.com though. I’ll check it out. My user name’s davidberkowitz if you use it (reach out with yours as well).
Twine: Someone asked to connect here. I haven’t seen enough value out of this to really bookmark much here but I’m open to giving it a shot as it evolves.
YouBundle: Actually, I haven’t checked this out yet since it seems to require some time to “bundle” stuff (okay, maybe not much time, but some time to give it thought). TechCrunch bills it as a more wiki-style version of editor-powered search engine Mahalo. I can wait a bit on this one.
Yahoo Fire Eagle: This should make it easier to take advantage of location-based services. It already taps into Dopplr, Twitter (with Firebot), Movable Type, and other sites and applications. This test is still early, though I’m a big fan of apps that can operate behind the scenes, integrating other services automatically, without creating more work on my part.
Socialmatic: I had so many questions when signing up. Why does the site look like some get rich quick scheme? How come the About Us page isn’t working? If it allows you to share bookmarks on 13 sites at once, why doesn’t it tell you which ones? Why does it require your physical address? When I did register, I quickly regretted it. First of all, you need to register at all 13 sites first. There’s no reason to have bookmarks at all of them unless you’re trying to game search engines, which is why it staggers submissions. This is a service that should not be used.
Xobni: I kept trying to use this but Outlook would slow down too much, and this was with Outlook already being way too slow. Now that Outlook’s working better for me, I’m interested in seeing if this makes me smarter about how I go about managing my communication.
Toluu: The premise here is to aggregate feeds you’re reading and then match you up with others who enjoy similar content so you can discover more of what you might love. It didn’t match me up with anyone right away once I imported my Google Reader feeds so I’ll have to check back, but my problem right now is too many feeds, not too few.
Posterous: TechCrunch says it “might be the simplest blogging platform to date,” and I’ll agree here. Email post@posterus.com to create the blog, and then email it to post, and you can add attachments like MP3s and images. I can’t imagine I’ll be updating mine too much, but it’ll be fun to toy around with.
Dopplr: I use this fairly regularly. It becomes even more interesting for me just to keep track of where I’m going, though occasionally the social uses come into play, and it should become more valuable as the network effect kicks in – more people, more value. One new features: public profiles, customizable with as much or as little as you want to share; I decided to keep a fair amount public on mine.