Neither of these are groundbreaking or new by any means, but they are both still really cool and I’m not sure why everyone doesn’t jump on them rather than the silliness and uselessness of stuff like Twitter (alright, maybe Twitter isn’t, I haven’t used it, but the whole concept does seem rather silly to me).

First, there is last.fm, a music logging website. You download a completely safe and ad-free program. Every time you play music on your computer, the last.fm program (which hardly takes up any memory) icons comes on the lower right hand tray and logs the music, posting it to your online profile. You can then look through and see the top tracks and top artists you’ve listened to, which is useless information, but very interesting nonetheless.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg. You can also add your friends, a la any social networking site, where you can see your music compatibility rating and also what they have been listening to. It also provides you with bands and artists that it think you may like based on what you listen to and also each band and artist’s profile contains links to the pages of similar sounding bands. Of course, the majority of band and artist pages also contain samples and sometimes complete songs to their music. I would say that nearly half of the music I “discovered” this past year was due to last.fm. It has been an invaluable music resource.

Check last.fm out right here and feel free to add me or post your profile link in the comments.

The other site is called Good Reads. There are many sites out there that log what you read, but this seems to be the cream of the crop (and many great authors have profiles on the site and keep it updated with what they are reading). There is plenty there from user book reviews, to ratings, to author profiles, to user-submitted quotes from every book you can imagine, to trivia games, to event information, writing tips, videos, discussion groups, etc. It is well worth checking out if you are a reader and enjoy keeping track of what you read.

Check out Good Reads right here and feel free to add me here too!

In future wars, battles won’t be won with smart missiles or sniper rifles. No, it will be won with information and the collection and sharing of said information. Support your country today with one of these fine propaganda posters that encourage net neutrality, responsible Tweeting and the use of great apps like Google Earth!

a few more beneath the fold…

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Twitter has hit the mainstream. The “social media” tool recently celebrated its third birthday (congratulations if you remember last years Macworld event which killed Twitter and introduced the “Fail Whale” to the masses. If you remember that, you’re officially a Twitter grandfather/mother) but it seems as if recently the micro-blogging application has picked up steam and folks you’d never expect are now talking about Twitter like it’s the next best thing. Soon your cool grandmother who knows all about YouTube is going to want in on the action.

So how do you explain the inner workings of Twitter? Why, you show them a video of course! This one is pretty funny and features a hysterical interpretation of the previously mentioned Fail Whale. This is classic people. Classic I tell you!