Sociosophy

GigaPan is a website dedicated to displaying panoramic photography. Their mission is kind of interesting:

GigaPan will help bring distant communities and peoples together through images that have so much detail that they are, themselves, the objects of exploration, discovery and wonder.

It might be too soon for a blockquote in a post, but that stuck out when reviewing this site, mainly because; Yes, the website interface for viewing panoramic images is cool - Yes, there’s a means to comment on photos, and update your profile - but more over, their main goal of the site is to make the world a little bit smaller with enormous photos uploaded by their community members.

Gigapan was developed by Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group, with support from Google… so their footer states, and the site design is by DeepLocal, also in their footer. Some awfully steep credentials to be pasted in a 6 pixel font-face along a stretch of blue on the bottom of the site. This is definitely worth checking out.

For everyone with a lil Dr. Ruth in’m, YouMe.us is the place for you. Giving and receiving a little relationship advice from every day common folk, such as yourself, as opposed to getting it from some therapist with a clipboard? Sounds like fun! Who wants to wait on hold to talk to Dr. Dru on Loveline anyway?

This site is for those of you who either have relationship troubles, or want to give advice to others about them. The responses and issues appear to be fairly genuine, I haven’t seen any trolls, or spammers, and there’s quite a bit of activity going on. YouMe.us is set up with lots of Web 2.0 goodness, polls, profiles, voting mechanisms, and of course - it’s all user-driven content.

Additionally, the more active you are… the more… (I’m hesitating typing this)… FlowerPower you get.  Also, the more skilled you get with their site? (this feature’s cool) - The help icons stop displaying! That feature in itself should be spread across the Internet like wild fire.

Matchmaking, 2.0 style. Paird is a Social Networking site that allows you to match people to each other (but not yourself). The clever, quick interface is actually quite fun. I spent a good 5 minutes on this just clicking faces - which apparently submits them as a match for the person… A tad superficial, sure - but still, mildly entertaining enough to keep you busy for a few minutes. The jist of it from their About Us

no registration is needed to participate, simply visit paird.com and start matching people. as you create these “pairs” each user will have the person they were matched to placed in an “inbox” for them to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down too.

And there’s also a points system - for how you do when matching others. Nothing much more to say about it than that though, it’s simple, quick and clever. In fact, it’s speed matchmaking, perhaps they should partner with a speed dating service.

For all things geek, tech, and ninja; head to Thaumatocracy, a blog from Dan Tentler, San Diego BarCamp organizer, photographer, business owner (Aten Syndicate/Photography), and friend of Sociosophy’s author (that’s me).

To be up on current affairs; he was recently interviewed by Wired.com for his exemplary reporting skills of the San Diego fires via Twitter and Flickr, as well as his own blog. As ninjas do, Tentler stayed within the evac zone to report on the happenings of the fire, as well as performing fire watches for home owners, doing journalistic photography of the devastation, and keeping all of us not at ground zero in the loop.

Normally, Thaumatocracy is filled with “linky posts” of web findings of the obscure and interesting; as well as the down right awesome, and provides an inclusive means to stay on top of the Internet pop-culture.

I’m only partially into the idea of monetization of a blog, and if it needs to be done, or if it’s desired to be done - more like - than, I’d suggest doing it with some Web 2.0 flare. WidgetBucks is more targeted and interactive than most advertising banner campaigns you can plant on your site, hoping for a few dollars. Personally? I never click on net-ads - I rarely even notice them. So for me to post about an ad company? Well, there’s something special here:

Dynamic, contextual widgets act as content (vs. ads) that more effectively targets your users, not the masses

… and there’s the selling point. An ad that’s actually content-useful. Something more than just some content relative Google AdWord that resides on a page just to fill space, these are… well… widgets. I like the idea of placement of interactive, qualified, quality widgets - and if they turn a buck to support a blog? All the better.