A New Way of Blogging - email ONLY

No registration, just email post@posterous.com, and instantly get a http://yourname.posterous.com blog. You can then sent photos, Mp3s and other files through the same email address to post@posterous.com, and they will appear on your blog. Not only that, you get 1Gb free storage, and you can search the entire posterous community for uploaded files, and easy downloading image galleries. Give it a try!

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If you can only access 3 websites in the world, what will they be?

As I was reading the RSS in my Google Reader and complain about China's block on feeds, a random question came to my mind:

If you can only access THREE websites in the world (for the rest of your life), what will they be?

(excluding RSS reader, start-page, etc., which contain contents from multiple sources)



Google, my most often used website is out of the question because it doesn't really contain anything on its own. Even Google Books don't really have many full-length ones to my interest.

My second thought is New York Times. It's rich in information, and a good combination of hard news and leisure reads.

Then naturally came BBC. Sometimes I think the amount of stuff available on BBC is crazy: from streaming music and videos to language learning, to history and technology. Britain doesn't need an open university, every piece of learning is contained in BBC. If BBC is more political-biased, it might just become a Big Brother. This thought is scary, really. Because if I'm only going to use 3 websites in the world for the rest of my life, I don't want to desperately fall into the hands of the Brit-Americans.

In the meantime, a couple of music websites slip through my mind, like Naxos Library, where, with a subscription, you can streaming millions of classical and jazz CDs. Also YouTube, with a considerable and growing collection of education materials, documentaries, and classical music.

I also lingered over some shopping websites like Amazon, ABE books, Etsy, etc. that used to save my so much trouble (and give me so much delight) - living without them will be hard.

And should I throw in Apple.com? I still have to update, right? Or... if I can only use 3 websites, maybe I don't need updates at all, after all, where are the risks?



The decision has been made. Okay, the Great Firewall of China, take the rest and leave me:

1. Zenbe (it's a beta email service with gorgeous interface, build-in easy-access To-do-list and calendar, and incoorperated Zenbe page which allows you to share stuff with friends, etc. Overall much better than Gmail. I might blog about it next time)

2. BBC

3. iTunes Music Store





Now, what's your selection?

10+ Best of the Web Tools/Apps

Emailing

Big attachment solution: SendAlong lets you send files of any size with your email. No installatioin required, no spyware, Free trial. PipeBytes is an alternative, it's more bittorrent-like.

Email-tracking solution: SpyPig sends you a notice when a person has opened your email. You can choose different tracking images, including a complete blank one, which makes it impossible for the receiver to discover that you're trying to track the email.

Social Networking

If you are like me, that is, a total social person, you should give socialthing a try. It lets you see a stream of content updates from your social networks: digg, facebook, twitter, lastfm, delicioius, pownce, you name it. Whenever your friend has a new update in any of these accounts, you'll get noticed in your "lifestream". So without checking all of the websites, socialthing keeps you notified of everything happening in your network. It's just sweet!

Presentation

Yes, it's true that there are a number of impressive online presentation makers: Google, Zoho are the big ones, with a complete set of office equivalent web tools. But in terms of presentation, Empressr is easily the best - interactive, powerful, and deals with graphics really well.

Sketchcast is actually a recorder for your sketching process, but I find it useful when doing a presentation too.

Graphic Editing

I have yet to decide between Graphita , Splashup and Picnik, all three are nicely designed, and useful in their own way.

Collaborating

To-do lists, stick-its, photos and documents, everything is just beautifully incorporated with Stixy. It's THE nicest online collaboration tool I've used. Give it a try.

Website Building

Doodlekit, it's the best free website builder I can find.

British Museum New Website

The British Museum has launched a new website. Having worked in the museum as a volunteer guide in freshmen year, I always feel a kinship with this magnificent museum and its grand collections. The new website offers plenty of information on the exhibits and is very easy to navigate.


On a side note, China's famous terra-cotta warriors are currently on display in the museum up until April 6, and as a Chinese, I can say this: this is a very very rare occasion such a great number of terra-cotta warriors travel oversea, so if you are in London, don't miss out. Also, they've got a beautiful flash movie specially made for this exhibit.

My 2007 in Numbers

I have watched 218 movies, listened to 240 albums, read 72 books (sigh...) according to Douban, a Chinese version of Librarything, which allows users to keep track of not only books, but music and movies, keep them in categories: to-watch, watched, or to-listen, listened, etc.

Published 14 music reviews; 5 issues of TOUCH ( school magazine) ; put on 5 concerts; went to South Korea twice; won 1 debate champion; won 2 Best Speaker awards; made 100+ new friends according to facebook; read 30000+ feeds according to Google Reader; wrote 296 blog posts...

Here is a collage of the CDs I consumed in 2007 generated using Douban API. ( not complete, because some album covers are missing in the system)