Mashup: Gawker Stalker

GawkerStalker is a mashup between Google Maps and people's sightings of celebrities.

The useful web: Walk it

Walkit.com is a lovely little site that encourages people to walk more.
It produces a map to get you to your destination as well as information about how long it will take you, how many calories you'll use and how much CO2 you'll avoid.

Mashup: Trippermap

Trippermap.com is a "web service that allows you to put a flash based world map on your own website or blog. Trippermap will then automatically search your photos at Flickr for location information and plot the photos on your own Trippermap, on your own website."

Mashup: News Map

Newsmap visually demonstrates the ever changing landscape of Google News (a news aggregator.)

Newsmap: "It divides information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe."

Mashups

Mashups is a phrase for something that has used an existing popular web tool (such as Google APIs or Flickr APIS ) and combined it with another level of functionalilty (e.g. adding an estate agent service to Google Maps).

The Wikipedia explanation: A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.

Find out How to create a Mashup
Discover the principles for making a good Mashup

Digg

Digg is a site that acts as a filter for the mass of web content. It allows people to submit interesting things that they've found online, the content is then rated by the Digg community, allowing the most popular content to surface to the home page. Essentially, it's about harnessing the power of communities to edit the enws.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is a system for storing links and then sharing them. It was created by a Joshua Schactter, who was working as an analyst on Wall Street. He also wrote a blog in his spare time. In order to keep on top of all the links that he got sent, he created a database in which to store them. He made this database accessable by a web page and allowed links to be tagged to make everything super findable.

LastFM

Last FM finds out what music you like (based on what you play) and then recommends other music that you might want to check out. It allows people to share their music with friends and create a sort of personalised radio show.

Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, says of that 'the fundamental idea of Wikipedia is to create and give away a freely licensed encylopaedia in every langauge in the world'.

Anyone can edit a Wikipedia article. And at its core, the site is about community.

It now has over 1.4 million articles and has, in a report by Nature, to be found to be about as accurate as the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Buzz: tweet volume

Twitter is a bit like having a mini blog from which you can tell the your friends what you're up to. You could almost think of it as a digital postcard. Sign up and give it a go (you can even use it inconjunction with Facebook).

Tweetvolume is a service that lets you see what people have been talking about on Twitter - it's an interesting way of seeing what phrases are buzzing.

Buzz: finding out what's being said on forums

Boardreader:
Find out what people are saying on messageboards. This service lets you search under your keyword, directing you to forums where talking about the brand you're researching.

Buzz: searching podcasts and YouTube

Podzinger:
This service lets you searches podcasts and You Tube for keywords that you enter. This could give you an interesting audio & video selection of top content that people are creating that references the brand you're researching.

Buzz: use the online community for quick polls

Yahoo Answers:
Ask a question to a responsive and broad community of people. This service can be used as a sort of online focus group and is great for testing out a hypothesis or getting a steer on perceptions. Depending on the question, you could make interesting graphs and support them with nice quotes.(A little tip, the simpler the questions, the better response rates).

Buzz: listening to what's being said on blogs

Blogpulse:
A brilliant service, this super easy to use. It enables you to assess blog buzz and contrast different terms. You can select a date range from one month to six months. You can also link off to blogs that refer to the terms you entered to find out a bit more about what the blogger is saying.


Icerocket:
Again this allows you to search blogs and rather nicely, what's being said on MySpace.

Buzz: measuring Search

Google Trends:
Enables you to look at volume of searches on different search terms. It plots them along a time line with news stories relevant to the keywords you input. By presenting this on a timeline, you can look at any trends over time. You can also compare different search terms and see what cities & regions people where people are searching from



Yahoo Resource Centre:
Another interesting way to look at what people are searching for. You can different search terms to see what people are looking for when they think about the brand.

For example look at the types of related terms people are using. Can you see any trends here - are they drilling down to specific products or are they more likely to search for a competitors product?

Go the here, then click on the term 'Keyword Search' in the right hand navigation.


GoogleFight:
A quick way of showing 'fame' online. Use this to make a direct comparison between two brands or products.