Spot Cool Stuff: Websites

The Dollar ReDe$ign Project

Spot Cool Stuff — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:52:38 +0000

The U.S. dollar—official tender in the United States as well as Panama, Liberia, East Timor and a handful of other countries—is one of the world’s most widely used currencies. Its bills are also widely regarded as one of the world’s ugliest. To help spur a monetary makeover Richard Smith, a creative strategy consultant, launched a website to collect ideas for new notes: The Dollar ReDe$ign Project.

Of the various designs that have been submitted to the site, one of Spot Cool Stuff’s favorites most also happen to be the most controvertial.

That design, by the London and San Francisco-based firm Dowling Duncan, features President Obama on its $1 bill. Hence the controversy.

Now, before you leave an angry political comment below please take note: Spot Cool Stuff is strictly non-partisan. We don’t like the design idea because Barack Obama makes an appearance.

(In fact, we don’t think any living person should be honored on a currency note and if one was we’d rather see a non-politican like, say, Maya Angelou or Neil Armstrong or Snoop Dog.)

To our eye the Dowling Duncan design hits the perfect balance between looking artistic and authoritative. We also appreciate how the bill’s different sizes are helpful to the visually impaired, the bright colors make the notes easy to distinguish and the vertical orientation allows one to easily see what bills one has in one’s wallet. Plus the dollar value on each bill corresponds to the design—the 1st American-American president on the $1, the 50 states on the $50 and so on. The $10 note listing the constitution’s first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, serves both as a statement of American values and useful legal info.

Disagree with our assessment? Click over to The Dollar ReDe$ign Project website and vote for your favorite. Among the currency redesigns proposed are notes that feature powerhouse American brands (like the NFL and, to Pepsi’s chagrin, Coca-Cola), abstract art and the moon landing. Check out some samples, below.

And if you have your own idea for new dollar notes you have until September 6th, 2010 to submit it. The person whose redesign receives the most votes gets an Apple iPad. For free. No greenbacks needed.

published: 19 Aug 2010

GO TO THE SITE | JOIN US ON TWITTER / FACEBOOK |

Dowling Duncan U.S. Dollar Currency Redesign

Other Submissions From The Dollar ReDe$ign Project

For reasons that surpass our understanding, lawyers have advised us to make clear that none of the bills depicted on this page are legal tender. Click on the image to go to the corresponding page on the The Dollar ReDe$ign Project website.

See more coolness on our design blog

8 Free Websites For Expanding Your Music Horizons

Spot Cool Stuff — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:05:50 +0000

Time was that it was difficult to hear music that didn’t make it onto your local radio stations. Which is to say, it was difficult to hear the vast majority of music available.

Not so today. The internet is the great music equalizer. If you are looking to expand your musical horizons, or simply hear a cool tune you’ve never heard before, here are eight of our favorite sites. Though some have pay options, each site can be enjoyed free of charge:

Musicovery. This site is free?! Audiophiles who want to discover new music, or simply don’t know what they are in the mood to listen to, would pay a lot for Musicovery.com. (And, indeed, the site has a premium membership that streams higher quality music). What’s so cool about Musicovery is the interface. Select the genre(s) you want to listen to and your mood from a matrix of energetic to calm, dark to positive, and your suggested song starts playing on a page with a a sort of flow chart to similar tunes.

TuneGlue is similar to Musicovery in that you’ll get a visual representation of bands that are of similar music styles. The service is powered by Last.fm which is a great site in it’s own right for finding new music—type in an artist you like and you’ll get great musical recommendations.

Seeqpod is like a music search engine with streaming audio player. Type in an artist and Seeqpod will return all the tracks by that artist that are available on the internet. And we do mean all. Our search for “Kate Nash” came back with nearly 2,700 hits. Through Seeqpod you can play the whole of every track. If available, you’ll also get links to that artist’s MySpace, Wikipedia and streamSurf pages as well as links to buy the track, buy the ring tone and see upcoming tour dates. For each artist there’s also a “Discoveries” tab where you’ll get song recommendations.

Contrastream is a site where indie bands—especially in the soul, folk and hip-hop genres—upload songs. Site users then vote on their favorite songs, Digg-style. Most songs are available for free download though not always at the highest quality.

OWL. What a cool idea for a site! You upload the MP3 file of a song you like. Then select the part of that song you like most. Then OWL will analyze that snippet of music and use it to suggest other songs you may like. We’ve found their suggestions very hit & miss. But it’s always fun to see what OWl comes up with.

Pandora misleadingly claims to provide “internet radio.”The site is much cooler than that. You type in one or more of your favorite musical artists and Pandora will stream through a playlist of tunes it thinks you’ll like. Unlike normal internet radio, you hear all the songs from the start and have the ability to pause and skip tracks. You can also give songs a thumbs up or down. It is well worth creating a free Pandora account because in time the site will get smarter about serving up music to your tastes.

One Llama is certainly not the only aggregator of internet radio stations. But it is our favorite. (Many a post on Spot Cool Stuff have been written to musical accompaniment provided by One Llama). The site generally provides high quality streams, which is one reason why we like it. That the site lists each station’s recently played tracks is another. Most of all, we like One Llama’s system of browsing stations—find a stream to listen to by genre, artist, popularity or location of origin.

updated: 17 Aug 2010

DOWNLOAD SONGS ON AMAZON / iTUNES | JOIN US ON TWITTER / FACEBOOK

Do you have a favorite source of music on the internet? We’ll listen to your comment below:

A Look Into the Future That (Mostly) Never Was

Spot Cool Stuff — Tue, 04 May 2010 03:41:27 +0000

• The Statue of Liberty will be plastered with advertisements.

• Men will have flying machines built into their clothes and use them to pursue women; women will use the same to escape from men.

• New York City will be covered by a giant man-made roof from which humans will control the weather below.

• Having sex with robots will be commonplace; technovirgins (humans who have only had sex with robots) will proliferate.

Those are not predictions about the future. They are past predictions—from 1885, 1901, 1949 and 1997, respectively—about the word of today. They, and many more past visions of the future, are collected on the website Paleofuture.

The cool Paleofuture blog is the work of one Mr. Matt Novak, a self-discribed accidental expert on retro-futurism.

Novak calls his blog “a look into the future that never was.” And, indeed, many of the past predictions discussed on his site have not come to pass. Not yet, anyway. In 1901 some people thought that the United States would incorporate Canada and that the American president elected in 2001 would come from Montreal, USA. 1924 article that predicted that everyone would be driving flying cars in the “near future.” As for the 1995 piece in Newsweek declaring the internet to be hype because no one will ever shop or book plane tickets online—it was not so much with the accuracy.

As funny as some of the wildly wrong predictions found on Paleofuture are, we found it more fascinating to read about those preminitions that were right. Or, mostly right. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke envisioned HDTV and the emergence of 3D summer blockbusters. Two different early-1990s concept videos—one from Australia Telecom and another from Pacific Bell—anticipated the emergence of Skype. Granted, the man who prophesied frozen dinners also foresaw plastic skyscrapers; and the group of 1893 futurists who predicted larger governments and the emergence of immigration as a major issue (and foresaw blogs, sort of) also forecast that the population of Denver would today equal that of New York City. Still, some attempts to foretell the future were rather impressive.

And that has Spot Cool Stuff in the mood to do some prognosticating of our own:

If you are interested in history, or curious about future, then definitely check out the Paleofuture website. We predict that you’ll like it.

published: May 2010

GO TO THE SITE | FOLLOW US ON TWITTER |

Click on the photos below to see the corresponding Paleofuture post:

Flying Machines (circa 1885)

The Flying Burglars of the Future (1910)

Science on the March (1952)

Computer Games of the Future (1981)

GO TO THE SITE | FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

No More Problems Sending Outgoing SMTP Email

Spot Cool Stuff — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:29:11 +0000

Spot Cool Stuff is writing these words from one of our favorite coffee shops. We love this place’s drink selections, its vibe, its river views—and its free wifi. But there’s one problem: We can’t send emails from here. Or, at least we couldn’t until recently.

If you’ve used your laptop at a restaurant, library, hotel, airport or other place with a public internet connection chances are you’ve run into similar outgoing email issues. The problem is that some internet connections block particular outgoing ports and/or connections to SMTP servers. This isn’t an issue using website-based mail services like Gmail or Hotmail. It can be when using an email program like Outlook, Eudora or Mac Mail.

Happily, there’s an easy, efficient solution to these email troubles: SMTP2GO.

Prior to stumbling upon SMTP2GO, Spot Cool Stuff tried a half dozen other email work arounds including setting up our own local email server. Some of our attempted solutions were complicated, some were expensive, and none worked 100% of the time.

The beauty of SMTP2GO is its simplicity. Sign up for an SMTP2GO account (currently on sale for a mere US$1.99 per month), put the SMTP info you are provided into your mail program (SMTP2GO has easy-to-follow instructions on how to do it) and register the email addresses you want to send mail out from.

That’s it. You use the exact same mail program and exact same email addresses you currently do. When you are at home or someplace else that doesn’t block your SMTP ports you can choose to use your old SMTP server (the Mac Mail program will automatically adjust to this) or continue using SMTP2GO’s.

We’ve tested out SMTP2GO from dozens of public internet sites that previously blocked our outgoing email and were able to send from every one.

So, friends of Spot Cool Stuff, go ahead and send us your email. With SMTP2GO we’ll be able to write you back.

LEARN MORE & SIGN UP | FOLLOW US ON TWITTER |

FAQ Direct from the SMTP2GO Website

SMTP2Go is best explained by the following commonly asked questions and answers:

What is SMTP2Go?
SMTP is the protocol used to send email over the Internet. When you send an email it gets sent to your SMTP server, which then forwards it to the recipient of your email. Obviously in order to send email you need an SMTP server that works! SMTP2Go is an SMTP server that works all the time, wherever you are in the world.

Why would I need SMTP2Go?
You might have experienced difficulties sending emails from your laptop or PDA from more than one location (e.g. at home, at work, staying in a hotel, visiting another city or country). This is because the SMTP server assigned to you by your ISP only actually works when you’re connected to the Internet through that ISP. As soon as you connect to the Internet through a different network you lose your ability to send emails! This is a security measure used by ISPs to prevent people sending spam through their servers, but it’s also an annoying problem for laptop and PDA users who want to be able to use their email on the go.

Why can’t I just use Hotmail?
Many mobile users switch backwards and forwards between their regular email program and a web-based email program like Hotmail. Obviously it’s possible to use a web-based program anywhere in the world, but these systems have their own drawbacks. Not only do you have to send mail from a highly unprofessional email address (steve8564@hotmail.com, for instance), but it’s also hard to keep track of your emails when you’re hopping between your different email accounts. Who needs the drama? Wouldn’t it be better to just use the same account, and the same email program, wherever you are? That’s what we think.

Can’t I just change my SMTP server to the SMTP server of my current network?
You could, if you could find it. Often these can be extremely difficult to find, or simply not available at all. You also need to do this for each and every different location. Every time you want to send an email… you first need to find the SMTP server. Tedious? Very! Using SMTP2Go means changing your settings once, and then never having to change them again. SMTP2Go works anywhere, regardless of location or service provider.

What if I have more than one email address I want to send from? Can I use my work email address and my home email address?
Yes, we’ve thought of that! SMTP2Go lets you send emails from up to 5 different email addresses, from the same account. This means that you can continue to send work emails from your work email address, and personal emails from your home email address (or any other email addresses) all in the one account. Businesses with more than 5 email addresses – see our corporate accounts.

Do I have to use an @smtp2go.com email address?
No – in fact we don’t even offer them. You keep using the same email address, or addresses, you always use!

What about attachments? Can I send them?
Absolutely! You can send any attachments, up to 20MB in size per email.

What happens if I try to send more emails than my plan’s daily limit?
If this happens, the email will stay in your Outbox on your own computer until the next day when you attempt to send again. We’ll also email you if you ever reach your limit, with the option of upgrading.

Is SMTP2Go easy to set up?
Setting up SMTP2Go is no more difficult than entering your email settings for your regular ISP. You simply type smtp2go.com into your email program’s settings. Just to make it easier, though, we’ve got setup instructions for most mail programs (both Windows and Mac)

LEARN MORE & SIGN UP | FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Visit our travel ideas blog

The Cool Comics of The Oatmeal

Spot Cool Stuff — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:00:08 +0000

What’s the proper way to use a semicolon?

How fast can cats run?

- and -

How long could you survive after kicking a bear in the balls?

These and other burning questions are answered in fun graphical form on a Spot Cool Stuff website favorite: The Oatmeal.

The site is the creatively genius work of a Seattle graphic designer who never seems to explain the origin’s of his site’s name. Not that it matters. The Oatmeal would be engaging under any moniker.

Our favorite pages on Oatmeal are the oversized comics, the ones full of detail that require quite a bit of scrolling to get through.

Some Oatmeal comics are absurdist, like the depiction of how everything goes to hell during a zombie apocalypse—turns out things wouldn’t be too bad if the non-zombies simply decided to stay home with shotguns pointed at their front doors.

Other comics are more real world informative, albeit not in a life-changing sort of way. Pilgrims on the Mayflower stopped at Plymouth Rock rather than continuing on to Virginia because they ran out of beer? Who knew?

In addition to its full-fledged comics, Oatmeal has several fun quizzes, a shop for buying related books and posters and a collection of snarky emails the site creator has received.

Everything on the site is creative fun. Making Oatmeal a tasty treat any time of day.

published: Mar 2010

GO TO THE SITE | FOLLOW US ON TWITTER |

Click on the image to see the entire page on Oatmeal:

GO TO THE SITE | FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Best Spot Cool Stuff Website Reviews of 2009

Spot Cool Stuff — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:33:16 +0000

We spend nearly every day searching out cool websites. And nearly every day we are amazing at the possibilities the world wide web offers.

Our favorite website review posts from the past year:

#10: Cool Websites For Home Remodeling & Redecoration

Our choice websites for locating a quality contractor, finding home furnishings and (perhaps more important) being inspired.

#9: Strange & Wonderful Maps

Our review of a blog collecting all manner of funny, fascinating and fantastic maps.

#8: Eight Cool Flickr Photostreams

The Flickr photo sharing website has drawn tens of thousands of photographers to share their camera-lens view of the world. Here are eight of our favorites.

#7: Book Dog- and Cat-Friendly Hotels Online

In partnership with our travel blog we tested every hotel booking website we could find for their prowess at finding pet-friendly accommodations. Here’s our review of those sites we found to be best.

#6: Eight Free Websites For Expanding Your Music Horizons

The internet opens up a world of music possibilities the days of radio dominance could never offer. Our eight favorite sites for finding new tunes.

#5: Cool Websites To Use While Traveling

Most people know websites where they can book or plan a trip (like, to take a random example, Spot Cool Stuff’s travel site). Here’s a collection of websites you may find useful during your journey.

#4: The Best Online Dating Site For You

An online yenta showdown between Match.com, eHarmony, Just For Lunch and Lavalife.

#3: Five Incredible Photoblogs

We absolutely love these photography-filled sites, including one that bills itself as The 100 Year Old Blog

#2: Best Website Hosts for a Wordpress Blog

These four website hosts offer low prices and high reliability. They are also designed to make setting up a Wordpress blog easy! (If you are proficient at Wordpress, or are planning to set up some other sort of website, check out our review of the best eco-friendly website hosts.)

#1: 8 Weird and Wacky Items Sold on Amazon.com

Land Cruisers, coffin beds, wedding chapels and uranium ore are among the bizarre items you can buy on Amazon.com. Really!

Coming in 2010

A few of the posts we have planned for the coming year:

• a look at online-only museums;

• a review of the best websites for printing creative & unusual business cards;

• a comparison of Netflix v Blockbuster.

And, of course, we’ll continue to bring you humorous blogs, the best travel websites and reviews of cool online stores.

Stay updated on all our website posts by following us on Twitter, subscribing to our RSS feed, signing up to receive our posts by email (in the brown box at the top right of every SCS Website page) or simply returning to our cool websites blog often. Thanks!

published: Jan 2010

Where to Watch Classic TV Commercials Online

Spot Cool Stuff — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:43:18 +0000

Television commercials. Watching them today is an annoyance. But there’s something about seeing commercials from 30~40~50 years ago that can provide a nostalgic and interesting look into bygone times.

Here’s our selection of websites where you can watch classic television commercials for free:

AdViews

When the students and faculty of Duke University aren’t busy watching basketball they apparently spend their time collecting vintage tv commercials. The commercials on their AdViews site are well organized by product, company and year. Unfortunately, you can’t watch them in a web browser. Instead the commercials on AdViews must be downloaded via iTunes.

YouTube

Unsurprisingly, YouTube has a huge collection of vintage TV ads. The problem is that they are completely uncategorized. Some of the videos are titled something like “classic TV commercial” but generally you need to know what you are looking for. Happily, some sites have tried cataloging old commercials on YouTube. Our favorite of these is Retro TV Ads. Another is Classic Commercials though that site’s design is rather frustrating.

USA TV Ads

This site has the largest online collection of TV commercials—more than one million! Most of the ads here are from the last few years but there is a special section for older commercials.

Library of Congress / Coca-Cola

The United States Library of Congress has microsite devoted to the advertising of that most American of products: Coca-Cola. In addition to viewing vintage Coke ads you can get some of the history behind them and see a timeline of Cola-Colas advertising themes going all the way back to 1886.

Retro Junk

There’s a nice little collection of vintage TV ads on this site organized by decade: 1970s, 80s and 90s. This is probably the easiest site of all those on this list to have fun browsing around though we wish Retro Junk included ads from the 60s and 50s too.

Super Bowl Ads

The era of special Super Bowl advertisements haven’t been around long enough for those commercials to be considered “vintage.” But how could we not this site to our list? It not only has every Super Bowl ad since 1998 but also related articles and info.

More About Vintage TV Ads

Classic TV Commercials: Ones We Never Forgot

If you are truly a fan of classic commercials—or aspire to be—there’s an excellent 3-disc collection on DVD with 337 of them.

Hiya Kids! A 50’s Saturday Morning Box

Howdy Doody, Flash Gordon, Lassie, Ding Dong School, The Roy Rogers Show—episodes from these and 15 other vintage shows are collected on this 3-disc DVD set.

The Golden Age of Advertising

A series of books by Jim Heimann that offers a fascinating behind-the-scens look at advising in a particular decade.

Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns

If vintage American political advertising is your special interest there’s no better book than this one by Darrell West; it looks at ads from every major (and some minor) election campaigns, 1952 through 2008.

FIND DEALS ON TELEVISION DVD and BLURAY DISCS | FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

The Website Where Kids Design Their Stuffed Animals

Spot Cool Stuff — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:43:01 +0000

Spot Cool Stuff laments the general direction children’s toys have taken away from requiring imagination. Surely, part of the issue has been the proliferation of online gaming websites aimed at kids.

But if websites have been part of the problem maybe they can be part of the solution? That’s the idea behind the Israel-based start-up Shidonni.

Shidonni has a variety of fun, imagination-enhansing online games for children. Kids can draw animals, for example, upload the drawing to the Shindonni site, and then have their animal creation roam around the virtual Shindonni world for others users to see.

And here’s our favorite part: On Shidonni you can take a child’s drawing of an imaginary creature and then turn it into a real life stuffed animal!

It’s easy: Simply create a free Shidonni account, have your child draw their animal (either a profile or straight-ahead picture), then go to the website’s “One-of-a-Kind Planet” area and place your order for $80. A stuffed, three-dimentional, 12-inch (30cm) high rendition of the animal in your child’s drawing will arrive in the mail a week or two later. Check out what Shidonni’s animal drawing and manufacture process looks like in the video below.

Shidonni has won a Parent’s Choice Gold Award and is unreservedly declared a Most Excellent Choice by Spot Cool Stuff. But the most important endorsement will come from your children.

published: Dec 2009

GO TO THE SITE | FOLLOW US ON TWITTER |

GO TO THE SITE | FOLLOW US ON TWITTER