VentureBeat

If you don’t know what to do New Year’s Eve, take a look at the parties on Going, a year-old event listing site. Mos Def’s ‘Sneakers Required’ party may not be that exciting for you if you’re not in the site’s targeted demographic of 21-29 year olds, but nightlife is only one area where [...]

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Update
Scribd, the fast-growing site that lets you post documents online, has launched two free programs, one to let high-volume publishers organize and market their content, and another to allow educational institutions to store and share information securely online.
The company, which calls itself the “YouTube for documents,” says it has over 4 billion words contributed and [...]

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updated
Web of Trust is a plug-in for your browser that lets you rate all websites based on their trustworthiness, reliability, privacy and child safety.
It is similar in some ways to the market leader, McAfee’s SiteAdvisor, though WOT relies on help from you and me to do the ratings, not on web robots. SiteAdvisor uses automated [...]

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People per Hour is a London-based site that helps connect freelancers in various sectors with job opportunities. It’s much like Elance and Guru, though unlike those sites, it focuses less on tech, and more on administrative and other jobs.
Moreover, Elance and Guru serve full-time professional freelancers. People Per Hour serves people who may only have [...]

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Investing social network The UpDown has a slightly different take on investment communities than the likes of Marketocracy, Covestor, and others (see coverage of others here, here, and here). Users invest a simulated portfolio starting with $1 million and are paid based on their ability to consistently out-perform the S&P 500. And users who refer [...]

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Pikluk aims to create a “subnet”–a walled-off part of the web–for pre-teens by letting parents filter which websites and email addresses their children can access.
While other products manage either web browsing (Net Nanny and KidRocket) or email (ZooBuh), Pikluk does both. But unlike competitor Children’s Internet, which has a monthly fee and filters sites [...]

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If you’ve ever wanted to send a personalized e-video card to someone, Rattlebox is for you.
The site lets you browse a variety of videos based on categories such as Birthdays, Holidays, Thanks, Sorry, Feel Better, and Most Popular. When you find one you want to send, you enter your email address, your personalized message [...]

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If you want to share your travels with friends and family check out Driftr. The service is in alpha testing, but you can request an invitation.
Driftr lets you detail your past trips or those in progress, ranking places to eat, places to stay and attractions. It includes a blog for each day of the trips [...]

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SendShield, a new software plug-in from Unedged Software, is a fast and easy way to strip your email attachments (Word, Excel, Powerpoint files) of all the meta data or other hidden comments inserted during the creation process.
This can save you from revealing embarrassing edits or, more importantly, contractual issues sensitive to you or your company. [...]

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Flashphone is offering a quirky free VoIP service that lets you make three calls of three minutes in length per day to most countries.
The list of countries this Russian-based company serves is here. Three minutes is pretty short, which may be what kills this company’s chance of spreading virally. It’s just too limiting, and there [...]

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