Interesting links for July 8th through July 18th:

• How 16 Electronics Companies Got Their Names – I somehow just always assumed that a lot of these companies were just named after someone, but most of them have pretty interesting origins.
• The Wertzone: Multimedia storytelling in support of TVs and movies – Great article about how storytelling evolved from just one medium to multiple media. Formerly everything other than the main movie/tv show wasn't considered cannon (just filler). For example, anything that happened in the Star Trek books never happened in the TV show. But slowly that changed, with other platforms being used as part of the story. I loved Babylon 5, but I didn't know that all Babylon 5 books and comics are actually part of the complete story. Or that the answer to "What do the numbers mean in Lost?" has actually already been answered in the ARG.
• 10 Things We’ve Learned From Failed Threequels – Film School Rejects – The sequel to a sequel: there aren't really that many good ones out there. Here's a great list of 10 things those movies do wrong.
• iPhone Apps For Movie Geeks | /Film – I don't have an iPhone yet, but this is a handy list of movie apps for those who have one. I wonder though it there are any UK based apps out there?

There’s a cool contest going on, run by Chris Cardinal and Threadless.com. The idea is to turn one of the Threadless T-shirt designs into a cake! To check out all the rules etc head on over to Threadcakes.com.

Here are a couple of amazing cakes some people have created:

Compare with the original design of “I Wish I Were”

Compare with the original design “The Apple”

Compare with the original design “Long Journey”

Compare with the original design “Catburger”

Compare with the original design “She Doesn’t Even Realize”

Compare with the original design “Capistrano Spring Break”

Compare with the original design “Camouflage”

There are loads more in the Threadcakes Gallery, but these were the best ones so far (in my humble opinion). The contest is open till August 3rd, so expect some more amazing cakes in the following weeks.

Interesting links for July 3rd through July 5th:

• Blade Runner and Spike and Angel’s House For Sale – The real name of this place is the Ennis House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and it's just so weird and quirky.
• Book Reviews (Sort of): Paradise Island, The New Mars, and The News Mars (A Family Vacation) by John L. Manning, Jr. – I got two of these books for review one and a half year ago, but they were just so bad, I couldn't even get past the first chapter. This review (although not really a review cause this blogger also barely made pass the first couple of chapters) explains exactly what's so bad about it.
• The top 250 best movies of all time Map – Interesting "tube map" style visualization of IMDB's Top 250 movies; are those really all 250 movies listed there?
• A Paper Craft Castle On the Ocean « Tokyobling’s Blog – Wow, now that's some serious origami!

Interesting links for June 25th through June 26th:

• 20 Effective Reflection Photos – Beautiful photos making great use of reflections. I love the one with the window in the puddle.
• Light Breakfast – A cool photo of the "lightest" breakfast.
• Mac Dock Icon Spelling – Screenshots of Mac docks with apps spelling out words.
• Jun Takahashi’s Graces – Cool exhibition photos of the "Graces", an imagined creation of designer Takahashi.

Interesting links for June 17th through June 23rd:

• Plastic Flashback: A visual history of the credit card. – Interesting little piece on the backstory of the credit card.
• The Uniform Project – 1 Dress, 365 Days. Cool project from a girl who's wearing the same dress for 365 days, but uses accessories/layers to create different outfits (not sure, but I also think there's the rule: no using the same accessory twice)
• The Usability of Passwords – Great post about the security of passwords. If you've never understood why simple words like "sun" won't do as a password, read this. It also explains why "pass-phrases" are better than random letters/numbers.
• Grilla styling – Blog about the Grilla styling "game". Two girls, two cameras, 52 cards with random colours, countries, styles, etc on it. Walk into a store, take 2 cards and you've got 10 minutes to create that look. I loved the combos the cards create like "Welsh Navy" or "Gold Emo".
• Alice and Kev – Brilliant experiment about Alice and Kev, two homeless characters created in Sims 3. It makes me want to try out Sims 3 for myself and create my own characters.

Shopping nowadays is different than what it used to be. For me, an afternoon of leisurely shopping means looking around for clothes and shoes, and trying them on. Everything else though? Gadgets, books, games, holidays, everything else I do via the internet. This doesn’t necessarily mean I actually buy it online, but I’ll always know exactly what I want to get and where I have to get it.

The days of listening to a shop clerk and trusting his ‘expert’ advice are practically over. For almost everything I buy, I’ll always first do my own online research, reading reviews of other people, figuring out which product does exactly what I want, and where the cheapest place is to buy it. I’ve had a couple of times now that I’ve researched a product so much that I knew more than the shop clerk and had to correct him a couple of times.

But I realised not everyone is that web savvy, and most may not even have the faintest idea where to start finding these online reviews. So for that reason, I give you this blog post. Mind you, these aren’t all the resources that are out there, not by far; I’m only scratching the surface with websites that I like to visit myself when doing this type of “research”.

Amazon

Even though it’s not primarily a review site, Amazon is a useful tool to get general views about products. The main focus may seem books, games and DVDs, but you’ll find a lot of other items have pretty thorough reviews too. The reviews consist of 1 to 5 star ratings and a written review or a video of a user. I mainly like to use Amazon reviews to get that first impression of a product.

For simple items, like books or DVDs, I’ll keep it only to just Amazon, but If it’s something more gadgety (and more expensive) it’s only the first step. A problem in the past with the Amazon reviews though has been that anyone can leave a review, which led to authors giving themselves great reviews or fans giving competitors bad reviews. While it’s by far not the norm, keep that in mind when using these reviews. [Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany]

Reevoo

For those based in the UK, Reevoo is another interesting review website. Unlike Amazon (and most other review sites) Reevoo only allows people to publish a review, if they’ve gotten their product via one of their retail partners. The reviews itself though are quite limited, with users reviewing a product with only a couple of sentences of pros and cons, and a 1 to 10 score.

I mainly use Reevoo when I want a certain gadget, but have no idea what type, brand or even price range. Reevoo has a useful filter functionality for each category, so that you can refine your product search. For instance, in the Headphones category you can filter the price (£3-£10, £10-£20, etc), brand (Sennheiser, Philips, etc) and other applicable groups. It also has a nice price comparison of the different places where you can buy the product. What I’m not sure about though is whether the retailers mentioned in this list are only Reevoo’s retail partners; it doesn’t matter too much, cause a lot of the big brand cheaper retailers are listed. [Reevoo]

TestFreaks

I like to use TestFreaks to find more extensive reviews than Amazon or Reevoo. For starters, it splits the reviews into two groups: Expert Reviews and User Reviews. The Expert Reviews aggregates professional reviews from around the web, featuring reviews from blogs and online magazines. These reviews give much more technical analysis than your standard user reviews.

Besides the reviews, TestFreaks have some useful metrics, like the FreakScore: a weighted index of all aggregated expert and user reviews (expert reviews are given more value than user reviews, while older products and reviews are given less importance). It’s a great way to see what the hottest products are that people are actually talking about. Like Reevoo, TestFreaks also has a price comparison section, but is not limited to only the UK. [TestFreaks USA, TestFreaks UK]

Digital Photography Review

This website is specifically for photography, covering everything from the latest industry news to very detailed professional reviews on cameras and lenses. And with detailed, I mean: DETAILED. Some of them go so far as measuring the time it takes to switch on the camera and to take a photo. There are also sample photos, so that you can view the quality of the camera under different light circumstances. Finally, there’s an compare tool, where you can select various cameras and see the exact specifications of each of them side by side. [Digital Photography Review]

SkyScanner and Kayak

I don’t travel that much by plane, but when I do SkyScanner and Kayak are both useful sites to find the cheapest flights out there. SkyScanner offers a bit more flexibility in choosing the airports; for instance, I can get a list of all the different flights between UK and the Netherlands, without specifying which UK airport or which NL airport. Kayak on the other hand gives a more useful overview of which days are cheaper so that you can select the cheapest combo of depart/return flights. [SkyScanner, Kayak]

Bview

Bview doesn’t really offer reviews of products, but of businesses. It’s handy to find reviews of local businesses like plumbers or electricians. Besides that they also have vouchers for a huge bunch of different stores and restaurants. [Bview]

As I said before, this aren’t all the review sites out there; these are only the ones I use myself. Feel free to share any tips of sites that you use in the comments below.

Interesting links for June 16th:

• Picture of the Week: Legal Threat – Wow, some people really don't understand the ways of the internetz.
• For God’s Sake The Problem With The Star Wars Prequels Was Not Green Screen | The Movie Blog – Nope, the problem with the Star Wars prequels was simply bad writing. Don't blame the technology.
• Tube Exits for the London Underground – If I had an iPhone, I would want this app. It shows you where on the tube you have to get in, so that at your exit station you're exactly at the "way out" part.
• Girls on Film: A Desire for Varied Female Protagonists is Not a Political Agenda – Cinematical – Great post and I agree completely with her; why is it so strange to some people that girls would want strong female protagonists in movies?

Interesting links for May 14th through June 11th:

• "The Heart of the Female Warrior" – Cool interview with Mary McDonnell about Battlerstar Galactica.
• April 1, 2009: Theodore Wilson’s Last Ride – Funny April Fools prank from one of the writers of Stargate.
• How to Win at Boggle – Great illustration with tips on how to win Boggle. (makes me want to play Boggle now)
• 25 logos with hidden messages – Hmm, some of these aren't really "hidden", but still a nice list to go through.

While my definition is somewhat different than that of the Society For Geek Advancement (I don’t think you have to have an interest in technology: for instance, what about movie geeks?), I do like the idea:

[Watch the video on MissGeeky.com]

The Society For Geek Advancement was founded upon the principles that everyone should embrace their inner and outer geek and have fun while doing it. As individuals who love learning, innovating and believe in possibility as well as change, the second step of responsibility is to be the geek that keeps on giving. The Society is connected with a Room to Read, a charity which builds libraries and schools in developing countries. If you buy an I Am A Geek T-shirt via the Geek Advancement site, part of the proceeds will go to that charity.

Like my blog posts? Sign-up to get daily email updates from MissGeeky.com

Interesting links for May 13th through May 14th:

• Kris Kuksi : Sculpture – These sculptures are just creepy! And yet at the same time still beautiful.
• Top 10 Incredible Time Capsules – Ooh, I hadn't heard of most of these time capsules. Interesting read.
• io9 – 15 Evil Corporations in Science Fiction – Hehe, some of my favourite evil corporations are mentioned here, like Blue Sun and Fatboy Industries. But how about Umbrella Corp? Or Shinra?
• The 10 Most Visually Stunning Movies of the Last 10 Years – I don't agree with the order of this list (Sunshine on #1??), but it's almost spot on with which movies are included. I would have replaced Transformers with something else.
• The next generation of The Next Generation – Post about who might play the characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation if they ever make a reappearance in Abrams world.