The recently launched Widgipedia let’s users upload and rate widgets. You can think of this site as the BuzzShout for the world of widgets. Since the new widget craze has swept the Web 2.0 community, Widgipedia looks like it would be a useful resource for widget developers and addicts.

In terms of features, Widgipedia isn’t pushing any new boundaries–users can submit, rate, comment on, and download widgets. They currently accept 12 types of widgets, including Opera, Dashboard, and Windows Sidebar Gadgets. Since the site is young, the overall selection is quite small.

The interface has a pleasing design. However, I do have one complaint. Almost every page on the site is served up via AJAX, and, as such, the site is pretty speedy. However, they are using AJAX to serve up entire listings on each page. In other words, there’s a considerable amount of data that is transmitted without page loads. For me, this causes major issues when using the back button. The bottom line? Page loads are okay for large page changes. Save the AJAX for smaller inline functions, such as voting or tagging.

My girlfriend frequently watches Rachel Ray’s cooking show on the Food Network (the picture is of Rachel Ray, not my girlfriend). She enjoys the show mostly because of the great meals that Rachel prepares in just 30 minutes. Today she told me that she wanted to buy a Rachel Ray book so she can use some of the recipes at home. Instead, I decided to try to prove to her that she could find the same great recipes online. Google was my first stop, and I was presented with so many sites that had so many different recipe choices that I didn’t know where to start. To better refine my search, and find out what others were saying, I went to BuzzShout. On BuzzShout, my recipe search led me to two sites that I thought looked promising– MyRecipe.org and RecipeThing. 

First, you won’t get very far with RecipeThing, unless you create a username and password, but it is definitely worth it to do so. With RecipeThing you can search through other’s recipes by using the tag cloud or by selecting one of the featured recipes on the front page of the site. After creating an account, you’ll have your own recipe box where you can add your own recipes by writing them in, or copy others recipes from the “community potluck”. After copying someone’s recipe into your own box, you can then edit the recipe and take out or add ingredients or change preparation instructions to your liking. With your free account, you’ll also have a pantry that’ll help you keep track of the ingredients you have in the real-world. This is useful when seeing what ingredients you’ll need for different recipes that you collect on the site. With the “what’s for dinner” feature you can drag and drop recipes into days of the week and then get a shopping list based on what you have in your RecipeThing pantry and what you’ll need based on your chosen recipes for that week.

MyRecipe.org has a better looking UI than RecipeThing, and just looking at the pictures on the front page makes my stomach growl. MyRecipe.org also has tags, but unlike RecipeThing, you can also check out other user’s profiles and see what recipes they like or have submitted. On the negative side, I find two things very annoying about MyRecipe.org. First, when I forgot my screenname and password, I had no way to recover it. That was especially strange since they asked for my email both times I registered. Secondly, while I can email recipes to myself or others, I can’t copy them to “My List”, which is the part of the site where I’m able to aggregate recipes I like. I instead need to write all the recipes out myself.  

So, I will recommend two things to my girlfriend. One, that she uses RecipeThing instead of MyRecipe.org, and two, that when she cooks she wear the same outfit as Rachel Ray is wearing above.  

Flagr, a mobile social bookmarking service for locations and places, have utilized the Facebook API to map your friends’ hometowns on Google Maps. It’s always nice to see companies doing these sorts of side projects that foster the use of open APIs.

You can tell from my Facebook map that I started my life in upstate New York, then moved to Oklahoma during my high school years, and somehow ended up in the bay area after a stint at Cornell.

If I’m looking for a quick bite at a restaurant, I’ll usually want it to be close. Real close. That’s where Yelp’s local mapping feature is helpful. I know that Yelp has had Google Maps integration for a while now, but I just recently noticed the tight integration between the map and the reviews. After you search, hovering over a listed restaurant pops up more information on the corresponding map point.

An even more useful feature is that the listings update automatically when the map is dragged. Simply drag around the area you’re interested in and watch as nearby restaurants pour into view. The listings on the left hand column also update as you drag.

It’s really a great tool for those times when you’re not exactly sure what’s around and are flexible about what you want to eat. Of course, clicking on the mapped restaurants brings up their reviews page. Sure, Google Local may have a bigger and better mapping interface, but I like Yelp’s wide range of personal reviews better. My only complaint is that you can’t make their map larger.

Dude, screenshots are so Bubble 1.0; check out the screencasts instead. Molly, a loyal BuzzShout user and our new friend, has created a wonderful screencast of BuzzShout. Not only has she done a great job with the screencast, but on it she’s even helping us promote our Shoutblog contest. What a great gal!

According to her Screeniac blog, she is the newest addition to VPOP Technologies, which does custom programming and web hosting out of Southern California. She has already done 50 screencasts, so be sure to check out some of her past work. If you also like her screencasts, and have a good idea for a site she should feature, drop her a suggestion here.

A song: Molly McDonald had a screencast, ee-eye, ee-eye-oh. And on that screencast she had Buzz-Shout (hyphenated to keep rhythm), ee-eye, ee-eye-oh. With a new site here and a new service there, here an app, there a mashup, everywhere a social networking site, ee-eye, ee-eye-oh…or something.

Note: About that contest, the prize has been decided and we think everyone will love it. Drumroll please…it’s…CASH! Fifty dollars of cold hard cash in the form of a pre-paid credit card. So get those blog entries submitted to us at the BuzzShout feedback email before the end of October. Don’t procrastinate or you’ll forget. Also, thanks to Computer Joe for the mention on the 9Rules site.

Have you ever hosted a house party and needed some cool drink ideas to serve? Have you ever been at a bar, and asked for a chocolate cake, only to be looked at with complete bewilderment? Right now I have a bottle of Vodka in my freezer, and my cranberry and orange juice is gone. I know there are other drinks I can make, but none immediately came to mind. Does vodka go with ginger ale?

So I visited BuzzShout and typed “drink” into the search box. One of my results was a site called Extra Tasty!, which helps you find great drink recipes and figure out what you can make from the different ingredients you’ve got. I felt I was meant to find the site tonight since the “Drink of the Day” on the front-door to the site was made with my favorite soda, ginger ale. A tag cloud on the sidebar makes it easy to find drinks with your alcohol or ingredient of choice.

With the “My Bar” functionality you can list the ingredients you have available and figure out what drinks you can make with them. I did experience a problem with the site when I went to the “Full ingredient list”, where I was supposed to be able to add a lot more ingredients to the list that the site already provided. I wasn’t able to click on the plus icons next to different items to add them to “My Bar” because there were no icons there to click on. That might have been due to my browser, but I did see plus icons on the sidebar under “People’s commonly added items”. I’d like to know if others aren’t able to see the icons on the full list.

The coolest feature is the SMS search which I haven’t tried yet. However, I was able to try it from a demo on the site to better understand the use. You can type a SMS text keyword such as “Vodka” into your cell phone and send it to 82789 (fees may apply). Here is what you’ll get back:

” 68 results for vodka. The top rated drink is the Malibu Sunset : Prepare a glass full of ice then add the Coconut rum, next add the Cranberry juice.”

A very useful function if you want to impress a certain somebody at the bar by sharing some drink ideas. So if you drink, and you’re looking for some new ideas, check out Extra Tasty!, and tell us what you think.

Wow, we’ve just blown through August haven’t we? We’d like to thank those of you who’ve already submitted blog entries for the Shoutblog blogger contest. Since very few write-ups were submitted, and because we’d like to have a larger pool to choose from, the contest will be extended to the end of October. If you’ve already submitted a write-up to us, don’t be discouraged. We’ve enjoyed reading your posts, and you will still be considered with the future entries that we receive. If you haven’t sent us anything yet, and you didn’t win the GigaOm contest, then send your entries to us now! 

To increase the amount of participants, we’ve decided to give away a prize to the winner with the best write-up. While we have some good prize ideas in mind, we’d like to hear what you think the winner should get. Keep in mind that we are a bootstrapping startup, and don’t have excessive amounts of money to spend. So we can afford a Porsche 911, just not the 911 turbo. Okay, I’m talking about a model Porsche; keep it at $100 or less (please, oh please, be less). 

Write your ideas for prizes in the comment section of this post, and send your blog entries for the contest to: feedback@buzzshout.com.

Here is the original post with some more contest information. 

The recently launched Squirl allows collectors to become online curators. The company is betting on the fact that hardcore collectors will benefit from sharing their object obsession online and interacting with like-minded people.

Squirl was founded by two friends who saw a need for an online service that would let anyone keep a digital copy of their collections, whether it be 3000 45rpm records or Pez dispensers. Unlike Wishlistr and Your-Wishlist, Squirl is about showing off the unique items that you already own. And, unlike listal, Squirl doesn’t limit its users to movies, books, music, and games. They’re really trying to build niche communities around any type of object in general, which is a similar to what Fanpop is doing for interests.

Of course, the most important part of a collections site is the uploading. It’s really the tedious act of digitizing your collection that can be the real turn-off in using a service like Squirl. They allow you enter each item manually, batch upload 5 items at a time, or import data from Amazon (when available). Each item can have an associated name, picture, description, tags, condition, dimensions, and various other metrics.

Uploading is fairly easy to do, but I think they should consider more third party support. Amazon and listible already lets you create lists, and many people are passionate about them. Squirl would be wise to let these users automatically import lists from similar services. Also, for hardcore collectors with tons of items, an Excel or plaintext formatted file importer would be useful.

Squirl currently offers two plans: free and plus. The free plan lets users have a maximum of 3 collections and maximum of 200 items. The plus plan, which costs $25.95 a year, gives 5000 max items and unlimited collections. Personally, I don’t have enough collections to justify the plus plan. Is there anyone who would consider using the plus service?

Currently, there aren’t too many collections on Squirl. For collection browsers like me, the real power of Squirl will come when thousands of niche collections are created.

It’s official: Google is sticking its neck out into the enterprise applications market with its Google Apps for Your Domain. After a slow but deliberate investment in online web applications that mirror Office applications, Google has finally let the water out of the hydrant. Let the games begin!

Currently, Google is offering Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Page Creator to businesses that own a domain. The service is free during the beta. Paul Kedrosky has already played around with the service, and is impressed with the interface. Basically, there are no real suprises–just the usual clean and functional interfaces that we’ve come to expect from Google.

So, should Microsoft be shaking in their boots? With the push of Vista and its increased document sharing capabilities, Google is directly attacking Microsoft’s turf. But, it’s not going to be a walk in the park for Google, and here’s why:

• Responsiveness: On slower machines, Google’s online apps are significantly slower than Microsoft’s desktop offerings. No matter how they slice it, heavy duty apps running in browsers are less responsive than desktop apps today.
• Connectivity: Storing everything in Google’s datacenter means that you’re out of luck when you’re offline. There will probably be solutions for this rolled out in the next year, but currently, you’re stuck without an internet connection. Perhaps an Office exntension paradigm like what Xcellery provides could be a viable solution.
• Portability: Simple Excel and Word documents can convert fine. But, what about real-world complicated documents? These currently aren’t guaranteed to fly in Google’s world.

These problems are by no means simple, and I’m sure Google is actively looking into potential solutions, especially for the connectivity problem. If they can trump these three issues, Microsoft will certainly see a significant number of users jumping on the Google ship.

When it comes to maps, the techie inside of me still loves Google Maps for its shear interactiveness. It was one of the first to employ draggable maps that would forever banish the use of those pesky arrow buttons. Even though I find that it can be a tad slower to load than Yahoo Maps, my personal choice for maps is still Google Maps.

But what about all those sites that have store locating interfaces? For most, you’re either stuck using web 1.0 style non-draggable interfaces, or, copying the address to Google Maps. Blipster, which just recently launched, aims to bring affordable mapping solutions built on Google Maps to all businesses.

Now that superb services like Google Maps have opened up their APIs, small and agile development teams can compete with the age-old mapping incumbants. Blipstar’s tactic is to penetrate the store locating market with low prices by leveraging Google Maps. In fact, I’m suprised that there aren’t many others doing the same thing–blipstar appears to be the first.

Blipstar allows businesses to enter data manually, or using an Excel sheet in a particular format that blipstar understands. After uploading the location data, blipstar hosts and stores the map data. All the business needs to do is link to their blipstar map page to allow their visitors to search for stores nearby. The style of the store locations page can be changed to suit the business.

When I tried out making my own store locater, blipstar was clearly having some technical issues, as I couldn’t browse to my store locator due to javascript errors. Hopefully, this will be resolved soon. The screenshots I took below are from the demo, which does work.

The interface as it stands is pretty functional for users, allowing them to quickly see different store locations relative to their location on a Google Map. One complaint I have is that when users request directions to a store, the ending address is given in GPS coordinates, which is not so user friendly. Another major concern is that the interface isn’t completely cross browser compliant, as I had to switch from Opera to IE in order for it to work. For high volume business customers, compatibility issues like these aren’t going to fly.

blipstar charges $25 for 25 locations, $50 for up to 60 locations, and $90 for up to 250 locations. Their prices are reasonable for business owners who aren’t technical enough to dabble in APIs and web programming. Overall, blipstar has the right core values–they just need to streamline their interface and work out the technical issues.