Just a few quick words on some of the new sites I've been looking into this week:

SkyDeck turns your phone bill into a map of your relationships with friends, colleagues, and customers - your true social network. We show you who called you, whom you need to call, and who never calls back. And since we also keep track of how much you're spending, you'll never get a surprise bill again.

This is an interesting site that connects your phone calls with your email contacts and gives a nice overview of the relationship you have with the people you talk with on the phone.  I plan on using it initially for querying calls based on tags to get a log of billable vs non-billable conversations.  As it grows I can see a number of other uses including a better FoaF network tracker and tickle list.

The RepRap Project is an initiative aimed at creating a largely self-replicating machine which can be used for rapid prototyping and manufacturing. A rapid prototyper is a 3D printer that is able to fabricate three dimensional artifacts from a computer-based model. Project authors describe 'self-replication', understood as the ability to reproduce the components necessary to build another version of itself, as one of the goals for the project.

The big news here is that RepRap made its first complete working replicated copy this week.  Although we are probably not going to see 3D printers being as ubiquitous as ink jets anytime soon, this is a big step toward making them at least accessible to the general public within the next few years.  I know I'm sure going to be trying to get my hands on one before 2010!

SmallWorlds is the first web-accessible, casual virtual world which is designed for mass market appeal. Online virtual worlds have traditionally been impeded by a number of factors that have prevented them from breaking through niche markets to appeal to a broad demographic. These include the need to download and install the application, complicated and intimidating user interfaces, difficulty in navigating and finding things to do in the world, and limited options to customize the world and your experience without a sophisticated level of computer expertise.SmallWorlds breaks through these limitations and brings the very best in accessibility and interaction design from the Web2.0 era. SmallWorlds makes the richness of a multi-dimensional social and entertainment experience available to anyone and everyone from 13 to 103.

I don't really get the virtual world genre, but SmallWorlds is at least interesting to look at.  The problem I have with all of the 3D (or 2.5D as the case may be) virtual worlds is that they are never up to par with what I want them to be.  The idea of being able to interact with a large number of people in a virtual environment is without a doubt the holly grail of online communications but I don't think it will become something I can really sink my teeth into until the human-machine interface becomes much more fluid than a 2D screen and a mouse/keyboard.

Twine is a new service that helps you organize, share and discover information about your interests, with networks of like-minded people. You can use Twine alone, with friends, groups and communities, or even in your company

I'm onboard with the idea behind Twine but I don't yet see it as much more than a fancy book marking application.  My original take on it (and one that may still be valid) was that I would be able to feed in snippets of information that I was interested in and it would then use that information to spit out related information that I may not be aware of.  For example, I could feed it a set of URLs, emails, documents, notes etc... and it would analyze and index that information and cross reference it with information gathered from other users then suggest sites, documents and even other users which might share common interests.  A customized discovery service of sorts.  I haven't spent enough time with it yet to determine if it can or will do that but so far all I see is a new style del.icio.us.

BeFunky helps people turn their offline personalities into powerful online visual expressions.

Just throwing some props out to the BeFunky guys for putting together a fun, easy to use online app.  This is similar to another one of my million dollar ideas which I never developed because I didn't think it served any real purpose other than to simply exist, not that there has to be any greater purpose than that but I barely have time to finish the things I must do let alone the ones I want to do.  I'd love to see someone with some creative abilities use this to publish a Max Headroom meets A Scanner Darkly sort of podcast, or at the very least a pseudo-realistic comic book.

I've bounce around a number of other sites over the past week or so but they are a bit more utilitarian.  They mostly deal with marketing and business and development tools.  If I get a chance I'll do a quick write up of them sometime next week.

TTFN