The Fearless Blogger

Today I discovered what just may be my favorite e-cards ever!

As I was nosing around the CDC website, perusing the latest H1N1 information (isn’t that how everyone spends their evening downtime?) I noticed they’ve included an H1N1 social media page.

Awesome sauce! Not sure if you know this about me but:

PANDEMIC + CDC INFO + SOCIAL MEDIA(!) =
IRRESISTIBLE TO FARYL

I happily clicked away.

That’s when I noticed this section:

Send Friends & Loved Ones Swine Flu Wishes!

No Way! Excellent!

I’m not sure what I was expecting to see, but the CDC didn’t let me down.  Caring friends and family can select from a variety of “occasions” ranging from Autumn to College Health to Disabilities to Halloween to Salmonella to STDs and more.  They even have “Congratulations on Your New Pet” and Valentine’s Day cards!

This is a small sample of the selection the Flu category has to offer:

Just a Sampling of Occasions You Can Choose From

My particular favorite is the Father’s Day card:

You can't make this stuff up.

Not impressed?  Just wait – there are animated cards as well.

How many times has this happened to you? Your best friend is getting married tomorrow. Here you are, a bridesmaid, and what with sharing all the joy and festivities and excitement – you forgot to buy a card.

I’ve totally been there.

Well, fear not, my friend – the CDC to the rescue!!

This Wedding Card even features a soundtrack (one that bears a bit of a resemblance to the Tonight Show theme)!

What Bride Wouldn't be Overjoyed to Receive This?

There are too many options to post screen shots of them all here.

Some of my other favorites:

• Wishing You a Seizure-Free Day
• I Got Tested – Did You?
• Here’s to an Alcohol-Free Pregnancy!

The list goes on and on . . . You’ll just have to visit the site yourself so you can choose the one that’s the perfect fit for your special day.

Feeling down because no one’s ever sent a CDC card to you?

Well turn that frown upside down!  Because I care!

That’s right! I created a card just for you!
View it here!

Matt Rosoff at CNET.com just posted a review of Muziic, a free music streaming service with an extensive catalog of songs.

Two things about Muziic struck me as especially cool:

First: The music catalog?  YouTube. That’s right – the video site. Muziic

makes extensive usage of the YouTube API to deliver rich audio-visual content, forming the web’s first ever “YouTube for Music”.

I think this is brilliant.

YouTube holds contracts with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and EMI.  (A noted exception is Warner Music, who recently removed YouTube videos containing their music after negotiations around licensing fees failed.)  Through the usage of Google’s YouTube Content ID Recognition System, artists are paid royalties based on the number of plays their song receives. “Because of YouTube’s contracts with the record labels, satisfaction can be reached for our listeners and the artists themselves,” stated David Nelson, Muziic’s CTO and Co-Founder.

David, by the way, is the second cool thing about Muziic. read more

Tweeplez.com is a new site launched by Mike Wayne:

I created Tweeplez so us “Tweeters” could get to know each other a little bit better and to create a community for relationships formed there to grow. Twitter has been a life-changing web service for me, and I often wished that it was easier for me to develop friendships started there.  I longed for more community features to help me learn more about my fellow Tweeters, and grouping functionality to help me organize my followers.

Once you register, you can create and join “Twitter Groups” so you can build your own community within the Tweeplez site!  I also wanted to create a “Tweeter Showcase”  that would spotlight ALL Tweeters, regardless of how many followers they had – because follower size does not always equal an “interesting” Tweeter! By featuring a random Tweeter daily, now we have a place to learn more about cool people (tweeple) who’s tweets you might have missed otherwise!

We’ll be posting interviews that help you get to know your fellow Tweeters a little bit better, help video’s, tips, tricks, tutorials and free backgrounds to make this your favorite Twitter themed site! read more

After seeing a tweet about sitetweet.net, I headed over to the site to see what it was all about:

sitetweet allows webmasters to post immediate messages on Twitter about specific behaviors on their site. Usually installed on strategic pages, you can configure sitetweet to send a special message when a user performs a certain action on your site. You can use Twitter’s options for private posts in case you want to control who follows your login.

Some interesting uses:

• receive details on goal completions;
• register specific searches;
• receive notifications from vistors from specific sources. read more

iBetaTest.com is a recently-launched site created to connect iPhone developers with beta testers for their apps.

iBetaTest.com is an iPhone beta tester community and an Application Store, with an idea to bridge the gap between developers and beta testers, help those stranded developers and apps denied by Apple in their own App Store by giving them ability to sell their apps on iBetaTest.com.

The process to become a tester is straightforward. Register you user name at the site, fill out out optional profile details and register your iPhone or iPod touch’s device UDID and you’re ready to beta test.

Developers registering a new beta specify supported devices, number of testers, an application description and testing instructions. Developers also have the option to offer incentives for tester participation (e.g., gift certificates or a free product license). read more