GameSuggestR, named in true Flickr fashion, provides suggestions for video games you might like based on your ratings of other games. The site grabs its data from Amazon and is slightly buggy in the process (for example, it refused to allow me to rate Theme Hospital for the PC because Amazon no longer stock it despite that it is readily available on its marketplace and sites like eBay).

The site appears to be inspired by a South Park episode (clip below) as the site, like in the SP episode, has a stage 1 and stage 3 but no stage 2! This appears to be a gag which continues throughout the site but can be a little annoying as when you click stage 2 you don’t get anything meaningful back (stage 1 is rating and stage 3 are the recommendations).

The whole rating and searching process is done through RoR-powered Ajax which works extremely smoothly; I have yet to have a problem of any sort whilst rating. Searching can be refined to specific platforms; all major sixth and seventh generation consoles are supported as well as PCs and Macs (but no Linux!).

The actual recommendation engine seems pretty good. I rated 27 games and from that it gave me 19 suggestions, many of which are extremely accurate, however I dislike how it tosses so many systems in (I had one SNES game suggested!). I’d like the ability on start-up to say which consoles I have so I don’t get so many irrelevant ones!

Also, widgets are provided for Netvibes, Google IG and the OS X dashboard. These widgets can either display a random game or a suggested one.

(via. Mashable France)

Tags: video games, games, gaming, gamesuggestr, widgets, netvibes, google ig, web2.0, web2, web 2.0, web 2

Andrew Nesbitt (aka. Atariboy) has just got a job as designer and evangelist at Greenvoice.com. Greenvoice is a site which provides social networking and information regarding the environment.

Greenvoice boasts a good design. Whilst the design is fairly heavy and not as light as I like sites to be, it is utilised to a really tasteful effect. By heavy, I mean it has many colours and a lot of content compared to many designs which appear to have much more whitespace.

A nice feature of signing up for Greenvoice is that they will pay for 1 year of carbon off-setting for your computer (well only if you’re a light user! They’ll only pay to off-set a total equivalent to 2 hours daily!). But still, even off-setting a fraction of your CO₂ usage free of charge is nothing to complain about!

You can co-ordinate environmental campaigns on the site and allow other users to partake in it or donate money to help achieve it. For example, this campaign to try to get software manufacturers to stop using excessive packaging (which I personally despise) has raised about £120 (little bug here, it reports it as £120.0 when it should be just £120 or £120.00!).

The site also has groups, such as anti-whaling and even local ones like one for Herefordshire. Any user can create their own group.

Also, Greenvoice provide news on environment-related subjects.

The site is an interesting idea: social networking which helps the planet. If this site takes off, I could see it changing a few things!

Tags: greenvoice, environment, climate change, global warming, atariboy, web2.0, web2, web 2, web 2.0

If there’s a power outage, or for some other reason your Mozilla Firefox bookmarks disappear, this article might help you restore them.

Suggestion 1: Assure Firefox is closed. Rename bookmarks.bak in your profile folder details (C:\Documents and Settings\Joe\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\68y597g2.default, obviously changing the italic details, if you need help read this) to bookmarks.html, deleting that first.

Suggestion 2: Assure Firefox is closed. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\Joe\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\68y597g2.default\bookmarkbackups and replace bookmarks.html in your profile folder with the the latest working backup.

Suggestion 3: In the future, use software like MozBackup!

MozillaZine has some suggestions on this, too.

Digg – Reddit
Web-based operating systems such as Goowy try to help people who constantly shift computers by having their files, emails, contacts and calendar stored online so they can be accessed nearly anywhere. The features they offer greatly differ; this article compares them.

Cost	Free	Free	Free as in beer and indeed freedom! (Open source)	Open source
File storage	Through box.net: 1GB free, 5GB for about $8/pm.	1GB (can be increased up to 50GB if you pay)	Varies. Unknown for hosted eyeos.info but probably as much as your hosting account allows for self-hosted!	250MB on hosted edition.
Registration	Optional	Optional	Compulsory	Compulsory
Email?	Provided and up to 3 external providers supported via. POP3	Provided and external providers via. POP3	Not on eyeos.info hosted.	No. Internal messaging only.
Office suite?	None	OpenOffice (via. Java)	Word processor on eyeos.info hosted.	Word processor
Calendar?	Yes	Yes	Yes	No.
MP3 player?	Yes	Yes	Not on eyeos.info hosted.	No.
Flash, Java or AJAX?	Flash	Flash, Adobe Acrobat and Java	Ajax	Ajax
IM	MSN/Yahoo!	MSN, Jabber (including GTalk), internal	Unknown (server down when writing this!)	Internal messaging only
Other notes:	Multiplayer games and widgets. Struggles under Ubuntu as it needs certain TrueType fonts.	Blog & web hosting provided. Forums and live chat also available. RSS reader provided.	Because of its open-source nature, it will be highly extendable. RSS, games and message board on hosted .info version.	Because of its open-source nature, it will be highly extendable. Also, very buggy.

Tags: web os, webos, web operating systems, operating systems, web 2.0, web2, web 2, web2.0, goowy, desktoptwo, eyeos, youous

Today I received an invite to a service the BBC is trialling which allows users to watch various shows from the archives of the BBC. This differs from their iMP initiative which only allows users to watch newer programmes.

The site doesn’t have that many episodes yet – they total about 370 – which means you have a limited choice. The BBC promises to release 1000 pieces of archived material by the end of trial, though.

Many of these archived tapes which are currently available have historical or cultural importance. For example, you could use the site to watch original, full-length news broadcasting of the Falklands War or even watching an original Basil Brush show (how many children will have seen one of those today?!).

The site does have a few entertaining shows but because it is an archive the site seems to be mainly geared for nostalgia and historical research.

The site hosts both radio and TV shows which are streamed to the user, in true BBC fashion, as a Windows Media streaming or Real stream. I am disappointed that you can’t download a show nor are they streamed in a more cross-platform format such as Flash video.

You have the ability to rate archived media in addition to stating why you chose to watch it. As it is still in trial stages, the latter will be for BBC to understand what they must include in the future.

Unfortunately, if you’re not currently part of the trial you can’t expect join as registration is closed. The BBC hope to open it up to all British residents by the end of 2007.

Tags: bbc, bbc archive, tv, web2.0, web2, web 2.0, web 2, media, free tv, television