Ubiquity garnered spots in all sorts of web-related ‘Top Ten’ lists for 2008, and with good reason. It appears to be an ambitious first step toward a completely new browsing experience, but I’ll have to check it out and judge for myself.

If you’ve used Ubiquity, please leave a comment — I’d be interested to read about your impressions. Although a few months old now, the video below continues to intrigue, and I understand Ubiquity recently received an update.

I’ve been battling an evil cold for most of the week and, as a Google News search for technology + “common cold” turned up zilch, I’ve elected to offer up a handful of interesting links today. Not very original, I know, but somewhere between Ricola and Zicam I’ve had trouble finding the energy to push the power button. Look for a (hopefully) more inspired post on Saturday next week.

In the meantime, on with the linkage*:

• Podlinez is a mobile/web app for the die-hard podcast fans among us. Just visit the Podlinez website, enter the RSS feed URL of your favorite podcast, and wah-lah, the site serves up a phone number where the podcast can be heard. There are already plenty of podcasts available via Podlinez, and the current “most popular” list includes CNN News Update, NPR: Hourly News Summary Podcast, Fox News Radio, TalkCrunch and … wait for it … PotterCast: THE Harry Potter Podcast.

• PDFHammer.com promises quick and easy editing of PDF files online, without the need for a download. I haven’t taken it for a test drive yet, but the promise alone earns this one a spot in my bookmarks.

• Wordie.org bills itself as “Like Flickr, but without the photos.” In short, Wordie looks like it could quickly become an addiction for a word nerd such as myself. The site allows you and your friends to make lists of words and phrases, identifying words you love, hate or words that relate to any given subject. I’ll probably dig into this one a bit deeper soon, and if it proves to be blog-worthy, you’ll be hearing more about it in the near future.

• Beam It Up Scotty makes it easy to send virtually any file, including images, music and video, to your cell phone in just three steps. Did I mention it’s also free to use?

• BeFunky is another one of those sites certain to provide some time-killing, photo-editing fun. In addition to offering up the ability to “cartoonize” (perhaps the most awesome techno-verb since ‘Googling’) any photo or avatar, the site promises the same feature will soon be available for videos.

And, that’s that. I’m off to mix up one mean over-the-counter cocktail and catch some Z’s. If you still find yourself hungry for linkage, check out the ‘Friends of technotorious’ section over on the right-hand side of the page — there’s plenty of goodness to be found.

*Most of the above links were found thanks to makeuseof.com’s ‘40 Unusual Websites You Should Bookmark’ and ‘40 Unusual Websites You Should Bookmark (2)’, both highly recommended sources of yummy, yummy linkage.

When Second Life first made the e-scene, I was naturally curious and intrigued by the concept of a “virtual world.” The possibilities, I told myself, must be endless — gaming meets The Neverending Story in a world full of creative opportunities and interesting people.

One download, one log-in and two hours later, I was less than impressed with the service and struggled to find an “island” that wasn’t dedicated to adult-oriented pursuits or another user who wasn’t verbally abusive or downright childish.

But, even as I uninstalled Second Life, many in the business world contended that it represented the future of e-commerce or, at the very least, that it was a must-use for any brand seeking to raise awareness. Private companies, non-profits and even news services began flocking to Second Life. I remember reading about the first “Second Life millionaire” and openly wondering how someone could dedicate so much time to a “game” that made The Sims seem like Halo by comparison.

And, as I expected, the biz buzz is slowly beginning to fizzle.

Last week came word that Reuters news service had pulled its virtual reporter, the aptly named Adam Reuters, from Second Life after deciding there was no reason to believe the hype. Eric Krangel (aka Adam Reuters) was quoted as describing his Second Life beat as “about as fun as watching paint dry.”

“For all its bugs, Second Life is tolerable as a playground, but enterprise users will never and should never use it for business,” Krangel said, noting the same bugs that gave headaches to Second Life enthusiasts made it nearly impossible for him to work within the virtual world without getting “locked out of (his) own office.”

There may ultimately be a future for Second Life or a similar service, perhaps one that incorporates social networking elements or life-streaming or anything actually useful. Until then, I’ll be content to read the stories of virtual millionaires and unimpressed businesses from the sidelines.

It took me a while to come around, but Firefox and I recently celebrated our five-month anniversary. I’ve got no real excuse for being a late convert, but what can I say? Old habits die hard, and Internet Explorer had been my stand-by, pre-installed browser for at least 12 years.

Praise for Mozilla’s browser has been trumpeted from nearly every corner of the interwebs by now, so any attempt at an all-out endorsement on my part would be woefully outdated.

I will say, though, that one of my favorite things about Firefox is the extent to which a user can completely customize the browsing experience. However, until now, I’ve mainly relied on friends’ recommendations when it comes to browser add-ons. Sorting through the countless available add-ons and extensions has just been too time-consuming, and there was never any real guarantee that my selections would live up to expectations.

But, thanks to the recently launched Fashion Your Firefox app, my inability to track down the best Mozilla has to offer is no more. The app breaks down Firefox add-ons into nine categories: Finder and Seeker, Social Butterfly, Shutterbug, Digital Pack Rat, Rock Star, Decorator, Shopaholic, News Junkie and Executive Assistant.

Each category then offers a drop-down menu of “best of the best” add-ons. Based on the app’s recommendations, I’ve added a handful of cool (and useful) features to my browser, and I’m looking to customize things even more.

Already, my short list of favorite add-ons has grown to three. Yes, Cooliris and Read It Later have been joined by a third add-on, one that should prove particularly useful with the holidays just around the corner and the current state of the economy.

My new favorite add-on is a bargain hunter’s delight known as RetailMeNot, and it couldn’t be more simple to use. Whenever I visit a retailer’s website, this add-on automatically notifies me of any currently active coupon codes. The codes are given a success ranking from other RetailMeNot users, which helps in determining the worth of any given code.

With Fashion Your Firefox up and running, my list of favorite add-ons will likely grow at a much faster rate from here on out. But in the meantime, if you’ve got a recommendation, give us the low-down in the comments.

Every once in a while, a major brand name manages to pull off a brilliantly fun piece of internet marketing. Burger King, despite having one of the most emotionally disturbing mascots ever, has offered up its share of winners with sites like Simpsonize Me and Subservient Chicken.

Schick becomes the latest to make the list with its men’s grooming application, Manscaping. I use the word ‘application’ loosely here as, from the moment the site generates an animated, 3-D version of you, it’s obvious that Manscaping is meant to be fun, to be blogged about (you’re welcome), forwarded in e-mails and shared on social networking sites. It’s like Elf Yourself for facial hair.

And it only strengthens my wife’s argument against the biker ’stache.

If you’re looking for other a few other sites for some photo-manipulating fun, try these:

• PhotoFunia
• HairMixer
• Yearbook Yourself
• MagMyPic
• fd’s Flickr Toys
• ASCII-O-Matic

(via: Lifehacker Australia)

We’ve all been there.

You’re working on that big speech or that important paper, and you’re on a roll. The words are zooming from your brain to your fingertips as they dance across the keyboard like a boy band on MTV – and then it happens. You’re stopped in your tracks, drawing a blank in a momentary lapse of vocabulary. What is the word you’re looking for?

A proud “word nerd” (I’ve got a T-shirt that says as much), I hate those moments.

Hopefully, though, those moments will be fewer and farther between now thanks to University of Tampa graduate student Chirag Mehta and his web app, Tip of My Tongue. It’s a bit more crude than my standard web app description, but all I can say is that Tip of My Tongue is like Gas-X for brain farts. Simply input as much as you can about the word you’re searching for, whether it be a few letters, approximate word length or even a sound-alike word. Tip of My Tongue will do the rest.

Pitched as a tool designed to help you “find that word that you’ve been thinking about all day but just can’t seem to remember,” Tip of My Tongue may not help when you find yourself stumbling through “uhhs” and “umms” during a live presentation, but it could help spark that “eureka” moment when all you really want to do is keep your rhythm as you work toward a written project.

If ever there were a tech-equivalent of not having “the right tool for the job,” it would have to be the file format dilemma. For me, the conflict often arises between Microsoft Word documents and Adobe PDFs. When I need something as a PDF, I only have it as a Word doc and vice-versa.

That is, until about a half-hour’s worth of plowing through shady Google search results finally led me to ExpressPDF. While the developers behind the site don’t shun tips from frequent users, ExpressPDF is a completely free service. As an added bonus, it’s a web-based application and requires no downloads whatsoever. What’s more, ExpressPDF not only converts MS Word documents to PDFs; it also converts MS Excel spreadsheets and web pages to the popular Adobe file format. Just upload your Word or Excel file, input an e-mail address, and ExpressPDF does the rest. Once the conversion is complete, the site automatically sends you a link where you may download your shiny new PDF.

On the flip side of the coin, newcomer PDFUndo will convert PDFs back to MS Word documents (just as long as the PDF is not password-protected). PDFUndo is a free service, too, but it’s also in the beta phase at the moment and occasionally experiences some “growing pains,” to quote the message currently displayed on the PDFUndo website. It’s worth noting that, unlike ExpressPDF, PDFUndo doesn’t require you to use an e-mail address.

Neither site requires registration.

Personally, I’ve yet to have a real need for a service like PDFUndo, but I can definitely attest to the usefulness of ExpressPDF. If you’ve ever been caught in the middle of the file format melee, consider yourself better equipped for the throw-down.