A paperback travel guide can recommend hotels and sightseeing activities for the general public, but the writers of these guides have no way of knowing what individual readers would most like to see and do. For that kind of personalized information, people are turning to Trippy. Trippy is an application that taps into the experience of a user’s online friends to deliver spot-on vacation advice.

Whether you’re going on the trip of a lifetime next month or a brief getaway next weekend, you should sign on to Trippy and check out how it can help before you walk out the door. Type in where you’re going and when you’re leaving, then sign in to the site through Facebook. The more information you put in about your trip, the more helpful your friends can be. After you’ve added a description of the trip and a list of the activities you’re dying to try, you’ll want to click on photos of any Facebook friends who might have advice that you’d like to seek out. The friends you’ve selected will see a wall post inviting them to help out with your trip. In mere minutes, you’ll start seeing personalized recommendations about everything from hotels to shopping districts on your Trippy trip page. In addition to your Facebook account, Trippy also ties into your connections on Foursquare and Twitter. When you’ve gathered enough information to make an informed decision, click “Add to trip” and you can make reservations and bookings for thousands of hotels directly from the Trippy site.

People who download the Trippy mobile app can upload photos to their trip pages from their phones while their trips are still in progress, showing friends just how great their recommendations and ideas turned out. Trippy also has a useful “copy” feature, which lets friends copy entire trip itineraries to use as inspiration for future trips and getaways.

Practical Uses:

• Get hotel recommendations in Paris from friends who’ve visited recently
• Find out which restaurants to check out while you’re in Miami
• Offer information about New York to a friend who’s going next month
• Share photos of yourself enjoying the restaurants your friends recommended

Insider Tips:

• Trippy users must login with a Facebook account
• The auto-complete tool helps people recommend obscure hotels and restaurants when they can’t remember the full names
• To recommend something not in the Trippy database just type +add after the name
• Anyone who you’ve shared your vacation plan with can view your trip page

What we liked:

• Trippy helps cut through the online clutter when planning vacations
• The recommendations people get from friends are always going to be more tailored than what they could get from a book or website.
• The mobile app lets people share their adventures on the road
• Friends can copy each other’s trip plans to use when planning their own vacations

What we didn’t like:

• Trippy offers an iPhone app, but not an Android app

Alternatives:

• Gogobot – http://www.gogobot.com

Company Info:

• Launched: 2011
• Privately Held
• Founded by: J.R. Johnson
• Web site: http://www.trippy.com

Costs:

• Free

Adverse Events is a web-application with tools that patients and their doctors can use to find up-to-date information on more than 4,000 FDA-approved prescription medications. The application itself is powered by RxFilter, a special algorithm that analyzes FDA drug safety data and tracks the adverse side effects associated with certain medications.

If you’re at all concerned about the medications your physician has prescribed, then it pays to log on to the Adverse Events website and have a look around. Without becoming a subscriber, you can search for information about any drug, medical condition, or prescription side effect. If you’re interested in the possible side effects of a pill you’ve recently been prescribed, then you’ll want to enter the name of the medication in the Adverse Events search bar. Find the correct result on the next page, and browse through a list of the most frequently reported side effects of this medication. You can compare these side effects to those of similar medications with the click of a button. If you find out that people who take a similar pill are less likely to suffer from depression or insomnia as a result, for example, then you can take this information to your physician for a more in-depth analysis. Individuals and organizations that sign up for premium subscriptions, meanwhile, can set up special alerts to find out when new adverse events have been reported by people taking their same medications.

Although the information that Adverse Events provides was available through the FDA Adverse Events Reporting System in the past, it was organized in a way that was difficult for patients to navigate or understand. Adverse Events opens up this information and improves patient safety by encouraging people to get informed about the potential side effects of any medications they’re taking on a regular basis.

Practical Uses:

• Find out whether the pills you’re taking are making you drowsy
• Do research on the prescription medications your doctor recommends
• Find out if any alternative medications are available with fewer side effects
• Prevent bad drug interactions by finding out which pills should never be mixed

Insider Tips:

• Premium users can sign up for alerts when adverse effects are reported
• Drugs can be searched for by keyword or by the condition they are intended to treat
• The data itself comes from the FDA Adverse Events Reporting System
• Adverse Events uses a special algorithm to organize and filter the FDA’s data

What we liked:

• Adverse Events encourages people to become their own advocates
• People who use this web-app can learn more about the pills they take
• Users do not have to sign up for accounts to access the majority of the data
• Adverse Events was created both for patients and their healthcare providers

What we didn’t like:

• Adverse Events is not set up and organized in a way that is easy for the average layperson to understand

Alternatives:

• Clarimed – http://www.clarimed.com
• Healthline – http://www.healthline.com
• WebMD – http://www.webmd.com

Company Info:

• Launched: September 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Healdsburg, California
• Founded by: Brian Overstreet
• Web site: http://www.adverseevents.com

Costs:

• Basic plan is free
• Premium plan is $39/year
• Professional plan is $59/year

JobPage is a tool that businesses can use to recruit job applicants and manage potential candidates for the positions they’re trying to fill. Businesses that use JobPage can take advantage of many of the same tools that professional agencies use when recruiting and managing new talent, without spending a fortune during the process.

Whether you’re looking for a new executive assistant or a new head of development, you’d be wise to check out JobPage for help getting started on the hunt. Select a plan based on the size of your company and the JobPage features you need access to, and you can get started recruiting new talent within just one minute of creating an account. Start building a new ‘job page’ by describing the position you’re looking to fill and selecting the skills that all successful applicants must have, keeping in mind the helpful tips that JobPage provides when typing up the job description. Once your new job page has been created, you’ll want to promote it using all the most popular free IT job boards out there right now. With JobPage, you can post the position on multiple online boards at once – choosing between free and paid boards – while also sharing information about the opening on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and via email.

Visit your analytics page to see how many people are viewing your job posting and how many of the people who saw the posting are actually applying for the gig. JobPage focuses on finding candidates for technical and marketing roles, so your search will be targeted and candidates are more likely to be qualified for the roles you’re trying to fill. You can communicate with candidates who have applied for the position from within the JobPage system – which helps keep things organized and in one place – and track of which applicants have been shortlisted with the help of the application’s helpful ranking features.

Practical Uses:

• Post job announcements on all the most popular job boards at once
• Advertise for an open position without spending a bundle on recruitment
• Track how many people have applied for a job as a developer at your firm
• Keep a list of your favorite candidates out of those who’ve applied for the job

Insider Tips:

• JobPage will create questions for candidates based on the required skills you select
• Job pages can be branded with your company’s logo
• Use the email referral tool to send your jobs pages to people who might be interested in the position
• Post the JobPage widget on your own website to increase response rates

What we liked:

• Analytics tools show employers how people are finding their job pages
• JobPage offers tips for people when typing up job descriptions and required skills

• The recruitment task list helps busy professional stay organized throughout the hiring process
• Users can post their positions on multiple free job boards with a single click

What we didn’t like:

• JobPage was only built for people filling jobs in the technical and marketing industries
• The pricing plans can be very expensive for companies without big budgets

Alternatives:

• Bullhorn – http://www.bullhorn.com
• Catch the Best – http://catchthebest.com
• Resumator – http://www.theresumator.com

Company Info:

• Launched: 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: London, England
• Founded by: Matthew Ogston
• Web site: http://www.jobpage.com

Costs:

• Bootstrapper plan is $46/month
• Startup plan is $156/month
• Business plan is $469/month
• Managed Service plan is $999/month
• Global Corp plan is $2,399/month

Nextdoor is a private social network that people can use to develop closer relationships with neighbors located nearby. Whether you’re looking to organize a community garage sale or find a teenage babysitter for your child, Nextdoor is a secure and trustworthy application that connects people in ways that are not possible using traditional social networking sites.

The days when families held block parties and borrowed sugar from their next door neighbors might be long gone, but Nextdoor is trying to bring back the sense of community that has been somewhat erased in recent years. If you’re interested in getting to know your neighbors but skeptical of the responses you’d receive by going door-to-door and introducing yourself, then you can save face and make the introductions online by signing up for an account with Nextdoor. The application requires that people enter their real names and addresses in order to use the site, and lets you know immediately whether people in your ’hood have already started connecting online. If they have, you can join the neighborhood network by verifying your address and entering some basic profile data like your name, occupation, and interests. Neighborhood networks function similarly to social networks like Facebook or MySpace, which means you can post questions, offer advice, and chat with neighbors through the online service. Nextdoor will send you an email each time a neighbor posts new content on the site, and you can reply to these conversations by replying to the Nextdoor emails if you wish.

Two of the more useful features available through Nextdoor are the Events and Recommendations sections on each neighborhood network page. Using the information provided by your neighbors, you can find out about upcoming events – ranging from concerts to construction projects – as well as nearby merchants that are worth checking out.

Practical Uses:

• Organize a community yard sale
• Learn about your neighbors and their families
• Find out when a nearby park is expected to open
• Get recommendations on the best orthodontists in your community

Insider Tips:

• The first person to sign up for Nextdoor in a neighborhood gets to set the neighborhood boundaries
• Users can reply to comments on Nextdoor via email
• The information posted on Nextdoor will never be indexed on search engines
• When requested, Nextdoor will call certain new members to verify their addresses

What we liked:

• Neighborhood networks are completely private to outsiders
• Nextdoor is a great way to learn about a neighbor whose name you forgot
• People can use Nextdoor to invite neighbors to their upcoming events
• People have to use their real names when they log in to Nextdoor

What we didn’t like:

• Because the service is relatively new, there are few neighbors who’ve signed up in most neighborhoods

Alternatives:

• DeHood – http://www.dehood.com
• Home Elephant – http://www.homeelephant.com
• Neighborrow – http://beta.neighborrow.com
• Yatown – http://yatown.com

Company Info:

• Launched: October 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California
• Founded by: Nirav Tolia
• Web site: https://nextdoor.com

Costs:

• Free

Slice is the perfect tool for people who regularly shop online. The web-based service digs into users’ email inboxes and automatically keeps tabs on all shopping-related messages that come in. With zero effort on a user’s behalf, Slice will pull order confirmations, shipping notifications, and electronic receipts to use when creating a comprehensive record of everything a person has bought, paid for, and received.

With the holiday shopping season kicking into gear, there is no better time to sign up for Slice than now. Create a new account by entering your information by hand, or sign in quickly with an existing Yahoo! or Google account. Slice will import information about all your recent purchases into its system. Scroll down the main screen page to see images of all the products you’ve recently purchased online. Below the merchant’s name you’ll find the status of the purchase: ordered, shipped, or delivered. Click the arrow next to any items that are still in-transit to see when they’ll be arriving at your doorstep, or click “Track Shipments” to visually track where your in-transit purchases are at any time. Slice will save information about all your purchases long after they’ve arrived, making it easy to find receipts and access return information without having to dig through your email archives.

One of the really useful components of Slice is the web-app’s price drop alert feature. Because Slice is automatically recording all your online purchases, it has the capability to track the prices of the items you purchased and notify you immediately when an online discount or sale qualifies you for a potential refund or price adjustment.

Practical Uses:

• Find out when the books you ordered are scheduled to arrive
• Track down a receipt for a blouse you need to return or exchange
• Receive an instant notification when an item you’ve purchased goes on sale
• Get the return policy for a store without clicking over to its website

Insider Tips:

• Slice currently supports more than 500 merchants
• Users can manually forward emails to track purchases from retailers who aren’t recognized by Slice
• The more email accounts you link to Slice, the more accurate the service will be
• Accounts automatically update once every 15 minutes

What we liked:

• The in-transit map lets you see where all your packages are at any given time
• Slice can track a package even if it’s not sent by a recognized merchant
• Past purchases can be searched by keyword or order number
• Slice will save emailed receipts even after they’ve been deleted from your inbox

What we didn’t like:

• Forwarding an e-receipt to Slice could cause you to have duplicate records

Alternatives:

• allEtronic – http://www.alletronic.com
• Warrantify – https://warrantify.com
• yReceipts – http://www.yreceipts.com

Company Info:

• Launched: 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Palo Alto, California
• Web site: http://www.goslice.com

Costs:

• Free

Ask anyone who’s had to look for a new apartment in the last few years, and you’ll find out that tracking down and securing the perfect pad is no easy feat. Nestio is an application that harnesses technology to help simplify an age-old task. People who use Nestio can save their favorite real estate listings, share their favorite places with potential roommates, and receive instant notifications when the listings they’ve saved have been updated or changed.

Using Nestio doesn’t mean you have to change the way you look for apartments online. You can continue to use the sites and services you like best – like Craigslist, Apartments.com, and others – to find places that fit your specifications. When you find a place that looks good, save it to your Nestio account. Keep saving listings until you’ve got a handful to choose from, and then send all those listings to your soon-to-be roomies through Facebook with the click of a button. You and your roommates can add notes and photos to the listings you’ve saved on Nestio, and the application will automatically notify you if the information on a listing has been updated to reflect a lower price or a new move-in date. When you come to a consensus with your roommates about which apartment seems best, you can contact the agent or landlord who posted the listing directly through the Nestio site. Nestio also makes it easy to keep track of which agents you’ve contacted and which viewings you’ve scheduled on one organized page.

Among the many useful features available through Nestio is the application’s mapping tool, which lets you plot all the pads you’re looking at on a single map. You can also use the application to quickly calculate commuting times between the apartments you’re looking at and your office or school. iPhone users who download the mobile application will be able to access many of these features from their phones, which means they can add notes and photos to any listing they’ve saved while they’re in the middle of viewing potential pads.

Practical Uses:

• Find an apartment that’s located near your work
• Be the first to know when an apartment’s rental price has gone down
• Share potential apartment options with your future roommates
• Jot down notes about an apartment while you’re looking at it in person

Insider Tips:

• iPhone users can download the mobile app
• Download the bookmarklet tool to quickly save listings to Nestio
• Users with Facebook accounts can start using Nestio with a single click
• Users can invite their friends on Facebook to view certain listings by just typing in the first few letters of their names

What we liked:

• Nestio is a great way for roommates to share information about the listings they find
• The note-taking feature is available on the mobile application
• Listings can be viewed, sorted, and rated in a number of ways
• The Local News feature shows people relevant news stories that are happening near the apartments they’re looking at

What we didn’t like:

• Nothing

Alternatives:

• Buyfolio – http://buyfolio.com
• Lovely – http://livelovely.com

Company Info:

• Launched: October 2011 (Nationwide)
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: New York, New York
• Founded by: Mike O’Toole, Caren Maio, and Matt Raoul
• Web site: http://nestio.com/

Costs:

• Free

You’ve got talents, and Dabble is an application that encourages you to share them with others. People who use the Dabble web-app can take, teach, and host all different types of continuing education courses than run the gamut from knitting lessons and cupcake decorating to Zumba workouts and guitar lessons.

If you live in Austin, Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver, San Francisco, the Twin Cities, or St. Louis, then you’re in luck. Dabble is only available in these select markets at the current time, although the service will likely expand throughout the country as interest grows. Create an account on Dabble, choose a city, and select your interests. Browse through the courses being offered in all six categories – technology, arts & entertainment, business & career, fitness & wellness, and food & drink – until you find something that sounds interesting. Click on the course to see a description, a date, and a location. You can also see how many spots are left and how much the course costs to take. When you’ve decided to take the plunge, click the “Register for Class” button to pay through Paypal and reserve your spot. When the time comes, you can attend your course without worrying about bringing cash or paying the instructor.

If you’ve got the knowledge to teach a course or the space to host one, then you can use Dabble in an entirely different way. Submit your venue, and Dabble will evaluate your location and add it to its database. The application does not pay people to use its venues, but says that hosting a course can be a great way to get more people through your business’ doors. Teachers, on the other hand, do get paid for the courses they put on. Students generally pay $20 per course, and Dabble splits the ticket proceeds with the teachers who run the courses offered through the site. Dabble can be a great way for people to earn money by sharing the skills and knowledge they already have, while knowing that the payment collection and disbursement will happen automatically after the courses are complete

Practical Uses:

• Learn how to cook Vietnamese food from a trained chef
• Make money by teaching yoga in your spare time
• Host an event to get more people inside your new cafe
• Get tips on improving your social media skills

Insider Tips:

• Teachers get $10 from every $20 ticket sold to their classes
• Payments are processed through Paypal
• Teachers get paid two to three days after their courses take place
• Dabble must approve venues before they appear on its site

What we liked:

• People can use Dabble to find courses on all sorts of interesting subjects
• Teachers can make some quick money by sharing knowledge they already have
• Dabble is a great way for new businesses to get people through their doors
• Processing payments online takes away the awkwardness of collecting cash in person

What we didn’t like:

• Dabble takes 50% of the ticket fee before giving the remainder to teachers

Alternatives:

• Betterfly – http://betterfly.com
• School of Everything – http://schoolofeverything.com
• TeachStreet – http://www.teachstreet.com

Company Info:

• Launched: 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
• Founded by: Jessica Lybeck and Erin Hopmann
• Web site: http://dabble.co

Costs:

• Courses are $20

Rating:

• 4 out of 5 (great)

If you’ve ever spent 20 minutes searching for a restaurant review that you meant to bookmark, or a hilarious video that you recently watched and planned on sharing with a friend, then you’ll understand the usefulness of a site like Pistashio. Pistashio, with an emphasis on the stash, is an online hub where users can save and store all the articles, photos, videos, reviews, books, and music they find online.

Websites like Pinterest help you save photos, while applications like Delicious are useful for saving links to articles online. Pistashio is an app that brings all those functionalities together under one roof. Sign in with Twitter or Facebook to get started, and then drag the Pistashio bookmarklet to your toolbar. Click the bookmarklet the next time you come across content that seems save-worthy online, and add any necessary details like a category, a description, and an address. One of the cool things about Pistashio is that you can set reminders. If you come across a review for a great new restaurant in your neighborhood that you want to try out next weekend, set up a reminder for the day you want to go and Pistashio will automatically email or tweet you the link. You can also set up the service to post your favorite links on Facebook or Twitter. When you’re done sharing and referencing an article, just click “Archive” and Pistashio will move it into a different section of your account.

One thing that makes Pistashio different from basic bookmarking applications is that it only saves links that fall into five distinct categories—food, video, reading, listening, and to-do—and the majority of this content is actually embedded on the site for easy referencing. When you add a YouTube video, for example, Pistashio embeds the video on its site rather than making you click away to watch it again. Pistashio can be used in a number of different ways, depending on what you’re interested in and how you want to use the service.

Practical Uses:

• Save all your favorite music videos in one spot
• Get an email reminder before your cable bill is due
• Share your favorite songs with friends on Facebook
• Archive all your favorite New Yorker articles for future reference

Insider Tips:

• Link Pistashio to a Facebook or Twitter account for seamless sharing
• Pistashio can be set up to send out automated reminders
• Use the bookmarklet or download the Chrome extension
• Individual items can be dragged and reorganized within a user’s stash

What we liked:

• Pistashio is a great tool for quickly saving articles to check out later
• People can add check marks to the items they’ve read or watched
• Users can mark their stashes or their items as private
• Links can be archived or kept in the stash for quick reference

What we didn’t like:

• Pistashio can be used for so many different things that it’s hard to keep up with all of the app’s functionalities

Alternatives:

• Delicious –http://delicious.com
• Pinterest – http://pinterest.com
• Read It Later – http://readitlaterlist.com

Company Info:

• Launched: September 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Brooklyn, New York
• Web site: http://pistash.io

Costs:

• Free

Everyone has a niche. Using NabeWise, you can figure out where you’ll fit in best in some of the most popular cities in the country. Using a series of metrics, reputation indicators, and user reviews, NabeWise can help anyone discover the perfect neighborhood to live in permanently or stay in while visiting a new city on vacation.

Before you travel across the country to look for apartments in a brand new city, you’d be smart to click onto NabeWise and have a look around online. Search by city, zip code, address, or neighborhood to find out more information about wherever it is you’re heading, or click on the name of a city from NabeWise’s drop down box and click on the word that describes what’s most important to you. NabeWise lets you choose by trendiness, safety, or family friendliness, to name a few. Once you’ve entered your preferences, click “Find my nabes!” and NabeWise will come up with an interactive map that lists the more desirable areas of town. Click on the map to see a neighborhood’s rankings in a number of related categories, as well as the keywords that are most frequently used to describe it. If you like what you see, then click on the neighborhood directly to view even more detailed information – including public school data, real estate values, and safety rankings – about that area of town.

Not only can you learn about neighborhoods on NabeWise, but you can rate them, too. NabeWise encourages users to rate and review their own neighborhoods as a way to let outsiders know what they’re missing out on. Users can even add photos and videos to give tourists and potential new neighborhoods a better idea of what they’re getting into before making a major move.

Practical Uses:

• Get help deciding where to move after graduation
• Check crime rates to make sure you’re not moving to an unsafe neighborhood
• Post reviews of your own neighborhood online
• Find hotels that are located in a family-friendly part of town

Insider Tips:

• Registered users can post reviews, photos, and videos of their own neighborhoods
• School data comes from GreatSchools.org
• Reputation tags are based on the phrases that come to mind when people hear about a particular neighborhood
• NabeWise crowd sources content from other social networking sites, to give people a complete picture of what it’s like to live in a particular neighborhood

What we liked:

• Tourists can use NabeWise to help select a hotel or create an itinerary
• Looking up crime data and school information on NabeWise is more efficient than looking it up through city records
• People can pick a neighborhood based on how many beautiful people live there
• NabeWise can help people decide where to live when they’re moving to a new town

What we didn’t like:

• NabeWise is still not available in many cities

Alternatives:

• LocalBlox – http://localblox.com
• NeighborhoodScout – http://www.neighborhoodscout.com
• Walk Score – http://www.walkscore.com

Company Info:

• Launched: January 2010
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: New York, New York
• Founded by: Ann Montgomery
• Web site: http://nabewise.com

Costs:

• Free

Pikimal is a web-application that takes the hassle out of choosing. Whether you’re deciding which car to buy, which blouse to wear, or which baseball team to bet on, Pikimal has got the answer. The answers that Pikimal provides are based on quantifiable data and publically available information that the site has used to create comprehensive databanks – or “pikis,” as they’re called – about each and every product available for review.

Although you have to create an account to start contributing to the Pikimal site, you don’t need to sign in to have a look around. Review the categories on the left side of the Pikimal homepage and pick any topic that strikes your fancy. Let’s say you’re trying to decide which amusement park to visit on your summer vacation. Click on the amusement park piki and you’ll instantly see a list of the best parks based on a range of categories, such as the best parks for roller coasters lovers, families, or people who like cheap season passes. Click on the category that seems most important to you and you’ll see a list of the top 10 results. If you’re having a hard time deciding which of the parks from that list looks best, then you can use the comparison tool to have a deeper view of all the information that goes into the park’s Pikimal rating.

Pikimal gets it data from retailers, manufacturers, review sites, and government-published databases, however it’s up to the individual Pikimal users to decide what to do with that information. Users who have definite opinions about products or places can create their own accounts and set their own preferences about any topic imaginable. As more users contribute their opinions on the site, Pikimal will become infinitely more useful in the future.

Practical Uses:

• Make a decision on which beach to visit this summer
• Get help choosing whether to buy a Nook or a Kindle
• Decide between two HDTVs with a similar price tag
• Settle a debate with friends about which baseball team is the best

Insider Tips:

• Pikimal’s information comes from retailers, manufacturers, and government databases
• Users can email Pikimal directly to fix incorrect data
• PikiRank scores show how any product stacks up against similar competitors
• Users with accounts can write reviews of their favorite products

What we liked:

• Pikimal chooses which new pikis to add based on user suggestions
• Reviews are based on actual data, rather than just user opinions
• People aren’t required to sign up for an account to start using the site
• Pikimal can be used to settle debates among friends

What we didn’t like:

• Because Pikimal is still new, there are not as many products and places listed on the site as you may expect

Alternatives:

• FindTheBest – http://www.findthebest.com
• Hunch – http://hunch.com
• Quora – http://quora.com

Company Info:

• Launched: October 2010
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Founded by: Eric Silver
• Web site: http://pikimal.com

Costs:

• Free