Open house for everyone
If you’re shopping for a new home and have the urge to pass along your reactions to homes you’ve looked at, the Web gives you plenty of options.
Two sites, www.Reply.com and www.ZipRealty.com let potential homebuyers post personal reviews of homes they’ve considered. Both are really all-purpose realty sites, but each also allows anonymous postings of comments and home reviews.
The value is obvious: You wouldn’t want some poor family to buy a house afflicted with nasty bathroom mold, which your sensitive nose detected.
Between the two sites, Reply, based in California, offers the easier system for reviewers to navigate and post comments. You punch in an address for a building you’ve looked at, then post a review. As long as it’s not obscene or extremely rude (moderators keep track of comments), your observations will be there for the world to see.
We checked it out and didn’t see much use in the Spokane area.
Buyers beware: since postings are anonymous, it’s possible the glowing reviews you find there might have been written by the owners.
Anything but the iPod
Are you weary of the iPod mania coursing through American’s cultural bloodstream? This site, www.anythingbutipod.com, is the curative.
It’s not a hate site, but more a comprehensive approach to finding great hardware alternatives to the iPod.
It mostly offers handy guides to product purchases. It has, of course, a heavily used forum section with user comments on why or why not you should opt for particular mp3 players on the market.
The site’s mission is summarized on the Anything But iPod FAQ: “With the iPod there are no choices to make; you give up your right to choose. You are just another face in the crowd, with the same player and the same service. With other mp3 players you have the right to choose from several different services and with those services you are able to choose which player matches you as an individual.”
Make your own ringtones
Admit it, you’ve always wanted your own randomly generated, way-out cool ringtone.
The coolest, brainiest approach comes by way of Wolfram Tones (http://tones.wolfram.com), a site developed by prominent scientist Stephen Wolfram. Wolfram Tones allows users to generate electronic digital signatures — roughly a five-second melody — by selecting from 16 genres and from a variety of mathematical algorithms.
Some of the resulting tones end up vaguely familiar, depending on your choice. Others can be wildly random and individualized.