Now that I've finally found time, I spent the last few days listening to some great music and finding out some cool online music websites that are sure-shot pleasure for sore ears(!?!). Whatever, check them out if you are into music, might just get hooked to some...

MUZU TV - Starting off with this one cause I liked it the most. In a time when Google has decided to ban music videos from Youtube, MUZU TV could just become "the one". This is where bands, artists, festivals, venues, broadcasters, music magazines and more, broadcast their music TV on the web. Still on beta, but very very promising!

StumbleAudio - It's StumbleUpon for music. is a social music discovery site with a mission is to help you find music by new and exciting artists that you would like, rather than play or sell you the hits by known artists that you are “expected” to love.

Jogli - Jogli scans the internet for existing music and music video clips, and then indexes the music in order to provide an easy and efficient search enabling users to have access to huge free inventory of music. This one's great!

Mufin - Mufin is a music discovery engine, which you can easily discover new music in a large database with millions of songs.

theRADIO - Yet another cool search engine for music. Users are allowed to listen to free and enjoy the site 190+ online pure digital channels.

tunerec - It's a platform that helps you create your own music library with several million tracks available to you on demand. As soon as you have signed up for an account you'll automatically start recording music from thousands of radio stations. The service is 100% web-based. No downloads required, just sign up and you're good to go.

just hear it - Members can listen to any song they want and also create a media library which allows them to build their online music collection and listen to it from anywhere, create multiple playlists, see their play history, rename songs and more.

JamLegend - JamLegend lets you play a rocking guitar game online for free. It features a limitless song library, massive multiplayer, tournaments and social features. Like the games Guitar Hero and Rock Band, JamLegend simulates the thrill of rocking out for a sold out crowd while enabling features never before available in console games.

Musicovery - Discover new music based on your mood, this free webradio lets you browse music styles and epochs.

Karaoke Party - Sing karaoke online in your web browser. Practice your singing and increase your score. Challenge your friends in becoming the next karaoke champion. All you need is a microphone, built in or connected to your computer.

MixTape - Create and share popular playlists. Still very much in beta, you might not always get what you're looking for. Hope it gets better soon.

Happy groovin'...

Well, I've been off for the last few days taking care of a few family crisis. But that didn't stop me from surfing the web and finding out some fun and useful chat sites and utilities. Here they come...

me globe - It's a free and addictive instant messaging tool with language translation utility. You can even add you AIM, MSN and Yahoo! accounts.

tokbox - Tokbox is a live multi-user video calling service that works even with your favorite IM services. It even allows you to send video emails.

jabbify - If you have a website and would like to add chat facility to it, Jabbify is the place for you. Simple to install, easy to monitor and customizable, adding the chat facility is only as simple as adding a few lines of code.

zopim - Have an e-commerce website. Add an IM to analyze your visitors and never miss that important message again.

toksta - toksta* is a free instant messenger, which is easy to implement and customize into your social networking site or forum. toksta* IM enables your users to chat via text chat or webcam in real time - without having to switch to programs like Skype, MSN or ICQ!

Babuki - Yet another useful messenger aggregator that not only works with all you favorite IMs but also for Facebook. They also have a desktop version for both Windows and Mac.

tinychat - With TinyChat you can create your own chatroom and invite people through one simple link. Try it.

voxli - Instant voice chat for Gamers and Teams. Voxli is compatible with all gaming headsets and does not need registration. Just push to talk inside your game or send a customized link to invite as many as 200 members of your team.

webby chat - Free chat bar for your website or blog.

Communication unlimited...keep in touch!

Suddenly feeling lonely? Those "friends" who used to call up so much that they literally irritated you are suddenly gone? Can't find any known faces at the regular hangout anymore? Well, accept it! You just got socially ousted. But hey, welcome to the new age...The time to sulk under such circumstances and feel lost is gone!!! Remember it's hard times that you get to see many known faces "coming off". So take a lesson (and a bow if you want) and move on. Social networks are here with a promise that you'll never be at a loss of meeting new people and making new friends any more...

But before I open the Pandora's Box, please understand that this list will NOT include the over-popular sites like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut where you are more likely to come across the same ol' personas!

Zoosk - The best, no-nonsense, free social dating site I have come across in a decade. It's simple (as in just 5-6 fields to be filled up) to register, easy to browse, quick to make a contact and great to maintain! I actually made a profile here and loved using it.

wittygraphy - If you are a patron of arts, or into illustrations, digital arts, cartoons, caricatures etc. this is the place you belong to. Meet some brilliant artists sharing their works online and share your own too if you've got some!

Entitea - Tea anyone? Well this is a tea-lover's community where you come across people sharing some really cool tea recipes. Make friends, try the recipes and get refreshed, you'll love it.

meezoog - A trusted and closed social dating site. You cannot meet the wrong people because every member here comes through real contacts only. And hey, don't worry if it's a closed community and you don't know anyone using it, the best part is they provide you with tools to get connected to somebody first before you can join.

Dating DNA - This is innovative. These people like to call themselves web 2.0 social dating engine. Based on your profile they provide you a 9 digit number that serves as your dating dna and can be embedded anywhere for people to find out and get matched on-the-fly!

storyz - Become a storyteller. Use words, images and videos to tell your story and share them with the community here.

Mahshelf - One of my favorites here. It's a community for comics and graphic novels. Missed them for long? Not any more...

Wadja - Mobile social network.

webbr - A social network that visually connects you everyone around you.

mixtt - Make new friends. Post upcoming social plans. Connect with other groups. Go out and have a good time!

footbo - A social network for football lovers worldwide. Let's have a game!

So no more tears! Remember, there comes a point in life when you realize who really matters, who never did & who always will. So don't worry about people from your past, there's a reason why they didn't make it to your future. :)

It's Holi today! A celebration of colors and one of my favorite festivals. But colors have always confused me while designing a website, not that I'm a pro designer. So here's a small gift on this day...a list of sites I came across that would surely help you find color schemes for that new project you have been stuck up with...

COLOURlovers™ - It's resource site that monitors and influences color trends. Here you will come across a world of color palettes to draw inspiration from.

color hunter - It is a place to find and make color palettes created from images. You can search by tag or hex color code or image URL. If you have an image, you can upload it and get a color palette based on the colors in the image.

colr.org - A cool tool to let you fiddle around with colors from images again. Really simple and very useful.

Colors On The Web - A site is dedicated to the use of colors in design, and especially in web design. Plenty of useful info and inspirational stuffs.

w3schools HTML Colors - The ultimate & useful color reference guide from w3schools! RGB & Hex values for colors. Additionally, if you don't like hex or RGB, get a list of color names that are supported by ALL browsers here and here.

ColorBlender - Free online tool for color matching and palette design.

I Like Your Colors - Enter the url of any site and get their color schemes.

colorcombos - Find the perfect color combination for your project.

Colors Palette Generator - Upload an image to generate a color palette based on the image's primary colors. Useful for quickly grabbing a particular color within an image for inspiration.

Color Scheme Designer - The name speaks for itself. Use the color wheel to get your perfect scheme.

EasyRGB Color Harmonies - From your RGB colors it creates colors complements, harmonies and themes. It can be used to easily generate a Web site color theme or to select good trim and accent colors for your home decorations.

Go on and play with all the colors you like...

Coming out the unemployment and recession issue for a while, I was looking around for some online sharing and storage sites for media and documents. Here's a list of my finds...

pdfvue - Edit, annotate and share pdfs for free.

Photomemo - Share photos with your friends by mobile phone.

sendeo - Sendeo is a single dashboard for your digital life. Sendeo looks and feels like a look up window for all of your people, places, and things. It is your hard drive on the web and everything is securely stored and managed. clicking publish enables you to share your files via email or onto Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious and Reddit.

shwup - shwup by muvee, is your own private space on the Internet to share photos and videos with family, friends and even that eccentric postman. Shwup hosts online albums where you can effortlessly share and view photos or videos as well as create original home videos with whoever you want, whenever you want.

molv - molv lets you stream live videos from your phones to the world.

Share on Ovi - Share on Ovi lets you upload and share all your photos, videos and other media in one simple place. Plus, it’s easy to use and completely free.

A.nnotate - Private or shared review, indexing and discussion with notes and tags. A.nnotate lets you easily give, collect and store detailed notes on documents and web pages.

toluu - Toluu is a free service for sharing the feeds you read and discovering new ones.

TinyAlbum - With TinyAlbum you can create albums, upload photos, and share with your friends. Protect your private albums using passwords. You can upload as many pictures as you want, it's Free.

Scribd - Almost everyone knows Scribd by now. It's one of the most popular sites where you can publish, distribute, share, and discover documents of all kinds.

SlideBoom - SlideBoom is a free service for sharing PowerPoint presentations on the web. Everyone can publish their slideshows for business, education, entertaining and just fun. The membership is free.

That's all for now...Happy sharing!!

I've been looking at some statistics on jobs related searches and as expected, the volumes have shot up in the last few months. Googling for jobs resulted in a lot of "big" names which we are already aware of and many of us have probably come across their frenzied non-targeted job match emails. So I looked and looked and finally came across some interesting as well as innovative sites that could be used for the purpose. I have not tried them, so I don't really know how they'd work, but I'm sure it's worth giving a try. If anyone have tried out any of them, please share your experiences here...

LinkUp - Job search engine which claims to be "Always Current, Often Unadvertised & Never Fake" with 358,884 available jobs and 18,076 company websites. Not to mention they have been featured on PC Magazine, Killer Startups, cnet & About.com

Workstir - It's a local service providers directory. The concept is rather than combing through lists of service providers and relying on gut instincts to pick up the best one, you simply post your need and start receiving bids from service providers in your email.

Paid Interviews - It is a career network that connects job candidates with their ideal employer using social media, sophisticated matching technology, and a unique model that pays candidates when hired.

Jobirn - Insider Referral Network - It is referral network that connects applicants with employees inside the company where they would like to work. Jobirn makes connecting easy through features available inside the website such as video conferencing, chat and thousands of jobs.

Snaptalent - Discover companies matching you expertise, build online resume and get jobs/vacancy updates.

Visual CV - VisualCV is better resume, online. Include video, pictures and a portfolio of your best work samples. Securely share different versions with employers, colleagues and friends, and control who sees what.

NotchUp - NotchUp is a new way to manage your career. Instead of YOU having to sort through hundreds of job postings, NotchUp enables top companies to find you and pay you to interview for available jobs. It's 100% free to join and use.

JobFox - Claims to be the fastest growing job site in America.

mployd - Mployd helps job seekers search for employment and leading the employers wanting to recruit, hire and provide opportunities.

TUGLink - It is an online peer-to-peer job search community where members help each other land interviews for desired jobs. It's a new powerful job search and recruitment tool with all the necessary privacy measures, financial incentives, and maximum freedom of choice.

SimplyHired - Simply Hired is a vertical search engine. Simply Hired building the largest online database of jobs on the planet. Their goal is to make finding your next job a simple yet effective, enjoyable journey.

FWJobs - If you are a web professional, here's good news for you. FWJobs is a job board with a declared goal of bringing together companies and professionals who take interests in latest web technologies, web standards and web design trends. That's why its audience is well defined and consist of best web professionals around the world.

WhoToTalkTo - It brings job seekers together so everyone can share and exchange the inside scoop.

Indeed - It is a search engine for jobs - with a radically different approach to job search. In one simple search, Indeed gives job seekers free access to millions of employment opportunities from thousands of websites.

CrunchBoard - It's the electronic version of the ultimate insider's network. Use CrunchBoard to connect with the most dynamic programmers, designers, entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists and others who are deeply interested in the new web, and looking for their next career step.

Happy hunting...

Well, it's been a great day! Great 'cause I just lost my day job and now I can concentrate full time on my personal projects and blogging and internet, at least for some time...Keeping that in mind, I intended to submit Chosen Links to some blog directories as a stepping stone of my marketing efforts. To my disgust, most of the directories I came across were crap, either already closed and leading somewhere else, or simply saying they'll be back after the year end, not to mention the year end meant 2007!!! So I guess a small list of still working directories would surely be of some help for budding, starting bloggers like me. So here we go...

MyBlogLog - Yahoo's blog directory cum community cum social network! One of the excellent places to start up as your blog gets exposure to niche communities instantly!

BlogCatalog - The best blog directory with feed aggregation and community support. Along with MyBlogLog, this is the best place to start!

BlogBurst - They claim to put your blog on major media sites like Reuters, USA Today & FoxNews!

BlogStreet - PR7 blog portal for Indian blogs & bloggers where you can submit and get listed too.

Kmax Bloglinks - I found this one very colorful & attractive. No automated submissions, you gotta write this guy a mail and linkback. Seems more like a link exchange, but nonetheless a nice place to be!

Blogion - Typical directory for blogs!

Blogarama - Yet another simple blog directory!

Blogz Version 3.0 - Sarthak Taneja prefers to call it "No frills blog search engine"! You can surely add your blog here...

Blog-Search - The blog directory search engine!!!

Blog Topsites - The name says it all! If the mainstream sites can have 'em, why can't the blogs?

Boing Boing Blog Suggest - Suggest your blog to Boing Boing and if they like it, they'll review it!

Technorati - Couldn't have done without it! I don't really wanna introduce it out here as you can find millions of pages and sites already talking about this hottest heart-throb of any bloggers!

That's all for this day! If any of you have suggestions or comments on the above links, feel free to shoot!