Web 2.0 Awards The Good, the bad & the Indifferent aka week 8 #19

My first observation was that many of the useful sites were already one's that have been looked at through the last 18 points. You sly ol' things.

On the assumption of the 20/80 rule that 20% of our patrons are bibliophiles. I had a look at http://www.lulu.com/ The self publishing site for all budding authors without having to go through nasty old publishers. Definitely worth a second look as is http://www.biblio.com/ a site linking used book shops, and a good source for out of print books.

When it came to the City Guides and reviews. It sounds great in priciple and does seem to have application as a networking tool with LBC (There's that acronym again!) A small gripe however. Of the 3 listed all are Yankocentric and do not search outide of the US, so for local searchers, they weren't. Google Maps maps.google.com at least does this much, although its more guide than review. I also like the idea in principle as you would hope it would lead to a greater degree of transparency and accountability.

Cocktail builder http://www.cocktailbuilder.com/ is one that sounds fun and practical, except I'm sorry, but isn't that what you pay the man behind the bar for, and lets face it, if you're reduced to drinking cocktails on your own, that's no fun at all.

When its comes to shopping for unique items I couldn't go past http://www.etsy.com/ especially if you're fond of handmade walking sticks like me. My credit card got very itchy on this one. Pity most don't ship outside US. Also of note was http://www.threadless.com/ if you're of a mind to design your own Tshirt, although if you have access to publisher, blank iron on's and a colour printer, it would seem a lot simpler. I'm just sayin!

Others I liked were http://www.boxxet.com/ although its strength in being a search index of 'what's hot' is also its weaknewss, in its limited applicability beyond geeks like me. This also applied to http://www.listdump.com/ to an extent, but I can see some broader applicabilty in the odd reference question. And I do mean odd!

This also applies to Yahoo Answers, answers.yahoo.com although when I tested it for an answer on my faulty graphics card I had to wade through a number of less helpful hits first, but to be fair I did keep the search parameters general rather than specific. And I may have found an answer, more than one in fact, so I can recommend this one, with the following caveat below.

Of course it goes without saying , but I'll say it anyway that as with any site which allows content from anywhere on anything, beware the lack of verification. Caveat Emptor still applies, if not more so when it comes to the web.