Ben Recommends

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 7 months ago

Love it. Great for watching general trends (warmer? cooler? wetter?) and historical data... can be a little overwhelming at first.

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 7 months ago

Great, captivating movie. A good off-kilter creature feature, something different than you might expect. (Might play a GREAT double feature with Joon-ho Bong's The Host.) Uncomfortable at times, but that only made it more rewarding in the end. I loved the effects used for the monsters and the "infection".

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 7 months ago

At some parts this series hasn't aged so well, but at others it's still kind of amazing -- and series as a whole holds together well. The individual stories, and characters, pull you through. A "retired" spy who posts an ad in the paper for people who need help, and he helps them. Serious, silly, shocking. Awesome.

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 7 months ago

Sometimes the native search in Gmail or Google Docs is fine... For all the other times, there's Greplin. Great to be able to search across multiple services (evernote, facebook, delicious, dropbox, twitter... and on and on!). You get a good chunk of search indexing for free, and can pay for even more. And it's a fast (and well organized) search! Think spotlight for the web.

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 7 months ago

Great idea and implementation, so far. Almost too powerful -- so many initial combinations that you might not know where to start.

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 8 months ago

Not quite comprehensive for every possible application, but it does a number of things really well. Awesome for keeping track of places (restaurants, etc.), movies, recipes. Plus, offline support in Google Chrome is a big plus. Add another star if you use the mobile app (which I don't).

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 8 months ago

This is currently my favorite recipe recommendation site. You can adjust what types of things it shows you (by specifying things you crave or, alternately, things you hate), but the site is curated by food writers, so there is a relatively small pool of very good recipes to try. Plus, full-screen photographs make the site even more appetizing.

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 10 months ago

Smooth experience and nice interface. Uploading not the swiftest (and it decided not to upload a large number of files without explanation -- possibly based on metadata? or something else?), but once the files are in, great performance. Instant mix function works well (and throws up some welcome surprises).

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 10 months ago

Easily one of my most-used extensions on Google Chrome -- lets you save files directly to your favorite cloud service (or at least a close second, if you favor a particularly obscure one). Supports Google Docs, Box.net, Dropbox, Picasa, and tons more. Works like a charm. Great for Chromebook early-adopters.

mickerdoo recommended this 1 year, 10 months ago

Ways to save water throughout your daily routine. It is interesting to see how things that aren't even water based can effect how much water is used.

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 10 months ago

Philanthroper's an interesting combo of micro-lending + group buying. Each day a particular nonprofit is highlighted, and you can donate $1 to them -- but no more. (Except for later.) The idea is, lots of little donations add up -- and, esp. if you make it a habit, it simply becomes easier to give. I'm still a little skeptical, but I love the idea -- it remains to be seen how sticky it'll be.

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 10 months ago

Interesting talks across a whole spectrum of ideas. Lots of worthwhile stuff -- at a different pace than most other internet-bred videos. This stuff is sometimes splashy, sometimes shiny, but frequently smart, motivated, and challenging. (p.s. I wish hunch could recommend which TED talks to see next, too...)

bnewcomer recommended this 1 year, 12 months ago

There are tons of social bookmarking services out there, and lots of overlap, but Diigo stands out for 1) tying in to Read Later Fast and Quick Note (both recommendation-worthy Chrome web apps on their own), 2) providing a clean interface, 3) tying into numerous other services (you can send to twitter, blogs, -- you can even auto cross-post on delicious!). And they have a snazzy bookmarklet.

bnewcomer recommended this 2 years ago

No recollection how I first came across this musician, though probably first through his band Kult. Great original music ranging all kinds of styles, hilarious / epic / amazing covers.

bnewcomer recommended this 2 years ago

Whether you're looking for surplus beakers or desk toys or retired British Postal attire or robot parts or more plastic bags than you will use in your life, this is the spot. They've got tons of really useful stuff, as well as science-minded fun and diversions, and things that seem like they might be useful, some day. (Still haven't used the digital caliper or aircraft wire, but maybe some day...)

bnewcomer recommended this 2 years ago

A modern story. This is meta-fiction, but not in any of the bad ways -- it's storytelling that's quiet, enticing, and riveting. Hard to describe what it's about, exactly, but read the first page or so and you'll either like it or won't. More likely you'll be pulled in. One of very few recent books I've read that would survive being read aloud. This is one I'll be reading again.

bnewcomer recommended this 2 years ago

Okay, so the website itself is nothing to write home about, but I'm biasing my recommendation here because I love taking the train, honestly.

bnewcomer recommended this 2 years ago

A fine selection of local consumables like crackers, noodles, jams, etc., but a great selection of meats (grass-fed beef, pork chops, ostrich, wild boar bacon, antelope chops, bison... -- besides having a very good selection of the meats you'd expect, they also have a changing selection of exotic meats as well) and the like, plus tasty olive oils and produce and breads and spices...

bnewcomer recommended this 2 years ago

An excellent, exciting, beautifully designed spy thriller. In some places it fits the mold you've come to expect, but in other places it makes you think -- and keep thinking after the end credits have rolled. Wonderful acting all around, from action sequences to snapshots of weird conversation to... everything. Loved it.

bnewcomer recommended this 2 years ago

Minimalist, easy to set up, friendly. Cheap for low-traffic sites: unlike the big-box (so to speak) players, you don't get unlimited disk space and traffic and all that, but then again, you also don't have to pay for stuff you're not using. Forums are fairly active in addressing any problems you might have. A good group of people. (Or robots, or hyper-intelligent mice or whatever.)