I’ll start off by saying I love POIFriend! 

I was contacted by POIfriend.com and I was rather intrigued. As you might suspect POIfriend.com (pronounced like boyfriend) is all about points of interests. Essentially, it is a social network that allows users to create and share their own POIs within their group of friends or with the entire community. With POIfriend, you can create your own POIs, download them to your GPS unit, iPhone or Blackberry, and share them with others site users and even with friends who aren’t members. Best of all, it’s free.

“The advantage POIfriend has is that you are in the driver’s seat — quite literally,” says Bill McLean, co-founder, POIfriend Inc. “We often don’t realize the sentimental value associated with the places important to us. Places are just places until they take on more of a personal, helpful, or intriguing aspect for us, so we’ve created an online community to share just that.”

“POIfriend.com is an essential tool for everyday life. It offers accessibility and sharing of your favorite shops, sporting events, restaurants, gas stations, bank machines — whatever it is that keeps your world ticking,” adds McLean.”

Since POIfriend.com is constantly updated by you, the user, the information is always current and fresh. Uploading your own POIs means that there’s no limit to the groups that you can create or the friends that you can involve. POIfriend allows you to share and grow your world, on the go, all the time. However, as exciting as this is, I feel there may be some inaccurate data. Either way, it is a great service and it is absolutely free. Here are a few more features:

– A one-stop shop for a broad-range of POI destinations
– Avoiding the hassles of store-locator navigation
– 100% FREE
– Connect with everyone you know and those you don’t
– User-friendly compatibility (works with most portable GPS-enabled
devices)
– No GPS required
– Stripping away the techno-babble from GPS and POI data
– No bio necessary – just an email will get you started
– Users have full control over the places they wish to share
– Compelling connection between businesses and your community

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up today!

I have been asked many times how I manage to keep track of all the social networks and services that I have. It is very difficult. Since I also review sites, I am constantly signing up for social networks or services. I think I am the only person that does not have a Myspace account, however, I suspect that many individuals are signed up for quite a few social networks themselves. Fear not! There are a few ways to keep them straight with – yes – another service, however, you will be just a little more organized. Below, I will give you five services that I have tried that are great starts to becoming more socially organized.

1. Profilactic (which sounds like a medicine to me) is a recent favorite of mine and supports Pownce, LinkedIn, Shelfari, and the ability to add more than one account for the same site. At its core, Profilactic does two things: it displays your personal lifestream, which consists of your social networking activity, and a group lifestream from your friends. What it does, it does well. There’s also the option to create clippings – bits and pieces of information from the web; but this option is not really connected to the rest of the features on the site.
2. SocialURL helps you organize your online identity and get back in touch with all of your friends and classmates. It’s a unified profile with support for photo galleries and videos, as well as a central portal with links pointing out to all your other social network profiles. It’s all spiced up with lots of additional features, like on-site email, reminders and bookmarks.
3. Naymz is not so much an organizer but helps in that the service actively monitor certain sites for mention of your name. Naymz also actively promotes your profile by trying to make it more visible on Google.
4. Second Brain takes a radically different approach to aggregation than other apps on this list. You organize your data – this includes data from your social network profiles, like Flickr photos or YouTube videos – into collections. A collection is basically a bunch of links, photos, or other bits and pieces of data thrown onto a dashboard; you can create your own collections or explore what others have collected.
5. MyLifeBrand goes a step further by really integrating various social network sites within a MyLifeBrand frame. Its a pretty great service.

All of these services will help in your quest to be a little more organized in your life online and let’s face it; They all do the same thing, however, each of them have something they do different as well. Something you may like, and something you may not like. Take a look at them all. They all strive to keep your online social life more organized and that is something many of us need these days.

Since everyone’s all a-buzz about Mixx aiming to be the new Digg I decided to check Mixx out for myself to see how much of a clone it really is. In all honesty, I really only use Digg to promote my favorite blogs. That’s what Digg was made to do and it does it well. In regards to this function, Mixx is no different aside from the fact that it takes far fewer votes to get featured on the front page. While Digg is also a social site that is meant to help users find new media, I don’t like these aspects of it at all.

This is where Mixx has picked up the slack. While I’m not as huge a fan of social networking as it would benefit me to be, Mixx’s social features strike me as a bit more inviting than Digg’s, giving users the ability to use Mixx’s features within the boundaries of private groups. Plus, the site greets you with your customized MyMixx page. This page lists the most popular, most recent, or most commented on media in each category you’ve selected as having an interest in, helping you build “your blend of the web.” Plus, Mixx allows you to search for media that is related to your area and subscribe to feeds for each category. While Bubbletop is my favorite when it comes to having a customized online experience, I’d say Mixx is handling that aspect a little better than Digg.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to say how well Mixx is going to do. I by no means think it’s going to replace Digg but it probably will continue to steal little bits of Digg’s user base at a time. One of it’s big downfalls at the moment is the fact that Digg, StumbleUpon, and Del.ici.ous are already integrated into so many sites. Is the web willing to make room for a fourth? If not, the chances of people opting to use Mixx over Digg and other services will probably decrease quite a bit. Regardless, Mixx is definitely worth watching, as its growth is bound to shake things up on the Internet at least a bit. Sign up for Mixx Beta at www.mixx.com.

So, after a lengthy, school-induced hiatus from The Tech Brief, I’m back with a long-overdue review of Meemix, another new personalized, Internet radio service. Having come across it shortly after falling head over heels for Pandora, my expectations were high, so Meemix had a lot to live up to.

Like other personalized Internet radio sites, Meemix uses an algorithm to determine what songs it will play for you. The algorithm makes its calculations based on song parameters and information about the user. Each song can be rated from 6 (Hot) to -6 (Not), and Meemix works with the high scored songs while driving the others away. It boasts creating its playlists based on an understanding of personal taste rather than simply finding songs that are similar to the ones you tell it you like. I’m not sure how that works, but that’s what they say.

So how does it actually work? Well after using it for a few weeks, I’m not too impressed. Until today, my first station didn’t deliver anything that I like aside from the song I originally fed it to create the first station and it always starts with a Linkin Park song. It took a few hours today for a string of songs that I actually liked to start playing, and the station always plays songs from several bands that I have repeatedly rated -6 at first. It rarely plays any of the favorites I’ve defined. My second station actually delivered a really great playlist almost immediately. Unfortunately, the interface completely died, so I couldn’t rate or save any of the awesome songs I heard that day. Since then it has frozen up on me repeatedly.

But the very shiny, Web 2.0 Meemix does have it’s good points, without a doubt. It’s easy to use and it makes it extremely easy for you to log and acquire the music that you actually like (so long as a song on that album happens to play). And—of course—it’s free, being ad-supported, and has the community and other features everyone expects from today’s startups. Undoubtedly, Jango will be one of its prime competitors, being another of the younger Internet radio services. I think Meemix has a lot of potential, but I don’t think I’ll switch to using it exclusively, just because I can’t really create stations that are as specific as Pandora’s unless it’s specifically genre based. Playing songs that sound like ones you like may be an old formula, but it works.

Meemix is in private beta at the moment, but you can learn more and request an invite at meemix.com.

How about another social radio market to join? I use Last.fm and Pandora quite often and love them, especially the recommendation features. Jango is the new kid on the block, and it is not looking to bad at all.

Jango has been in beta for the past few months, and has recently opened up full access to its services. I must say, Jango is incredibly easy to use. When you go to the site you get a search box and a list of “stations.” Pretty simple, eh? You can choose a station, which is a selection of artists, or you can type in an artist’s name, at which point you are taken to a user page, without even having to sign up. I signed up though.

By choosing an artist’s name you in effect create a “station” based around them, which can be made up solely of that artist, or artists that are similar. Jango suggests musicians and bands that it thinks you might like based on your choice, and then you get to choose from Jango’s list and add that artist to your station.

So if you have used Pandora before, you will feel right at home. The concept is basically the same. I can’t tell you how many songs I have discovered using Jango and Pandora. I love it.

The site doesn’t have some things that Last.fm and Pandora do. It does not have a widget, for example although the company said that’s coming. So will I continue to use Jango? Sure! The more the merrier. Be sure to check them out. It is free and you don’t even have to sign up to try them out.