In 2004, there was a total of 4.3 million injuries and illnesses on the job in the US. That’s at a rate of about 5 out of 100 people on the job. For those that do get injured, it can be frustrating and even confusing to figure out basic information like compensation, healing time, and the cause of the injury. The Injuries is a site that provides resources for people who are injured (or, who may be injured).

As part of their goals, The Injuries hopes to become a resource for the injured through information and advice about injuries, and through interactions with other people with similar injuries. Although there are other sites that allow users to talk about injuries, The Injuries looks to be a nicely design and focused site that could be very valuable as more users use it as a common resource.

It’s great to see Web 2.0 starting to diversify into verticals such as health. The Injuries can potentially do a good job of providing user interaction and a sense of community for those that are injured. Their database is small right now, but, watch out for them to grow as more users join and comment with their own injury experiences.

Yesterday, Digg version 3 launched, and it’s definitely a great redesign. The interface is much tighter, allowing users to more easily navigate between sections and stories. As expected, they also launched a number of new topical areas, in hopes of expanding their reach.

On the interface level, the redesign is a welcome change. The graphics have been slightly updated, and given a softer and more refined look. It’s also much easier to switch between the upcoming stories in the queue, which is really important, since users are the ones that can digg them up to the front page. The tabbed interface for surfing the different topics is also nicely done, allowing users to quickly jump between topic sections. It’s also much easier to jump between the most popular recent stories, and the most popular stories in the past day, week, month, and year.

The big deal is the addition of new content areas for Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment, and Gaming. Some of these topics were originally lumped into Technology, but they’ve since been separated. The new topics are currently in beta, and, you can only view them once you’ve logged in.

Whether or not the new topics such as Celebrities will catch on remains to be seen. Currently, there are relatively few stories in these fledgling categories, although, many people are starting to submit new items for them.

Overall, the redesign was a nicely executed, and made the homepage easier to navigate, and easier on the eye. The new categories have great potential, and we’ll have to wait and see if more people besides techno-geeks will start using digg.

WubHub is another social commands service for the web, alongside YubNub. It’s interesting that their names are so similar. The aim is to satisfy those linux and dos junkies out there by extending the notion of a command prompt to the web.

You may be asking why a command prompt would be of value to anyone for the web. Aren’t command prompts a legacy that the typical user rarely ever needs? The fact is, that, for many, the command line interface is one of the fastest and most efficient way to access information. This is no different for web interfaces.

For example, suppose that I’m a physics researcher who relies heavily on Wikipedia. It’s become a real time killer to go to the Wikipedia homepage, wait for it to load, and then type in my search term, then wait again for the results. Instead, I could just go to WubHub and type in “wp(atomic physics)”, and I’ll immediately get sent to the results page. The key is that I’ll get used to typing wp(something) so often that it will become second nature, and will eventually help save me time.

They also have other commands that are useful, like “imdb()” to search imdb and “deliciousPopular()” to search on del.icio.us. Since this is a social application, users can also submit their own useful commands for querying other services. As more users add commands, value is added to WubHub.

WubHub, however, does have its shortcomings. It really needs to have browser integration like YubNub does, so that I can type in my commands straight into a search box on my browser. Having to go to the WubHub website each time I want to query is a deal-killer. Another problem is that the command structure is quite rigid at the moment, only allowing queries that conform to “wp(test)”. Otherwise, WubHub will hit you with an error. What they really need is to implement a flexible parser that can take a variety of syntaxes, like “wp test”, “wp test”, “wp[test]”, or “wp{test}”.

If you’re one to cringe at command line interfaces, I would still suggest giving YubNub and WubHub a try. You might be suprised at how much time they could save you. And, if you find that there’s a service you use that’s not covered, try adding a command for it.

When researching about a city before visiting for the first time, it can be hard to get a sense of what places to try, and what places to avoid. Sites like Yelp and CitySearch can only go so far in conveying the essence of a place. TurnHere lets visitors vibrantly see places with streaming videos backed by professional filmmakers.

Similar in style to the recently reviewed Rooftop Comedy, TurnHere focuses on quick and easy video browsing, except this time, the topic is travel and locations. Basically, they hire filmmakers with either professional or prosumer equipment, and with a passion for travel, to submit videos documenting cool places to visit. Businesses can also buy shooting time from TurnHere to promote themselves.

This all sounds like a pretty typical film production company, but, what’s different about TurnHere is that they make all the films available free on the web, supported by ads. Currently, most of the videos congregate around New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with a long tail sprinkled around the rest of the US. Most videos are around 5 minutes long, and try to be entertaining while providing relevant information.

The interface is spot on, allowing users to easily browse videos in different cities. The videos are delivered using a flash based player, and they’re fast to start.

What we’re seeing is traditional film production companies turning to the web for content delivery, which is great for the consumer, since it gives them more flexibility and options. But, in the end, companies like TurnHere have not scratched the surface of user generated media (which is what YouTube is solely focused on). Not everyone can be a TurnHere filmmaker.

What I would love to see is a video-based Yelp. Alongside textual reviews and photos are user-uploaded videos reviewing businesses. I’ve already seen many videobloggers doing it on their individual blogs. Heck, I’ve even done a video review on my blog about a popular sushi restaurant in Palo Alto (don’t laugh, I used my dinky little Canon Elph). I believe that there’s enough passion amongst the video blogging crowd to make a very valuable video reviews site. Someone like YouTube just needs to provide the bandwidth and infrastructure, and we’ll be set to go.

OpenStreetMap is leveraging the community to produce geographical data. In many parts of the world, this data is not free, and is subject to ownership by government agencies (this is not true in the USA, where it is free). OpenStreetMap lets users freely edit maps online in a wiki fashion, sharing their knowledge and experience of local geographies.

Currently, the project is focused on European geographics, where places like Dublin and Glasgow are actively being mapped by users. They’re still early in their development, so coverage won’t be as good as the standard maps out there, but they hope to increase coverage as the project moves along.

Maps are draggable via a Google Maps style interface, and editing is done using a Java engine. The interface is a bit clunky and slow at this point, which I hope they’ll be able to resolve in the future. Zooming in and out takes way too much time, which could deter people from making extensive edits.

A major question that many people ask is, why not use Google Maps instead? They explain the intricacies in their FAQ:

Most hackers around the world are familiar with the difference between “free as in beer” and “free as in speech”. Google Maps are free as in beer, not as in speech.

If your project’s mapping needs can be served simply by using the Google Maps API, all to the good. But that’s not true of every project. We need a free dataset which will enable programmers, social activists, cartographers and the like to fulfil [sic] their plans without being limited either by Google’s API or by their Terms of Service

So really, the OpenStreetMap project aims to go beyond any mapping service in terms of freedom of use. The real question then is, will there be enough map geeks out there who have the skills to do this? They do provide a service where users can upload points taken on a GPS, but I don’t think I’ll ever trust myself to freehand any roads on a map.

The bookmarking space is getting very crowded indeed. Microsoft recently launched their bookmarking service, Windows Live Favorites. At first glance, it seems to be just another del.icio.us clone. But, at further inspection, it’s a lot worse.

Favorites is part of the Windows Live service, Microsoft’s foray into web applications. All the typical bookmarking service features are present in Favorites. You can add a bookmarklet to quickly favorite websites with a pop up window. I actually like this type of bookmarking method better than the redirection method in del.icio.us. Redirecting can sometimes be a bit jarring on the surfing experience. The pop-up method is also seen at Blue Dot, another social bookmarking contender to watch out for.

The interface for managing your bookmarks is all AJAXified. But, somehow it feels a bit clunky, like the whole interface is going to fall apart at any moment. At times, I found that buttons were unresponsive for long periods of time. They certainly have a few UI issues to sort out.

The service allows you to enter a description and tags along with the URL. After building up some links, you’re able to star them, somewhat like Gmail’s star feature. Later, you can sort by stars, and see what links you’ve marked. In addition, you’re able to view all your tags (there doesn’t seem to be a tag cloud feature, so all you get is a flat list). You can also directly preview each of your bookmarks by clicking on the preview button, which opens the bookmark in a columnized frame. I wouldn’t see myself using this much, but if you’re doing a lot of bouncing back and forth between each bookmark, it could speed things up.

Currently, users can import bookmarks from IE, Netscape, Firefox, and del.icio.us. I entered in my del.icio.us username, and tried importing my del.icio.us bookmarks, but was only able to import the latest 30 bookmarks. It was, however, successful in getting all the tags and descriptions for each item.

Favorites has a spotlight-like search at the top of the page, which searches your bookmarks instantly as you type. The response was pretty quick, and searches all the text and tags.

But wait, where’s the social bookmarking aspect? There is a sharing attribute for each bookmark, but there is no obvious way for you to share or view other people’s bookmarks. It turns out that you’re only able to publish your latest bookmarks on your MSN Spaces. You will need to first include the Windows Live Favorites module.

Overall, Windows Live Favorites brings nothing new to the social bookmarking table. Also, the bookmarking system is pretty closed, in the sense that the only way to share bookmarks is through an MSN Spaces account. Microsoft needs to open up if they want users to more effectively share their favorite sites. They can easily do this by providing a direct interface within their Favorites service to see other people’s bookmarks (and perhaps a zeitgeist of popular links, like the one del.icio.us provides). An open API would be even better, but I don’t expect them to do that anytime soon.

Then again, maybe Favorites is supposed to be more of a personal online bookmarking service, with less of an emphasis on the social aspect of bookmarking.

Ever since reading about wetpaint on their front page during beta, I’ve been waiting anxiously to see what their product looks like. Their philosophy stands on the foundation of collaborative thinking with an easy to use wiki interface. In addition, the site itself is very nicely designed, with smooth curves and wise use of space which is easy on the eye.

Right now, wetpaint can host your wiki for free. The target audience is a wide range of users, including club members, schools, bloggers, and hobbyists. They’ve really tried to make the service as friendly and as easy to use as possible–it’s very inviting even for wiki novices.

The interface for editing uses AJAX so that you can edit in place without refreshing (something I wish Wikipedia would implement). As soon as you hit the EasyEdit button, the page dims and focuses on the editing box, where you can edit in a WYSIWYG environment. A toolbar appears and allows you to do basic formatting and insert links. Another feature is the ability to place tags on each page, which greatly helps searches. Once you’re done editing, just hit the save button, and in an instant you’ll see the changes. It really is slick.

You also have total control concerning the editing rights of visitors, from allowing anonymous users to edit, or only allowing your close contacts to edit. It’s flexible enough to meet any need.

Right now, I see about 100 wikis that are hosted by wetpaint, and they’re really trying to grow more. Since they are currently a free service, wetpaint gets revenue by placing contextual ads on each wiki page. The front page displays some the featured wikis that their users have grown.

What I would like to see is a premium wiki service which gives users more enhanced hosted features like:

• Ability to edit CSS: Currently, users can only choose from a library of templates.
• Guaranteed unlimited space: wetpaint currently provides unlimited space, but they may restrict this in the future.
• Media hosting (audio, video, etc).

As evident by the FAQ, wetpaint is still trying to figure out what users really want, and many of these features may become live if there is a high demand for them.

Overall, wetpaint looks like a real winner. The wikis that are made all look nice, and most importantly, are very easily edited. They’ve really flattened the learning curve for wikis, and their audience is potentially very large. Make sure to check out wetpaint if you’re looking for a good hosted wiki service.

There was a controversial thread over at Techcrunch about Flickr not opening up their API to Zooomr. Two sides promptly formed behind each company in the comments (with some pretty harsh words being said about Zooomr). The Zooomr proponents said that Flickr shouldn’t be afraid of opening up to their competitor, and that keeping their system closed harkens back to the days of Web 1.0. In the end, Butterfield of Flickr cleared it up by saying that they will indeed be opening up to competitors, as long as they reciprocate the gesture by opening their own API. This was supposedly a change of heart.

We have to remember that Flickr is a company, not some free wheeling do-gooder that will cater to anyone’s request. It should come as no suprise that Flickr woudl take some time out to carefully consider opening their API directly to their competitor. In the end, I believe that Flickr has made the right decision, which could potentially allow Zooomr users to transfer all their Flickr photos to their Zooomr account. There’s no reason for Flickr to tether their user’s content. But for people to say that this decision should be a knee-jerk reaction is quite ridiculous.

When you look at the social networking space for 20-somethings in the US, you’ll see a crowded space that would make any entrepreneur shy away. But, as soon as you widen the field outside this age range or outside the US, the space is considerably more open. Miaplaza, which has been through a year long private beta, aims to grab marketshare in the untapped demographics of social networks.

Miaplaza centers around the idea of plazas, which are basically groups of people who share an interest–think Yahoo Groups, but with a tighter integration around social networking. All the usual features of social networks are there: the ability to add friends, look at the links between friends, messaging each other, and perusing member profiles. The plazas are grown organically, which is to say that members make their own plazas, and passionate members keep them alive with activity. This is similar to the portals at Zimbio, but with a stronger emphasis on social networking.

The key behind the plaza paradigm is that users are able to post various types of media, including photos, news, discussions, and recommendations. You can also surf these media types across all the plazas via the top navigation menu.

I met the founder of miaplaza, Johannes Ziegler, at Stirr, and he is a strong proponent of organic community growth, and looking for social networking oppurtunities outside the demographics of the usual players. For example, they have seen a huge growth in World Cup Soccer plazas, which have sprung up with users all around the world. Indeed, some of the other plazas that I see are “Parents of the Silicon Valley Area”, “Peninsula Bible Church”, and “Fly Fishing and Bird Hunting”–not the usual social networks you’ll see on the other popular sites. And a lot of them are garnering a decent amount of activity.

Right now, Miaplaza offers localizations for US, Canada, and Germany. They’ll be rolling out other countries soon.

Miaplaza is a social network to look out for. If they tap just a slice of the untouched social net, that may bring enough people and value to the system. However, I’m not crazy about their faded khaki color scheme, which I think should be made more colorful and friendly.

Remember Hot or Not? Not very useful, unless you really want to know what anonymous visitors think about your new hairdo, or, if you want to play a prank on your roommate by submitting his picture. But, what if we could use collective intelligence to decide if two people would be hot together? This is the premise behind the new dating site, MatchMake.Us.

Usually, dating sites involve submitting your profile, then browsing endless listings in hopes of finding that one fish in the sea that is compatible with you. But how likely is it that you’ll find that one profile that matches well? Even with the state of the art matching algorithms, there are still a lot of profiles to weed out. MatchMake.Us aims to turn the whole social dating site paradigm on its head by allowing users to essentially take part in match making other users.

Visitors are presented with two profiles and three buttons: “yes”, “maybe”, or “no”. After contemplating the viability of the two people’s relationship, they cast their vote. After a particular pair gets enough “yes” votes, they will both be contacted about the potential match, in which case they can contact each other. They just launched, so there aren’t that many profiles or voters yet, but I could see this being highly effective with a large user base. Why search through profiles when you can let other people suggest matches for you?

I had the chance to speak to Dale Thoms, founder of MatchMake.Us, at the Stirr Mixer 1.3, and he said that he has been getting great responses from women who love to play matchmaker in real life. Some of the upcoming features include support for matchmaker accounts, which will let matchmakers track how successful they are in making matches, and how they compare to other matchmakers. In a way, this is kind of like digg, instead of being first to find interesting links, you can be the first to suggest a successful couple.

Other new features to look out for are the ability to make lists of friends you may want to try to matchmake, and better searching capabilities. They’re really trying to be user-driven, and keep things simple and fun, which is a great philosophy.

When they get more votes in, it would be interesting to see on the front page lists of the most compatible couples, and most uncompatible couples, as voted by visitors. Another idea is for match seekers to message successful matchmakers to request to find a match for them. Matchmakers could either do this pro bono, or even charge a fee for doing it (if they’re good enough). There are numerous variants on matchmaking that could be done.

Overall, MatchMake.Us is a simple idea that could go a long way. I haven’t seen any service like this in the dating space as of yet, so it looks like they have a really original idea here.