Yet Another Meeting

I discovered a new web service recently via a clever YouTube video that was circulating via my Twitter pals. In all honesty I can't really tell you how it works just yet as I've only just signed up and it's tough to have a meeting by yourself. Yam, short for Yet Another Meeting, is a collaborative tool for conducting meetings and sharing notes and docs, similar I suppose to Basecamp or even Google docs and spreadsheets, but perhaps with a little more emphasis on the user experience.

"... Dating Service For Parking Spots"

Two entrepreneurs from Montreal have extended a university project into a business matching drivers up with parking spots and reserving these spots via the internet. "It's a new tool and people have largely been happy with the service, and they like the [website] idea in general." said Philippe Guevremont, who founded maplace.ca with his partner Dominic Chartrand. The website allows users to sign up and enter the particulars of where and when they need a parking spot. The software then finds a spot, reserves it and takes payment by credit card. I wonder what happens when you get to your spot and it's been taken?

Source: Globe and Mail

Living Life On The Whims Of Others

A young Chinese lady, Chen Xiao, decided in December that she was done making decisions for herself and has taken to the online community to decide how she should spend her days. Refusing only to do anything illegal, immoral or violent, Xiao charges about $3 per hour to carryout the requests of others. "If somebody asks you to do something, something simple, and you do it, it can make you very happy. You can change from a gloomy person to a very bright one. It can help give you a new sense of self-esteem," she told CNN. She's been asked to do all sorts of tasks from spending time with the homeless to photographing the birth of a child. Her motivation? "Every time I had a plan for what I wanted my life to be like, nothing would come of it. It was very disappointing. I figured if other people came up with things for me to do, I might stumble upon something new and better,"

Drop.io My New Favourite Web App

Here is a dead simple solution to file sharing! drop.io is a new service, since November of '07 according to the interview on net@night, that is largely making itself known by word of mouth. The site allows you to create a "drop", which is "a ‘discrete’ chunk of space you can use to store and share anything (pictures, video, audio, docs, etc) privately" according to the site, without requiring any type of sign up. Free drops allow you 100 MB of space for up to one year while the $10 a year premium drop gives you 1 GB! The really cool thing about drop.io is that it makes it extremely easy for you to set up your drop and receive files from multiple entry points. You can use a familiar web interface, e-mail your files to your drop.io e-mail address, phone your drop.io phone number and leave an audio message that gets converted to .mp3, or send a fax to your drop! As the administrator of your drop, you decide who to send the drop location and password to, it's that simple. The only thing drop.io knows about you is your ip address, for obvious reasons. I'm lovin' it!

Windows Live to offer photo and file sharing with new online services

Microsoft V.P. Chris Jones revealed in a blog post yesterday the company's intentions to offer two new online services. Windows Live Folders and Windows Live Photo Gallery will be free services that Microsoft hopes will take on other such offerings by rivals Yahoo! (flickr) and Google who is rumoured to be developing a file storage service. Microsoft's services are to be released in a limited beta later this year, only available in the U.S. The Globe and Mail has the complete story here.