There are many Firefox add-ons that one can be imagined. In matter of fact, I don’t want to install anymore add-ons on my beloved Firefox browser impulsively. Instead, I want to install those that I think I will need them. Today I found a reason to install Pluribo, a Firefox add-on that provides Amazon product user reviews instantly when you need it.

The story is this, a friend of mine urge me to help him to buy an interesting psychology product entitled, “Learn Dowsing 2-DVD Set.” Prior to this, he was not managed to bid a similar product successfully at eBay, and that’s why now he turn to Amazon Web page. He want me to check whether or not the user reviews of this Learn Dowsing is good, can help him succeed in his psychology classes he attended now, as well as the shipment issues. Clearly, install an add-on such as Pluribo should help us achieving our aims.

Visiting the Pluribo home page will find many great tools about this particular software. You’re giving a great video clip, “how Pluribo works in Firefox,” and upon you successfully installed this add-on, you’ll aware that anytime you visit an Amazon product page, Pluribo will use its back-end artificial intelligence technology to help you automatically summarize user reviews. The summarized user reviews will appeared as a one or few sentences in the below of the product page.

With respect to the Learn Dowsing DVD, albeit that Pluribo couldn’t calculate a summary at the time of my writing, but in an untamed, massively scaled Web environment, learn about the user reviews before you make up your mind to buy a product is always a wise decision to have. We’re not only want the more careful sellers, but also the buyers in this Web environment. And we definitely want an add-on that will scan the user reviews more thoroughly for us.

Blippr is a site that replicates some micro blogging sites such as Twitter, and offer users a place to share their reviews on books, games, movies, music in a maximum 160 characters. There are many people know that product review is important, but few realize that one can do a review in less than 160 characters.

With blippr’s 160-character length limit, it’s sound like users that wrote the reviews know much about the Internet slang, and are belong to the group who prefer to write short instead of long text of product reviews. To better determine whether 160-character length limit is enough for one to complete a sound product review, you can go to the front page of blippr, and measure the review/opinion of the reviewer about a particular game or movie, or etc. To a lot of people, time equals life. I’d like to imagine that a lot of people would like to visit this kind of site and get the review of a particular movie before they found out the movie really bug them, and simply a waste of time after they watched the movie.

Of course, encouraging people to do the product review on the Web and also mass the opinions for the benefit of public is something that worth to do. Blippr did offered some Web 2.0 features such as users can agree or disagree on a particular review, as well as show off their emoticons such as love it, like it, whatever, or dislike it. In addition, visitors can also find “hot this week,” “all-time favorites,” and “most blippd” on the sidebar found on blippr. Meanwhile, blippr has already integrated with a number of services such as Facebook, FriendFeed, Profilactic, and Twitter. Other services such as Jaiku, Plurk, and Pownce is on their way soon.

Slantly is a Web platform that allowed users to start a debate or share their opinions. Upon you sign-up to the site, you can go to your own dashbaord and state your own opinion, support it with your own word in order to spark an interesting debate.

On Slantly, you’ll find every single opinion is an unique opinion submitted by the users. Users are allowed to vote “Agree” or “Disagree” and the simple user interface minimize barriers for users to make a compelling argument. However, there is a rule on Slantly which require its users to vote first before they type in any argument to submit their votes. It’s true, if you can’t agree on a statement, vote “Disagree” first before you explain why you vote so. Besides, rather than call it an opinion, the look and feel of the opinion is indeed a poll and Slantly enables its users to embed these opinions into web pages or blogs. Also, Slantly offer a statistical data in which users are aware of the votes by location, this is one area which I find it is a vital factor to build an active community. Users want their opinions to be shared on Slantly, whenever feedback received, they do expect they know which region their feedback is coming from. In other word, all votes and arguments will be sorted out by Slantly and thus users are able to view sentiment by geographical location.

Like any other Web platform, Slantly organize all the opinions based on categories. Users can find, vote, or engage with the debates through opinions that they like in different category such as News, Politics, Celebrity, and etc. Furthermore, users can also find what topics currently are popular in Slantly, what are the recent opinions, which opinions are the controversial, or find opinions based on time/date of posting. For opinion publishers, there will be given a publisher dashboard for them to moderate and manage discussions, opinions customization, and etc editorial tools.

Nevertheless, all the opinions created by users at this moment are about the current news and issues, not the passing whim of the users.

As a Web developer, I like to visit some sites that talked about programming, build application, or pointed out some cool software tools. For me, it’s indeed a strange experience to go back to some sites that existed on the Web for a while, but I did not profile it on my blog, and Intel’s cool software platform is one of them.

I first thought it’s no longer maintained by Intel anymore, but the top result at the time of writing, i.e. with the vote of 29 is illustrative of trend that this Digg clone will likely be accepted by the Internet users, and proudly served as a Web product that will sustain for a long period of time. Frankly, in a noisy world out there, if a site carried a brand name like Intel, it will always has the advantage to lure in users. When I first started TagEdge, I did profiled a lot of Digg clone (check out this Digg link at TagEdge), but Intel’s cool software is one of the Digg clone sites that makes people want to go there, visit and revisit again, simply because of it’s an Intel product.

Intel’s cool software platform, like any other Digg clones, the article submitted by registered user with the most votes will always be appeared on the main page. In evaluate how its offering can bring value to the software lovers, it does its founding mission. However, when I pay close attention to the community participation on the site, it still did not generate the same kind of buzz as generated by Digg, not to mention how this site will help Intel to find out “the next Google,” as written by VentureBeat in October last year. Perhaps all those so-called “the next Google” are still the small and lean ventures, and definitely not that easy be found by the ordinary Internet users, only private investors and venture capitalists will know how to access them in the first place.

This site is said was powered by Pligg, a famous open source content management system. When it is developed using an open source tool, I still curious how it cost around $40,000 to develop.

TradeVibes, co-founded by four (4) ex-PayPaler, is a leading contender in the user-generated startup directory. On the landing page, one can find all the interesting new startups that were submitted by users. If you’re looking for the basic information about a startup, particularly from the emerging technologies field, TradeVibes is the right place for you.

TradeVibes’ Web-based startup information primarily were submitted, edited by its own users. Upon an user is sign-up to the service, she can straight away updating startup information or posting news and discussions. Likewise, an user can add a new startup information to the TradeVibes database, such as add the description of the new startup that has not yet be appeared on TradeVibes (1,000 characters maximum), etc.

TradeVines is up against a less fierceful competition, CrunchBase is the one that currently offer the free technology startup database, and the other one, is the KillerStartups, a blog-like startup review directory. However, I like the way TradeVibes offered to the public, which I can easily find the key people behind the startup, the funding history a particular startup received, and the related companies in the same categories.

Even though there is no de facto standard for the tech startup database, TradeVibes is continually develop features that help to retain its existing users. Now TradeVibes has the Startup Battle, a prize, i.e. Wii to be given to the users every week (check out the contests listed in the sidebar), Top Bullish Movers and Top Bearish Movers, widget that can be embedded on one’s own blog or Website, and etc. just to name a few. In addition, to encourage users in participate to the TradeVibes, whenever one submitted a new startup, a one (1) TrV Points will be awarded to the user, and she can use it to exchange for the items from TradeVibes.

Meme is now my second-word that most people talked about but I don’t get understand its real meaning in Netspeak (The first-most I don’t understand is “strategy,” which appear to mean something of reading a lot of management journals such as McKinsey Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, etc. and directionless pursuit of the fad endorsed by some analysts). The most famous Meme site of course now is Techmeme, and from then some people have built sites with the word of Meme such as Polymeme etc. Here come another Meme, i.e. PownceMeme.

PownceMeme is a site that powered by Pownce, and is continually feeding you all the notes, links or photos shared on Pownce. As stated on PownceMeme, its slogan “Rating the stuff you put on Pownce.com.” I think you sure will aware this is a site for users to vote on the notes, or links, or videos and photos posted on Pownce. The first one appeared on the front page is the most voted, with 5 stars the most, and the note with the most recipients will rank higher than those who are lower but in the same level of stars.

YouPublish is a publishing platform which allowed users to publish any type of digital file, whether it is in the written, audio, video, or software format or in any combination and sell it for a price tag or for free. It went live in May this year, and upon you sign-up for this platform, you’ll be given a unique sub-domain as your referral link, and you can use it to refer people to buy products on YouPublish and you’ll earn a 7.5% commission. Typically, YouPublish pays content providers 50% of their sales, which is relatively higher as compared to some other publishing platforms elsewhere.

On the other hand, buyers that would like to buy the available products on YouPublish can click the “Find a File” and browse the products they want and add them to “My Library.”

Google Doctype, Google’s newly launched Website is like a Wikipedia for Web developers. In a brief introduction of this Website, Google said this Website, all of its content will be written by Web developers, for Web developers. Whether or not you’re in the middle dabbling in HTML, JavaScript, or CSS, or really dives into these open Web tools, this one is definitely for you.

Similarly to Wikipedia or Citizendium, it remains true to its commitment to user-generated content. In other word, those who own a Google account can edit any of the content. In this case, it might follow the hidden risk of what Wikipedia gone through, i.e. allowing anonymity, and hence some users who created fake accounts could submit some wrong materials to this Website. I’ve to admit this is a premature scenario, as most of the Web developers are all willingly to foster a healthy and long-term community and help promoting open Web standards.

Currently, this Google Doctype is available in English and Spanish. I particularly excited about this when I found out that there will be a new JavaScript library, in which 8,000 lines of code which originally developed and tested internally at Google will be available in Google Doctype.

To learn more about Google Doctype, there is a video which embedded in the below.

via [Google Operating System Blog]