Luckily we can turn to the Internet, where we’ve archived all the highlights from yesterday’s show. Good thing, too, because there were some doozies.

Patton Oswalt opened the night with Internet porn, pterodactyls, Mark Zuckerberg’s vows, and our curious love of cats.

Bono was a last-minute addition to our Steve Jobs tribute video (along with President Obama, Jon Stewart, Sarah Silverman, and more).

Louis C.K. accepted the award for Person of the Year with a classic 5-Word Speech, Jeremy Lin made a surprise appearance with Spike Lee, and the Remember Me Project provided the night’s most chill-inducing moment when receiving the award for their work with the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

We could continue the list, but frankly you’re better off browsing the highlights yourself. Plus, we need to take a nap.

Thanks to all of you who voted for, watched, and supported The 16th Annual Webby Awards. We’re already looking forward to next year.

Now playing: exactly that. Watch It compiles your movie must-see list, whether the film is a classic you’ve been meaning to see or an indie film that’s yet to hit theaters.

Adding movies to your queue serves two purposes. First, you now have a list of all the movies you want to see (duh). More importantly, if you add a movie that isn’t available in theaters or on DVD yet, you’ll receive an email notification when it is.

All the links you’ll need to start viewing are right on the page: Fandango for in-theater ticket purchases; Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and more for downloads and instant streaming.

Looking for suggestions? Work your way through the complete list of Oscar’s Best Pictures or stumble through some of the worst movies ever made.

We always thought Baby Geniuses got a bad rap.

A very public crime scene.

280daily lets you archive your life in private, 280-character diary entries — just enough to get the gist without the pressure to mimic Jane Austen.

Since not every day is a winner (“Had frozen yogurt again…”), you can mark specific entries as “days of note” so they stand out from the crowd. The site comes with helpful features like an entry search engine, photo attachments, and the ability to export your musings to a PDF, spreadsheet, or even hardcover book.

If you find yourself in love with the service, upgrade to a pro account ($3 a month) for the ability to submit updates via email, adjust your character limits, and receive text-message reminders.

After all, it would be a crime to let a day go by unchronicled.

Kind of like a Rube Goldberg machine, except you do all the work.

Wappwolf makes that chore (and about 30 others) a simple one-step process with a little help from Dropbox. Meaning if you don’t have a Dropbox account, go get one now. We’ll wait.

Ok, now consider the aforementioned Facebook problem. With Wappwolf, you could create a specific folder in Dropbox called “Facebook photos.” Then, using Wappwolf’s step-by-step process, create a rule that says, “Every time I add a photo to that folder, rename it with today’s date, reduce it to 640×480, and upload it to Facebook.” Drag a bunch of photos in and poof: You’re done.

Other things Wappwolf can automate: emailing attachments to people, converting documents to Kindle ePub, password protecting files, uploading items to Evernote, converting to PDF, and plenty more otherwise laborious tasks.

Plus, Wappwolf just brought their automation features to Google Drive, and plans for SkyDrive and box are in the works.

So all this free storage space can start doing the work for you.

Except, not really. Skypers talk to Skypers and Facetimers talk to Facetimers, but video chatting still can’t rival the ease of picking up a phone.

Except, now it can. Meetings.io starts a video chat between you and up to five people in two simple steps: 1. Press button to generate link to video chat; 2. Share link. That’s it. No registering, no logging in, no screen names to remember. Just click and start.

Your screen automatically resizes to accommodate participants as they come and go, and there are cool little add-ons like a notepad for personal memos and a messenger space for personal comments.

If you did want to register for an account (it’s free and painless) you can then create your own “vanity room,” meaning you could simply say, “Meet me at 5:00 in The Netted Chat Room. And BYO sunglasses.”

Because the future’s so bright, obviously.

We’re not talking about that kind of shopping.

We’re talking about errands. Your bi-monthly gallons of laundry detergent, your premium paper towels, your oft-neglected cleaning supplies.

NetPlenish has found a way to make shopping for those things easier – and cheaper.

Use the iPhone or Android app to scan items in your home that you purchase repeatedly. When it’s time to restock, simply select those items off the list.

Taking current promotions, shipping, and tax into account, NetPlenish calculates the best price on that combination of items from a variety or sites including Soap.com, Target, Sephora, and more.

In a neat twist, once you submit the order with the app’s one-click checkout, all those participating merchants actually vie for your business, meaning the price you end up paying is often less than the quoted amount.

It might not be considered “fun,” but we’ll take “cheap and easy” any day.

The one service to do just that: VoteIt.

Offering three types of custom polling methods — consensus, multiple choice, and yea or nay — the new site brings democracy to questions as small as where to eat dinner and as large as naming the best movie of all time.

Ballots can be private (accessible via email invite only) or open to the public by sharing the link on Facebook and Twitter. Also available: Head into the proverbial danger zone and let participants add their own options.

When the dust settles, the survey creator can close the vote, which automatically sends a message to the participants with the final tally.

Four more words worth noting: “Let’s agree to disagree.”

Keep your dog out of the kennels with Dog Vacay. The site matches fellow dog lovers with pooches in need of a place to crash while their owners are away.

Prices start at $15 per night, but hosts with proven track records — professional experience, good reviews, homemade treats, etc. — can charge a bit more. Meet and greets are available to ensure hosts and puppies (and you) are all simpatico.

Besides providing your pup with a cage-free environment, Dog Vacay gives owners the flexibility to choose the perfect environment for lap dogs and fetch enthusiasts alike. Plus the Dog Vacay Guarantee provides insurance coverage in case of an emergency, support for last-minute cancellations, and email or SMS photo updates.

All of which makes for some very happy mug shots.

Tingo has the plan to keep buyer’s remorse at bay. Book any of the site’s “money back” rooms and if the price drops Tingo will automatically rebook your reservation at the lower rate — right up until you check in.

Tingo’s prices are comparable to other online bookers like Hotels.com and Expedia, so the downside is nil. You’re starting at the amount you normally would with the possibility of going down from there.

But that isn’t the only thing making Tingo a powerful hotel site. Narrow your search by amenities, read TripAdvisor reviews, and toggle the map view on to see exactly where your digs are located.

It’s the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle.

We have no idea what we’re doing.”

And thus kicks off Funny or Die’s inaugural issue of The Occasional, a digital magazine designed to compliment its viral video factory funnyordie.com.

Released “occasionally” (read: every two months), the humor mag features much the same content you’d expect from mainstream periodicals, with two exceptions: 1) It’s interactive; and 2) It’s funny. Really, really funny.

Swipe, tap, and drag your way through articles like the Craigslist-style “Dog Missed Connections” or an email correspondence between Videogum’s Gabe Delahaye and a spammer offering blind European children for adoption. Zach Galifianakis’s popular “Between Two Ferns” series gets a fresh episode with Ed Helms (The Office, The Hangover).

At the end of the first issue (available for free in the App Store), readers are invited to record and email a five-second sound bite to let Funny or Die know how they did.

We expect a lot of positive feedback.

Then Toyota mastered it with kanban, a billboard-style process to visually organize and prioritize production by dividing activities into three categories: undone, in progress, and completed.

Task manager kanban2go adapts that system for your to-do lists with a simple drag and drop schematic that makes completing projects, errands, and chores a visual, actionable exercise.

Start as many boards as you want, and tie together projects of a similar type with tags (home, work, Fifty Shades of Grey fan fiction, etc.). Google Calendar sync and Evernote backup provide invaluable support from apps you’re already using.

If you need to collaborate with others, invite them to join the board (the site’s charming instructional video shows the benefit in this). And the whole thing is optimized for desktop, mobile, and tablet usage, so you can start projects and track accomplishments from all frontiers.

It’s probably the only time billboards won’t obstruct your view.

Mostly you just want to . . . fix it.

You can do just that with DestroyTwitter, a lightweight program that turns your Twitter account into a background service, not unlike an instant messenger.

The real plus of doing this? Your Twitter stream is now completely customizable. Start with simple tweaks like changing the font, lengthening or shortening the refresh rate, and enabling spell check. Then go to town.

Filter out Foursquare-generated messages (“I’m at TooMuchInfoTown!”) and nonsensical live tweets hogging your feed. Enable autocomplete so you don’t need to remember all your friends’ usernames. Going out? Turn on away mode to freeze everything until you get back. You can even create a separate feed for keyword or hashtag searches that will auto-update just like your regular stream.

Our favorite feature? Applying the smirk-inducing Facebook color scheme.

We can’t tell if we love or hate it.

But the fourth friend lives too far away, so the poor kid’s on his own.

RendezNew allows for a more democratic approach to hanging out: meeting in the middle.

Enter up to four starting addresses and the map-based tool will find the midpoint and plot a cluster of possible meeting places around it. To ensure it’s the right hotel, museum, or taqueria for everyone, reviews from Yelp or Google (your choice) open up in a new window.

There’s a link to share the results with all parties involved, but even more helpful is that every destination option comes with personalized Google Maps directions from each individual starting point.

It’s the easiest way to guarantee everyone shows up — bar none.

Today we’re suggesting a better way to listen to music while cooking. Or exercising. Or throwing a dinner party. Or cleaning the house.

Because that’s how Songza works: Instead of building “stations” based on artists and algorithms, the site streams expert-made playlists based on your current mood and situation, all without commercial interruption.

Start by choosing the time of day and an activity (e.g. cooking dinner on a Wednesday evening) then your preferred genre. Songza will recommend three playlists, each with a brief description and song samples.

The genius here is that you may not know how fun it is to listen to ‘60’s soul while making dinner or what indie songs are good for working out — but you don’t need to because Songza does. And apps for Android, iPhone, and Kindle Fire ensure that the right playlist for the present situation can be cued up in just a few taps.

So you can focus on what you’re doing instead of what you’re listening to while doing it.

Now all you need is Forkchop, a virtual sous chef that takes any recipe – whether inputted manually or pulled from a website – and automatically transforms it into an interactive e-recipe.

Progress is tracked with simple clicks (or taps on phones and tablets): Ingredients can be crossed off once they’re used, and directions can be highlighted or minimized to keep focus on the task at hand.

Mark down tasting notes for different batches (think pound cake with and without the lemon zest) then tweak the original recipe until nothing’s left but the good stuff — sans the illegible pen marks in the margins.

But our favorite feature is how Forkchop can automatically generate recipe-specific grocery lists with the click of a button.

This cooking thing is a piece of cake.

Food cons: Left unchecked, our love affair with it would render us more immobile than the weights we should be lifting.

Here to keep us in check is Sessions, a remote health coaching service that designs bespoke fitness regimens and encourages users to stick to them.

Clients receive a personal consultation, customized exercise plan, daily monitoring with apps like Runkeeper, Fitbit and Foursquare, and scheduled chats to review progress and tweak programs accordingly.

But the most surprisingly useful feature is the human reinforcement. Coaches send emails and texts with motivational tips to eat healthy and Google Calendar invites for workouts. Too busy? Instead of taking no for an answer, they’ll make you walk to work or run your errands at double time – basically anything other than quit.

We worked out a deal with Sessions to get Netted readers an extended preview: three months for the price of one.

Because getting healthy is an acquired taste.

Here’s why.

The new comparison shopping site covers a comically large amount of topics, a small fraction of them being: credit cards, law schools, fast food items (the highest-calorie dish was a shock),laptops, soda, baby strollers, beaches, tequila, and airlines, plus camcorders, dirt bikes, and handguns (or as we call it, an Alabama vacation).

And yes, that is a small fraction.

But there’s no quality sacrificed for quantity. Each category has rating units specific to that topic – megapixels for cameras;  tasting notes for whiskey – and each specific item has its own page full of product info and tips for comparison shopping.

The site’s quick-glance Smart Ratings rely on a slew of experts from every field or an average of customer reviews from popular shopping sites.

And that’s why it’s Best in Show.

“Eggs don’t need to be refrigerated.”
- MawMaw

Those are two of the gems we received when sampling The Wisdom of Others, a new site that lets you crowdsource important insights (along with folksy witicisms, backhanded compliments, and cautionary tales) into a custom-bound book.

Invite family and friends to contribute their quotes via email, Facebook, Twitter, or personalized URL. Then choose your format: hardbound, PDF, or ePublication. The site transforms your content into the perfect gift for graduations, weddings, and other advice-inspiring events.

Now, a suggestion from us: Use discount code “NETTED” to get 30 percent off orders now through August 25.

If we may be so bold.

But what happens when you come across a picture of something you actually want? Like in real life?

That’s where Fancy has upped the ante. Like Pinterest, Fancy features members’ collections of unique Internet finds. Users can “fancy” things other people have added either online or with an array of stylish apps.

But Fancy adds a key piece to the puzzle: a buy button. Some items are purchasable right on the site; some link to the site where they are available. Still others (like this house built under a boulder in Portugal) aren’t for sale at all – but Fancy has booking information for a nearby hotel if you want to see it in person.

Browse by category to see the day’s most popular stuff, or dive into the sale bin, where you’ll find notable Fancy-only deals from places like ThinkGeek and Audiocubes.

FYI, the dog up there isn’t for sale — but his trench coat is.

Fancy, indeed.

With Spotiflux, a free download for Mac and PC, Internet usage is protected even when sharing a connection with total strangers.

Once logged on to the wireless network, flip on Spotiflux and browse as you normally would. The service encrypts your internet traffic, blocks malware and viruses, and hides your IP location to keep you anonymous.

It’s perfect for use in airports, hotels, and that cafe around the corner where struggling artists work on their novels.

They’re probably harmless, but better safe than sorry.

Instead, we trust our forecasts to the masses with Weathermob. Alongside the standard seven-day outlook, the iPhone app generates on-the-ground, crowdsourced weather reports expressed with photos, videos, comments, and emoticons, adding a layer of depth to boring numerical data.

Reporting breaks down into three fields: what it looks like outside, how you feel about it, and what the weather has put you in the mood for. So sunny, happy, and ice cream sundae probably means we’re loving the conditions (or watching an episode of Game of Thrones).

You can follow people to stay abreast on their local weather and share your own reports on Facebook and Twitter.

The best part: You’re always 100 percent right.

The Internet. You may have heard of it.

It’s what we here at Netted scour day and night, looking for the most useful, innovate stuff to suggest to you, our trusty readers.

But enough of that for right now. Because now is the time of year when we turn the tables. When you tell us what’s good. When opinions flow like wine and victors are crowned.

That’s right, it’s time to vote for the 16th Annual Webby People’s Voice Awards.

Like to laugh? Cast your LOL for funniest site. Fiercely loyal to a particular music app? Rock the vote. There are categories for mobile, video, games, and tons more places for you to make your voice heard.

Polls are open now through April 26. Winners are announced May 1. Bragging rights extend indefinitely.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

You’d probably watch a lot less television.

A Cleaner Internet aims to make online videos as clutter-free as offline ones. The extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari removes all distraction from YouTube — backgrounds, related videos, and pretty much everything except your video.

The results are visually stunning: You don’t realize how much extra junk is on the page until you see a before and after photo. (Activate the extension on Amazon too for an even bigger shock.)

The show/hide button can easily bring back the extra content, and a button to dim the background in a nice touch. Plus, you can share a link to the cleaned-up version of the video even with people who don’t have the extension installed.

But when asked for our favorite feature, we have but one response: “No comments.”

At the end of the day, not much.

If you agree, good news: Guestmob can get you into one of those hotels at a deep discount. The only catch? You won’t know which one until the booking is confirmed.

Start by choosing your destination city and date range of stay. Guestmob’s search results will give you a choice of “collections” — groups of hotels in the same neighborhood with the same star rating. Book the collection that suits your needs; you’ll receive an email with the winning hotel on the Thursday before your scheduled arrival. Last-minute reservations will confirm immediately.

Suspicious? We were too. But when we cross-checked rates with other sites for the same time periods, Guestmob was consistently at least 30 percent cheaper.

Consider it an invitation to throw caution to the wind.

Wikinvest
Diversifying is great for finances, bad for organization. Wikinvest syncs all your investment accounts (including 401k) in one place and provides statistics, news updates, and trends — all in real time. »

Hope Phones
Turn that early-model iPhone you use as a paperweight into a tax deductible charitable donation by sending it to Hope Phones, where it will be repurposed to help advance medical care around the world. »

Bump Pay
Collecting debts with fists usually means something has gone terribly wrong. In the case of Bump Pay, it’s business as usual. The new iPhone app lets you transfer funds by bumping phones with someone else. »

OneReceipt
That shoebox full of receipts? Hardly the height of recordkeeping. OneReceipt automatically archives e-receipts and provides an easy tool to catalogue photos of paper ones, too. »

The definition of a reversal of fortune: us discovering Superfly, a search engine that factors in users’ rewards points when finding flights.

Lots of sites can find the lowest fares — but seeing if those fares can go even lower by using rewards points is something that we, like lots of people, don’t have the head for.

Simply creating an account is fascinating; like constructing your travel fingerprint. Sync your rewards programs — everything from credit cards to airline-specific programs — and you’ll immediately see a tally of your “potential savings.” (In our case, $477. Just sitting there.)

When searching for flights, results are plotted in three columns: price, available rewards (already converted to dollars), and price minus rewards. Sometimes rewards won’t factor in. But when they do, you’ll feel like a travel genius.

We’ll fund our friends’ projects. Or anything promising stickers. Beyond that, nada. (Venture capitalists we are not.)

But one go-around with Fundhaus is changing our tune. The site combines the awesome crowdfunding of Kickstarter with the random discovery of StumbleUpon (to no one’s surprise, the site was forced to change its name after launching as KickStumbler).

Start at the homepage and click the oversized “Try It” link to land on a random project. From there, you can use the drop-down menus to sort through projects by category of interest or tags like popular, small projects, or ending soon.

For us, the simple next button is enough. It’s compulsively clickable, and each new project is a welcomed dose of creativity.

So now we have an embarrassing Fundhaus habit.

Our nominee for headwaiter of the Internet: Scoopinion. Using extensions for Chrome and Firefox, the web app quietly gathers information about your reading preferences to serve up an ever-changing list of amazing and relevant recommendations.

There’s no sharing or liking or tweeting involved. To use Scoopinion all you need to do is read articles like you normally would – and read them well. (As the site’s founders say, “An outrageous headline can only get you so far.”)

Scoopinion will then suggest similar articles from its “whitelisted” sites – over 250 legit publications like Pitchfork, CNN, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and BBC. A weekly digest features the most popular articles from the entire community; a daily version is more tailored to each user’s individual taste.

The site isn’t quite open to the public yet, but we secured invites for you to get in early. Just go here, register, and install the extension.

Then steel yourself for a daily dose of piping hot newsiattos.

Until we found Slice, we didn’t think it did.

But one look at the e-purchase organizer and we were sold (no pun intended). The app syncs with Gmail and Yahoo! accounts to scan order and shipment confirmations and compile an organized list of every purchase you’ve made along with a map of where current shipments are right now.

The site also catalogues your transactions, giving you easy access to purchase history, receipts, and return options. Use the Slice & Dice tool for a bird’s-eye view of your spending habits, complete with a pie chart depicting favorite merchants and shopping categories.

For tracking on the go, Slice has Android and iPhone apps available for free.

In other words, it’s flush with possibility.

The service acts like a regular job search engine, right up to the point where you apply for a position. After uploading your resume and cover letter to Jibe, you are invited to log in to LinkedIn (or Facebook) to see if anyone you know currently works at the company you are applying to.

If so, you can ask those contacts to give you a “thumbs up” — basically a quick, though incredibly impactful, referral. Use of the referral service isn’t required (Jibe is still a convenient job application tool without it), but those few clicks can go a long way toward making you stand out from the crowd.

Besides, it’s time for all that networking to pay off.

Sad, isn’t it?

Grubwithus has a fix for that: impromptu dinner parties full of strangers who may or may not like one another.

Yikes? Not really. Guests choose from a list of events in their area organized around specific interests, industries, foods — basically any topic that will break the ice among link-minded strangers.

Diners purchase tickets, which cover a two- or three-course family-style meal, tax, and gratuity. Any fun beverages (i.e. alcoholic drinks) are billed individually.

If you’d rather play host, create an event by choosing the neighborhood, approximate number of people, and desired price range ($16, $21, $26, or $38 per person). Give it a catchy title and description, and watch as potential new friends buy tickets for your event.

Already have tons of pals? You can use Grubwithus to organize private events, too.

But where’s the fun in that?

Yesterday at work we learned how to cast for pods.

Flapcast is a service that makes podcasts from across the web available in one searchable, streamable place. Browse to find new on-air personalities or start subscribing to your favorites for a giant queue of engaging info on demand.

Like your typical music streaming service (think Spotify), Flapcast queues up podcasts and autoplays through the list, essentially creating the most interesting AM radio station in the world. Though there are no apps to speak of yet, the site does function on mobile devices.

If you’re new to podcasts, may we suggest starting with the latest episode of This American Life or this classic Radiolab episode about how Carl Sagan met his wife and Neil de Grasse Tyson explains the Copernican Principle.

Suddenly, finding the best podcasts has gone from a game of sport to friendly catch and release.

Which means chances are you know a parent or two who desperately needs a break from their kid. (Maybe it’s you.)

And this is where you start thanking UrbanSitter. It’s a two-way street that uses Facebook to connect parents with sitters recommended by friends and sitters with jobs through people they already know.

Sitters’ profiles include bios, reviews, rates, a calendar of availability, and a badge to indicate that the applicant has undergone a background check. Sitters can also make note of affiliations with local organizations like daycare centers and parenting groups.

Parents logging on for the first time can browse recommendations and schedule interviews right on the site; return users can quickly scan their roster of favorites to book at a moment’s notice.

Last-minute Opentable reservation, meet last-minute UrbanSitter reservation.

Scenario One: You finish dessert, pay your check, and head into the rain to hail a cab. There are no cabs. You get wet.

Scenario Two: You finish dessert. Before paying the check, you order a cab with Uber. You head into your cab. You do not get wet.

Spoiler alert — we’re big fans of scenario two.

With Uber, you simply text your pick-up location or set it using the iPhone or Android app. You’ll receive one text with the estimated arrival time and another when the car arrives.

Your account is linked to a credit card, so payment happens automatically; even the tip is included in the cost of your fare. Like regular taxis, prices start with a base fare and increase in increments according to distance traveled or time idling. And with our sweet offer, Netted readers get $15 off their first ride when they book using promo code NETTEDUBER.

It’s what you might call an ideal scenario.

Goals and rocket-powered rollerskates.
For those with the drive sans the death wish, Gonna Try is a safe nudge in the right direction. The homepage asks you to complete one simple statement: “I’m gonna try to _____________ by ______.”

Define your goal and the date that you’d like to accomplish it by, on, or until. Then choose from a list of tools you will use to assist you – everything from exercise apps like Fitocracy to the basic motivation of “being public about it.”

Scroll to the bottom and sign the “pledge” that you will return to record your results. The site will send a reminder but otherwise butt out – because Gonna Try isn’t primarily concerned with success or failure. What the site cares about most is helping people take the first step, which is making a “noble attempt.”

And if Wile E. Coyote taught us anything, it’s that the enjoyment is in the challenge.

Short Calendar is our new favorite. It’s a free tool that creates weeklong agendas in the form of neatly organized calendar boxes, which are emailed directly to recipients from the site.

Potential uses are endless, from group vacations to hectic workweeks to exercise routines. The simple layout, which renders flawlessly in email, is a helpful aide for “visual thinkers” (a.k.a. forgetful people).

Each day is conveniently boxed with the date at the top for quick reference. Add the recipients’ email addresses and a subject line and click “Send.” Easy as pie.

As for completing the agenda, that’s on you.

URGENT: Your boss is walking toward your desk.

Install Pause for Later on Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera and you can pause those hilarious YouTube, Vimeo, and Hulu videos and place them in a queue to revisit later.

When you’re ready to finish watching, click the bookmarklet a second time to go to the list of videos, all still paused right where you left off. Newest videos appear at the top,  and a dropdown menu allows you to continue watching, copy a link to send to friends, and delete the video from the list.

To ensure your daily browsing is totally covered, the developers are currently working on iPhone and Android apps.

BCC: You, but at your convenience.

Better question: Why are you making all these “friends” if you never speak to them?

Mingly hooks up with your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to put important info about your friends — birthdays, new jobs, relocations, and relationship changes — in a place where you will never miss it: your email.

As a Gmail plugin, Mingly adds an expandable dashboard right into your mailbox where you can see any updates your contacts have made plus receive and send direct messages from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If you don’t use Gmail, you can still opt in to receive what might be your most informative daily email (besides this one, of course) — a roundup of any notable events in your friends’ lives along with reminders to keep in touch with old friends and introduce yourself to new ones.

Little effort, big results. That’s our kind of website.

Except when the references are to an obscure French burlesque troop and some airline called “Continental Op.”

Small Demons is a new site devoted to piecing together such literary puzzles by cataloging all the real-life people, places, and things in works of literature.

Take Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, a pop music novel that references everyone from Wagner to Dylan. Small Demons (the name comes from a line in a short story by Jorge Luis Borges) has catalogued those quotes and linked them to small bio pages where you can learn more about the musician, see what other books have referenced them, and even buy their albums.

The search works in reverse, too, so you can see what books have referenced your favorite cities, actors, songs, and more.

A few hours down this rabbit hole feels like chipping away at missed references with a giant spade.

For the person you’re supposed to be meeting for dinner, they just want to know where the heck you are.

Instead of texting updates every two minutes, use Glympse to send anyone you want a real-time map that shows where you are, where you’re going, and how much longer until you get there.

Unlike other services that broadcast your phone’s GPS location to everyone willy nilly, Glimpse only shares your whereabouts with specific individuals – and each session expires after an allotted time for your privacy and protection.

Apps are available for Android, iPhone, Windows Phone or BlackBerry. After you’ve used the service a few times, you can even add recurring trips (say, your commute) for an even more hands-off experience.

So you can continue enjoying the journey while others focus on your destination.

Unfortunately we have no one to tell it to because we haven’t memorized a phone number since 2003.

Made just for such occasions is a service called Postable, which should, if we do this correctly, build a virtual Rolodex for use during all future mishaps.

First, the site generates a unique URL for you to disseminate to your contacts however you please – be it directly by email or through social media. The link takes recipients to a form asking for their phone number, mailing address, and birthday.

As people respond, their entries are beautifully formatted and organized, complete with a link to a map of their address, a section to add notes, and the ability to export your contacts to a spreadsheet (wedding planning?) or print it on labels.

Meaning the only thing you need to memorize is Postable’s website. (Okay, you can just bookmark it.)

But has everyone else at this party?

If it has a computer and you have an iDevice or Android handy, you can start playing YouTube videos with the help of Clik. In quite possibly the best use of a QR code ever, you simply load the site, scan the screen with the app, and poof: Your phone becomes your remote.

Browse categories for new videos or queue up clips you’ve already favorited within your Clik app. “Trending” is easily the most accessable category, but there’s also stuff close to our heart like TeamCoco, Cyriak, and The Onion. If nothing else, there’s always the search button.

All the other controls appear on your phone, so favoriting, pausing, and adjusting the volume are all conveniently at your fingertips.

So the party can rage on, complete with screams of “Look Ma! No keyboard!”

It wasn’t a total success.

Next year we’ll use Capsule, a one-stop shop for party planning and archiving that only includes the people you want.

Each event you create receives a custom email address for group planning (“Who’s bringing the hummus?”) and phone number for on-the-fly texts (“No one let Chris go swimming, he just ate lunch!”). This way even your Facebook-less buddies can get in on the action.

Anyone you’ve invited to the party can download the CapsuleCam app, which automatically uploads every photo you take during the event to a shared group album – meaning you can stop pestering people to email you their pictures the next day.

If only it would stop Aunt Marie from pestering us about wearing sunblock.

. . . you say to yourself while signing up for Pinterest.

Whether you belong to one or ten social networks, you should know about Bliss Control. Building on the popularity of Notification Control, developers Ben Lang and Alex Wolkov took the one-stop settings shop idea and expanded it to cover every possible setting on 13 different sites.

First choose the site (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.), then choose the setting you want to change (profile photo, bio, email settings, etc.). Bliss Control will generate a link that will take you directly to the appropriate page – no digging necessary.

The tool can even point you to a site’s “delete account” button.

Just in case you got a little overzealous with that Path account.

Then again, no one’s really praised it either.

Dip your toe into the world of online culinary instruction with KeepRecipes. Users grab recipes from around the web with the bookmarklet and share their finds with other diners looking for something new and exciting.

In addition to following choice bloggers, mixologists, and celebrichefs, KeepRecipes provides follower suggestions based on the popularity of their recipes. For an iTunes-y feel, parts of entire cookbooks are available for a dollar per recipe.

And when you’re ready to try your hand at a newfound dish, there’s an iDevice app to pull up any of your recipes with a few clicks.

So, egg waffles anyone?

You: ”Oh yeah. Service Dogs – I read about that. When is it?”

Cool Friend: ”Yesterday.”

Sound familiar? Not the dogs dressed as butlers, but the missing out on things? That’s where Tentative.ly can help. Install the bookmarklet and with the press of a button you can add upcoming concerts, parties, shows, and other happenings from any webpage directly into a calendar cleverly sorted by date and time.

Simply highlight the pertinent information and click the “Grab It!” popup. The plans are automatically uploaded complete with a map and link back to the original invitation. Each week, Tentative.ly will email you an agenda of upcoming events, and you can also export events to your Google Calendar or iCal.

Otherwise you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Something you almost never have handy when you need it: a business card.

See where we’re going with this? TxtBizCard makes it possible to send your contact info directly to people’s phone via SMS message. Create a keyword (could be as simple as your name or a more complex password) and when someone texts that keyword to 511511 they receive all the info from your TxtBizCard online profile.

Each text comes with a link allowing recipients to download your vCard directly to their phone’s contacts, along with photos and optional links to your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles. And you’ll be able to track every phone number that has requested your card, as well as the date and time it was received.

Bonus: Instead of $12.99 per month or $129.99 per year for premium subscriptions, Netted readers can join for $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year using promo code “Netted”.

That’s just good business.

At least that’s what using Joe’s Goals has taught us.

The site helps you catalogue recurring goals in weeklong chunks. Completing positive tasks (eating breakfast) increases your score while negative ones (eating a Diet Coke for breakfast) decreases it. You can weight certain goals so harder activities like cleaning the house earn you extra credit.

There is a handy logbook for optional notes, and everything’s sortable by tag for quick clarification or prioritization, so maintaining your checklists doesn’t feel like just another chore.

Though if you want to count it, we won’t judge.