TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid is reporting a site that could be very useful to California tokers out there: Weedmaps looks like it could become the Yelp of cannabis club sites.

Upon opening the site, I was shocked to learn there are about a dozen cannabis clubs within a mile of my home. Personally, I don’t have a weed card, but if I did, I’d be able to find clubs and dispensaries and rate my experience there.
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I like Yelp, though I’ve been forgetting to use it lately. I used it to find a great Italian restaurant in Hollywood, where I had some of the best food I’ve had in years and saw a couple of celebrities. It pointed me to some of the best Thai food in the San Fernando Valley, and a greasy Chinese joint that I order from twice a month. I think it’s a quality site.

However, a detailed and well investigated story by Kathleen Richards of the East Bay Express reveals that Yelp be involved in some pretty dubious tactics in its attempts to squeeze money out of restaurateurs and merchants. Among the allegations:
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Yahoo does fantasy sports very well. I have been in more Yahoo leagues than I care to count, and every time I use them, I get served big-time banner ads that undoubtedly create a massive impression in my lizard-consumer brain.

Yahoo’s fantasy sports content is pretty good, including a live Sunday morning show that helps users plan for their weeks. Today was Super Sunday for fantasy fans, where users were battling it out for the grand final.
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So it’s Monday night and I’m looking for something to write a blogpost about in between IMing with a friend and watching soccer highlights, and my Internet goes down. Having experienced some of this in my many years on this Earth, I tried all of the typical fixes: basically, they boil down to “unplug the modem for three minutes and see what happens.”

Didn’t work. Strangely enough, my IM was working but not my web browser. The chilling thought that there’s some kind of unique, hard-to-repair problem that will require some kind of difficulty runs over me.
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I’m visiting some close friends in Boulder, Colorado right now and one of them has turned me on to a web site that lets guys get great, unique hand-crafted gifts for their girlfriends.

Etsy.com provides a way for craftspeople across the country to get their wares out to a wider audience, which means anything bought on Etsy helps support actual people rather than some larger conglomerate that imports cheap items from overseas and marks them up to maximize profit. So not only do you get to find completely unique hand-made items, but you’re doing some good as well in supporting small-time artists and craftspeople.
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I’m moving tomorrow morning, and the first thing I did was to get on movers.com to get some quotes via the web. They offer a ton of different options for the type of move you want to make, from local to international.

They will ask your basic geographical information and for you phone number and email address. I decided to give my phone number–and they made sure to use it.

The next morning, I received about a dozen different phone calls from different moving companies in the LA area, all offering quotes. There was no doubt: I got about all of the information I needed by utilizing movers.com, perhaps more than I needed.
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SitOrSquat is the latest site that promises to find you a good place to do your business. Unlike the others, it actually has color coded markers that let you know if the toilet is open, closed, or if it isn’t known what the situation is.

I remember a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza pontificated on the best places in New York City to relieve yourself. As a former New Yorker, I remember having to sneak around sometimes during desperate moments (my favorite was a Subway restaurant where I got thrown out after sneaking into the employee bathroom). But if times are tough, it can be a real pain to find a toilet in Manhattan. Help is on the way, and it’s smartphone friendly.
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Now this is something I’ve been waiting for my whole life. Do you have a situation where protocol requires placing a phone call, but you really would prefer not having to talk to the person on the other end? For instance, perhaps you caught something “social” during a trip to Vegas a few weeks back and need to alert an ex-girlfriend?

This is where Slydial comes in: even if the person on the other end is present and willing to answer the phone, Slydial sends you straight to voicemail. So the other person thinks they dropped the call and you get off scot-free without having to confront a potentially awkward phone conversation.
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Microsoft’s new ad push is called the “Mojave Experiment,” and the point is this: due to bad word of mouth, people have poor thoughts about Windows Vista, but when they actually use it (under a different name, Mojave) they think it’s God’s gift to operating systems.

It is true that Vista (which I admit I also have a limited, but largely positive, experience with) gets railed on by a lot of people who aren’t sure why it’s so terrible. But there is a reason for this: when Vista was released and people upgraded their computers from XP, stuff quit working. Hardware, games, everything: kaput.
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Multiply is one of those social networks you don’t hear much about, drowned out by the loud buzz of MySpace and Facebook. But Multiply has slowly built a loyal and active user base, and is attempting to monetize by offering high-volume media storage that never expires and ad-free usage for $20 a year.

Attempting to be the “adult” alternative to the mega-sites out there, Multiply is drawing in a good number of users in their upper-20’s to mid-30’s. Assuming users of this age group are more likely to shell out for a premium service, Multiply’s answer to the monetization question is built on the back of this perceived loyalty and maturity.
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