There are a handful of websites, like Amazon and IMDB, that I constantly look things up on. If you want to know what rating a movie has on IMDB, you go to your browser address bar, type www.imdb.com, wait for the homepage to load, enter the movie name and click search. This is a 3 step process that can be reduced to 1 using a bookmark.

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When browsing the web, I often come across sites that are extremely well designed. Naturally, I want to know who built the sites that capture my attention. However, unless the design firm puts a “designed by …” link on the page, there’s no way to know who designed or built a site. That’s why I’m suggesting web design shops make use of the designer meta tag.

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An integral part of build any web app is database design. Creating the right tables, fields and relationships you need to store and control the app’s data can be a difficult task. Enter SQLEditor, a database design app for Mac OS. For PC users, I hear MySQL Workbench is quite good.

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I had originally set out to review the Zappos.com website when I discovered Zappos.com “Zeta,” a beta version of Zappos’ new site. Instead of discussing a site that will soon be gone, I will cover the biggest complaint I have with the Zappos site and see if it has been improved in the new Zeta version.

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StumbleUpon’s Firefox add-on now provides enhancements to Google search. StumbleUpon leverages its data on what thousands of users like and don’t like on the web to add human ratings to Google search. StumbleUpon adds a 5-star rating, category tag, and a comments link next to search results, giving you a better idea of which are the good links.

For example, I searched for “iphone apps” on Google, and StubleUpon immediately drew my attention to what turned out to be two of the better links on the page, appleiphoneapps.com and Lifehacker’s 20 Best iPhone apps post.

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Many people use Firefox to remember passwords to the websites they visit, thinking their passwords are safe from prying eyes. But this is not the case. Firefox stores passwords in a very insecure manner, allowing anyone with access to your computer to easily look them up. Enter KeePass, an open-source, cross-platform password management tool.

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I’ve tried many different ways of keeping track of the things I need to do. From trying to remember it all (yeah, that didn’t work) to writing everything down on post-it notes or in a notebook. I’ve yet to find the perfect solution to meet my needs. A recent post on Hacker News motivated me to try out some task management apps and see if I could find a better way to manage my tasks.

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With the recent acquisition of The Weather Channel by NBC, I am hoping there are some positive changes coming to Weather.com. The site, given its domain name, is the dominant website for checking the weather. Yet, the site presents a poor user experience, hides the good content and absent-mindedly focuses on unneeded services. Below I’ll highlight what bugs me the most and suggest some improvements.

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