This edition of my Web Picks is quite the hodge-podge of interesting/useful sites across the internet…

• Yuxt is a social video-sharing site that makes for a really easy way to share and host your own video clips or those that you find on other sites. A simple drag-n-drop uploading feature effectively eliminates any learning curve for getting used the site’s format. A few weeks ago I wrote about Vod:Pod, a different video sharing site that is also pretty interesting, but the thing I love about Yuxt’s site design is the clean, no-frills interface. Also, a feature which is nice is the “Lounge” tab in the site’s main navigation box which links you to hosted video collections that are grouped into great categories like “Top 10 Collections”, “YouTube Top Rated”, etc. I came upon this site because I got linked to what I believe (and apparently a lot of other people believe this s well, since it is the top rated collection on the site) is the best collection on the site. It is a collection of music videos with the lyrics in various fonts timed to the music…seeing is believing.

• One day, as I was delving into the never-ending stream of del.icio.us tags, I stumbled across an interesting graphical compilation of site logos that claims to be the ‘Complete Web 2.0 Directory.‘ It is a site that is nothing but logos of every website that has been deemed to be ‘web 2.0′ (what the editors have decided to use as a standard definition for web 2.0, I have no idea…but I guess we just have to accept their judgments on faith alone.). While I can’t really think of any direct functional purpose I would have for frequently using the site, it is pretty interesting to just look through all the logos and check our some of the sites. The ‘About‘ page states that as of today, there are 1,635 logos displayed on the site, which does make it a pretty large database. It is fun to poke around, so check it out..to navigate, use the small, thin purple ‘Down’ tab on the bottom left.

• Mango is a new site designed to teach you a new language via the internet. Most people think, “Oh yeah, I can get some software and do that.”…but Mango is free, which makes it available not just to those people with enoughdiscretionary income to subscribe, but rather opens the doors for anyone to learn the basics of a different language. As of today, they have 11 languages, each with 100 lessons included! It has an incredibly easy-to-use interface that provides audio and visual instruction without having to wait for buffering…buffering…buffering…

• A lot has been written about Sketchcast in the last week or so, but I’ve just started to fool around with it, and I think it is pretty awesome. While I would never consider myself to be any kind of artist, Sketchcast is an easy way to draw out quick sketches of ideas and then embed or link to them from anywhere. Basically, you start recording and then it records your brush strokes as you draw on the ‘canvas’ of the site and then you can watch you playback and publish it for people to see or for you to embed on your own site. I’ve embedded my first sketch as a little experiment! This another great new tool for the online communications world!

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