5 Ways to Build Your Own Reddit Alternative

Tired of your online communities being hosted by seemingly incompetent management teams, or being overrun by trolls? Avoid the problem altogether: build your own alternative to Reddit, and host it on your own server. I’m not going to get into the politics of Reddit right now, but needless to say there’s been drama. If your community would rather leave all that behind, it’s possible to host your own Reddit alternative. Today Cool Websites and Apps looks at five tools for doing just that. Note that all of these require at least some webmaster knowledge to set up, but are completely...

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Your Favorite Game of Thrones Characters When They Were Young

If you watch Game of Thrones, you probably have a certain mental image of what each of the characters look like. Have you ever wondered how they looked when they were young? Seeing them in this way just might change your mental image of them altogether. Have a look at some of the images of your favorite GoT characters then and now, and head over to Imgur to look at the whole album of 30 images. The Hound was still big, but much less intimidating. The Kingslayer looking quite a bit less knightly. That hairstyle! Is that Eminem? A Backstreet...

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Scientists Create First Mammal “Hive Minds”

Scientists have made a major breakthrough in brain-networking technology, linking animals together to allow them to solve problems collaboratively. It may sound like science fiction, but this is real research that’s turning up real results. One experiment linked together the brains of three monkeys, allowing them to jointly control an avatar arm. A second experiment connected the brains of four rats, enabling them to solve a weather forecasting problem together that they struggled to solve individually. Neuroethics researcher Anders Sandberg told The Guardian that this work is the most convincing demonstration yet that brains can be wired together for direct communication. “People have claimed digital telepathy...

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Things You’ll Wish You Knew Before Your Kids Started Using Kik

It seems that every week, there are new and more interesting ways to communicate with each other online. We all ooohed and aaahed when Skype was first introduced, thinking it was some kind of black magic. But now we have various other forms of communication, including texting apps which send those texts via the user’s Internet data plan. WhatsApp is the most well known of the lot with approximately 450 million users (according to its owner, Facebook). Others are trying to elbow their way into the increasingly crowded space, one of which is Kik. What Is Kik, & How Is It...

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8 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight EBay Scammers

Despite high profile and embarrassing security breaches, EBay remains very popular: its potential is great – for both good and bad. Of course all that junk you’re storing somewhere can fetch big bucks and all you need to do is take a few photos and add a nifty description. But it’s also a big target for fraudulent activity. It’s not just criminals you need to worry about. You can be ripped off simply by a false description or an untrustworthy image. Here are some very simple ways of reducing the risk of being a victim when buying items, not just...

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How Virtual Reality Will Change Sex and Dating by 2020 (NSFW)

Every generation has found ways to use new technology to shock their parents. VR is probably next on the list. Virtual Reality is rapidly improving, and it’s going to transform the most intimate areas of life. David Holz, the founder of Leap Motion, has a talk he likes to give entitled “Our Kids Are Going to Get Really Weird“. He’s talking about the philosophical implications of VR — but the sentiment is much more broadly true than that. If there were a theme song for VR, that would be the chorus. Soon, our kids are going to have access to machines that can completely and convincingly take over...

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Is Angry Brids 2 Worth Downloading, or Should You Skip It?

The world’s favorite flock of cartoon birds is back! Angry Birds 2 is the first numbered sequel to the mega-popular original. It takes everything you liked about Angry Birds, and adds enough new elements to make for a fun way to pass some time. Oh yeah, and it’s free. Angry Birds 2 was teased for a long time as Angry Birds: Under Pigstruction on the Canadian App Store, but it has now been officially released as the sequel. It’s available on Android and iOS as a free download, with in-app purchases. Improving the Classics Angry Birds’ impressive physics engine is...

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Which Office Suite Is Best for You?

You’ll be pressed to find an occupation that doesn’t require word or number processing of some sort. Whether you need to produce a presentation, report, table, graph, or worse, you’ll want to work with software. that makes your job easy. A professional office suite typically comes with a host of applications, including a word processor, but also tools to produce, presentations, spreadsheets, databases, a calendar and mail app, and often more. Whatever it is that you actually want to get done, ask yourself one question: “Is Microsoft Office really the best solution I need?” With five different types of office suites available, we’re going to...

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How to Clean up Evernote Clutter for Cleaner Note Taking

Evernote is one of the most popular, powerful note taking tools out there. From the web and desktop applications to syncing with phones and tablets, Evernote is a superb source for capturing, keeping, and referencing your thoughts, ideas, and important notes. As an Evernote user for six years, I can attest to how easy it is to let items get cluttered. It certainly is not the fault of the application, because Evernote does provide the necessary features to keep everything nice and neat. But, we all know that it can become like the junk drawer in your home. You have...

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KillerStartups Weekly Roundup

Startups are great at challenging conventional thinking and defying overused phrases. “Never say never.” That one has probably triggered your gag reflex a time or two. Well, how does never doing the bookkeeping again sound? Never having an old social media post come back to haunt you? Never turning to a survey to learn about your customers behavior?

 

 

We’ve saved some rooftop space for you in this KillerStartups Weekly Roundup today – ready to shout? Never! Never again! Never! Never! Never again…

 

Killer Startups

• SEO. Stupidly, Egregiously, Onerous? No, no, no, really, driving founders crazy is not what it’s all about. INDATALY will finally make SEO easy for everyone.
• Custom clothes, custom classes, custom homes – Sinatra would’ve loved how easy it is to have everything done “my way” anymore. Latest goodie that you can now enjoy to your personal specifications: nutrition bars, by YOURBITE.
• If your to-do lists look frightfully ugly, CloudTasks can give your calendar and agenda a makeover. The next time someone mentions productivity, you might actually give your smartphone a double take instead of doubling over in pain.
• Bookly makes a strong case for entrepreneur’s newest best friend thanks to an old enemy it knows how to send packing: bookkeeping.

 

Living the Startup Life

• Where have you been? Where should you go? It only takes a few seconds now to collect memories (and daydreams) of visiting the best places – and to share everyone’s favorite passion: travel.
• It’s so easy to forget old posts on social media, uuuuuuuuuuuuuuntil they return at the worst time imaginable. Save yourself from your earlier self by taking care of awkward posts before they inflict damage.
• No shame. Even as adults, we still love our stickers. For showing off startup logos, standing out from the crowd, or to simply have fun, laptop stickers rock. Here are some keepers to shine atop all of those glowing apples out there.

 

Startup Tips & Trends

• There’s a reason why cold calling and cold outreach are called such, and not hot – they give people on both ends of the exchange the chills! Turn up the heat already, and discover a better way to grow a sales funnel.
• “What would a VC think about this?” is a question that crosses startup founders’ minds often. Well, here’s an app that lets entrepreneurs ask away and get answers straight from the venture capitalists.
• Every company would like to understand customers’ behavior and figure out how to gather actionable data without breaking the bank. If you’d rather not think “survey” ever again, here’s another way you can Ncrease your knowledge and insights.

 

Photo Credits

Ollyy/Shutterstock

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The Worst Tech Company Names of All Time

Never before has it been easier to learn how to program and host your own websites, so it’s no surprise that startups have boomed over the last decade. While this is a good thing in the bigger picture, it does present some issues… …like picking a name that doesn’t suck. Try coming up with a unique-but-catchy name for an imaginary company or product and you’ll soon realize that all of the good ones have already been taken. Unfortunately, this means that many company names are simply awful, sometimes even verging on cringe territory. Here are some of the worst offenders....

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