Cool things you can do on the internet (Part I)

So, in response to the question of what kind of questions people would ask me - I've decided to talk about some of the cool things you can do on the internet with the hope that maybe I'll inspire you to do something cool....

1. Create your own website
This seems like a pretty basic thing to do - but surprisingly there are a lot of us out there who don't have a website and don't know where to start - well start with a basic css template and then go crazy with it. Here is a stockhouse of free CSS templates: http://www.freecsstemplates.org/css-templates/
If you're not satisified with that collection, google "free css templates" and you'll find many more templates. If you want a basic css template that you can completely develop yourself, I'd recommend: http://csstinderbox.raykonline.com/

For those of you who want to stay away from CSS, you can always go to googlepages or similar websites to build your web presence. Or you could just stick to a blog (blogger, livejournal...) and use that as your website.

2. Create your own custom search engine
So google has a lot of cool things - one of which is their custom search engine builder: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
This is a cool way to index all your websites and if I understood it correctly, make some money out of it too.

3. Create your own products and start your own mall
This one is relatively new to me but I discovered it on digg as part of a larger article definitely worth reading for all you money minded bloggers out there:http://www.insidecrm.com/features/101-ways-monetize-blog122007/
The websites you can use to create your own products (shirts etc.) are:
http://www.printfection.com/
http://www.cafepress.com/
http://goodstorm.com/index.html

There are several other cool links on the inside crm link.

4. Integrate Google Maps, Google Picasa, Blogger and your website
The cool thing about Google is that they release APIs about their services - which to mean translates to some way to make use of those websites on your blogs. And more often than not, there are several help groups/discussion forums to help you figure out how to use them.
Just google Google Maps API or Google Picasa API.

5. Create a blog/website and track who's visiting
The easiest way I think to do this is to use Google Analytics. http://www.google.com/analytics/
Just paste some code in the pages you want to track and voila - you now know everything about your visitors from their location to their connection speed to the browser they use!

6. Watch TV/sports/movies online
I'm not exactly sure about the legality of some of these websites, but since they're still online, I'm guessing they're doing okay. The big storehouse of TV shows is
http://www.alluc.org/
http://www.dailymotion.com
I generally get my dose of sports by downloading sopcast and watching sports hosted via:
http://www.myp2p.eu/
You can download sopcast at:
http://www.sopcast.org/
As far as movies are concerned, alluc has some movies, but there are several other websites, one of which is:
http://joox.net/ (discovered by a secret source)
You can actually download movies at that website.
Another website collection of videos/movies:
http://www.start2enjoy.com/

7. Listen to your favorite music free on Pandora!
Pandora is a great way to discover music you like - I'll not say anything more and let you discover it for yourself - effort definitely worth spending:
http://www.pandora.com/
(The only sad part is that it doesnt work outside the US:( )

8. Create your own wiki
With wikipedia being the most popular internet encyclopedia, you can contribute in more ways than one. Theres a wiki which tells you how to start a wiki and redirects you to several websites which provide free wiki hosting (called 'wikifarms'). Enjoy:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki

That's all for Part I of cool things you can do on the internet. You can check out other cool websites I stumbled upon here: http://harshm.stumbleupon.com/favorites/