I’m a big fan of a beautiful thing called open source software. I’m sure you also fancy of software which is employed free software model, and solve your tasks without paying a single penny. In that spirit, isn’t it a smart move to check out a site which provide you a few alternatives you name it for the software you going to spend on your computer or mobile phone.

As the name suggests, AlternativeTo is a site that suggests you with the list of alternatives for the application you want to replace. For instance, if you want to replace Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 with some paid or free software, that page will wow you with some noteworthy alternatives. For those who has no money to spend on software anymore, you’ll be impressed with the list it provide to you.

At present, AlternativeTo is focusing on the software from two main categories that are Desktop and mobile phone. For each category, you can scroll through the results with the help of some filters such as “Most Views,” Most Likes,” and etc. Of course, to save your time in browsing through the list of application, perhaps you can delve deeper into the main categories and go to the sub-categories such as Windows, Mac, Linux, Online, the sub-category of Desktop for instance.

For now, if you can’t the alternatives for the application you want to replace, you also can sign-in to the site and suggest one for them and then waiting for the community contributors to name the alternatives for you. As long as you found the right alternative to the application you want to replace, I believe it is a right site you want to bookmark with.

There are a lot of question and answer services on the Web, some in the forum design, but it seemed that the most prominent in this sphere is Yahoo! Answers. Imagine a city-centric New York version of Yahoo! Answers, it leads me to AdviceYard, a Q&A site that anyone can use and post question about anything in NYC (New York City).

AdviceYard is a well-designed Q&A site with most of the questions are organized by NYC. The site has a very strong community focus, as all the questions posted must be categorized under any of the communities given, may it be beauty, style & fashion, going green, heath care, or the others. Of course, there is a scenario whereby certain questions are not given an answer, but if you find a good answer to a question posted, a user can rate a point to that answer for the recognition purpose. To further encourage users to get involve in a community, the idea is a user can register any of the communities he/she interested during the sign-up process.

For questions given to a particular topic, for instance, bar or karaoke places, you can get a more specific and objective opinion since this site is NYC centric. If you’re worry of keeping up with the questions you posted, there is a live notification feed in your profile.

On the business side, AdviceYard’s business model is relatively simple. Unlike Yahoo Answers and other Q&A sites, AdviceYard offers a premium membership which provides the ability to post business listings for a one-time fee ($60 for 6 months or $100 for 1 year). These listings are indexed in up to three (3) related communities, on the user’s profile page, and on a dedicated business page. An example of the business listing can be found here.

I still remember I did profiled a travel review site called WHERE’S COOL last month, and it seemed that the travel review is a big niche and now a new one with a similar idea and a generic domain name called Nextstop is officially launching this month.

Nextstop’s main focus is to offer a solution to address some of the challenges when users come to share their authentic travel experience. At first glance, I was very impressed by its user-friendliness interface in building a travel guide. Since some of the founding members have a common background for working at Google, they have used Google APIs in building the local and image search results and successfully integrated them into the Nextstop site.

In fact, there are plenty of similar apps launched with the similar idea of travel review, and unfortunately I failed to recall them all, except the aforesaid WHERE’S COOL. However, the interface of Nextstop is probably one of the easiest to be used when a user want to add a travel recommendation to the site. Simply enter the name of the place to be shared, the country name will be rendered in below of the place, makes it abundantly clear that easy-to-use is the primary function of the site. Besides, users are allowed to upload or add a photo of the place if they find that they have a better photo instead of the few that pull from Google. I like the fact that one can add a quick text recommendation with the highlighted 160 characters, though the maximum limit one can post is beyond this 160.

Like most of the review sites, Nextstop has a strong community features. You can add comment to any of the quick text recommendations, also have the option to recommend any travel guide to friends, buddies, and etc. To encourage users in sharing the places, Nextstop has applied a badge system whereby different badge color carried with the different community status. Besides, browse the community leaderboard, you will come across a succinct list of top nextstoppers who are passionately want to share the local hotspots within the community, and Nextstop is making sure that their efforts will be awarded with their own “Reputation” system.

Also, the content of the Nextstop site plays smoothly, though the site have Challenges, Forum, and the interface is not clutter. For those who love adventure, the travel recommendation posted by Nextstop’s users is extensive as there are many travel guides, and each guide is comprising of several useful travel recommendations. For instance, this London travel guide will definitely offer some places of interest for other people who haven’t been to London a completely taste of London.

For online shoppers, whether you’re shopping for computer hardwares, softwares, or even domain names, you won’t forget to search and find out what are the valid coupon codes for you to enter and hence get discounts from the deals.

Coupon codes, or promo codes, you know when you want it, you want it so badly at the time when you check out that item. Frankly, I’ve seen many blogs, forums or sites that offer coupon codes in a way that the codes are either submitted by the users themselves or as a result of Web aggregation. The famous one is RetailMeNot, but there’s a new entrant to this realm; a new site called Bargn.

Bargn is a newly launched site that shows the valid coupon codes which mostly are submitted by the users. You can save money with the online coupon codes when you check out the items at some well-known vendors such as GoDaddy (domain names), HP & Dell (computer parts), 1-800-FLOWERS.COM (flowers), Adobe softwares, and many more. However, the coupon codes available on Bargn are mainly focused on online deals, and without the clear stated of expiration date. But you always can assign a “+” or “-” symbol to rate how well the coupon codes have worked for you.

ResearchGATE is essentially a professional network for scientists. Dubbed as Science 2.0, this site has a very clean look, and the contents are slit up in an easy to navigate menus. At first glance, ResearchGATE is a closed community, which only restricted scientists and researchers to interact with each other, and view each others’ profiles, although one can still sign-up to the site and connect with some of the scientists and researchers with a profile opened there.

Positioned as a social network for scientists. ResearchGATE mentioned it as a professional network, which is a different way of saying social network for professionals, as I perceived; Perhaps many of us will asked do the scientists and researchers around the world need a social site that they can interact each other with?

From a scientist and researcher’s standpoint, it is a good idea to merge the social and research aspects together around the science disciplines so that they can converse with each other based on the research areas. In particular, scientists and researchers can share work and idea with each other, they called it “discussion partners,” or collaborate in a given project on ResearchGATE. However, as a site visitor, you only can query its search engine and read the abstracts of the papers pertaining to your areas of interest, or busy yourself with the tag cloud listed on the sidebar.

To know more about ResearchGATE, it has collaborated with various international research institutions and organizations such as European Students’ Conference, IALS, REBIRTH, etc. in order to build a strong network system for the scientists and researchers.

WHERE’S COOL is a new online community for travelers, with a specific focus on travel reviews of the places that your mom probably wouldn’t find useful, as mentioned on the front page. Though it’s in Alpha stage, but users are allowed to register with the site at this moment and start the travel reviews for some cool spots such as the record shops, dive bars, hostels, live music and underground local attractions, etc.

Currently, there are several destinations from Taipei, Taiwan to Kraków, Poland have been reviewed by the users, and each review is detailed with photos, text reviews, and geo-tagging in order to provide a comprehensive travel recommendations for other users who want to plan their next vacation to the same travel destination. Of course, users can also comment and rate others’ travel experiences. Nevertheless, if you are the type of person who is the free and easy traveler and like the local adventure, you’ll find this site most useful for this purpose.

In overall, WHERE’S COOL is a site for discovering local information. For instance, when I been in Taiwan and traveled as a free and easy traveler, some photos listed there urges me to go there for a second look such as this Shilin Night Market which I missed the food so much. As the site still in Alpha, I hope this site can make to the mainstream so that people can have another place to share their travel experiences and places of interest.