Get a text when the ISS is over your home town
The International Space Station operates about 230 miles above the surface our planet. That's high enough for its crew to float weightless. But, surprisingly to many, that's low enough for the station to be seen with the naked eye by an earthling at see level. The key is knowing where ...
SEE OTHER POSTS IN: Technology & Gadgets
Cool stuff made from used chopsticks, bread boards and vodka bottles
Time was that products and materials were either recycled or not. These days, "upcycled" products are becoming increasingly popular. The difference between "upcycling" and "recycling" being that the former involves reusing a material without degrading its quality or composition. So, used beer bottles being turned into jeans or asphalt or ...
SEE OTHER POSTS IN: Cool Online Store
Websites for booking bargain island vacations
Arranging a trip to the Caribbean online? There are lots of general travel websites—Travelocity, Expedia and Funjet Vacations among them—that cover the Caribbean along with the rest of the planet. But many of the best deals, and much of the most useful planning information, are found on websites that specialize ...
SEE OTHER POSTS IN: Travel Websites
How and why we upgraded from a VPS host
If you are a very regular (and especially observant) reader of Spot Cool Stuff then perhaps you noticed how our website suddenly got a bit zippier a few months ago. That happened because we switched our hosting to a managed dedicated server with Hostgator. In doing so, we completed a ...
SEE OTHER POSTS IN: Website Hosts
FILMography bring film stills on location
Spot Cool Stuff loves websites that are both simple and ingenious. On Tumblr, perhaps no blog exemplifies those two characteristics more than FILMography. The site features photos of hands holding — other photos. The photo being held is a black and white screenshot of a scene from a movie. And ...
SEE OTHER POSTS IN: Community & Social Networking | Photography & Photoblogs | Quirky | Tumblr
See where USA weather is blowing in real time
As we write this post, a tropical storm is poised to bear down on Spot Cool Stuff headquarters. But even on calm days there's something oddly captivating about Wind Map, a cool website where you can see how and where wind is sweeping across the United States in almost real ...
SEE OTHER POSTS IN: Quirky
HowAboutWe: a dating website that’s actually about dates
On most dating websites — including virtually all the most popular ones like Match.com or eHarmony — users find who they might want to go out with and then try to arrange a date with that person. But there's one dating website that flips that notion around: HowAboutWe. As in, how ...
SEE OTHER POSTS IN: Community & Social Networking | Dating Websites
Put extra luggage space to good use with Stuff Your Rucksack
A school in Jamaica doesn't have enough pencils. A rural jobs program in Thailand needs cell phones. In South Africa, an orphanage could use more toys. How do we know that? And what can you do about it? The answer to both those questions is the same—Stuff Your Rucksack. SYR (as ...
SEE OTHER POSTS IN: Charity & Volunteering | Travel Websites
