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Worldwide Picks: - USA - Aus/NZ - Canada - France - Germany - Spain - Italy - Norway - Sweden - Denmark - Brazil - Asia
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Worldwide Picks: - USA - Aus/NZ - Canada - France - Germany - Spain - Italy - Norway - Sweden - Denmark - Brazil - Asia
What makes a Yahoo! UK & Ireland Pick of the Week? Sometimes it's a site that makes us laugh, sometimes it's one that's being talked about, other times it's because they're quirky, useful or just plain interesting. If you have any suggestions for cool sites to be included in a future Picks of the Week, why not send us an email? If you only want to view the list of this week's picks, click here.
It's not often that the words 'banking' and 'smile' are uttered in the same sentence, but a new Internet venture from the Co-Operative Bank is trying to refute that with Smile "a whole new world of banking". Rather than being an add-on to an existing banking service, Smile is 100% Internet based, it never closes and prides itself on offering great interest rates and a free £500 overdraft. The colourful Smile web site is a change from most banks' dowdy affairs, but the real key is whether it will capture the public's imagination, and with prizes to be won on the site and plenty of promotion, perhaps Smile will be making the Co-Operative bank very, very happy.
Staying on a financial theme, isn't it about time you got some Marbles? By the sounds of things, HFC Bank must have almost lost their marbles when they discovered that after spending £10m on marketing their new credit card, the ads had gone out on national TV and in newspapers with the url www.marbles.co.uk - a url that has been happily owned by PR company in Henley for many years. The new Marbles credit card is a card you can still use happily on the high street, but it's especially geared for use with online transactions, and you'll be covered for any fraudulent use. The site lets you apply on line, they don't charge an annual fee and the APR is fairly low. Clever gimmick of great business sense? Only the great British public can decide.
Kids might play with marbles, but they'll probably have more fun at the CITV (Children's ITV) site. There's plenty of info on the site for kids to get their teeth into. As well as schedules for all the CITV programmes, background on the shows/presenters and the statutory shockwave games, there are also 'pin boards' where you can leave your messages, though most've of them were empty when we checked. But there was one for the show 'Bernard's Watch' which said "The younge (sic) girl in Bernards (sic) Watch is really sexy" written by someone called 'Sex' - so the CITV site proves in one fail to swoop to be both highly educational and safe for your kids to use.
Now here's a more interesting concept. The QuickBand Network acquires music video, interviews, independent film as well as live event footage and puts them onto their site. Split into two sections (the third smaller 'Hub' section is merely a set of handy links), the 'Circuit' section is a music magazine which provides Real Video at a variety of bandwidths and features such luminaries as DJ Spooky, Sebadoh, The Cardigans and Wilco. The 'Short' section mainly concerns itself with film but also includes pop video and animation. With plenty of footage to watch, smart design and content which will no doubt grow and grow, the QuickBand Network may well be one to keep an eye on.
Finally this week, winner of the best-name-of-a-site-for-months award goes to Orgasmic Wines, whose rather splendid tagline goes "a wine site for people who enjoy their wine, like to get a good deal and hate pretentious twaddle." A big thumbs up to that sentiment, and to the site, which cuts out a lot of nonsense about wines having "loganberry and cedar noses" or going on about how Chilean Merlot from 1989 is a little too "smokey". Instead of classifying by region, age or grape, it asks the fundamental question "Will you like it?" So you get to browse by style or price and there's a few recommendations for the total wine beginner. And once you're done choosing, you can buy them online and get them delivered to your door. Orgasmic Wines is a great example of how to use the medium of the Internet to its full potential.