A week or so ago the AJAX-powered service usernamecheck.com was all the rage in the various tech rags for being able to check a bunch of different websites (all shown below) to see if a username was already taken. I held off blogging it at that time because the service was crippled by the attention, but the tide has passed and today you can reliably get there (knock on wood).  Before you wonder if I succumbed to the lemming blogger bug (definition: to blog something just because everybody else is doing it) read the next paragraph.

The first time I saw the service I thought immediately of a second, more appealing use: to explore some sites/services you might not have heard about before. This is something I enjoy doing online and if it’s something not blogged too much already, can generate interesting blog posts. If you find an entertaining or useful service it can be like opening a present at Christmas.

With that in mind, I looked through this list and was able to explore the 10 following sites/services (links lead to registration page, where possible):

1. Vox - YABS? (Yet Another Blogging Service). This one looks a little too familiar although PC Mag gave it high marks and it "works seamlessly" (whatever that means) with sites like Amazon, YouTube and Flickr. The web is littered with third party blog hosting services. Your Vox member name is not unique, which is kind of different. Registration email confirmation required.
2. visualizeus - picture bookmarking service. The URL is a mess in a del.icio.us sort of way, fortunately the dot com redirects. Uses YAFBE (Yet Another Firefox Bookmarking Extension). Registration email confirmation required.
3. Posterous - YABS with a slight twist: post by email from your confirmed email address to post@posterous.com and it blogs it. Your email can have photos, videos, MP3 as attachments and Posterous will include in your blog post at yourname.posterous.com.
4. Meemi - is there an English version of this site? Could have used Google Translate to help, but I passed on registering for this one. YAFSIDU (Yet Another Foreign Site I Don’t Understand)
5. koornk - YATC (Yet Another Twitter Clone). Bonus points for using OpenID but didn’t see anything that breaks this one from the pack. I asked my Twitter friends/followers if there was something nicer to say about this service. Registration email confirmation required.
6. isfingawesome - self-described as mixtape + microblog, my non-awesome description: YABS+YATC. Bonus points for default profile message that reads: "This profile is completely void of anything awesome" and the screenshot to the right, save the uncapitalized ‘d’ in my name (I’m joking, friends, just joking). Their logo contest has borne some cool fruit.
7. iLikeLoveIt - ??? Where is this ??? Link from usernamecheck bounced back to usernamecheck.
8. hexday - interesting concept. Choose a different color every day and see if herd mentality generates different color patterns. I like this one.

    
   I went psychedlic today: fuschia. What color would you pick to describe today? Would have probably chosen red yesterday for the history drop in the DOW (-777.7).

9. hellotxt - a microblogging aggregator, think a bunch of twitter clones (++YATC++), although they also aggregate Friendfeed and some networks. I tend to like aggregators as long as they aren’t sploggy-like because they save time. Didn’t see any ad play here which is good. Could be useful to heavy microblogging users but it’s a bust for me because I don’t want to share my microblogging passwords with it. API keys no problem, passwords are a big no-no.
10. FunnyOrDie - watched several videos from this site and might have even blogged one or two (didn’t check archives). Funny stuff, good production value and celebrity comedians. Prepare to laugh. Registration email confirmation required.

Note to owners/developers/webmasters of these sites that may appear in the comment/trackback section below: My brief overview comments above were based on signing up (except for Meemi and iLikeLoveIt) and looking around for a few minutes not an exhaustive review. Did I miss something cool about your service? Tell me about it below and I’ll be happy to look further. Call this the second chance saloon if you will.

Beyond that, save for hexday and FunnyOrDie, I wasn’t that interested in the 10 sites above. Not all prospecting is fruitful; sometimes gold, mostly dust. There are good services though in the overall usernamecheck list, so look through that.

If you compare the list in the screenshot to the list above, you’ll see not every site is duplicated that showed as ‘available.’ Commercial services are in there like Smugmug that I know about and have chosen not to pay to use and/or have used in the past (TypePad).

There is also some bugs with the usernamecheck service, like Virb where I already have an account (’TDavid’ not ‘tdavid’) and diigo which does not have this username available and is the reason I had to register ‘tdavids’ instead.

So keep in mind just because a site/service in usernamecheck might show your name as ‘available’ it might be taken and vice versa.

Happy exploring to you!

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