Are you one to favor the age-old polling system to determine between multiple options, whether they be real or hypothetical? Or perhaps just to see whether the public can accurately predict future events? Answer yes to first and/or second questions, and you might want to give MyGuesstimate a run.

Though the website has yet to achieve the all-important critical mass it requires to truly make it an effective system on a broad scale, the MyGuesstimate foundation provides something that could grab considerable interest it if can manage to bring in the right type of users. The right type of users being those who posit questions which trigger passersby to become members and that drives members to partake continuously.

I’ll be honest. It is somewhat peculiar that the makers of MyGuesstimate chose not to maintain a uniform presentation for the front page and individual pages created by users. That’s not something easily excusable here in 2008. It makes for a sort of disjointed experience. Otherwise, it is quite good, though. Flickr and YouTube integration is convenient. All data you would tend to desire from such a service is there, too, from a user vote count to information about the questioner and the roll of fellow members he/she is following.

Also, run your cursor over the answer choices provided by a submitter, and you can view user icons corresponding to registered votes. Those icons are linked, so it’s very easy to browse the site in a kind of discovery mode. You see who voted yes, visit their user profile, see what questions they themselves have asked. You can get very involved with the service very quickly as a result. Again, it bears mentioning. If the right people climb aboard the MyGuesstimate train, it could become a busy place chock-full of engaging conversations. Because MyGuessmate is said to track users’ vote histories, a percentage-based spectrum of intelligence - albeit a suble one - can emerge.

There is some evidence that MyGuesstimate won’t become such a happening destination. A look at the initial query list shows hints of vapidness. But I say give it time. It’s young enough that the user network can be one comprised of people you’d genuinely want to connect with on a regular basis.

Source:Mashable!

We here at Mashable are always ready and willing to expand our view of the social networking realm top to bottom, left to right, east to west, and all the little nooks and crannies that make up the long tail of niche interests and fascinations. So, naturally I was curious when a site by the name of Tatuatori crossed our path. It is, in a few words, a venue for tattoo enthusiasts.

Before you step through the door, be advised. While it is “relatively” well-known, with 150,000 monthly visits to its name, it is wholly devised for Italian language speakers. You might be able to rough your way through imagery alone, but take it as it comes, as the saying goes.

The layout is intuitive enough. It doesn’t require much thought or scrutiny to navigate. There are plenty of visual cues to give you an idea of what each facet delivers. The tattoo gallery is of course at the top of the totem pole. Quite literally, too. Just take a look at the front page, and the sections are displayed one atop the other. To be frank, it’s not so unappealing a design. Granted, it’s basic. But basic seems to work well in the case of Tatuatori.

Others of similar making might be less attractive to some users. Names like Inked Nation, My Tattoo Place, Tribals, MeetMyTattoo, CheckOutMyInk, and Tattoo Passions are all of different design, but mostly adhere to the formulaic widget-based outline that is customary in the networking realm. Want something different? Try Tatuatori.

Alternatively, Inked Nation and CheckOutMyInk rank most highly in my mind in visual appeal. Inked Nation is thematically complete, while CheckOutMyInk is simple and straightforward. Want a large photo library to shuffle through? CheckOutMyInk delivers. Search categorically, via tags, or by new uploads. Social components come with the package, too, per users’ interactive convenience.

It would be a challenge to juxtapose any of the above English-language sites with Tatuatori. It’s entirely unique with respect to its exclusively Italian upbringing. But it is nonetheless worth a glance, and if you should be fluent, or even passably knowledgable of the language, it might prove bookmark worthy. Registration worthy, even. If not, there are at least another six sites to strike your fancy for the art of the tattoo and the painters behind the gun.

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Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: I Heart Movies

20-word Description: I Heart Movies is a movie based social network and DVD collection organization site.

CEO’s Pitch: I Heart Movies is a movie and television based social network that at its core allows users to join and rate movies. The users can tag, categorize and mark films or TV shows as favorites to help them organize their list. The site has the ability of adding friends to see their ratings on films to help you choose the best films for you. Films and TV shows are loaded with information (casts, plots, trailers and photo galleries) to give users the ability to step beyond just watching a film.

Users also have their own profile pages that display their recent activity, show comments from other users and give the basic info about that user. Each user is also assigned a Dashboard that they can personalize (similar to Google IG) with widgets to their likings. The site also features a dynamic homepage that’s updated depending on the happenings on the site.

Mashable’s Take: Do you heart movies? Then you might want to visit I Heart Movies. Sure, it’s a bit sparse. It could use a little more umph in the design department. But the networking features that accent the site may be worth your while.

In addition to tagging and rating and all that fun stuff, I Heart Movies is geared to put central emphasis on discussion of things coming out of the media world as well as lots and lots of archival goodness. Yes, sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes and the like manage to pull in vast amounts of traffic and thus chart countless pages of lively conversation. But this relative newbie seems to offer a fresh slate, as it were, and even sports some features that other players in the market don’t have.

As the above description makes clear, I Heart Movies is a movie rating system that carries atop it a social dimension. This goes for basic communication among members, as well as things like tracking lent and borrowed DVDs. It’s somewhat unfortunate that the design of I Heart Movies doesn’t highlight the best aspects of the network, but if you opt for an account and manage to establish a reasonably substantive lists of friends and favorite flicks, the value you can glean from the site may well induce ample stick-with-it-ness.

For garnish, the movie trailers in evidence on the site are a nice addition. They are easily accessible, they don’t inhibit browsing (they don’t require you to pay a visit to a static movie info page, though you may do so if you like), and the quality is appreciable. As the site expands its coverage, it may well come to be one of the highlights to rise above the fold. Observing that growth will be pretty interesting indeed.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

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Typically I give a popular service around an hour to get its act together before posting about its downtime, but for the last 15 minutes or so my Twitter friend timeline has been lighting up with messages about Facebook being down. Being Friday and all, I figured why not have some fun with it.

Twitter’s “fail whale” has become somewhat iconic, at least for those of us that use the site regularly and have become used to its quirky downtime messages. But all Facebook gives me when it goes down is this stinkin’ browser default “connection reset” page:

What should Facebook’s version of the “fail whale” be? Leave your own ideas in the comments … bonus points for original artwork We’ve got two $25 iTunes gift certificates for the best submissions.

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Source:Mashable!

Fling it Girl is a new social bookmarking and shopping site aimed at the Web-savvy consumer crowd (the site is pink and has “girl” in the title, but there’s a section for guys too). As with most other social bookmarking sites like Kaboodle, Fling it Girl is broken down into various categories, and each user-generated submission can be voted and commented on, saved to your own profile and further shared within the community as well as across the Web.

Fling it Girl has a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser toolbar for easy submissions as you surf the Web. Its toolbar, which is similar to StyleFeeder’s recent browser add-on, is what really ties things together and provides a more direct social interaction amongst users. Powered by Medium, the Feed it Girl toolbar gives you additional features while you browse the Fling it Girl site and surf the Web for new shopping items.

As Medium is a social toolbar that gives you recommendations and related sites, a co-branded Fling it Girl option for users means that you can ask other users questions while you surf, find more shopping sites, and have direct access to the constantly updating new and hot items coming through on Fling it Girl. Co-founder Kary Rivera notes that unlike the StyleFeeder social browsing tool, Fling It Girl has the opportunity to extend its network. “This toolbar with real time function and accessibility to the site from everywhere is an unbelievable feature. All me.dium search users will benefit from what is being Flung Up through Fling it Girl in the social search results,” said Rivera.

It makes a lot of sense conceptually to integrate an additional social search toolbar for active Fling it Girl users, as it aims to provide a full circle of options for both browsing and connecting with others. We’re sure to see more of this, not just in girlie shopping sites but across a large portion of social Web surfing, even delving into areas of Web surfing that isn’t necessarily considered social. Tools like Vysr and Yoono are doing a lot to make such provisions available to users, with browser sidebar widgets that include bookmarking and chat. Such browser add-ons will only continue to grow and mature, layering in increased feature capabilities and integration with existing networks and recommendation engines.

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