The Wonderful World Wide Web
The Internet is the greatest invention ever. With websites like Qoo10, Groupon and Zalora, you can now buy anything from the latest deals, right down to unicorn meat (100% legit!) with just a click of the button.
Being able to buy stuff online is great, but that’s only 10% of what the internet has to offer – and no, the other 90% does not solely involve cute gifs of kittens and puppies. I’m talking about practical websites that add value to your life in ways you wouldn’t expect.
“I’ll Google them when I need them”, you say petulantly. Ah, but how do you Google things you never knew existed? And so, this is where we come in. This list takes you away from the mainstream and gets you acquainted with useful gems that you never knew existed – get ready to bookmark them all!
1. CafeSG
CafeSG is an interactive map that encompasses a comprehensive list of all the cafes in Singapore. Carefully classified by region, this page is incredibly handy when you’re planning your stops for a weekend of non-stop cafe hopping.
The information on CafeSG is crowdsourced, and you can add cafes you discover to the map. Fancy yourself a seasoned cafe hopper? You might find a few hidden gems through this website!
2. Freeboh
Freeboh is an online job marketplace that allows employers to list available job vacancies, and allows part timers to find the best job to suit their needs.
Their online job search interface gives job seekers a bird’s eye view of all available jobs, their timings and their locations. For university students or anyone with multiple commitments, Freeboh’s existence is the best thing your cash-strapped wallets will hear all semester. Juggling work and school? Piece of cake.
3. Do-It-Your Way Insurance
Most of us will have had or will have the misfortune of falling prey to some pretty unscrupulous insurance sales tactics. They might try the old bait-and-switch, or maybe they’ll resort to scaring you into making a purchase. Whatever it is, you’ve had your fill.
The people at Providend have heard you, and since its inception in 2014, Providend’s subsidiary website, Do-It-Your-Way Insurance, has been empowering consumers to make informed decisions about insurance policies.
DIY Insurance allows people to compare the premiums and features of different policies from disparate providers online – for free! – regardless of whether the plans you are looking for fall under Protection, Savings, or Retirement Income.
All staff from DIYInsurance are paid a fixed salary and do not participate in sales-based compensation or incentives of any kind. So there is no hard-selling or over-selling.
In addition to promotions, you will also receive 30% commission rebates in cash when you purchase any product through DIYInsurance for greater cost savings to you.
With the portal’s step-by-step filtering process, don’t worry about being inundated with a barrage of information as only the policies most relevant to you will appear.
Click here to learn more about DIYinsurance!
4. Snupped
We love our office cat, Pika, so much we decided to put her face on our laptop sleeve.
Yet another website to demonstrate that the customising craze just will not stop. Not that I’m complaining – it’s one of the greatest gifts of the 21st century to be able to plaster your significant other’s (aka your cat’s) face all over your mobile device.
Snupped is web store that lets you where you can not only buy sleeves for your mobile devices, but also DESIGN your own via a nifty online interface, and making it possible for you to elevate your love for your pet to disturbing new levels. Just kidding – we’re obsessed with Pika too.
5. Never Liked it Anyway
Breaking up with your long-term boyfriend made you realise #Together4eva on Instagram, means 5 years 4 months IRL. You also found out that to avoid yet another emotional meltdown, everything that reminds you of him – from stuff he gifted you, down to his ratty old t-shirt – has to be within, uh, a no-mile radius of you.
Still, it is a shame to throw away things that aren’t broken. Never Liked It Anyway is a site that lets you sell all the baggage from your break-up at marked-down prices. But one man’s meat is another man’s poison, right? Peddle your ex’s stuff online at neverlikeditanyway.com, achieve catharsis, plus a chance to cash-in on your emotional turmoil.
Hey – you’re going to need money for all that ice-cream after all.
6. SeatGuru by Tripadvisor
We’ve all heard about horror stories on the airplanes, and if, God forbid, we have to sit next to a puking baby for thirteen hours, it’ll be the absolute pits. SeatGuru makes sure you’ll never put yourself in such a situation.
Their Seat Maps of airplanes helps you identify which seats you should try to get in the airplane, and for the detail-obsessed, SeatGuru even makes information like the seat’s degree of recline available.
7. Chope
We’ve all come across Chope’s cheery, yellow Chuppa Chups look-alike logo at one point, but how many of us know exactly what it’s for? As a rough gauge of Chope’s traction among the youth, only 6 out of my 900 Facebook friends actually like Chope’s Facebook page.
Chope is an online restaurant reservation service that operates 24/7, minimizing the hassle of calling in to make reservations at your favourite restaurant. When you sign up, you’ll automatically be included as a beneficiary of their reward system, where you‘ll earn Chope Dollars – a global currency that you can redeem at ANY participating outlet in ANY participating city. Simple, but ingenious.
8. Viddsee
Viddsee is a Singaporean-based online short film portal run by two graduates from the National University of Singapore, and is dedicated to showcasing the work of filmmakers from the Asia-Pacific region.
Viddsee is a fantastic platform for viewers to get exposed to the indie cinema scene because it is free, and accessible anywhere – as long as you have a working internet connection. Also, films have already been curated and categorised into various channels. Igniting your love for indie films has never been this easy.
9. Travelmob
For aspiring globetrotters on a budget, Travelmob is your best bet. Founded in Singapore in 2012, Travelmob is the lesser-known Airbnb for the Asia-Pacific region. The online startup allows travellers to secure rented accommodation online for a short getaway in popular vacation spots like Hong Kong, Bali, Phuket, and Tokyo with several fuss-free clicks of the mouse.
10. PricePanda
Perhaps in the near future, you’ll be looking for an iPhone 7. Or the Samsung Galaxy S7 if you hail from camp Android. Whatever it is, the bargain hunter refuses to buy anything lest you’re offered the best (lowest) price possible!
So you’ll be camped out in front of your computer, bleary-eyed and jacked up on caffeine, trawling newspapers for the lowest prices, even considering making an actual trip down to Sim Lim if nothing comes up.
My friends – abandon your old-fashioned ways! Allow me to introduce you to every gadget lover’s fairy godmother: PricePanda. Once at their website, simply select a device to get a price comparison. Pick the retailer with the best offer, and you’ll be directed to the store’s webpage to place an order – all with just a few clicks of the mouse.
11. Shopicks
Online shopping is such a blessing in the harried times of the 21st Century. Thanks to being able to shop whilst on the daily grind, we’ve saved ourselves a ton of time. With everything within your fingers’ reach – this is about as easy as it gets, right?
Rrrr – wrong. Shopicks is the latest online website to make your virtual shopping experience more streamlined than it already is. Shopicks is a browser add-on that acts as a global shopping basket for different websites that encourages smarter shopping because it allows you to create shopping lists and compare prices amongst other things. And if you can’t find it online, Shopicks will locate it offline for you.
12. One.Motoring – Real Time Parking Lot Availability
Nobody ever wants to drive to town because a) parking spaces are non-existent, and b) even if you manage to secure a lot, you’re not quite sure if you are okay with their exorbitant car park rates.
While One.Motoring can’t help you with the latter, their Real Time Parking Lot Availability easily allows you to circumvent the former problem by showing you the number of lots available at the various shopping malls in town, updated in real time.
13. Terms of Service; Didn’t Read
“Too Long; Didn’t Read.” – Everybody on the Internet who’s ever been slapped with a Terms of Service Agreement.
Knowing the terms of the online service you are using is exceptionally important in the Social Media Age – but who can actually bear to sift through pages filled with passages of ant-sized words? Terms of Service; Didn’t Read (or ToS;DR), is the SparkNotes of all Terms of Services. Select your online service from the list on ToS;DR, and you’ll be able to view a concise summary of the Terms of Service in a few lines.
You can also download their add-on to get ToS information delivered straight to your browser.
14. Tiong Bahru Market Food Directory
Type tiongbahru.market into your address bar, wait for the site to load and…
“SOOO CUTE!” The website’s design is not just ‘so cute’, but so-with-three-Os cute. But when the initial squealing subsides, you’ll realise how useful this online Tiong Bahru market directory is.
With numerous identical storefronts, and impatient bodies jostling you from one direction to another, hawker centres are a mess to navigate. An so, in our quest to find that legendary yet elusive Char Kuay Tiao stall, we often end up settling for something that’s within eyeshot from our table.
This online market directory sorts stalls by their dishes and cuisine. There is also an animated interactive map. Hover your mouse over the stall numbers, and the stall name, along with opening hours, pops up. It’s essentially Google Maps for the hapless Tiong Bahru Market patron.
Useful But Underrated
“But 9Gag is useful… for killing boredom!” You protest weakly, knowing these protests are futile.
Now that you’ve made it to the end of this list, we hope that you might actually give some of these legitimately useful but overlooked sites a try. Before you know it, you’ll wondering how you even got by before you knew they existed.
This post was brought to you by DIYinsurance.