A lot of people are disliking YouTube these days. If it’s not for their ever-present "scheduled maintenance", it’s for the continually tightening grip on what is considered "acceptable" content and what isn’t. And let’s not forget that the community (and it’s a stretch to call it that) is simply awful.

There are plenty of so-so alternatives to YouTube such as DailyMotion, MetaCafe, Revver, Viddler, Vimeo and several others. But like I said, they’re so-so because the first thing that will turn you off is the interface for any of them, and the slowness will drive you up a wall.

Being that I like to see what’s out there, I found sevenload and decided to give it a shot.

In all honesty, it’s not bad at all. It’s actually fast and in some cases faster than YouTube, has far better privacy options compared to other video sites, and most importantly, it’s easy to use.

I give sevenload a thumbs up, because it’s the first YouTube alternative I’ve seen that I believe people would actually like. Try it, you may like it.

Hate Facebook? MySpace seems old hat now? Want something that’s easy to use and gives you instant message capability too?

Here are three you can try out. You’ve most likely never heard of these, but hey, that’s half the fun because being early in sites like these means you’ll probably get more e-popular.

All three of these sites have the ability to connect IM in Meebo, so you can centralize them all in one spot.

You will notice all these sites operate similar to each other, but each have a distinct "personality" of sorts.

Zorpia – www.zorpia.com

A social network that concentrates on more of an international presence compared to just USA-only.

dotblu – www.dotblu.com

The shtick with this site is "social gaming". Games, games and more games. No, not the hardcore MMORPG and FPS style, more like Yahoo! Games used to be back in the day, except this has a social twist to it. You might like this one a lot; it has a very addicting quality to it.

Flixster – www.flixster.com

This is exactly what you think it is, a social network for movie buffs of all types. Rate and share movie reviews, get social with it, etc. You get the picture (bad pun intended).

Why bother with any of these?

A problem that presents itself with social networking as a whole is that it’s too generalized. Yes, there is the ability to create groups in these networks, but most of them have hidden agendas (i.e. spammy).

Social networks with a specific purpose do hold value. If you’re overwhelmed by the "too much stuff" factor of the bigger sites, these smaller sites might be what you were looking for.

What do you think?

Are any of these networks good or are they total crap?

Let us know in the comments.

aMSN is a free alternative to Windows Live Messenger. The immediate advantage of using aMSN is that it is not as memory-hungry as the client delivered by Microsoft.

In addition, as far as an alternative messenger app is concerned, this one more closely resembles traditional-looking clients rather than something totally new that takes you a few days to learn everything. aMSN is laid out in such a way where just about everything is familiar to those who have used the regular WLive client. (Even the system tray icon is familiar-looking.)

Lastly, aMSN is not just for Windows. It also runs on OS X and Linux. So if you use multiple operating systems, aMSN will look the same no matter what you run. Try it out – you may like it.

Oh, and by the way, if you were looking for a simple Hotmail notifier (something that tells you when mail comes in), even if you don’t use the chat features aMSN sits neatly in the tray and puts a small envelope icon there when you receive new mail. You can click on the envelope and get your mail afterwards. Nice touch.

Inevitably you’re going to come across some web sites that still (for whatever reason) insist on delivering video content in QuickTime and not Flash. And of course at that point you have to download QuickTime via QuickTime.com.

Mac users never have a problem with QuickTime because it works superb with MacOS. However as many people are aware, Apple doesn’t exactly program things for Windows that “play nice”, so to speak. There are some that think Apple’s QuickTime is so bad they they call it the “New RealPlayer” (in reference to how Real’s RealPlayer software really sucked).

Is there an alternative? Absolutely. You can try out QuickTime Alternative. Compared to regular QuickTime, this loads fast and isn’t bulky at all.

Try it out. You may like it.

I remember using ReactOS a really long time ago and essentially forgot about it. Dave discovered it recently, told me about it, and I said “Oh yeah! I remember that OS.. I guess it’s still alive and kickin’.”

Yes it is, however to this day it’s still in alpha stages meaning you absolutely should not use it as your primary OS.

What makes React different is that it appears to be a ground-up OS(?)

Definitely interesting and worth a look. See video below for details.