SocialPicks just got funded not too long ago, indicating the general acceptance of social stock. To push that acceptance further, SocialPicks has partnered up with Reuters to launch an online social network for investors. The new joint network is called Stock Buzz, and it is a place for users to share ideas, exchange market research, and track investment performance against others within the community, just like SocialPicks.

There are a few sections featured on Stock Buzz, like the Top Picks, Rock Star Investors, a section for Q&A and another for listing additionally interesting stocks for other users to take advantage of. So it appears that in SocialPicks’ attempt to gain market share in its own right, it’s branching out a bit beyond the typical reigns of social stock online communities.

For the traditional media end, a number of companies have invested time, energy and money into their own online resource hubs for stocks, even purchasing them to add into their portfolio of web properties. Few have launched their own branded community, however. And considering Reuters’ recent plan for building out its online presence, which was highlighted with CNN’s decision to no longer distribute content from Reuters. Since then, Reuters has launched a video search tool with facial recognition, as well as signed on Attributor to protect its content.

Is this a good direction for Reuters, or a shot in the dark? The demographics for Reuters and stock communities are quite similar, so it’s not too far of a stretch in this regards. The community nature of SocialPicks-powered Stock Buzz is an effort to further engage Reuters users, and if Reuters is looking to grow its web presence, engaged users is key.

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Xakasha is a new timeline community that lets you create your events in an easy-to-browse fashion. The service really centers around the visual experience of each added event, along with some basic networking features for connecting with others. What you get is an event timeline that has a hint of blogging tied in. The purpose is to create a visual representation of your life, in chronological order. On the visual end, Xakasha is somewhat like Rememble. From the chronological standpoint of organizing your life’s events, Xakasha is very much like EachDay.

For each event, add in the basic info, like date, title, location, duration, and description. From there you can add images and videos. There are a few different options for adding images: single upload, express upload (multiple images at once–think Facebook-style image uploading), and mobile pix upload. Videos can be imported from YouTube, and support for other video-sharing networks will come later. The fun part comes in when you’ve got multiple events in your account.

These are viewed in a 3D timeline, similar to Space Time, that somewhat mimics a mini desktop, which customizable backgrounds. Use your mouse wheel or the arrows to stream through events, which are depicted mainly my the cover image and the year in which each event occurred. On the networking end, you can view others’ events, comment and rate them, and even adopt them for your own.

While you can add friends and even take an affinity quiz to find your soulmate, the networking features on Xakasha are secondary to the timeline creation, viewing and sharing tool. One thing that makes specific viewing and sharing tool more useful is inclusion of improved search and filtering, especially on a user-to-user basis. To make it easier for users to create timelines, import options from various social networking and media-sharing sites would be helpful as well.

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Ask500People is a new service that takes a somewhat fun take on the whole concept of the map mashup. I’m not a huge fan of most map mashups, as most of them lack interactive capabilities and some prove utterly pointless. Ask500People, however, offers a dynamic map that I can watch for about 3 minutes before getting bored.

What it does is show in real-time the responses to polls that users have created within its community. Pick a poll, vote for it, and watch the results play out across the globe. There are four different types of answer options you can offer to the Ask500 community, ranging from image-enhanced multiple choice, to plain and simple “yes or no.” Add more answer options if you’d like. Preview the poll, and send it off for approval.

Unlike most polls sites, the process isn’t fully automated, and there’s no end time for the pole you’ve created. It just goes on forever. Additionally, the only way to include images in your poll is by selecting the image option for the type of answers you’d like to offer the Ask500 users. That being said, there’s no other types of media that can be shared for your poll. I suppose the dynamic map is entertainment enough.

To the right of the map, you’ll see the current results, recent voters, and other questions that you can check out. Each poll lets you access the members that are online, as well as leave comments. Once users begin to create more and more polls, it would make sense to offer a search and filtering option, and maybe even a recommendation tool for presenting related polls (i.e. those pertaining to sports or food).

And what I’d love to see is a widget for the dynamic map poll, which could be an interesting way for gathering data on your own blog or website. Toluna is another polls creation site, which has undergone a major revamp, including a name change, earlier this month.

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Clearspring, which just launched mobile syndication for its widgets, has just added another very useful feature for the furthered spreading of not only widgets but for widgetizing content on your website. This new offering is called the Clearspring Launchpad.

With the launchpad’s new share menu, site visitors can easily send your widget or web content to their websites in the form of a widget. This widget can of course be placed on blogs and social networking profiles as well. Additionally, site visitors can email the content to friends or save them to a social bookmarking service like Digg or Technorati as well.

The menu itself has two options: you can embed it in its entirety, or add a button that expands one a site visitor clicks on it, to offer all of the sharing options. This works in a very similar manner to the “share” button that displays above every article here on Mashable. What’s unique, however, is the option for immediate widgetizing of the content that you’re offering up to be shared, which could be a blog post, a video, an image or pretty much any other type of web content.

As it can be widgetized in this manner, the syndication options have now been expanded for your site users and end users, without you needing to make widget options for all of your content, based on what type of content it is, or how its being syndicated on your own site. I like the mobility of this option, and I also expect a lot of development from other widget tools based on this recent development. I also know that Clearpring will be making more strides for additional widget options.

As social networks and web content become more open and shareable, its been quite amazing to see the world of widgets unfold. What we’re seeing now is solidification of certain widget companies as providing standards for general use, and an increasingly consolidated feature set for both startups and established widget services. So widget companies aren’t just for making widgets, but they’re also widget directories, vehicles for advertisement networks, a source for metrics, and a resource for developers.

And a lot of this is overlapping with other sites and devices tat use widgets, like MySpace’s upcoming widget directory, or the Pageflakes extensive search options for finding widget content for your start page. So as these tools become more available through existing networks, it becomes even more necessary for Clearspring, Widgetbox and the rest to offer more tools for web publishers, developers, brands, advertisers, content creators and end users.

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Search engines: they’re essential for getting your content noticed, but it’s a challenge to optimize your site if you don’t know what you’re doing. Here are 30+ resources to help out – feel free to add more in the comments.

Related: SOCIAL SEARCH GUIDE: 40+ Social Search Engines (more…)

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2-Column website templates are easily the most popular, as well as the most common free templates available. Here are more than 80 of the best.

You may also want to check out the following: 40+ Free One-Column Website Templates, 50 More Beautiful Blogger Templates, 20 Wordpress 4-Column Themes (more…)

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There only seem to be two types of people in the world when it comes to Java, The Lovers and The Haters, but there is no denying that Java is here to stay. We’ve got a toolbox of 20+ tools and tutorials to help out Java coders of all skill levels.

Related: 20+ Flash Tools, 20+ PHP Tools, 20+ AJAX Tools (more…)

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Flash, if implemented correctly, can be a real benefit to your site, but if executed badly, you could lose visitors pretty quickly. We’ve gathered 20+ tools to help you make the best use of this powerful tool. Feel free to add more resources in the comments.

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Have you always been reliant on others’ templates for your blog or website? You’d like to customize them, but you’re just not sure how? Perhaps it’s time to finally wrestle with the secrets of CSS. This collection of CSS-related links should be a good start – from basic tutorials to advanced tools, it’s all here. (more…)

Recommended: Hi5 Layouts at Mashcodes!

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Since May 2007, we’ve been bringing you resources and tools to be more productive on the web. Due to popular demand, we’ve brought all these lists together into one gigantic meta-list: 5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online.

Enjoy! And don’t forget to subscribe to Mashable for the latest web news and resources. (more…)

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