Miles Mendoza's Website of the Day ... and more!

Top Table

>> Top Table
I first featured Top Table when it was a small-scale site concentrating on reviews of restaurants in Central London. The site has grown massively since then; It’s now Europe’s leading site for restaurant reviews and bookings, covering cities across the UK plus Paris, Barcelona, New York, Rome and other international destinations.
You can search for a restaurant by cuisine, price, atmosphere, (child-friendly, romantic, business etc), availability or location, or restrict your search to eateries offering discounts to Top Table users.
You earn reward points for booking online or submitting restaurant reviews – and these points can be redeemed for free meals.

The CV Show

>> The CV Show
In the wake of YouTube’s massive success, online video is one of the biggest growth areas on the web, and this site is the first I’ve seen to bring video to the realm of online job-hunting. You can upload a short clip introducing yourself (and your skills) to would-be employers, and then add the address to your textual job applications.
It won’t replace a conventional text-based CV, but it could certainly help employers weed out some unsuitable candidates without having to go through time-consuming interviews.
One to watch (both literally and metaphorically)!

The Great Jock ‘N’ Roll Single

>> The Great Jock ‘N’ Roll Single
You have around 48 hours left to submit your votes for the 10 finest Scottish singles of all time irrespective of musical genre. Thus Andy Stewart is as likely to appear as Franz Ferdinand, Lena Zavaroni as much as the Cocteau Twins, the Bay City Rollers as much as the Blue Nile.
While I’m disappointed that Lord Rockingham is yet to enter the Top 25, I’m delighted to see that my own favourite – Obscurity Knocks by the Trashcan Sinatras was place at #11 at the start of February!

Lazytown

>> Lazytown: Official Site
>> Cbeebies: Sportacus’ Workout Game
>> Lazytown on Wikipedia
As well as my regular Website of the Day responsibilities, I also consider myself to be Steve Wright in the Afternoon’s pre-school telly correspondent.
One of the jewels in the crown of Cbeebies’ current schedule is the Icelandic import Lazytown – a high-octane mixture of live action, Max Headroom-style prosthetics, CGI and puppetry. The show’s lead character is Sportacus, a self-described "slightly-above-average hero" who is charged with persuading the kids of Lazytown to forgo junk food and video games in favour of fruit and exercise.
Find out more about the series on Wikipedia, or get a flavour of the show’s exhausting but highly infectious approach to healthy living by trying Sportacus’ Online Workout on the Cbeebies site.

Minti

>> Minti
Now this is really good. Billed as a “parent-to-parent advice-opedia”, Minti is a parenting site which really plays to the strengths of the web in 2007. The bedrock of the site is advice written by parents for other parents, but it works by taking the best features of MySpace and Wikipedia and tweaking them to deliver a vibrant online community for parents and familes.
If you just want to search or browse the extensive advice database you’ll find articles on almost every aspect of child-care, parenting and family life, from sleep to nappies, tantrums, teething and much more. But the site really comes into its own when you register and create a MySpace-style profile page (complete with photos and blogs) for your own family. Then you can befriend and interact with other families and parents, rate and rank articles for usefulness, add your own comments to existing advice or submit your own articles.

Online Tea-making rotas (and Holiday scheduling)

>> I Made It Last
>> Who’s Off?
Here are a couple of sites to help streamline a couple of important parts of office life.
I Made It Last is an automatic online tea rota designed to ensure that all team-members take their turn at getting the hot drinks in. Register by entering a user name, Password, Email address, and your chosen beverage - plus milk & sugar requirements. When you want a drink, just click on ‘Order’ and as soon as a set number of orders have been placed, the site sends an email to the next name on the rota, telling him or her "it's your turn to make the drinks".
Who’s Off is probably the more genuinely useful (and more sophisticated) service. It’s a fully-featured online staff holiday planner, which lets employees submit their leave requests online, and automatically calculates their remaining holiday allowance and whether their requested dates clash with leave already booked by colleagues.

BRITs / Valentines Podcasts

>> BRITs on Radio 2
>> Win a guitar signed by the winners and nominees
>> BRITs: Official Site
Tonight from 2100-2230 Dermot O’Leary is live from the backstage enclosure at Earls Court talking to the winners and nominees at this year’s BRITs. I’ll be hiding in the backstage enclosure taking pictures for Radio 2’s BRITs minisite so keep an eye on our BRITs pages later to see Dermot hob-nobbing with the stars. You can also win a guitar Signed by all of Dermot’s star guests.
Also mentioned today:
>> Queen of Hearts & King of Clubs Valentines podcasts
Top-notch reference source The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has been offering selected audio biogs of notable figures in podcast form since the start of 2007. Why not send your beloved a Barbara Cartland (Queen of Hearts) or Bobby Moore (King of Clubs) Valentine-friendly podcast!

Send a free Valentines Message

>> Love Is Blind
Last year we mentioned the RLSB’s Love Is Blind site and the response was fantastic. The site lets you post (anonymous) romantic messages on an animated montage of love hearts. Your valentine will receive an email which links them straight to your message. The service is free, but helps to raise awareness for The Royal London Society for the Blind’s work. Also mentioned today:
>> Life on Mars
Download an animated DCI Gene Hunt for your desktop, or a use a range of sound bites from the programme as your mobile ringtone or text alert.

SushiFAQ

>> SushiFAQ
I'm allergic to fish (thanks for asking) but that doesn't stop me appreciating the artistry inherent in Sushi creation.
Sushi FAQ tells you pretty much anything you might wish to know about the history, etiquette and preparation of sushi, sashimi, wasabi and more. A surprisingly entertaining (and informative) read.

The Pond (Feed the ducks game)

>> The Pond
One of my favourite things to do on a Sunday afternoon (second only to having a nice kip on the sofa when I’ve finished the washing up) is to pop up to the common with (junior Mendozas) Henry, George and Ruby to feed the ducks.
Which got me thinking that although we’ve featured fish , cow and pig games on Website of the Day, we’ve never done a duck game. Let’s put that right now then:
On this virtual pond you’ll find three colours of duck and a number of floating acorns. Click on the water surface to create ripples which will send the acorns in the direction of a hungry duck. Your aim is to ensure that only the correct colour of duck gets his or her fill of acorns.