Some people are gluttons for punishment. While the big push in the internet browser wars has been towards more and more ad control with ad blocking functionality now being standard in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox and Camino, there is another side to the coin. Companies like WhenU.com provide software that sends targeted ads to users who’ve requested them in exchange for free downloads of many software applications. While it seems to be a counter-intuitive model, many users are happy to have to look at ads if they can get something free for their trouble.

As half of the U.S. is still reeling from the latest snow storms, it’s easy for thoughts around here to turn to sunnier climates. It may just be idle daydreaming, but if you’re going to daydream, a website like PlotPerfect.com might be the place to start. Featuring some of the most beautiful scenery in the Mediterranean, PlotPerfect.com lists real estate from a consortium of agents and realtors in Crete, Greece. For daydreamers and serious lookers alike, PlotPerfect.com has plenty of pictures to help you visualize what your Greek home might be like.

As more and more people across the internet are using and pushing RSS feeds from news services and blogs, so increases the need for other services to help improve the “signal to noise” ratio to help filter out the feeds you don’t want from the ones you want. Enter sites like Bloglines.com. This popular resource lets users create free accounts to track the feeds that are important to them, whether it is from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or even the AboutUs Weblog.

SiteSell.com has an interesting approach to helping businesses succeed in the world of e-commerce. More than just being a place to get software to help setup e-commerce, SiteSell.com offers books, course and software as ways to help businesses brainstorm and think about their e-commerce strategy, beyond just providing the basic tools to setup e-storefronts. Additionally, SiteSell.com uses a variety of learning methods from text-based instructions to visual tour movies and presentations to get their word out. Along the way, they’re quick to provide customer testimonials and success stories as well.

Site Update: Over the last day the “Discussion” tab has been removed from article pages (User “Discussion/Talk” pages still exist as a means of leaving notes to each other). In an attempt to foster more robust conversation between users of particular sites, these messages, notes, reviews and other “user comments” have been move to the article page under a section aptly entitled “Discussion.” Feel free to add a “Discussion” section if there isn’t one, or to contribute your constructive input to discussions already taking place. The bot we’re using to move these did go a little crazy for a bit, so if you see a page that has “discussion” problems, leave a note. We’re working on cleaning up after it as well.

LocalWin.com is in the business of matchmaking, although probably not how most people mean it. In this case, the matches they’re making is helping customers needing services find contractors — whether it’s in their local area or across the U.S. The idea is to provide users with more than a simple “yellow pages” listing with phone numbers and addresses. Instead, LocalWin.com provides other pertinent information about contractors as well, including their website info, business overview, descriptions of products and services, license and insurance information, awards/certifications, business memberships and other relevant notes. LocalWin.com also has a “tips” section with various articles as well as a “discussion and forums” section for user sharing of information.

Building open source web applications for social change is more than just a mission for OpenConcept.ca, it’s their job. This Canadian business helps unions, NGOs, political parties and other progressive organizations fine-tune their web presence with strategic planning as well as programming and design. Their client list includes such websites/organizations as Canadian Parliament members Jean Crowder and (Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons) Bill Blaikie, MiningWatch Canada, Ottowa’s progressive bookstore OctopusBooks.ca, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

It seems as if AboutUs is always pushing file hosting sites in our “Featured Wiki Pages,” and maybe it’s true. On the other hand, it’s not just AboutUs that seems to like them. Take a site like Badongo.com for example. It’s consistently ranked in the top 20 websites in Asia, which is especially amazing considering that Hong Kong’s MegaUpload.com is ranked top 20 WORLDWIDE. So what does Badongo.com offer that many other file hosting sites don’t? Maybe it’s cool features like a music player you can stick on any webpage and it’ll play tunes uploaded to your account, or a widget that download files from Badongo directly from your blog, website or MySpace page.

PickyGuide.com is a brand new resource that more people should be using. Launched earlier this year, PickyGuide.com features thousands of objective articles to help consumers. Information is provided in 19 sections with over 200 categories in a format that is actually easier to browse that using their search bar (which also works fairly well). Currently, subjects and articles are broad, so a search for “laptops” gives a great article on what to look for in a laptop, but company specific articles (”Dell” or “Apple” for instance) don’t exist yet. Although PickyGuide.com have advertising, they do strive for full disclosure about advertising funds in their efforts to provide unbiased content, which is a major plus.

In today’s Community Portal listing, we’ve got the second round of potential AboutUs logos from Logoworks — please take a look and leave feedback. … Also: We’re not above poking fun at ourselves, having created a new category entitled AboutUsBotGoneBad to show off times when the automated capitalization/naming scheme just plain misses, like WesAndKim.com which until earlier today read WeSandKim.com, prompting a note from the site owners saying that “Kim will not be sanded.”