Backpack: gather your ideas, to-dos, notes, photos and files online

Personal and small business information manager: Get organized, Backpack

I saw this on O'Reilly's blog; they seem to think this is an entirely new way to work--they characterized it as "Blackberry for my desktop". After giving it a try, I guess I'm just thick, as I can't really see the "wow factor." I guess I'll have another go at trying to see what the Big Deal is, since luminaries like Tim O'Reilly seem to really like it.

O'Reilly on The Secret Sauce of Writely

An interesting blog entry on Writely, and how it may very well be the first Web 2.0 app written in .NET:

O'Reilly Radar > The Secret Sauce of Writely

IBM Buys Portal/SOA Vendor BowStreet

IBM Buys Bowstreet in Business Software Expansion

Interesting news--IBM is moving into Web Services/Service-Oriented Architectures in a big way. BowStreet is one of the "pure play" SOA/portal vendors, and the acquisition is a good fit with IBM's WebSphere line.

Basecamp: Web-based Project Management

This looks promising: a Web-based project management tool. Maybe even the folks from Sun can use this!

Project collaboration, management, and task software: Basecamp

Windows Live Local - Microsoft's "answer" to Google Earth

And a poor answer it is...but anything with MS behind it shows promise:

Windows Live Local

I'll have to spend some time playing with this; the folks on TWiT think it's pretty cool.

SETI@Home project ends; no E.T., but the technology continues

Not exactly a Web service, but it was cool technology nonetheless. When you consider that this technology preceded Grid by a good 4 or 5 years, it was pretty amazing. Fortunately the United Devices initiative (www.grid.org) is still alive and well, so people can still devote their excess CPU capacity to a good cause (like finding a cure for cancer).

Welcome to Flickr!

This is Flickr - a place to store photos on the Web. You can share them with others and also make cool stuff with them (like DVDs, Tee Shirts, etc). You can also drop pictures from Flickr into blogs and such. The main problem with it is that you can't upload more than 20mb a day (hey--whaddya want for free, huh?)

del.icio.us

This is del.icio.us (delicous) - a central place to store (and optionally share) all of your bookmarks. Cool idea.

digg

I heard about this the other day but couldn't find a reference to it on Google; it was because it's spelled with two g's. At any rate, this is a cool idea--figure out which stories are hot (e.g. who is "digging" things); users submit stories and then the readers decide what's not (and what is not).

Hamachi : Stay Connected

This is a fast, secure, simple, and free VPN. Cool!

Protopage v2 released - free AJAX start pages now with RSS news feeds, sticky notes and bookmarks

Another cool site, courtesy of TWiT; this one lets you easily create customized 'start pages'.

MSN Sandbox

Cool stuff here--MSN's Sandbox site.

Blinksale | The easiest way to send invoices online

This is another cool Web service; lets you do invoicing online.

Personal and small business information manager: Get organized, Backpack

Cool idea--heard about this on TWiT. Allows you to store lists and collaborate.

O'Reilly Web 2.0 Primer

This is a great overview of Web 2.0, which of course includes Web services