My 10 Favorite Web 2.0 Apps

I've been involved with Web 2.0 since it was, uh, Web 1.0 (maybe 0.1?), and I thought it was high time to publish a list of the Web 2.0 apps that I find especially useful, as well as those that I'm just now trying out that could become especially useful.

1. Linked In - probably the most useful (and profitable) service that I use--allows you to put together a professional network based on the six degrees of separation concept, and then mine that network for job opportunities, etc. It's 100% trust-based, and I can attest that it's highly effective. As an example, I currently am "linked in" to 318 people. Through those people, I can reach 89,000 "2nd degree" contacts (friends of friends), and 3.4 million "3rd degree" (friends of friends of friends) contacts. Pretty powerful networking.

2. Delicious - A wonderful place to store all of your bookmarks in one place--and then find them again. The service installs buttons on your Web browser's toolbar, and when you want to bookmark something, you just hit the button. Delicious then prompts you to add a description of the bookmark, along with tags that make it easier to sort and search your list. You can choose whether a given bookmark is public or not--you can share your bookmark lists with the public if you choose (or not). The best part for me is the ability find a bookmark from virtually any Internet-enabled PC, anywhere.

3. Salesforce - Salesforce.com, affectionately known as SFDC, was a pioneer in the software-as-a-service area, and the company continues to innovate. In addition to SFDC's core competency, which is sales force and marketing automation, the company has built an incredible network of partners that have developed value-added applications that extend the reach and functionality of SFDC to new heights. For anyone that is in a sales or marketing role, I highly recommend it.

4. Google Apps Suite - I use virtually every component of the ever growing Google suite of applications. This includes Google Mail (which can also be used with your own domain), Web hosting, Calendar, Maps (including the mobile Blackberry version, which is absolutely amazing), etc., etc. More amazing is that virtually all of it is free (advertising sponsored).

5. Blogger - I've used Blogger for about four years now, and am completely happy with its blogging capabilities. You can create blog posts via the Web, and it's also possible to create posts via email (say, from a Blackberry). If you're interested in blogging, definitely check out Blogger. I should mention that Blogger is yet another free Google service.

6. Wikipedia - the days of having to cast about for information on "things" is virtually over due to Wikipedia. An entirely free, user supported encyclopedia. Wikipedia has entries on virtually any subject. Building on the Wiki concept, in which anyone can make changes to virtually any page, Wikipedia has built an extensive network of editors and reviewers which serve to help ensure that entries don't get hijacked or fall victim to graffiti--and also that the entries meet stringent style and writing guidelines. Wikipedia has evolved into a meta organization called Wikimedia, which includes Wikipedia plus free dictionary, books, news, quotes, and even a university. Awesome stuff.

7. Technorati - a search engine and consolidator for blogs, Technorati is wonderful for finding blog entries on virtually any subject. The home page is also a great way to take the pulse of the blogosphere to see what's hot.

8. Digg - allows users to post web articles that they think are cool -- and the more people that "digg" a site, the higher it rises in rankings. If you want to see what's hot in any area (like technology, for example), you can just go to digg and see what's getting dugg a lot. Also, if you don't happen to agree that a particular article is "all that", you can "digg down" an article. I keep an RSS feed to several Digg categories on my iGoogle home page, along with conventional news feeds like CNN.

9. YouTube - it seems just yesterday when I first heard about YouTube from a friend and I spent the next 2 hours marveling at all of the videos that were up on the site. The next thing I knew, Google bought them, and now they're a house hold word. Viral marketing at its best.

10. Flickr - another hyper-viral site, flickr was the grand-daddy of sorts to YouTube, only with pictures. The service, which is owned by Yahoo, allows you to upload all of your photos (the free service limits the amount of transfers you can do in a month, and also stores the pictures in reduced resolution, while the "pro" service (which costs about $30/year) has no limits. I use the pro service to hold all of my digital photographs--it's a great way to ensure you have a backup of your photos, and an even better way to organize and share them. Well worth the money. Now, if you could only store all of your photos and videos in one place.....

In addition to my ten favorites above, you might want to check out the following honorable mentions:

1. Yahoo Go!: wonderful mobile application that you can load into your Blackberry, it integrates a number of key Yahoo services, including news, weather, sports, flickr, Yahoo OneSearch, and more. Highly recommended for any Blackberry user.

2. Trip It: a free service that automagically creates travel itineraries that you can share with friends and family. The kicker is that all you need to do is to forward the itinerary email that you get from your travel service (even if the itinerary is in PDF format!), and Trip It parses out the entries and puts them all into a single, sharable calendar. Very cool stuff. You can also put manual entries into it and even click a button to check in for flights directly from their user interface.

3. Pandora: free music service that learns what type of music you like, allows you to group them into "stations", and then plays them on your PC. The rating service is based on a proprietary way of determining the musical "DNA" of a given piece of music, and then matching it up with what your likes and dislikes are. Genius! Now if I could only play it at work (their web site is blocked by our IT department, as is YouTube and a number of other "fun" services mentioned above).

4. Antennaweb.org: free service that allows you to determine what over-the-air (OTA) high definition and digital TV broadcasts are available in your area, and what type of antenna you will likely need to receive them. Great resource.