My Web 2.0 Services

Yes, I know, many people disagree with the term Web 2.0, but, if nothing else, it’s a good way to characterize the new wave of Internet services that have come out in the last couple years.

E-mail: Yahoo! Mail Beta – I’ve been a Yahoo Mail Plus user since forever for various reasons, mainly the storage, no ads, forwarding and the multiple pop accounts. Since they integrated Oddpost into it though, I have definitely been liking the drag and drop, the tabs, the automatic-mail-checking and the improved search. Also, I’m hoping they’ll integrate Notepad into it soon since Yahoo! Notepad is my quick little notepad service of choice.

Calendar: Google Calendar – Google Calendar is a great calendar product, with the whole drag and drop ability and the quick adding of events. Sharing calendars is becoming more and more useful. Question: Why not use Gmail in Email then? Its true that a huge factor in the success of Google Calendar has been it’s integration with Gmail. My Gmail forwards to my Yahoo and I don’t use any of the reminders or the invitations to events of people in my contacts (since it only really works if they have Gmail also, which is not the case for most of my friends; also, that’s what Doopr is for). If Yahoo! Calendar gets ajaxified, I might need to switch.

RSS Reader/Startpage: Netvibes – One of the first to make a great full ajax start page. Multiple tabs allow me to sort my blog reading into categories, there are tons of modules (I only use a couple though) and I like rearranging stuff a lot. I don’t think I need the free-form, non-grid layout abilities that some of the others have.

Web-based Instant Messaging: Meebo – Even though at home it’s Trillian all the way (and I can’t wait for Astra), but at work I like to keep my IMs in the browser, in order to have fewer distractions, of course :). Meebo is definitely a great product and it’s constantly getting improved.

Blog: WordPress – Hosted on my own server. Free, full featured, with tons of plugins and themes, and is PHP-based, which allows me to hack the theme pages. :)

Social Network: Facebook – It has most of the people I know, great features, none of the excessive profile customizations which keep me away from My Space.

Photo Hosting/Sharing: Flickr – These guys definitely got it right early on with the community features, tagging and the unlimited storage. The high resolution versions come in handy too when you want to use photos in publications (like I always needed to in college) or if you need to crop and still have a photo with good resolution. I haven’t tried others out there due to switching costs.

Collaborative Office: Google Docs and Spreadsheets – I just started using collaborative office products. Writely, now Google Docs, seems to be as good as any web-based collaborative word processor out there. Google Spreadsheets is definitely full featured and I can’t imagine how much DHTML, Javascript and CSS is behind it.

Bit Torrent: µTorrent – Although, I know it is a desktop application, it has a cool Web UI that runs off my desktop, which allows me to upload, start and stop torrents on my desktop when I’m not at home.

Social Bookmarking: del.icio.us – I haven’t needed to store bookmarks anywhere other than my browser yet. Great for random browsing and searching though.

Video Sharing: YouTube – I haven’t needed to upload too many videos yet. All the others seem to have very similar features though, so I’m not YouTube all the way.

Wiki: MediaWiki – I haven’t really needed my own wiki yet. It’s definitely a very useful way of collaborating in big groups and is a great way to keep email communication down. I’d probably host my own MediaWiki instead of using one of the services out there.

Maps: I’m not really attached to any one service. Google Maps is fast. Yahoo Maps Beta has traffic. They both have multiple locations. Ask Maps allows clicking a location and finding the address. Ask City has CitySearch integration which is pretty cool.