Best of the Web 2007
Here they are. These are the best and brightest web sites out there right now. What do they win? Nothing… but maybe they’ll get a few new visitors when this hits the presses. Check them out, and leave comments!
Netvibes has become my homepage of choice as of late. It competes with iGoogle and PageFlakes in the personalized homepage space. Netvibes wins out because it looks cooler (I’m into visuals) and it has a ton of useful widgets to choose from. Some of my favorites are Google Calendar, Facebook, Weather, Twitter, and Gmail. You will begin to see that everything is connected on the web these days… netvibes does a pretty good job of pulling it all together.
Facebook is a major game changer. Never has a social network been so useful or prolific. Everyone shook their heads in amazement (including me) when Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly turning down $2 Billion offers to sell. Now the company has a valuation of $15 Billion!! It’s worth so much because it has so many users. It has so many users because it’s so addicting and useful. Yes, it will waste your time - a lot of your time. But it will also allow you to stay connected (even if minimally) with many, many people (which can be bad too). It’s become a one stop shop for checking in on everyone, and letting your friends see what you’ve been up to.
Say what you will about Wikipedia. It’s an encyclopedia that literally anyone can edit. The results could be disastrous right? Poor information could get spread all over the web… I look at it like this. Even though there’s a high probability that everything on there isn’t correct, it gets me a hell of a lot closer to the truth than I’d be without it (and quickly too). If nothing else, it points me in the right direction. One thing I always keep in mind when searching Wikipedia is how polarizing is the topic? If you’re looking up Hillary Clinton, or the Iraq War for example, who the heck knows what you’re going to get… This is a case where you’ve got passionate people on two sides of a topic (conservative and liberal), and they’ll be constantly overwriting each other on Wikipedia.
I’ve been a huge fan of Flickr for about two years now. I use Flickr so much, that some of my friends even call me Flickr. There are plenty of photo sharing sites out there and people often ask me what makes Flickr the best. I think if you love, photography (and I do), the community is what makes Flickr so good. You get to see amazing photos by people from all around the world. You can ask them what they did to get the shot. You can even see what camera they took the picture with in most cases. Flickr is the gold standard right now if you’re interested in photography.
Google knows what’s up when it comes to web applications. They either build the best or buy the best. I’m pretty sure they built Gmail from the ground up. Gmail is so smooth and easy to use, I almost hate using it because I have to use an alternative at work. It’s easy to search (Google is pretty good at that by now), and it’s easy to set up automatic rules. Even though it’s the best, they are still rolling out improvements. Google probably knows everything about me by now (since their computers are crawling my email)…should I be worried? I’m not.
Meebo is a problem solver. I’ve got friends that use multiple instant messaging clients, and it would be a huge pain to sign into all of them at once. That’s where Meebo comes in. It let’s me sign into Google Talk, AIM, and MSN all from one spot. It’s also completely web based, which means I don’t need to download anything to use it. They’ve even announced video chat for up to 6 people at once. I’ll probably never use that…but I could.
Popurls is where I go daily to find Interesting stuff on the web. I used to go to Digg for this, but I’m not impressed with the quality of info on Digg lately. Popurls (think popular urls) brings in the top stories from a ton of sources (like Google New, Del.icio.us, Digg…). I get to see it all in one place and the interface is very clean.
I wasn’t sold on the value of del.icio.us when it first came out a couple years ago. It’s a website that lets you store your bookmarks online. Now I use it as my repository for anything new and interesting. Every time I find a new site that I like, I plug it into del.icio.us and tag it with meaningful key words — this makes it easy to find later with a simple search. I’m also a big fan of the way it can separate your tags into different RSS feeds/pages. For example, here are all of my bookmarks that have been tagged “Belgium”
Simple GTD is all about Getting Things Done. And that’s what I like. It’s an online To-do list tool with everything you need and nothing you don’t. You can easily create multiple lists and drag items from list to list. I usually have this open all day at work and it keeps me on track. If you want something a little more robust, try basecamp. If you want something a little less robust, try pen and paper.
Google Reader is, hands-down the best RSS reader I’ve ever used. If you don’t know what RSS is, or why it’s important, click here for an explanation. Google reader lets me quickly browse top stories from all of my favorite sites in one place. If I find something good, I can “star it” and it becomes easy to find at a later date. It also has a slick e-mail sharing feature that lets me send stories to people quickly. The interface with my Gmail account automatically brings in my contacts, so I only need to type the first few letters of someone’s name and it finds their email address. I also really like the shared RSS feed feature. This allows me to share my favorite stories with whoever wants to subscribe to them.
Honorable Mention:
 Mint is a great tool for managing your finances in one place. It would be a top site if it was better at categorizing my expenditures. |
 Deezer let’s you make music playlists that you can post all over the web (like this one). |
 Meetup is a great tool for finding people with common interests around you. It helps you find events in your area, and it will even export the even calendar automatically to Google Calendar, iCal, etc. |
 Mango offers a ton of free foreign language courses on the Internet. Nothing beats learning a language one on one with another person, but this is about as good as it gets on the web. |
 Geni is a great Family tree building site. It let’s you post photos of family members and will send you email reminders when someone’s birthday is coming up. |
 Sketchcast is a tool that let’s you draw out diagrams and record your voice at the same time. It’s great for creating lessons on something, or explaining material over the web. After you create a sketchcast, you can post it on your blog, etc. |
[This has entry has been cross-posted from BlakeSamic.com]
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Tags: best, GTD, Productivity, web, Web 2.0, websites
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November 25th, 2007 at 10:47 am
I would add two more to the list.
1. Twitter and Jaiku. The concept of micro-blogging took off this year. I was skeptical at first, but people are now putting this stuff to good use.
2. Video podcasts. TechTV is basically back on the air, but under the name Revision3 (which was the brainchild of my personal hero Kevin Rose). Morgan Webb is doing her own thing. CNet is also joining the party. Wil Harris is bringing us the UK perspective. And of couse, Leo Laporte is still cranking out content.
November 25th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Yeah I’m just now trying out Twitter, and I can certainly see the potential. I would enjoy it much more if more friends of mine used it. Brandon would argue that isn’t the point - but it’s what would make it useful for me.
I was a pretty early adopter on the video podcasts. I’m more of a fan now that I have an Apple TV. I like all the ones you listed, but let’s not forget the Onion News Network (genius)
November 26th, 2007 at 9:50 am
I am a little wary of Mint. It’s just built on Yodlee anyways ( http://corporate.yodlee.com/customers/clients.htm ) and I feel like passing my financial data through another intermediary just adds a another layer of risk. Does it really save you money? I have all the features I need in Yodlee ( http://moneycenter.yodlee.com ).
November 26th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Yodlee is good I hear. I just prefer another layer of risk…
Just kidding. I may make the switch eventually. I think that using a service like either of these is inherently risky, but I feel it’s even riskier to have all of your accounts spread out and managed on multiple websites. It’s much easier to spot fraudulent activity if everything is in one place that you can check daily.
Saving money is nice, but I think the reason I use Mint is for a little more peace of mind.
November 26th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Lots of really good picks/reviews, I’m going to check some of them out, like the popurls one. I haven’t been really impressed with Digg as of late, either… StumbleUpon is so much better!
I depend on Google reader, but I’m not very satisfied with certain things (which makes me sad because I use google for everything, including my home/igoogle page!). Like, I’ve noticed a delay sometimes from publishing to getting into my feed reader, that’s the main issue for me and why I’m test-running Bloglines as a reader on the side.
Great post!
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Hi Joanne,
you should give Netvibes a try for a homepage alternative. I think it looks better than iGoogle and has better functionality.
December 28th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
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