Actually useful web 2.0 applications

October 29th, 2009 @ rmclain

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Actually useful web 2.0 applications

This article describes some of the great applications that web2.0 has delivered us. Everything from watching television online to getting your work done just a little bit faster.

Hulu

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Missed last nights episode of Glee? Well you don’t need a Tivo to see it. Hulu brings your television to your computer. It’s clean interface, HD tv shows, movies and clips make it worth checking out. Alternatives are numerous, and incude: Joost, wedigtv, fancast, woho.tv, and castTV.

digg

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digg is a social news site where only the “best” articles and links make it to the average user. It’s a great system where users post and monitor each other. For example you can visit digg and digg up this story if you like it.

Dropbox

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Dropbox: Still love having the ability to sync all my data between machines and have a online backup. All this and the ability to forward a file from my iPhone really makes dropbox a complete solution for syncing. They are working on being able to sync other folders outside your dropbox as well. Sing up for a free account with this link and receive a extra 250MB. It’s all free. It’s really a great synergy of desktop-to-cloud software.

Screen Toaster

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Need to do a quick tutorial for pretty much anything? Need to record your screen but don’t want to purchase or mess with installing software. Well that’s not a problem thanks to screen toaster. This app lets you record your screen directly from their website. It’s free so try it out here.

Wufoo

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Wufoo provides online forms for pretty much anything. Great way to send out a invite or just to have a wysiwyg form editor. The interface and design makes creating forms fun instead of tedious.

LinkedIN

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Facebook for professionals.

foxytunes

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Missed out on my article about getting music for free online. Well I failed to mention yahoos attempt at social music, foxytunes. They provide some streaming of music and can find related bands and songs you might be interested in. Foxytunes really seems more for followers of bands than your typical music streaming site.

ZOHO – Work Online

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If you interested in a free Miscrosoft Word replacement that is in the cloud, then Zoho documents just might be for you. I find that ZOHO is more structured than Google Docs and still provides a clean interface for writing, spreadsheets and pretty much every type of document.

mint

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Mint is a great single place to manage your money. It tracks spending habbits and gives you visual breakdowns of where your cash is going. Useful application, free, but you do need to enter a lot of your personal information for the account to work well.

Gliffy

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Gliffy brings Microsoft Visio to the web. It’s nice packaging and easy to use tool makes this a great substitute for the desktop counterpart. It offers flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans and much more. There is a limited mode that is free to try and see for yourself.

snap-shots

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Snap-Shots is a great application for bloggers and other writers who want to put a little eye candy on their links.

The rest

Hopefully this list introduced something new to you. I didn’t mention applications like facebook, yelp, youtube, skype, gmail, meebo, flickr, stumbleupon, pandora, feedbuner, and iGoogle because most people have herd of these sites.