Tuesday, January 31, 2006

My web-based application collection

I like a lot of my applications that I use to be completely web-based with no application install required; this is especially important as I try to interact with the web more and more via my Nokia 770.  Here’s the first version of my list, which I plan on updating from time-to-time as I make changes:

  • Bloglines — RSS/ATOM feedreader.  Yes, it has been having some problems recently and I have been “interviewing” alternatives, but on the whole I’ve been pretty happy with my experience.  This is a free service.
  • Gmail — e-mail from Google.  Lots has been said about by lots of people, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is a pretty great e-mail service with lots of storage and the storage grows incrementally on a daily basis.  This is a free service.
  • uReach — I’ve been using uReach since the service started.  Although I do pay a nominal monthly charge and the storage is pretty low for the price, I do like the toll-free number that allows people to leave me voicemails, allows people to send me faxes that go direct to my inbox, has a following function that allows people to reach me at various phone numbers through forwarding, and a bunch of other nifty functions.  There is a SSL login option, which makes me feel pretty good and the spam function seems to catch most of the stuff coming in.  This is the address and phone number that I use on my resume.  This service  is $6.99 per month.
  • Spongecell — Although I just started using this yesterday, it’s currently my social calendar of choice.  I will be evaluating other calendar services over the course of the next few months, so we’ll see if I stay with it.  This is a free service.
  • Flickr — I just like how Flickr works.  Granted I have yet to populate my Flickr account with lots of pictures, but it’s my choice for social picture sharing.  Once I have some time to run the iPhoto uploader, my Flickr account will be huge and I’m really trying to take some pictures to get up on the blog, which will be hosted on Flickr.  This is a free service.
  • del.icio.us — This is my social bookmarking service of choice and there’s really not much more to say about it.  There were some service issues as they worked through the absorption into Yahoo!, but I haven’t experienced any problems in the last couple of weeks.  This is a free service.
  • Google — This is and has been since it launched my search engine of choice.  This is a free service.
  • Technorati and IceRocket — I use both of these services equally to search blog content because they provide such different results.  Usually I’ll open up both of these in browser tabs and search the same topic on both.  Both of these services are free.
  • Blogger — This is the current hosting platform for this blog.  There is a WYSIWYG editor through the Blogger site and I generally haven’t had any service issues.  There are some key functions that Blogger does not include, but overall I guess I’m pretty happy with the service.  This is a free service.
  • Feedburner — This is my feed service of choice.  If I had it my way, I would go back to when I started my blog and would have encouraged everyone to subscribe to the Feedburner feed rather than the Blogger ATOM feed.  I like that I can view circulation and various other tracking mechanisms through Feedburner.  Further, I like the fact that my Feedburner feed address will never change even if I change my blog service provider.  Lastly, I really like all the tools that allow me to make my feeds more robust and easy to subscribe to.  This is a free service.
  • Squidoo — I have a couple of lenses on Squidoo.  You really have to go take a look at some examples of lenses to understand the purpose of the site, but it’s damn powerful.  This is a free service.

Stuff I’ll be signing up for next month:

  • Box.net — 1GB for $2.99 a month is hard to beat.  The more I look at the service, the better it looks and I especially like the RSS feed for files, I haven’t seen anyone else doing that effectively.  As I said, this service is $2.99 per month.
  • MP3Tunes — Once I have some time on a weekend, I’m going to upload my entire iTunes library to my locker.  I can’t wait to try this out streaming on my 770; I bet it’s going to be damn cool.  I’m also assuming that at some point they will upgrade the service to support video, so that’s something else to look forward to.  The premium version of this service is $40 per year.

I’m sure I’m missing some things, but I see this as a “living post.”

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