Inspired by Mr. Arrington, (who started a keeping a list of his essential web 2.0 companies in 2006), here is my list of web services I can’t do without:
del.icio.us
My bookmarks. I use it daily to tag just about everything. 2007 brought upgraded features including “do not share” which I use to make notes on my research, create lists, etc. Links I do share feed out to my tumblr blog, Tumbleona.
tumblr
I’ve said it a couple times before. I’m a huge tumblr fan. It is such an elegant tool to create a collection of my quick finds and my feeds around the web. Tumblr got some funding last fall and rolled out a service upgrade in November.
last.fm
I registered for last.fm on Janaury 2, 2007 and have scrobled 9,556 songs so far.
Wikipedia: “Using a unique music recommendation system
known as “Audioscrobbler”, Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each
user’s musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user
listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user’s
computer or portable music device. This information is transferred to
Last.fm’s database (“Scrobbled”) via a plugin installed into the user’s music player.
The profile data is displayed on a personal web page. The site offers
numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists
similar to the user’s favourites.”
From my charts, I know that last year my top artists were:
1. Wilco
2. Ray LaMontagne
3. Sloan
4. The Tragically Hip
5. Elliot Smith
6. Nick Drake
7. The White Stripes
8. Bob Dylan
9. Beck
10. Iron and Wine
So far, I only Scroble from my Macbook Pro. As you can see, I listen to lots of mellow stuff lots while I work. I use the recommendations to find new stuff, too.
Facebook
What a wild ride.
According to data released on Monday by Zinck Research:
“Over the past month something very interesting has happened in Canadian society. First, Toronto became the first North American city to have over one million subscribers to Facebook. And second, approximately half of online Canadians are now on Facebook.
“With our world becoming increasingly wired, Facebook appears to be bridging the gap with our online and real lives,” said
Singh. “We see people who have connected with people from their past and, given how mobile we have become, being able to stay in contact friends and family from across the country and around the world – all via this easy to use and engaging platform.”
Fastladder
My primary feed reader because it is simple and works really well for scanning. Instead of housecleaning my feeds, I start accounts on new services for a fresh start. This year, I went from Bloglines to Fastladder. I have a Google Reader account that I use when I browse on my PSP. I prefer Fastladder to Google Reader and Bloglines, although the Bloglines beta looks promising.
Tucows Email Service
As Ken mentioned this week, we “eat our own dog food” at Tucows. I use IMAP for my Blackberry and to run Mail.app on my MacBook Pro. Our sweet AJAX-based web mail was new last year, and rocks.
flickr
I love taking three minutes to cruise flickr for photos I like. (You may have noticed a few of them here and there on my blogs.) Yahoo! upgraded me to a flickr Pro account when they killed Yahoo! Photos, I find I’m using it more and more for my own photos.
popurls
My homepage because it is “the premium aggregator to the best of the web”. I also use the PSP version and receive updates on Twitter via the popurls network.
