My personal choice of Web 2.0 apps and services that I actually get to grips with and use! Plus latest Web 2.0 news brought to you using some of said apps as well as a list of established services.
What is Web 2.0? Some say the phrase has no real meaning, but I (and a great many others) disagree: let's say loosely that it's about web-based applications, services, customisation and collaboration. Perhaps its beginnings lie as far back as the birth of online shopping. Amazon is a perfect example of an Internet Business that's mutated into Web 2.0, with its recommendations, review system and wishlists (to name just a selection of its services).
The CSS is shamelessly based on NetVibes' RSS style, because I rather like it! Note: Firefox doesn't render CSS properly, so this (and indeed the entire site) looks awful. Please view in Maxthon (or even IE!).
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The list: AddThis Grazr NetVibes Pipes SpringWidgets The latest The Establishment: del.icio.us FeedBurner Flickr Frappr Google Labs MySpace Trends |
AddThis
Tue, 01 Jan 2008 10:39:54 GMT
What a perfect discovery for the new year! A meta-service, a service that provides easy access to so many other services. I'd been attempting to build an extensible template for content sharing, but this has saved me any further effort. Simply hover over the button below and share this content with your chosen service(s). Instructions are provided for adding the widget to your blog template, thus. Also available is a feed widget, offering a choice of integration platforms, and the usual range of web-based readers to which to add the feed: 
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SpringWidgets
Sun, 18 Mar 2007 08:34:33 GMT
As well as being a standard desktop widget engine, SpringWidgets also allows web-based widget functionality. But even better is its ability to 'widgetise' RSS feeds! Feedburner offers this service via a click from its own subscription choices (see here for an example. To widgetise any feed, visit this URL and paste in your feed, choose a size and click the preview button. Strangely, this service, at time of writing, is very 'back-end' in that it isn't available via the main website's navigation structure. Plus point - works by converting to flash on the fly and therefore neatly sidesteps no-script sites like Myspace. Minus point - because of the above, doesn't contain linkage. Check out my own example at MySpace (note that sometimes, the widget content looks strangely compressed - just click the Menu button followed by the RSS button to restore normality). |
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NetVibes
Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:46:04 GMT
RSS, web-widgets, MySpace and browser plugins all rolled into a single web-based interface. This is NetVibes, the ultra-customisable personal Web 2.0 portal. Monitor your RSS feeds and MySpace friends; instant access to stored bookmarks/favourites; weather widgets, games, TV guides...; and slideshows from RSS-configurable locations. And there's the ability to customise the appearance, and even develop your own modules. As Web 2.0 begins to take off, this is perhaps the finest place to begin. Check out my own example. |
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Pipes
Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:28:02 GMT
Like the idea of RSS but don't fancy getting deep down and dirty with XML and OPML? This, then, may be what you've been waiting for, a drag-and-drop modular app for merging, sorting, filtering and generally customising the hell out of any feeds and queries you can lay your hand on. And when you've done, save your pipe, publish it and feed it through a Grazr window! |
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Grazr
Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:28:15 GMT
A totally awesome service: syndicate feeds of your choice wherever you want; create OPML-based mashups; work with dynamic queries... This site's main header pages will soon all have relevant embedded Grazr windows, but for now, check out the first ones, below and here. To use, click on a folder group to see feeds; click on a feed to see items; click on an item title to open in the window, the blue chevrons to open in a fresh browser window. To return, click the left slider bar. |
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The latest Get the latest Web 2.0 news mashup from my own Pipe, fed through a Grazr window:  |
The Establishment:
Pick of the pioneers. |
The original social bookmarking site: save your favourites, keep 'em private or share as preferred, and browse others' while you're there. Works best with browser sidebar plugins: get the del.icio.us sidebar plugin for Maxthon. |
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Pioneer RSS feed syndication with plenty of options. |
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Photo storage and sharing made sexy. |
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Get yourself on the world map of any special interest groups you fancy. |
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Test-drive the latest offerings from the search giant. |
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One of the genuine phenomena of Internet history: no MySpace page, no existence ;-) |
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Reach measures the number of users. Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28%, this means that if you took random samples of one million Internet users, you would on average find that 280,000 of them visit yahoo.com. Alexa expresses reach as number of users per million. Alexa's one-week and three-month average reach are measures of daily reach, averaged over the specified time period. The reach rank is a ranking of all sites based solely on their reach. The three-month changes are determined by comparing a site's current reach and reach rank with its values from three month ago. |
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