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Top ten web applications I use daily

Posted by on Apr 7, 2008 in Technology | 4 comments

More and more I’m migrating desktop (offline) work to the Internet or the Cloud. I’m still not there, but I hope to be using only web apps in a few years. Technologies like Google Gears and Adobe’s AIR will make it possible to take your online (Internet-based) applications offline. Micro Persuasion wrote a great (but technical) article on how to create your own PPNC (Portable Personal Nerve Center). TechCrunch has two interesting articles on bridging Desktop and Web Applications — see part 1 and part 2. In these articles the author also refers to site-specific browser products like Mozilla’s Prism, Bubbles and Fluid for the Mac. These products allow one to encapsulate a web application into a self contained desktop application.  Now for my list of most used web applications.The following is a list of the top ten web applications I use on a daily basis:

  1. Gmail: I use Apple’s Mail app as my primary email application, however I read all my email into Gmail as a backup and also in case I don’t have my trusty MacBook Pro with me. I use labels and filters to tag each email with the name of the email account.
  2. Google Reader: I use Google Reader as my primary RSS feed reader. If I use FireFox on the Mac I can also view blog posts offline using Google Gears.
  3. WordPress: My blogging platform. I think it’s the best.
  4. Mint.com: I use Mint for my personal finances. After the initial setup it will categorize your transactions while you sleep — cool! Well, actually you still have to do some re-categorization and renaming, however it gets pretty smart after a month or two.
  5. Del.icio.us: I use this funny-name-that-I-always-misspell site to save and manage my bookmarks.
  6. Zoho: I started with Zoho CRM, and now use Zoho Creator and Zoho Meeting. Zoho Creator is a great app to quickly develop a simple web application for data capture — EXCEL on steroids. Zoho Meeting is a FREE version of Webex.
  7. SiteKreator.com: SiteKreator is one of many online website creation tools. I like SiteKreator because of the low monthly fees, professional themes and great support. I hope you’ll agree that my Beyond438 site looks very professional.
  8. Google Docs: Google Docs is not going to replace MS Office or Apple’s iWork anytime some, however it’s very useful to quickly create and share documents.
  9. GrandCentral: Google acquired GrandCentral in 2007. Your GrandCentral phone number is positioned as your one phone number for life. It also has very powerful voicemail features.
  10. DotMac: I use Apple’s .Mac service to host and manage my personal website. Very easy to use and manage your digital life online.

April 9, 2008 update:

See PCWorld’s list of top nine list of online apps.

This is my list. Do you agree? What do you use?

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Are we losing the World Wide Web (www)?

Posted by on Dec 7, 2007 in Blogging, Technology | 0 comments

Well, not really…I recently started to see that many blog URLS omit the www. prefix, e.g., using only blog.beyond438.com instead of “www.blog.beyond438.com”, or “jeffnolan.com” instead of www.jeffnolan.com.

no-www logo

Read all about the deprecation (I had to look up the word) of “www.”. The no-www.org site seems to be the definitive source. It’s a quick read and I decided to cite the main idea:

No-www.org philosophy

No-www.org strives to make the Internet and communications about it as fruitful as possible. To that end, we make the modest proposal that website makers configure their main sites to be accessible by domain.com as well as www.domain.com.

Wikipedia has a no-www entry that’s a bit more technical. This Dailyblogtips post is well written and understandable. I quote some of the article here:

The problem arises because Google and other search engines view the two versions as two distinct sites, even if they have the exact same content (technically, in fact, the “www” denotes a subdomain that could point to different content).Search engine ranking is based, among other things, on the number of incoming links to your site. If you keep the two versions available some people will link to “http://www.domain.com” while other people will link to the “http://domain.com”, basically splitting your backlink count.

Dialyblogtips also posts on how to tell Google your preferred domain. If you have a WordPress blog then you can use this no-www plugin from Mr WP himself (read the comments).Finally, you can test your own site’s no-wwwness here…is it a class A, B or C. Be careful your site may end up on the “Wall of Shame”.Ok folks, this is a test. In the comments explain in 2 sentences what all this means. Go!

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Switch to WordPress

Posted by on Jun 6, 2007 in Apple, Blogging | 0 comments

Today I decided to switch from Apple’s iWeb to WordPress for my business blogging.  I will migrate the old blog entries over time.  Here is the link to my old blog: http://web.mac.com/cbekker/iWeb/CarelsBlog/Blog/Blog.html

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