Web 2.0 Services

Every once in a while I do a major revamp to my computing habits. I have always liked to keep everything in hierarchical order and preferred storing all the information locally on my hard drive; including mails and bookmarks. But now, as finally the online services are mature and digital convergence has taken big steps (internet & mobile, tv & computer), it is time to move on. It is not hierarchy anymore, but tagged material (metadata added) accessible everywhere.

For me there are four major areas/needs for everyday computer use: e-mail, rss-feeds, web sites (bookmarks) and communicating tools like Skype and Messenger. In addition, there is the entertainment aspect including music, photos and tv. In the following chapters I concentrate on rss and boomarks.

1. iGoogle
This is the starting page for my web experience. Google Personalized Homepage is a customizable homepage with the capability to add web feeds, Google Gadgets and apply themes. There are many other and more advanced webtops, like Netvibes, but iGoogle is suitable for my purposes and the nice thing is that there is no need for another account as many of us already has an Google Mail account (I have been thinking also of moving all my mails to Google Mail, but this needs some more evaluation).

My iGoogle setup.

2. del.icio.us
I found my bookmarks bar to get filled with stuff and was re-arranging and cleaning them twice a year. But what if there is no need to store bookmarks in hierarchical folders? Maybe they can be used more like e-mails: one folder with good search tool and the ability to add tags. Del.icio.us is one of the many social bookmarking web services for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks. The service is a little slow, but most importantly: your bookmarks are accessible wherever and to whoever. The share feature is also nice: no need for “this is a nice page / interesting article” e-mails as it is possible to send bookmarks to friends using a for: tag.

These are my bookmarks.

3. Google Reader
RSS enables keeping up with news and updates without the need of manually visiting sites to look for updated content. I was using Safaris built in reader, but it was quite limited. Once again I didn’t want to use another separate application, so Google Reader came nicely out. Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. This is Google, so once you have logged in to iGoogle, you have the access to your feeds. If you are lucky enough to have an iPhone, RSS mixer might be worth checking out.

With this view I spend at least half an hour per day.

4. LinkedIn
It is good to have an online cv and also keep updated if your friends change their work place. LinkedIn is a business oriented social networking site and as of May 2007, it had more than 11 million registered users. The features are kind limited, but hey, this is for business, not playing.

View from my contact page. Here is my profile.

5. Facebook
If LinkedIn is missing some features Facebook has them all plus a dozen more with the recently launched Facebook Platform. The service was first only for university students, but is now open for everyone. As a result, there are some scaling problems as the service has over 30 million members worldwide and is growing rapidly with over 150,000 new users daily.

When registered to the service, you can build a profile similar to this.

6. Last Fm
Last.fm is a UK-based internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It is one of the world’s largest social music platforms with over 15 million active users. So, when listening music using iTunes or iPod, a special application can send all the data to the service resulting different charts and displaying info about artists etc. You can also listen to personalized web radios, check out what your friends are listening and can discover new music. Adding events is a nice feature and it is possible to even sync those with iCal.

My account overview.

7. Jaiku
This might be the coolest application for mobile. Jaiku is a social networking and micro-blogging service (a little like Twitter, but has a mobile aspect) developed in Finland. According to Jaiku’s web site “Jaiku’s main goal is to bring people closer together by enabling them to share their presence”. The service can be used and presence information updated using a computer (there is a really handy dashboard widget for mac users), but if a mobile application is installed, the service is great. You know your friends location, can see if they are busy and when was the last time they were using their phones. There is also a nice mashup called Jaikuvision.

My jaikus.