Bottom line - too basic for anything other than very simple searching, and you'd be better off sticking to Silobreaker.
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December 30, 2008 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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December 30, 2008 in Image/Video/People search engines | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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December 30, 2008 in UK Related | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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The Guardian recently produced a list of the 100 top sites for the year ahead and I've had a chance to go through them. I'm not listing all of them - just those that catch my eye for some reason, either good, bad or WTF? If you want the lot, follow the link!
Blogging. For reasons that escape me they've got Bloglines in there, and described it as smart and clean. I boggled at this - it's turned into a trainwreck and the only context I see people writing about bloglines with now is to say that they're leaving it. No mention of Blogger which I think is making a real comeback now and getting more and more useful. If Google had been a bit more off the mark when it came to updating the functionality I wouldn't have moved to TypePad, which I regret since they upgraded and lost a bunch of functionality in the process. Amusingly I mentioned this in a Twitter post and had a TypePad employee leap into an email offering to discuss it with me, so I gave her a small list of problems that I had with it and guess what - not a word since, and yes Ginevra Whalen I am talking about you.
Browsers is a section they added, and have clearly decided to make sure they get it right since they've added in all the main ones, so no surprise there.
Cartoons. Uh, ok... not really my thing, but I did take a look at XKCD which was vaguely tecchie and 'net related and produced a wry smile for the few that I looked at.
Create/collaborate. Ah, back onto solid ground here. I agreed with just about all their choices here, so if you've not been to Dipity, Zoho, Rememberthemilk Netvibes, 280 slides or Zamzar I'd suggest follow the link to the list and click through as necessary. Interesting that there wasn't a mention of Pageflakes, but given the stupidity of the unilateral introduction of adverts this doesn't surprise me and I think is a wise choice.
Gaming. Totally blank look here. I have no idea about gaming and the only games that I have on my computers are the ones that come with them.
Geek Squad. More for programmers than anyone else really, and since I'm not and you probably aren't either we can skip on by.
Government/politics. My favourite in this category is 'Upmystreet' which I've used for years to provide me with details on various areas that people live in.
Location, location. A collection of resources that flourish if you've got a smartphone. They've mentioned most of the ones that I'm familiar with and have written about in the Web 2.0 apps weblog such as Dopplr (sharing future travel plans), Qype (localised search for pubs) and Brightkite (location based social network),
Maps. The newspaper reckons that Google Maps street view is going to be busy in the forthcoming year, which has to be a sure bet. I was however introduced to Where's the Path from Google which shows a split screen with map on the left hand side, satellite image on the right, making it easier to track paths, and the defra 'Noise Mapping England' that lets you check a few urban areas to check the noise pollution levels.
Money and finance. I particularly liked Moneysavingexpert which does what you'd expect and Say no to 0870 numbers which gives local alternatives that might save some pennies.
Music. Again, not an area that I'm strong in, but Lastfm is one that I've used and I think their choice of Blip.fm is also on the mark, given the number of links I've seen to it from Twitter.
News recommendation sites. Less impressed with the collection here really - digg, reddit, techmeme - all fairly standard sites. I prefer getting RSS feeds from delicious and FURL myself.
Offbeat. Lolcats has to be included here, just don't look at the site if you need get any work done in the next hour!
Photography. Mention of the obvious Flickr which makes sense, but they could have added in rather more in the way of online photograph editing suites - is anyone really prepared to pay stupid amounts for Photoshop any longer?
Physical from virtual. Good choice of Moo cards, self publishing sites and t-shirt printing services.
Reference services. CIA Factbook makes sense, Wikipedia perhaps less so. Wayback machine is a useful choice, but a nod towards library sites such as Intute or the Librarians' Internet Index would have been sensible.
Search. An insane choice of three - Google, Clusty and Cooliris. Nothing wrong with the other two, but they wouldn't reach my top ten, put it that way.
Social software. Again an odd collection - Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn make sense (though no Bebo), but Friends Reunited is dead in the water now. Can't see that going anywhere.
Twitter. An entire category for Twitter makes much sense. However, given that Twitter is as much about communicating while on the move they've left out any mention of iPhone apps which seems odd.
Video. iplayer, YouTube and Seesmic make a lot of sense. Not so sure about the others though.
Virtual worlds. Games again, and interesting that there's no reference to Second Life, which I think is sensible as I don't reckon it's going to go anywhere at all - it's like a huge motorway that leads directly to a dead end in my opinion.
Visualisation tools. A fair selection.
So if you don't have time to check out the list, that's my take on it.
December 30, 2008 in General internet related | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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December 30, 2008 in General internet related | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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December 30, 2008 in Image/Video/People search engines | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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December 29, 2008 in Image/Video/People search engines | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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December 27, 2008 in Search engines | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
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December 24, 2008 in Social search engines | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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December 24, 2008 in Image/Video/People search engines | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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