Web application developers have been busy because there is a rash of new web-based tools and services appearing online. It’s good news for webmasters, users, developers and web integrators. And with all of this choice comes some really good, fresh ideas. Web tools to make our browsing and experience of using the Internet more interactive and enjoyable.
Google have one corporate eye on growth and the other on watching new web tools emerge that just might be a good fit for their portfolio of products and services. Now that google owns youtube, they are also acquiring Omnisio, Omnisio lets you compile your own videos by selecting your own clips from youtube and integrating slides too. And now they are buying brightcove, a professional online video platform provider designed for businesses.
Google’s new application, google wave, is launching very soon. It can be best described as a real-time communications platform combining email (googlemail), instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management all in one browser window. As an initial user of wave, Ben Parr is asking is it ready to be released to an unsuspecting public.
If you’ve ever tried google’s web-based applications, you know they are very good, and competition to Microsoft products. But google docs, which includes documents, spreadsheets and presentations, lacks the ability to be social. Socialwok changes that. It adds the missing social layer to google docs with your own feed-based social network. I think it’s a great idea and this web startup has recently won the techcrunch demopit competition. MG Siegler has been investigating.
Another great idea is snapshots. Their tagline is ‘let content find you’ and it works by creating links on your website or blog, and when you hover it opens a window to bring you information about the site without clicking the link. It gives the reader a more fun and interactive experience. I’m definately going to look at using it on my blog. It’s an efficiency tool. And anything to make browsing life easier and more enjoyable has to be good.
It’s official. Twitter is the fastest growing social website. And along with this growth in registered users, is a rash of new tools and applications to make your tweeting a better experience. Sherflock is a tool to find more people to follow with filters to help weed out spammers. Tweetmixx lets you shortcut to the links that matter by hunting through your followers to bring only the links they are tweeting. And if you have a twitter account, twitturly will have a profile on you. Twitturly tracks the URLs flying around the twitterverse and provides a quick, real-time view of what people are talking about on twitter. It was enlightening to look at my profile and see things I didn’t know!
There is certainly no shortage of excellent web tools for everyone.
