/Big Question/ App's amazing!
23/05/2008 | Filed under Discover > Big Question
What is your favourite web app?
Site owner
Martin Hoscik
Beyond Ego Ltd
My favourite web app of the moment is www.votematch.co.uk. It’s an online tool that tells voters where the candidates stand on important issues and scores them for relevance to the voter’s stance.
The organisation behind it, Unlock Democracy, sends each candidate a list of statements to which they have to give a definitive answer – none of the usual slippery politician’s answers here! – which helps voters make clear, informed decisions about who best represents their view of the issues.
Martin is sales director at web hosting company Beyond Ego Ltd
Hosting provider
Neil Hodson
1&1 Internet Ltd
My favourite web app at the moment has to be www.voixio.com. Only launched this month, this brilliant new application provides me with free calls to any mobile or landline anywhere in the world. Unlike other similar sites, there’s no need to install anything: it’s all web based so you can call upon it anywhere you have a browser. Simply register and, once logged-in, use the really intuitive dialling panel. To get a free call anywhere, you must each time run a 20 second video advert clip and then you’ll be connected. This isn’t really an inconvenience for social calls and well worth it for international calls. Unlike other apps where the VOIP quality can be poor, this service is crystal clear. I hope Voixio is around for a good while longer.
Neil Hodson is the UK general manager at 1&1 Internet, a global web hosting company and domain registrar with more than five million customers
Open source guru
Tristan Nitot
Mozilla Europe
My favourite web app is the next one. Or actually, it’s the web itself, thanks to the distributed innovation and participation it enables. That’s what makes the web so wonderful: it’s a place where anyone can innovate on a level playing field.
Tristan is the president of Mozilla Europe, a not-for-profit organisation funded by donations
B3ta guy
Rob Manuel
B3ta
Gmail. Probably doesn’t get the attention that all your Facebooks, Twitters, Tumblers get; it’s not really flavour of the month. But it scores for me on the following grounds:
* Bringing true innovation to email. The search is better than any client email I’ve ever used, making it a realistic alternative.
* Frees my email from the desktop. Okay, Hotmail did that over 10 years ago, but Gmail does it well.
* Autocomplete. No more mucking about with address books: if I’ve chatted to someone then their name is in the list.
And, if you spy on my desktop at any point in time, it’s more likely I’ve got Gmail open than any other website or even application.
Rob is co-founder of the ‘best of the web’ site B3ta
Hosting specialist
Neil Barton
Hostway, UK
My favourite web applications have always been those that enable user participation and creativity on the web – in short, those at the heart of Web 2.0. A decade ago, my list would have consisted of blogging platforms and sites teaching basic HTML. Today, the web allows for far more sophisticated activity from a wider user base – so that essentially, more people can do more, more simply.
A year ago, my list of favourite applications included sites like Vox, Blogger and Typepad, which allow users to create rich content at the click of a mouse. These sites have paved the way for new ways of creating and sharing content and expressing yourself. The movement has gathered speed and momentum in recent years, and you only need to look at Wikipedia to see evidence of this. Even if you disregard the impressive organisation and accuracy of the site itself, the sheer time and effort involved in a user-generated, user-edited encyclopaedia with over two million articles is truly monumental.
However, I also like the wave of new Web 2.0 leisure and entertainment applications. A good example is Lulu, which gives everyone the ability to become a published author by producing their own books online. Also, if it ever manages to reach the UK, my favourite web application would be Pandora, the customisable online radio station. It enables you to choose one track that best suits your mood, and then have other similar tracks by different artists played. It is usually right on target and is a great way of discovering new bands.
Neil is the director of Hostway UK
Interactive media
Colm Brophy
Conchango
My favourite web application is Gmail. It certainly isn’t the sexiest web application in the world. At a fundamental level, it’s just another web email client. Where it is innovative and brilliant is taking something that people use every day and making it as good as it possibly can be.
When it first launched, many people didn’t believe it offered 1,000MB of storage. It later emerged that Google’s figures weren’t accurate; they were in fact underestimating. This feature proved to be hugely disruptive in the webmail sector and forced the other players, which included Yahoo and Hotmail, to seriously up their game, and quickly. Within months, both had increased their storage.
While not having to worry about storage is nice, it’s not what makes me love Gmail. What does is the fact that Google weren’t afraid to completely shatter the existing email paradigms. They hid the delete button in a dropdown menu to encourage people to archive their mails instead. This wouldn’t have been very useful if they didn’t combine it with the feature that Google does best – search. Simple but powerful keyword search made the archiving approach incredibly useful. Not just because it meant you could find old emails you thought you wouldn’t need, but because it gave people the confidence to clear out their inbox. To do this with other webmail clients made setting up folders and filing things away a fairly painful and time-consuming process.
There was an appreciation that some users wouldn’t be happy without being able to feel things were ordered and so provided a flexible tagging system using labels. Interweaved in all these features was a strict adherence to usability principles, which are so important when it comes to designing actions that are going to be done over and over again.
Colm Brophy is an information architect in Conchango’s IM team
Internet researcher
Alex Burmaster
Nielsen//NetRatings
Google Talk. I use it daily. It’s easy, efficient, helpful, adds value and saves money and time. Exactly like the Internet should be. Job done
Alex is European internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings
Rights activist
Suw Charman
Open Rights Group
It might be up and down like a frog on a pogo stick, but my favourite application still has to be Twitter, especially when paired with a third-party client like Twhirl. It’s less demanding than IRC, more public than IM, and less long-winded than email, so I find it a perfect way to kill time or procrastinate when I should be doing... no, wait, I mean, a perfect way to keep in touch with a lot of people.
Twitter is also one of the most serendipitous apps on the web. I love the way that throwaway comments can end up in all sorts of things happening that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, from trips to the pub to being invited into first-class lounges in airports. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m still in love with Twitter.
Suw is executive director of the Open Rights Group
Content specialist
Siim Vips
Modera
My favourite web apps are the ones developed by Google. These are simple to use and intuitive apps that are developed with maximum optimisation and performance in mind. True to form from the Google camp, there are many APIs to explore, making the apps even more appealing to individuals and businesses, which present additional alternatives to a wider range of users. It’s the same philosophy that Modera applies when developing our web apps
and products, although we bring more visual elements to the formula.
The apps that I particularly enjoy include Gmail (www.gmail.com) and Google Maps (maps.google.com), which have become very useful personal and business tools.
Siim is a content management specialist at Modera
Media & PR expert
Tim Gibbon
Elemental Communications
There are four web apps that I’d miss if I wasn’t able to use them. There are alternatives, but I’ve grown accustomed to them, and so have the people I communicate with.
Netvibes is my first because it allows Elemental to collate all the best RSS feeds across the web and share them internally and also with clients and many other parties that we liaise with.
With the advent of Netvibes Ginger we delve further and use the little extras that make amassing and keeping check on what is transpiring on the web a lot quicker.
Skype is my preferred IM of choice because of VoIP and video calling, which I use a lot, and it tends to be the IM of choice by many of the people we need to connect with – although I also keep Trillian running in the background (my second), as there are clients using AOL, Yahoo, and MSN and it allows me to run them all through one client.
Snipr is my third and great for shortening URLs, but if you spend the time to create a login and profile you can manage what you have snipped more easily, amending them if the website address changes for example (something you can’t do with similar apps). It’s a neat little tool and useful when emailing or posting back to social networks etc., when you have those dirty long website addresses that seem to wrap forever.
My absolute favourite web app at the moment (and is something that I’ve been using for a number of years) is extremely simple, but very important for me. Time and Date is my fourth because with people in Australia, Estonia, Denmark, France, Holland, Poland, and the USA I need to ensure that I am not calling them out of hours. You can create your own applet, and I quite proudly have my time zones in a Mozilla tab to refer to when needed.
Tim is founder/director of Elemental Communications
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Comments
Ian B. / 27/05/2008 / 08:21 / http://www.lern2play.com
Voixio.com could become a Skype killer if they have some money in the back, otherwise they won't be around for very long time.
Sarunas / 27/05/2008 / 08:56 / http://sarunas.mikelevicius.lt
Definitly Gmail, and all G integrated appilcations (G Analytics, G Docs ...)
Dan / 27/05/2008 / 14:20 / http://silvertankard.wordpress.com
As much as I'd like to declare my love for some obscure little app, I have to jump on the Google bandwagon and say having an iGoogle homepage. Even though it's so distracting that I never get any work done...
Sondra / 01/06/2008 / 16:06 / http://www.sondrasneed.com
Google Apps especially Google Docs. Working with teams around the city or around the world, we are able to edit the same document without creating volumes of untraceable emails or authors of edits. It's brilliantly simple even for technophopes on the team.
As Google has been from the beginning, immensely important.
Derek Organ / 05/06/2008 / 13:41 / http://1timetracking.com
Gmail (mobile version), rescuetime, skype, sugarsync
I absolutely love sugarsync at the moment.
for business
Blinksale (http://www.blinksale.com )
1time (http://1timetracking.com )
Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com )
david / 27/06/2008 / 17:13 / http://www.fettspielen.de
www.netvibes.com is the best. Disclaimer: I dont work for them. why is it great. Because it organizes RSS Feeds in most efficient manner.
Matt / 01/07/2008 / 09:08
Voixio sounds great but the website says it's temporarily offline at the moment.
Currently i use Gmail as my main web app.
