/Big Question/ Favourite things
11/11/2008 | Filed under Discover > Big Question
What was the best site/app you came across in 2008?
Analytics specialist
Christian Howes
WebTrends
The amount of music stored digitally is vast these days with the majority languishing in iTunes Libraries. Until recently, treasured collections would remain unplayed and forgotten, hidden amongst trillions of random tunes. However, thanks to Genius Sidebar it seems these days are no longer.
This cracking application allows you to select a favourite song; it then creates a playlist based on what’s in your library that is similar, and voila, you start to listen again to things you’d forgotten you even had. Simply genius!
Christian Howes is digital solutions architect at web analytics company WebTrends
Internet playboy
Drew Curtis
Fark
Zombo.com. You can do anything there. Anything at all
Drew is the owner of Fark.com
Software expert
Ian Moulster
Microsoft
There really is no contest on this one: Live Mesh, accessible at www.mesh.com, is set to become hugely influential in terms of how we use the web and devices, and how developers approach web-enabled development. No other website or service launched this year is likely to have as much impact on our lives as Live Mesh as we see it expand and develop over the next 12 months
Ian is senior product manager for Microsoft
Hosting specialist
Neil Barton
Hostway, UK
I have been very impressed with both Mozilla Ubiquity and Yubnub.org this year, not simply because they make browsing the internet much easier, but because they represent a taste of the future of the web itself. In the last five years, search has become the most popular application on the internet, but many users often search for something within a familiar website, such as Flickr or Google Maps. By using Ubiquity or Yubnub, rather than going to Google, Ask or LiveSearch, they both allow users to input text and directly search a specific website - for example, you can directly search Flickr for pictures of the Eiffel Tower by typing ‘flk eiffel tower’.
The applications themselves are a great time saver, but it is also interesting to consider the long-term implications. Both applications allow users to configure their web browser to act as a command line for the internet. Although Ubiquity isn’t currently ‘social’, Yubnub is - so you can create commands, split screens, search multiple sites, create emails and open Google documents by entering a few words into the browser. At the moment, both of these systems are text-based and will probably remain so for some time. However, this is certainly the root of web OS and I hope that at some point we will see a graphical version.
Neil is the director of Hostway UK
Social software consultant
Suw Charman-Anderson
Open Rights Group
The best website/app of the year is always a hard call to make. It’s tempting to nominate the Twitter client, Twhirl. It makes managing multiple Twitter accounts much easier than any other client I’ve tried and I have come to depend upon it, but the Twhirl/Adobe AIR combination can act more than a little weird. The fact that it’s prone to throwing hissy fits, has no spellcheck and ignores cmd/ctrl-z undo disqualifies it for me.
If Omnifocus were a web app, that would be my choice. Being able to sync my to-do list between Mac and iPhone really has transformed the way that I deal with organising my working life, but it’s not a web app, so doesn’t count. (I do want it to have a special mention though, because it is just fabulous.)
Work-wise, I rely on WordPress, Socialtext and Gmail. Gmail hasn’t progressed much over the last year so I can’t see any real grounds for nominating it. Although WordPress has made some great leaps forward with v2.6, it has also stumbled horribly backwards with the new and very awkward widget management panel. Socialtext, on the other hand, has just released v3, and they have done great things not just with the look and feel, which had always been a little bit clunky, but also with some useful new functionality and much better information architecture.
But the site that truly captured my heart this year, I must confess, is ICanHasCheezburger. Who knew that humorous pictures of cute cats and forlorn walruses could be so compelling? It may not be helping my productivity, but I’ve seen an exponential increase in LOLz, which can’t be a bad thing now, can it?
Suw is executive director of the Open Rights Group
Ecommerce expert
Ben Dyer
Actinic
There are already a lot of sites and apps that are so good that they have become part of the fabric of online life, and this year a further influx has jumped onto my ‘must visit list’. However, for me there is only one clear winner, which is the Twitter search app, formally known as Summize.
Twitter search is fantastic for research - who is talking about who, what and when. But its core power lies in real time and this, for me, was illustrated at The Future of Web Apps conference. A search for FOWA not only provided the latest rock star developer sightings, but also real-time opinions on the various topics and speakers. The result is powerful and empowering, at least until the famous Fail Whale turns up.
Ben Dyer is Actinic’s director of product development
UI guru
Adam Bankin
Fortune Cookie
The best site I’ve come across this year is Apple’s MobileMe, a suite of sites that extend the content and functionality of your Mac desktop to wherever you are (eg on another Mac, a PC or an iPhone).
Sure, it’s a reconfigured .mac. And you have to pay for it. However Apple has updated it to address the way we use the web now. This means no more iCards and all that fluff.
There’s the ubiquitous mail-app-in-a-browser, the equally ubiquitous calendar-app-in-a-browser, and gigabytes of online storage ... so far, so Google right? But what makes MobileMe my favourite web app of 2008 is simply this: I don’t have to do the wiring up (entering POP3/SMTP details; WebCal subscriptions, uploading/downloading address books). MobileMe just works.
I use the web to get stuff done and MobileMe helps me do it. Admittedly, there were a slew of issues when it first launched in June. But, to their credit, Apple gave its users up to 90 days extra usage by way of an apology.
I recently helped a very non-techie friend set up her computer so she could easily email photos to friends through her Hotmail account. Four and a half hair-tearing hours later we had a solution of sorts. MobileMe provides clean, stress-free access to my data wherever I am. That should be applauded.
Adam Bankin is UI developer at Fortune Cookie
