For years I have been a PC user, always wanted to have a MAC but never made the switch. Over the last 2-3 years I have really tried to push myself to use web-based applications so that maybe one day I would only need a browser as my computing technology tool. I thought I might write a bit about my progress for those of you who might be thinking of a similar technology work style. Remember I am on a journey here, I don’t use everything yet, in fact only a fraction.
Of course the clear leader in this movement is Google. I will also mention some other web-based applications I use in addition to Google’s. I like Google, love the way the try to operate as a business, harness and use brainpower and best of all bring to the market a real wealth of great, smart, always improving web-based applications.
If you have comments, suggestions or questions just leave a comment.
Here are the web-base applications I currently use:
Personal Productivity
Google Gmail – I find Gmail has all of the functionality of any email tool I have ever used in a corporate setting. I really like how historical emails can be managed and that strings of one email are broken into separate slices making it easy to access just the content that is important at that time.
Google Docs – Document creation, spreadsheet, presentations, forms and folder and file management is all done very well with this application. The key feature I like is I can share folders and documents with non-Google people. They can view and edit various documents without having to email them around.
Google Calendar – Easy to use, full featured calendar that again is shareable and I can also view or even integrate other calendars into mine, for example I have the Green Bay Packer schedule calendar integrated with mine.
Google Contacts – I use this as my contact management tool.
Google Reader – I use this to aggregate all of the various RSS feeds I follow into one location.
iGoogle – Not a big user here yet, kind of a way of creating your own web portal in an effort to get your arms around the incredibly large stream of content that is flowing. Probably will replace Google Reader for me.
Google Chrome – this is my web browser of choice, it is fast, easy to use and is continuously improved and extended.
Project Collaboration
Google Site – Build a simple personal website, enable others to share and contribute, a simple way to aggregate communication and elements of a project.
Google Wave – Brand new, I just started learning this tool this week, this is designed to enable live collaboration integrating any type of content or communication form that you can think of, looks promising and once developers starting writing extension applications this will be very powerful.
Box.net – This is another web-based document sharing site with a widget that will display within Linkedin.
Multimedia
Google You Tube – Aggregate all of your various various videos into your own channel or for personal sharing with family or to serve as your personal portal to all things video.
Google Picasa – Image management that connects your desktop with web-based image locations, I use it for keeping my family updated with all of our kids pictures and things. Nice image editor included and the ability to make movies and publish DVD’s from within the tool itself as well.
Flickr – A non-Google application that is like Picasa that I used early on to provide images for some other websites I started for some friends and organizations.
SlideShare – A non-Google application that lets you share presentations with the public including audio if you choose, so sort of like presentations as a movie.
ScreenR – A web-based tool that lets you make screencasts, record your screen and voice and share it with others, easy integration with iPhones, Twitter and others. Simple to use.
Networking
Twitter - I try to follow people who contribute value in my areas of interest and try to provide information and links of value as well. Some interesting global connections can happen here. Need something, anything, ask Twitter.
Facebook - I primarily use Facebook as a personal communication tool to family and friends, fun easy to use and has enable discovery of friends I haven’t seen in decades.
Linkedin – This is more like a business networking event, or facebook for business. A great tool for connecting, marketing yourself. I find Groups as a function in Linkedin is a very powerful way to connect with those in your industry or to do research on a topic.
Hootsuite - This is a tool that let’s you manage your content, track the results of your entries into the tools above, kind of like a dashboard for your various online networking tools.
Website
Wordpress – I am a big wordpress fan, this site is managed with Wordpress, it is free, open source and continously gets easier to use with new functionality.
Awstats – I use this tool through my web-hosting provider, almost all do. It is an excellent way to obtain stats about your website.
Conclusion
I never realized until writing this just how many different web-based applications I already use and I know there are thousands more out there to be discovered. Note: This movement is so pervasive that Google will be launching Google Chrome OS, a browser based operating system.
So if your thinking of diving into web-based applications, I say come on in the water is fine.