It was that dark day every computer geek fears will come. This weekend, my best friend computer decided it had suffered enough of my endless use and unceremoniously died. I mourned. I cried. I thought about wearing all black. And then I went computer shopping. Oooh. Shiny things. Everything became kind of fuzzy after that.
But during this dark period of my life (hereafter known as time of death till arrival of the Fed-Ex truck carrying the answer to my despair), I discovered another reason to be crazy about browser based Web 2.0 apps. The transition has been almost effortless. My bookmarks are securely tucked away at del.icio.us. Google is holding my mail and RSS feeds. Flickr is entrusted to photographic documentation of the last four years of my children’s lives. And Google Docs and Spreadsheets means no families.com blogs are lost to a hard drive I can no longer access.
Remote data storage means never having to say “I lost it all,” even when your hardware fails, and especially if, like me, you’re horrible about remembering to do local data back-ups.
PC World magazine published a list of “The Web’s Most Useful Sites,” that included some of these and other Web 2.0 applications that just might save your day should the unthinkable happen.
Rest in peace my shiny, silver friend.
Word Processors
Winner:
Zoho – a fully featured, collaborative online office suite including Ajax-based spreadsheet, word processing and presentation software, plus productivity tools and utilities.
Runner Up:
Google Docs and Spreadsheets – formerly known as Writely, has a quick, clean interface, easy access to HTML code, automatic versioning, and automatic collaborative updating.
Bookmark Managers
Winner:
Del.icio.us – the original social bookmarking site. Check out the “most popular” page to survey the latest and geekiest tech news according to the site’s one million registered users.
Runner Up:
Magnolia – a younger and prettier sibling of Del.icio.us, but with a smaller user base that renders shared bookmarks a little less useful than the original.
Winner:
Yahoo Mail Beta – features user choice of two or three pane message views, 1 GB of storage, easy transition between multiple messages, and most closely resembles traditional desktop e-mail programs, although slower than Gmail.
Runner Up:
Gmail – features two column message view, 2.6 GB storage (and growing), plays MP3 audio attachments and opens Excel spreadsheets, is lightening fast, and integrates with Google Talk and Calendar.