How easy is it to launch a new web application these days? Easy enough that we see scads of new ones every day, in our tips inbox, on other blogs, raining out of the sky like cats and dogs. We love many of them, we really do, but after that short period of excitement - how many of these apps do we keep using for the long haul?
We asked seven members of the ReadWriteWeb team to list apps they discovered about a month ago and that they still find useful today. The resulting list was 22 services long, with consensus around a few in particular. Whether you're a long-time early adopter or just discovering many of the apps that the new web has to offer, we think you'll find some things on this list that you'll really appreciate well into the future too.
]]> Some of these are new, some of them just new to us. We hope that some of them are new to you too. We'd love to find out which apps you've taken for more than just a first test drive, really spent some time with, and are still using a month later.Marshall Kirkpatrick
Some of the apps I've tested and decided were keepers lately include:
GCal plug-in is an experimental Firefox extension that I read about on Download Squad last month and have grown to really love. It puts a little calender icon in the bottom of your browser, click it and your Google Calendar will appear in a pop-up lightbox on top of whatever page you're visiting on the web. Click outside the lightbox and it closes. So handy!
URLBarExt is another experimental Firefox add-on that I found via Lifehacker and wrote about here. It adds a bunch of cool little functions to your browser's address bar, but the ones I use all day are one-click URL shortening with Bit.ly and one click copy to paste. Works great with Twitter.
MultiClutch is a Macbook Pro app that lets you assign keystroke functions to 3 fingered swipe motions on your mousepad. It's awesome. Right now I've got 3 fingered swipe down as "close tab/window," swipe right as "change tabs in Firefox," swipe right as back arrow in the browser and swipe up as "undo" in any app. I love it! No more tab overload and really quick navigation. Thanks is due to David Recordon for showing me this one.
The Jobwire Crew
The content team for the new ReadWriteWeb Jobwire, our just launched site about new hires in tech and new media, were very happy to provide a list of their favorite apps from the last month as well.
All three said that they had just discovered point and click RSS feed building app Dapper.net and that it is a big winner. It was also just one month ago that the Jobwire crew discovered feed filtering service AideRSS/PostRank. That's a big favorite for the whole RWW family.
Jobwire writer Doug Coleman says that a month after starting to use them he's still loving browser super-extension Greasemonkey (see our recent post Start Using Greasemonkey in Under 5 Minutes) and web page archiving service Iterasi (our review). Jobwire's Dionne Fox named super easy screencast recording app Jing as her most valued recent discovery and writer Nate DiNiro says that Twitter client Tweetdeck and video special effects software Camtwist are fast joining the list of tried and true apps for him.
Frederic Lardinois
RWW writer Frederic Lardinois says he's sticking with newly relaunched music search and streaming site lala (his write up of the service) and web based screen sharing service Yuuguu (here's our latest coverage of Yuuguu). He's also finding multi-service publishing tool Pixelpipe useful but suspects that he may soon replace it with the recently reviewed Tarpipe.
Rick Turoczy
Night time news beat writer Rick Turoczy added page collating service Agglom (see our screencast tour of Agglom). He's also very happy that he's taken the time to figure out Dapper in recent months.
Sarah Perez
Sarah Perez has a whole different list of recent discoveries that have stuck with her. She still likes image enhancing browser plug-in Cooliris, Google's browser Chrome (check out this video of Sarah "unboxing" chrome), AIR Tumbleblogging app Tumbleweed, news ticker Snackr, handsome social start page Feedly, Microsoft's super ambitious Live Mesh and the FFHolic Sidebar for FriendFeed.
That's our list! How about yours? What apps have you found lately that have proven themselves to be more than just a flash in the pan? We all love shiny new things but it's a relief to report that a good number of these apps we've looked at are proving to be more than just cool - they are downright useful.