We're curious to know which of these services our readers use. Let us know in the poll below, or make a comment if yours is not listed.

In the example to the right, I posted a video of a band I like to my Soup.io blog by simply inputting its MySpace video embed code and adding a couple of lines of comment. Much less effort than writing a post on ReadWriteWeb ;-)

Compete data shows that Tumblr is the clear leader in this market, with Posterous about to overtake Vox as number 2. Note: we didn't include wordpress.com or blogger.com, because they are much larger than all of these and are used for different purposes too.

Here is our poll, please select the light blogging service you use most often. There are many smaller services around, so the list below is certainly not comprehensive. If yours is missing, add it to the RWW comments.

We did an informal poll at the ReadWriteWeb office (actually a Skype room) and our picks are below. We'd love to know yours as well, so please leave a comment telling us the 3 web apps or services that excite you the most.

Richard MacManus: Pachube (connecting environments), Peoplebrowsr desktop (Twitter app), Wolfram Alpha (computational knowledge engine)

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Know Thy Congressman (a bookmarklet that displays political and biographical information), Apture (adds multimedia to websites), Blip.fm (online music)

Frederic Lardinois: Lala (music), Gmail, and Seesmic Web (lifestreaming)

Dana Oshiro: Geo: foursquare (explore your city), Hype Machine (online music), Boxee (social media center)

Jolie O'Dell: Twitter, Gmail, PixelPipe (media gateway)

You:

Tell us in the comments!

Cat pic: Tabbymom was B and V Cats

UPDATE: Results of this poll have now been posted; Top 10 Most Exciting Web Apps or Services.

My documents are spread out across Google Docs, Office Live, SkyDrive, and Box.net. My photos are on flickr and Facebook. My music and video collections are backed up locally to multiple external drives (since I'm too cheap to pay for the hundreds of gigs of online storage needed), but one thing that wasn't backed up anywhere but on my own PC was the thing that may be the most important of all: my iPhone.

How Do You Backup Your Contacts? The Results of the Twitter/FriendFeed Poll

Is an iTunes backup stored off-site the most efficient way to go? Is that how most people handle this issue? Curious, I did what any social media addict would do: I asked Twitter and FriendFeed. The answers I received have me pondering my options. After receiving nearly 30 responses, I was surprised to find how many people rely on Google as their address book (14 responses). In fact, keeping your addresses and phone numbers in Google and syncing that address book to your iPhone is actually what a lot of people consider a "backup" these days.

But as much as I trust in Google, the old I.T. girl in me can't help but think "single point of failure, single point of failure!" Truth be told, several folks must feel the same because they also used another method on top of the Google solution, often MobileMe.

MobileMe wasn't as popular as I would have expected, though. Only five people said they used it. That number would probably be higher if it wasn't a paid service.

Seven people counted on iTunes to do the backup for them, but a few were careful to also make sure their PC was backed up as well.

I'm hesitant to sync my Google contacts to my iPhone for reasons I've stated before, but it couldn't hurt to make sure that my iPhone contact information also exists in my online address book...something that I know isn't the case as I recently found out when the phone's battery died during a phone call and I frantically searched for my friend's number on the web.

iPhone Contact Backup: Yep, There's An App for That

I also recently happened across an additional solution which you could add to your backup routine with ease. Called iDrive Lite, this free iPhone application will quickly backup all your contact info to your device in case you ever accidentally delete an important address or phone number. You'll also want to activate the app's "Web Enable" feature which backs up your contact data to the web where you can access it anytime at idrivelite.com. Not bad for a free service.

Your Turn! RWW Poll

If you didn't have a chance to participate in the Twitter poll, please participate in this one below. Now, we know not everyone is an iPhone user here at RWW, but we know that a lot of you are, so let us know how you backup your contacts! If you find yourself marking "other," feel free to comment and explain.

So are ReadWriteWeb readers, many of whom are early adopters of Internet technology, using online word processing services now instead of desktop software? Er, no.

Less Than 1/4 of You Use an Online Word Processer as Your Main Tool

Let's delve further into the results, firstly for the desktop software. Last year MS Word got 46% and this year 48%. So not much has changed for the dominant office software supplier, even with RWW's Net savvy readers. OpenOffice slipped a bit, down from 17% last year to 15% this year. Overall, 76% of readers still use a desktop software program as their main word processing tool (counting the 8% who use a text editor for this purpose). That's up slightly from 74% the same time last year.

That means that less than 25% of our readers use an online service as their primary means of doing word processing. The best of the online breed was Google Docs, with 17%, up from 11%. This is a good sign though, because Google Docs is now second behind only MS Word.

Google Docs Gains Users, But Not From Microsoft

What was a little surprising is that the Web startups competing with Google Docs all performed worse than last year. ThinkFree got 2%, Buzzword 1%, Zoho 1%, and Zimbra less than 1%. ThinkFree and Zoho both polled at 5% last year and Zimbra 2% (Buzzword wasn't in last year's poll). This indicates that Google Docs has gained users not from MS Word... but from the online startups.

Tell us your reaction to these results. What's happened to the startups? Are they doomed in this market dominated by the big guns?

Related:

• Office Live Workspace vs Google Docs: Feature-by-Feature Comparison
• Adobe Launches Online Office Suite and New Flash-Enabled Acrobat 9
• 10 Must Have Online Office Apps

Note: there's no way we could mention every single online music streaming service in this poll, but if we happened to miss a major service then do shout it out asap in the comments!

Lachlan said that his favorite 3 things online were Twitter (www.twitter.com), Tumblr (www.tumblr.com) and Fire Eagle (www.fireeagle.yahoo.net).

There are literally thousands of great web apps to choose from, many of which have been profiled here on RWW. Tell us your current 3 favorites in the comments. We'd especially love to discover new things that may be flying under the radar...

Cat photo: Kevin Steele

You can make your own prediction here.

Poll: Best Internet Bigcos of 2008

We've reached the halfway point of 2008, so time for a half-year assessment of the Internet bigcos. This week we ran a poll asking for your picks for best bigcos so far in '08. We did a similar poll last July - and Facebook just edged out Google for the RWW popular vote. At the end of '07 we named Facebook our Bigco of the year. We also ran the poll in 2006. Here are the results this time round:

At time of publishing, Google had 19%, followed by Apple on 18% and Mozilla 17%. Also in double figures were Amazon and Adobe, both of which got 12%. Interestingly, Facebook fell to 8% and the other two parts of GYM, Microsoft and Yahoo, didn't fare so well either. Microsoft scored 6% and Yahoo 5%.

See also: Internet Bigcos - How The Market Sees Them and It's Official: There Is No Bubble

Google Docs Goes Down - How Long is Too Long for You? (POLL)

Earlier this week, Google's hosted office suite Google Docs was down for more than 30 minutes, rendering documents inaccessible and users frustrated. Short outages are not uncommon, but it was a good time to ask - how long is too long for you? At what point would you personally deem a web service too unstable to use, and presuming that varies from service to service, what's your requirement for Google Docs?

Image credit: hans s

We looked at 7 Internet bigcos, chosen from the RWW poll list and with the addition of Cisco (per a suggestion from one commenter). This is a list of publicly traded companies. We have not included AOL - if we did we'd also have to include all of Time Warner, which makes them very far from an Internet company. We also can't include Facebook, Mozilla or LinkedIn - as none are (currently) public companies.

Out of many potential parameters, this analysis focuses on 5:

1. Market Cap. This is a simple proxy of "bigness".

2. PEG. This is Price Earnings Growth. This is a proxy for "value".

3. Revenue Growth in last 12 months. Growth is the most prized parameter by investors. Revenue growth is less easy to "financially engineer" than profit growth, so it is a good proxy for basic growth.

4. Cash. This just says "staying power" and is prized during recessions.

5. 52 Week change in stock price. This ranks the companies by how happy their shareholders are. That matters, as Yahoo management can tell you (but as you can see, Yahoo is far from the worst on that ranking).

Here are the numbers, ranked alphabetically:

Here is the ranking based on each of the parameters:

A. Market Cap - bigness

1. MSFT
2. GOOG
3. CSCO
4. EBAY
5. YHOO
6. AMZN
7. ADBE

B. PEG - value

1. EBAY
2. GOOG
3. CSCO
4. MSFT
5. ADBE
6. AMZN
7. YHOO

C. Revenue Growth

1. GOOG
2. AMZN
3. EBAY
4. ADBE
5. CSCO
6. YHOO
7. MSFT

D. Cash - staying power

1. CSCO
2. MSFT
3. GOOG
4. EBAY
5. YHOO
6. AMZN
7. ADBE

E. Share price change - happy shareholders

1. AMZN
2. GOOG
3. ADBE
4. YHOO
5. MSFT
6. EBAY
7. CSCO

Poll: Best Internet Bigco

So, given all of the above data, which do you now see as the most impressive Internet bigcos so far this year? Vote in the poll below (note: Cisco has now been added as an option):

• Adobe
• Amazon
• Apple
• AOL
• eBay
• Facebook
• Google
• Microsoft
• Mozilla
• Yahoo

Image credit: danielbroche]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/poll_best_internet_bigco_2008.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/poll_best_internet_bigco_2008.php Polls Mon, 07 Jul 2008 01:49:46 -0800 Richard MacManus Due to demand in the comments, 3 new IM clients have been added to the poll. You can now vote for Pidgin, Miranda, and Apple's iChat. Apologies for omissions! Our poll this week focuses on IM clients. This weekend Corvida wrote that interoperability between popular IM clients is happening, albeit slowly.

UPDATE: Due to demand in the comments, Pidgin and Miranda have been added. At time of adding, 3651 votes had been cast. Apologies to fans of those two IM clients for the omission.

UPDATE 2: Also added iChat (3983 votes cast).

Photo credit: BigBlue

Q: What do you think of iPhone 2.0?

It's revolutionary! 12% (105 votes)
It's a very solid version 2 product, nicely done 40% (359 votes)
Meh, it's ok 20% (182 votes)
Bah, those features are already in [insert your fave phone here] 16% (140 votes)
Yawn! 9% (77 votes)
Wait, Apple has a phone? 4% (37 votes)

In case you didn't see the iPhone 2.0 announcement, our network blog last100 posted an excellent overview. The new version iPhone supports 3G and faster data networks, has GPS, has a few cosmetic changes and is thinner, carries a (dramatically) lower price ($199 for the 8 GB iPhone, $299 for the 16 GB model) and will be available in 22 countries starting July 11. It also features Microsoft Exchange and full enterprise support out of the box.

These are all great features, but some people questioned: is the iPhone really that revolutionary compared to products available internationally? For example 3G has been available in many mobile devices for 2-3 years now in places like Japan. Check out the robust discussion in the comments to our post this week, as well as the results of the poll we ran and which you can still vote in:

See also: iPhone 2.0, Video Highlights and iPhone-less? Try Tiled Browsing Instead

Vote in our poll below and let us know your thoughts about Technorati's relevance in the comments below.

Though the shift toward the PC for video watching is more pronounced among the younger set, Ipsos said the trend was "relatively consistent across all age groups and genders." Even though the study only looked at the viewing habits of those who have streamed or downloaded video content, previous Ipsos MediaCT studies have found that is a rapidly growing segment of the population.

"Today, about half of all Internet users aged 12 and up have streamed a video file online in the past 30 days," said Adam Wright, Director at Ipsos MediaCT. "We really see these share gains in non-traditional video channels as not simply an isolated, generation-driven market effect, but rather a large macro-trend in the way consumers want their video content delivered that those in the entertainment industry should increasingly be paying attention to as we look forward to the rest of 2008 and beyond."

Last week, 28% of ReadWriteWeb readers indicated that they prefer online TV to cable. Now we'd like to ask you where you're watching most of your video these days? Bear in mind that a DVD watched on your television, is still video consumed via TV. (We realize this is not the same type of poll conducted by Ipsos MediaCT -- though it was clearly inspired by their study.) Let us know in the comments the different places you're watching video these days.