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.

The new Facebook Page updating feature at hellotxt, available here, lets page admins post messages, photos, or video links to the Wall of different pages. They've actually implemented this feature in a clever way that should appeal to admins who have to keep up multiple pages as they let you tag your networks and Pages with keywords. That way, when you need to update a particular set of networks, you can prepend your update with the pound sign (#) followed by the keyword in order to update just that one particular group.

Ping.fm, the newer of the two services, has also implemented Facebook Page updates and tagging. However, in their case, they don't support tagging as a workflow timesaving feature for categorizing posts, but rather as a methodology for inserting hashtags into your posts - such as what would be used on Twitter, for example. They also support "mood tagging" on networks that support it and have added in a feature for posting songs courtesy of Grooveshark.

The process of setting up your Facebook Pages on Ping.fm is a bit more involved, too. Where hellotxt simply has you add a Facebook application, Ping.fm makes you go off an get an application key which has to be copied and pasted into a box before you can access your Facebook settings. Once there, it's not even clear if they've correctly identified your page or if those settings refer to your user profile instead.

For the individual, Ping.fm will probably suffice in most cases, but it's clear that hellotxt is the service to choose if your job involves updating multiple sets of social networks or Pages.

Where Are the Other Cloud Agents?

Back in December, we wrote about the rise of cloud agents (a term coined by Chris Arkenberg). These agents are automated applications that help us parse through the data swarming around us to provide us with the information we need. At the time, we highlighted a service similar to Tweecious called Twitchboard, another app that also posts the links you tweet to Delicious. According to the Twitchboard site, more services beyond Delicious were "coming soon," but here it is April now, and no others have been integrated. That's disappointing to say the least, but what's even more disappointing is that these sorts of "cloud agents" are so few and far between.

At the time of the previous post, some people missed the overall point, thinking we were raving about a Twitter to Delicious cross-posting app. The truth is, we were excited about this concept of automated agents. Unfortunately, since that time, we've seen very few apps that fit the description. In fact, only a couple of others really come to mind...and to be frank, we're not sure if they even count.

One such service is SocialToo, a "social web companion" which has the ability to automate many tedious Twitter tasks like catching you up on your follows, unfollowing people who didn't follow you back, deleting all your friends, or automatically following people for you. It's the service's automated, "set it and forget it" behavior that we think might allow it to be classified as a cloud agent. Another is "Twollo," a Twitter service that finds like-minded tweeters and follows them for you automatically.

Within the Twitter ecosystem, there are probably slews of others which we just can't think of right now. But do apps that automate tasks within Twitter count as cloud agents? They're not all parsing information to separate signal from noise (well, maybe Twollo is), they're just saving us time. We would love to see some "real" cloud agents emerge that provide more than just automation. We want intelligent cloud agents, too. Know of any?

Zotero also announced a new online component to its plugin, which, in conjunction with the new synchronization features, automatically creates an online backup of your database on Zotero.org.

Zotero, which we highlighted as one of the top application for students last year, features an extensive set of tools for creating and managing bibliographies. While it started out as a very basic tool, its feature set is now up to par with that of other commercial bibliography tools like EndNote or RefWorks.

Zotero integrates tightly with Firefox 3 and allows you to quickly save articles and easily create bibliographies for your papers and articles from most of the major free and for-pay research databases and online newspapers.

The synchronization feature works exactly as advertised and allows you to keep your bibliographies in sync, even if you work on different machines. If you have access to a WebDAV enabled server, Zotero can also sync your attachments automatically.

Needs Firefox 3

Whenever Zotero recognizes that you are surfing a supported site like Google Books, Amazon, YouTube, the New York Times, or JSTOR, it will simply add an icon to your Firefox address bar that allows you to save the bibliographic entry for that page or article with one click. Zotero will automatically extract the bibliographical information for you and it can even create a full-text archive of your saved documents.

Social Networking

Zotero.org now also includes a number of social networking features. You can, for example, search for other users by name, email, affiliation, or discipline. While this feature is still very new, and hence only has a few users so far, this could turn out to be a real boon for academic researchers (and others) who could use this to share their bibliographic databases with colleagues. In the future, Zotero plans to extend this with a Twitter-like stream of your friends' research activity.

Zotero also integrates with Microsoft Office and OpenOffice (though the 1.5b1 version is not compatible with these plugins yet!), and supports over 1,100 different styles, as well as the ability to create your own. You can also just drag and drop entries from Firefox to any other document and it will create a bibliographic entry for you on the fly.

Verdict

Zotero was already one of the best tools for managing large bibliographies. These updates make it even better and allow it to compete directly with its commercial brethren. The new synchronization feature allows you to work on different machines, without having to constantly save and update your database, something that used to give RefWorks (which is essentially an online tool) the upper hand.

Note: While the new sync feature worked great for us, Zotero rightly recommends that you back up your database before you update to version 1.5b1.

Of course there are far more than 100 great Web products out there, so there are some excellent ones not included in our megalist. Please leave a comment here and tell us what we've missed!

• Best LittleCo of 2008 & Most Promising for 2009
• Best BigCo of 2008: Apple
• Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008
• Top 10 International Products of 2008
• Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008
• Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008
• Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2008
• Top 10 Enterprise Web Products of 2008
• Top 10 Real World Web Apps of 2008
• Top 10 Digital Lifestyle Products of 2008
• Top 10 Alternative Search Engines of 2008
• Top 10 Web Platforms of 2008

Note that seven products made it to more than one of our top 10 lists, so we've noted when that is the case and added some new products that just missed the cut somewhere along the line.

ReadWriteWeb's Top 100 Products

This list is in alphabetical order, with category noted beside each item.

• Adobe AIR; Platforms
• Afrigator; International
• Amazon Web Services; Platforms & Enterprise *
• Android; Platforms & Digital Lifestyle *
• App Store (iPhone); Digital Lifestyle
• Basecamp; Enterprise
• BBC iPlayer; Digital Lifestyle
• BlueOrganizer (AdaptiveBlue); Semantic Web
• BooRah; Semantic Web
• Brightkite; Mobile Web; Most Promising for 2009
• ChaCha; Alternative Search Engines
• Chrome; runner-up Platforms
• Cooliris; Consumer & Alternative Search Engines
• Confluence (Atlassian); Enterprise
• Dapper; RSS/Syndication & MashupAds for Semantic Web *
• Digg; runner-up, Consumer
• DimDim; Enterprise
• Dopplr; International
• Facebook Platform; Platforms
• Faroo; Alternative Search Engines
• Feedburner; RSS/Syndication
• FFtoGo; Mobile Web
• Fire Eagle; Platforms
• Firefox; Consumer
• Flickr; runner-up Consumer
• Force.com (Salesforce); Enterprise
• FreshBooks; International
• FriendFeed; RSS/Syndication
• Fring; Mobile Web
• Gnip; RSS/Syndication
• Google Apps; Enterprise
• Google Maps; Mobile Web
• Google Reader; RSS/Syndication
• Google Reader RSS Subscriber Count Greasemonkey Script; RSS/Syndication
• Hakia; Semantic Web
• Hulu; Digital Lifestyle & Consumer *
• Imeem; runner-up Consumer
• IntenseDebate; Consumer
• iPhone SDK; Platforms
• i.TV; Mobile Web
• KallOut; Alternative Search Engines
• Kiva; Real World
• Kosmix; Alternative Search Engines
• Last.fm; Consumer
• LinkedIn; Enterprise
• Live Mesh; Platforms
• Maxthon; International
• Mednar; Alternative Search Engines
• Meebo; Consumer
• MindTouch Deki; Enterprise
• Mint; Real World
• Mixi; International
• Mogulus; Consumer
• Mozilla Weave; Platforms
• MySpace; runner-up Consumer
• Netbook; Digital Lifestyle
• Netflix; Digital Lifestyle
• Netvibes; International
• Ning; Consumer
• Nokia E71; Digital Lifestyle
• NYTimes iPhone App; Mobile Web
• OpenCongress; Real World
• OpenSocial; Platforms
• Open Calais; Semantic Web
• Opera Mini/Mobile; Mobile Web
• Pandora; Mobile Web
• PatientsLikeMe; Real World
• PlayStation 3; Digital Lifestyle
• PlanetEye; Real World
• Postrank (ex-AideRSS); RSS/Syndication
• Powerset; Semantic Web
• Qik; Consumer
• Quintura; Alternative Search Engines
• Remember The Milk; International
• Rudder; Real World
• SearchMonkey; Semantic Web
• SeeqPod; Alternative Search Engines
• Sermo; Real World
• Shazam; Mobile Web
• Snackr; RSS/Syndication
• Songbird; Digital Lifestyle
• Surf Canyon; Alternative Search Engines
• Taggalaxy.de; Alternative Search Engines
• TeachStreet; Real World
• Techmeme; runner-up RSS/Syndication
• TripIt; Semantic Web
• Twitter; Mobile Web & Consumer; Twitter API, Platforms *
• Twitterfeed; RSS/Syndication
• UpTake; Semantic Web
• UStream; runner-up Consumer
• Wii Fit; Digital Lifestyle
• Wild Apricot; Real World
• Wordpress; Enterprise
• Wuala; International
• Xing; International
• Yahoo! Pipes; RSS/Syndication
• Yapta; Real World
• YouTube; runner-up Consumer
• Zemanta; Semantic Web
• Zoho; Enterprise & International; Best LittleCo *

* products in more than one list. There were seven of these: Amazon Web Services, Android, Cooliris, Dapper, Hulu, Twitter, Zoho

A company called FaceTime Communications, based in Belmont, California, recently introduced their new inspection and classification technology called "ACE," which simply stands for Application Control Engine. This patented security technology is capable of scanning a network and identifying more than 1400 Web 2.0 applications and more than 50,000 social networks widgets distributed by sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut.

Scanning for rogue applications on the network is nothing new for I.T., but what's interesting about FaceTime's ACE technology is its focus on scanning for the technologies that often fly under I.T.'s radar: web apps.

The Danger of Web 2.0 Behind the Firewall

As we've mentioned before, I.T.'s failure to adapt to the changing needs of their user base, now younger and more digitally savvy than ever before, has led to a lot of self-provisioning of the easy-to-use applications found on the web. These tools can include anything from Facebook groups to standalone apps like the SharePoint-lite team pages found on Google Sites.

Of course, when users become their own I.T. department, they're unknowingly introducing inherent risks into the previously hardened network infrastructure. Just because a web app is easy to operate, that doesn't make it safe and secure for enterprise use. As users upload and share sensitive files through these unapproved backchannels or have business-related conversations through web-based IM chatrooms, they might not only be putting their company's data at risk, they could also be breaking various compliance laws as well. 

The Difficulty of Monitoring Web Apps in the Enterprise

For I.T., the challenge is keeping up with the barrage of new web apps out there and shutting down those that present a threat. In an independent study commissioned by FaceTime Communications, 62% of I.T. respondents said that there were eight or more Internet applications installed on their enterprise networks - a 300% increase over the first study conducted in 2005. More importantly, the respondents noted that about one-third of their users downloaded the applications they wanted to use - regardless of company policy. Those apps were a mix between apps for business and those used for personal reasons.

I.T. has traditionally struggled to shut down many of today's web applications because they are not all strictly browser-based. Knowing that their adoption rate is dependent on behind-the-back installs on company desktops, many of the apps make sure they can't be blocked by a URL signature. The apps may also masquerade themselves as HTTP, FTP, SMTP and Telnet traffic while exhibiting evasive techniques that help them penetrate the company firewall and escape detection by the current crop of Unified Threat Management systems.

With FaceTime's ACE, though, more than 1,400 of these web applications can be identified and even more social networking widgets can be isolated, too. Those apps can be discovered and shut down regardless of the port, protocol, or evasive technique they use. In addition, the ACE software developers kit (SDK) allows third party solution providers the ability to extend their offerings in order to help their customers manage instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing, social networking, Web 2.0, voice-over-IP, anonymizers, IPTV, multimedia, games, virtual worlds, and unified communications. 

What This Means for Enterprise 2.0

If FaceTime's ACE or other similar technologies become a mainstay in the enterprise I.T. toolkit, the explosion of Web 2.0 for business use, a trend typically called Enterprise 2.0, may be dealt quite a blow. The only Enterprise 2.0 apps that will succeed given that scenario will be the ones that worked with the I.T. admins from the very beginning to assure them of their safety. The apps reliant on a slew of the company's rule-breaking users for adoption, however, will be out of luck. Perhaps being sneaky may not have been a great business model after all.

Another Web-based time tracking app? Why would we focus on that? There are a number of features that make Freckle worth a look, but the primary reason for considering Freckle is that the team behind it is rethinking the time tracking problem. And it could be that approach which differentiates the product in a crowded market.

Part of that user happiness will come from the intuitive design and thoughtful AJAX implementation throughout the app. The thoughtful - and colorful - aesthetic should come as no surprise, given that it was put together by interface designer Amy Hoy and javascript consultant Thomas Fuchs - the same folks who brought us Twistori.

The most striking part of the app is the user interface. Unlike the Web-based time tracking app I use on a regular basis, Freckle allows users to enter all of your time and categorize it without a lot of switching between typing and clicking. You can enter all of the data from the keyboard. And that saves time. Time that could be spent on other projects.

Many other time tracking systems rely on a rigid set of client and category lists that - while often editable - require dropping the task at hand to add new clients, projects, and categories. With Freckle, adding these elements all happens on the fly. Adding a new category, for example, is as simple as adding a new tag. What's more, you're not constrained to a single category for a task. You can can categorize tasks for both client's requirements as well as your own internal tracking needs.

Yes, Freckle is simple and thoughtful - with some insightful reporting functionality to boot. But unfortunately, Freckle's ultra-simple design lacks one feature which - for me - makes my current time tracking app invaluable: a stopwatch. With Freckle, I'm still required to figure out how much time I've spent on any given activity. And for someone like me, who jumps from task to task and client to client, the lack of a stopwatch is a deal breaker.

And that's unfortunate. I want to use the app. Partially because of the application, but mostly because of the team's vision for Freckle:

"We're in this to build a sustainable business: to make truly great software, to help people add a little joy back to their daily business, and to make a living doing it.

We're not building a tasty startup snack for Google to devour, digest, and defecate."

It's always nice to see a team with a vision - especially when that vision is accompanied by an application with a revenue model. Freckle offers several levels of paid service starting at $24 US per month for five users. Each level carries a 30-day free trial. Freckle also offers a "one user, one project" setup for free.

If you're more focused than I and capable of judging "how long you've spent on X," then Freckle could very well be the answer to your time tracking needs. It's certainly much more fun and functional than a dreary spreadsheet.

To try the app and read more about the team's vision, visit Freckle.

A new report by Carnegie Mellon University, authored by Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor, states that online privacy policies take an average of 10 minutes to read. If every U.S. web user read the privacy policy at every site they went to, the time spent reading privacy policies would total 44.3 billion hours per year. Their recommendation? Regulation. They concluded that regulation might be necessary to "provide basic privacy protections."

Of course, you can imagine a lot of companies are not happy over this proposal, specifically those that take advantage of long privacy policies which they know no one reads. Online advertisers are the worst for abusing the average user's ignorance over how the internet works. They deploy behavioral targeting platforms that track users and their behavior across the net. Instructions for opting out of these programs may be found in the privacy policies, but few people take the time to read them and discover how to do so.

Cranor, who's also a member of the EFF, thinks that people shouldn't have to read these extensive privacy policies in order to protect themselves - the FTC should get involved and regulate if companies aren't willing to improve the readability of these online documents.

Should Privacy Policies Be Regulated?

If a privacy policy is long, does that mean it fails? We've seen the privacy policies now sent in the mail to us from our credit card companies. They aren't the most readable documents either, but they're legal.

Privacy policies today only seem to be there for the hyper-aware online citizen for whom privacy is a major concern. The rest of us just hear about the breaches of trust when one of those folks takes the time to read the long and boring legalize and then warns the rest of us of their findings.

The problem with privacy policies isn't just their length, though. Alissa Cooper, chief computer scientist at the Center for Democracy & Technology, argues that "It's not only that they're long, but they're also complicated. They're not really written for your average Internet user to understand them."

The average internet user? You mean those people who access the internet for twice a day for a total of 20 hours per month? The ones that spend less than one minute per page? Something tells us they're not going to read privacy policies no matter how clear and easy-to-understand they become.

Image Credits: Computer Eye, Mikey G. Ottowa; Cameras, Urbankudos

No matter which department you're in, Web 2.0 technologies have had an impact. If you've been ignoring their prevalence and adoption, you're at risk of falling behind in your career and your business is at risk of losing ground to its competitors who are tuned into this trend.

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we deliver news about Web 2.0's impact on business in addition to news about web technologies in general. Depending on your area of interest, you can find a lot of great information on this subject in our archives. Or simply bookmark this post for easy reference.

Document Collaboration Suites

GroupSwim is an innovative company which has created an intelligent community building and collaboration SaaS solution. They aim to connect individuals and build knowledge utilizing social based methodologies. Read more.

DreamFactory's suite of Enterprise 2.0 applications consists of a Project Management module, a Time and Expense Module, a Document Manager, and a Team Calendar. Originally, the company was available on Amazon Web Services, but now DreamFactory's software will be available on Intuit's QuickBase platform, too. Read more.

Box.net offers collaboration functionality which allows any Box.net user can invite collaborators to any folder in their account. The collaboration feature is also fully compatible with all the OpenBox services, which extends online collaboration beyond just word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, similar to what Google Docs currently offers. Read more.

The term groupware refers to applications that facilitate real-time communication, coordination and collaboration amongst groups of people. A number of startups are working hard to develop the nascent groupware market, so in this post we identify some of those startups and provide an overview of where the market is heading...read more.

What's the Deal With Wikis?

Only a handful of years ago, it was common to hear people laugh at Wikipedia. Anyone can edit it! How could you take it seriously? These days, just as blogs are, wikis are on their way to winning a reputation as serious publishing platforms. Wikis are now serious business. Read more.

Atlassian Confluence, makers of one of the most popular enterprise wiki solutions, offers Microsoft Office and SharePoint integration in their release of the Confluence 2.9 software. With these new tools, users no longer have to know the technicalities of wiki markup or even how to use the included rich-text WYSIWYG editor in order to make changes to the wiki - they can simply open up a Microsoft Office document instead. Read more.

WetPaint, a popular hosted Wiki solution, provides person-to-person and private messaging between users of their Wiki network. This means that Wetpaint Wiki users can now send single or multi-person private messages, to connect and collaborate with others about their interests. This post introduces wikis and discusees who is using them and for what purpose.First, wikis are described and then the range of wiki products in the market right now is explored. Read more.

Leave it to people in the wiki market to know how to collaborate. Nearly 20 different wiki providers have teamed up to offer a new Firefox extension that will notify users whenever they are on a page that is publicly editable, using a standard icon that sits in the same place the RSS autodiscovery icon appears. Clicking on the icon (img. on the left) will take you to that page's editing interface. Read more.

What's Office 2.0?

Web Office Defined: A Web Office suite is a combination of productivity, publishing and collaboration features. A Web Office both embraces the functionality of desktop office suites (e.g. Microsoft Office) and extends it by using Web Native features. Read more.

The State of Office 2.0: Over the past 10 years, Corel, Sun, IBM and others have tried to compete with Microsoft in the office software business, but thus far none of them have been able to take a significant chunk of Microsoft's large market share, which generates revenues exceeding $15 billion each year. These companies have tried everything; including Sun open sourcing their StarOffice suite and releasing it as the free OpenOffice. Yet, even this very compelling move has not been able to make a serious dent in the market. Read more.

Microsoft announced their Office Live Workspace is publicly available for everyone to access. The site, a free web-based extension of Microsoft Office, lets you access your documents online and share your work with others. Some say that the service's launch is a direct response to Google's entry into the web office space with their Google Docs online service. If that's so, then the question now is: did Microsoft just trump Google Docs? Or does Google Docs still rule online office suites? Read more.

The Web Office was a market that underwent a lot of changes in 2007. Our definition of Web Office is: A Web Office suite is a combination of productivity, publishing and collaboration features. A Web Office both embraces the functionality of desktop office suites (e.g. Microsoft Office) and extends it by using Web Native features. The 2007 year in review: Read more.

This is the perspective of a "skeptical, later early adopter"; the sort of person who Microsoft needs to retain and should have been able to retain easily. I don't spend time on productivity tools that may at some date make me more productive, but which today are just a frustrating time sink. That describes the majority of people. MS Office can be annoying, but it does work. So any serious alternative has to offer a significant advantage and at the same time make adoption a total breeze. Read more.

EditGrid, the main product of HongKong-based company Team and Concepts (TnC) Ltd., is a leading Web 2.0 online spreadsheet service that focuses on online collaboration and interoperability. Read more.

eXpresso was named as one of PC World's 25 Most Innovative Products of the Year for 2007. PC World succinctly summed the product up: "[it] allows Excel users to share their spreadsheets, online or off." eXpresso is different from the web office contenders that you normally hear about on ReadWriteWeb for three reasons...Read more.

Zimbra is looking to expand its platform to the iPhone. Recently they announced Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0. Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 will allow iPhone users over-the-air two-way synchronization of e-mails, calendar, contacts, and photos between user mailboxes and mobile devices, and seamless "push" e-mail service for all Zimbra Collaboration Suite users. Read more.

News from the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco, 2008. Read more.

What's Happening in the Enterprise 2.0 Space?

A report released by Forrester Research is predicting that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years. This increase will include more spending on social networking tools, mashups, and RSS, with the end result being a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by the year 2013. Read more.

Enterprise 2.0 is Happening: If you're a business who has been ignoring the Web 2.0 trend and the spread of social media: look out, the tide is shifting and you're about to be left behind. The rise of social media didn't happen overnight, the power of the internet to unite people, the ubiquity of broadband, the rise of Gen Y, the development of new technologies for socializing on the web - all of these things and more have led to the rise of social media. And this new force is affecting change in the way that companies do business - now and for many years to come.

The break-up of behemoth, vertically integrated enterprises commenced in the 1970's, got a boost from junk bond financing in the 1980's, and accelerated in the 1990's with globalization. Now, late in the 2000's, Social Media (aka Web 2.0) is adding another gear that will accelerate the fundamental restructuring of the enterprise. Read more.

Most enterprise software sucks. That is my considered opinion from 30 years in the software biz. Words that come to mind are: bloated, inflexible and user hostile. The good news is that it is getting better, a lot better. The driver for change is what I call the consumerization of enterprise software. These new software champions typically have some if not all of these 8 main attributes...Read more.

The Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad program is a program that allows companies to showcase their products and compete for the opportunity to present their ideas to the community at this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference. This competition, organized by Stowe Boyd, began in April when companies were invited to post their video pitches to the E2 web site. After the community voted, the list of contenders was narrowed down to five finalists who will now compete for the final spot. For that grand prize winner, the prize is free exhibit space at the upcoming conference. Read more.

SharePoint to run Enterprise 2.0? 9 companies are saying "yes," having recently launched Enterprise 2.0 offerings that integrate with SharePoint technology. If there's one thing that any I.T. pro knows it's the value of "maximizing their investment" in whatever servers they run, technology they use, or services they've signed up for. With strict budgets in place, no I.T. purchases are bought on a whim. Instead, each decision is researched, tested, thoughtfully considered, and, if worthy, purchased, then rolled out to become a part of the I.T. infrastructure. SharePoint is no exception. Read more.

Is 2.0 Affecting My Industry?

Yes! Check out the examples below of Web 2.0's impact on various industries and fields.

Finance/Banking

Google is announced that after more than a year of work on the problem, Google Finance is now offering real-time price quotes for any stock traded on NASDAQ. Read more.

Strands, the recommendation and lifestreaming service we've written about here before, announced a much anticipated deal that will put it in the driver's seat for financial recommendations served up to millions of online banking customers around the world. The company's recommendation test-case in music is no longer all they will be known for around the world. Read more.

We reported on a survey that revealed that 48% of online banking customers between the ages of 18 and 34 would be interested in using "secure gadgets for personal banking" if their bank offered them. More than a quarter of bank customers would consider switching to another bank if it took better advantage of web 2.0 technologies. While that survey was flawed in some ways, there is another access point to banking information that customer may want more than secure widgets: mobile. Read more.

48% of Bank Customers Want Web 2.0 Gadgets. WorkLight, a startup that offers enterprise 2.0 products, recently did a survey among Facebook users to find out their willingness to use Web 2.0 tools for secure banking. The survey was conducted among 1000 Facebook users between the ages of 18-34. The fact that the survey was conducted among Facebook users gives it a bias towards tech-savvy people. However there are some surprising findings. Read more.

Accounting

Online Accounting: State of the Market: Accounting software for small business and personal use is increasingly moving from the desktop to online. However, compared to other office software, this transition to online has been relatively slow. Partly that's due to user reticence: writing a document online and sharing it with others (via Google Docs, Office Live, Zoho, or whatever you use) is one thing. Entering sensitive financial information into your browser is harder to adjust to. Read more.

Project Management

Add this one to your web office toolkit - LiquidPlanner is an online, hosted project management tool that lets you access and update projects anywhere you have an internet connection. The service offers you and your team a complete project environment, social networking and collaboration features, and a probabilistic scheduling engine which tells you the probability of completing each task - and ultimately the entire project - by a certain date. With everything organized into a centralized dashboard that can be customized for each team member, everyone on your team can stay focused on their tasks and how they relate to the project as a whole. Read more.

The Clarizen project management software came out of stealth mode last year and has now just launched a new version with additional features. The latest version, Clarizen v 2.0, will be demoed at the "Under the Radar Conference," an event held on Microsoft's campus whose current theme is "The Business of Web Apps: Where the Web Goes to Work." Read more.

Enterprise 2.0 is a rapidly growing trend that takes the concepts and tools of social media (social networking, RSS, wikis, blogs, etc.) and re-purposes them for business use, wrapping them up into applications that make the tools at work seem more like the tools we use in our day-to-day lives. While these enterprise 2.0 apps give us that web 2.0 feel, it's rarer to see actual Web 2.0 services like Facebook or Twitter used by businesses. And although we've seen many people promoting the business use of Twitter, we had not yet heard about anyone actually going so far as to integrate Twitter into a non-consumer focused application. However, that's just what Joint Contact has done. Their PM tool now shows how tweeting can actually be a productive activity. Read more.

37Signals offers a range of applications, from simple, single-function apps like Ta-Da Lists (to-do lists), Writeboard (collaborative word processor), and Campfire (group chat) to more complicated apps like Basecamp (project management) and Highrise (group contact manager). Read more.

Health

Health 2.0, web-based apps and services for the healthcare sector, is a nascent but potentially huge market for web 2.0. As of now, many of these apps have an emphasis on communication, information sharing and community. These are relatively easy things to address using Web tools. However we're starting to see health 2.0 apps try to tackle the enormous inefficiencies in the healthcare system - check out our description of Carol.com below. Also, in the longer term, we will see the Web being used in medical diagnosis and practice. Read more.

The Health 2.0 Conference is reviewed here and some of the health web apps that caught our eye as well as trends that are discussed. Read more.

Google announced the public availability of Google Health, after initially launching as a closed beta back in February. It is described as "a safe and secure way to collect, store, and manage [your] medical records and health information online" and is being positioned as a way for users to control their own medical records. Read more.

HR

Traditional resumes are boring. They become stale and out-of-date, they can't really showcase your work or achievements, and they end up just sitting in the bottom of someone's inbox. A paper resume, while professional, doesn't really let an employer get to know you. Many sites are trying to solve the problems of traditional resumes by providing job seekers a new way to stand out in the crowd. Read more.

The iPhone has been making headway in its battle to become a business-ready tool. Obviously, the addition of Microsoft Exchange support was a big step towards being considered a viable alternative to the traditional smartphones used at work, like Blackberry and Windows Mobile. However, beyond simply supporting enterprise email, the iPhone platform has a lot of potential to cater to the needs of its business users, too. Read more.

LinkedIn has an audience that is both younger (41 vs 48) and richer ($106k vs $98K). LinkedIn was also naturally crowing about their growth (189% for year ending Oct. '07) and the chart from Nielsen which shows comparative Facebook growth at 125%. Note that Facebook growth is from a higher base and the law of large numbers applies, but Facebook has always crowed about their growth rates vs the larger MySpace, so they have to live with growth rate comparisons to LinkedIn now. Read more.

Marketing

Viral marketing, user-generated content, online buzz: over the past few years, these terms have been representative of a new way of marketing to consumers that takes advantage of the current popularity of the social web. This new technique involves companies encouraging its customers to create content of their own in order to generate interest in the company's brand. Unfortunately, one of the potential side effects of this strategy is the potential for negative buzz. Despite this fact, a surprisingly low percentage of marketers are monitoring for negative responses. Read more.

Using the new pilot program from a company called Involver, Kiva launched a video campaign on Facebook to draw users to their site to lend directly to these developing nations. The video even features a button that appears at the end of the video encouraging you to "lend" money. Read more.

Mobile marketing startup, TextBound, has big plans to make text messages the new mass media for advertisers. Like we mentioned earlier, more and more companies are going to be betting on location based mobile ads this year, and TextBound hopes to capitalize on this trend. But unlike mobile social network/marketing vehicle, Fluc, TextBound isn't about connecting with your friends, it's about delivering ads to your cell phone via text message, then taking you to the mobile web for more details. Read more.

Recently, HiveLive announced a new partnership with Responsys, a marketing firm whose client list includes some big-name brands like Apple and Salesforce.com. Enterprise 2.0 is sure to follow. What Responsys offers their customers are on-demand email and marketing solutions that can be anything from web sites to email to mobile. With the new partnership with HiveLive, they can expand that offering to include enterprise social networks. Read more.

Widget platform Clearspring has an ad network that will allow widget publishers to monetize their widgets with advertising. The ads run inside widgets and come in a variety of formats. Clearspring has already inked deals with some of their largest widget publishers to run ads, including the NHL, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate Films, Blockbuster, and Virgin Mobile. Read more.

But given how fast things develop on the web, we thought we would revisit this topic again this year and look at some of the most useful Web 2.0 tools that have the potential to help students do better in school, collaborate with their fellow students, and save them time.

1) Evernote

Evernote is a great note taking application, but that only scratches the surface of what it can do. If you are in a lecture, for example, you can also take a picture of the blackboard with your phone, upload it to the Evernote server, and thanks to Evernote's clever OCR algorithms, even pictures of handwritten notes become instantly searchable.

You can also use it to bookmark web pages and write down your own lecture notes. Best of all, you can use a web app, a Windows or Mac desktop app, or a Windows Mobile and iPhone app, all of which seamlessly synch with each other, so that your notes are always up to date.

2) Google Notebook

The Google Notebook is one of Google's lesser know products, but, thanks to a very well designed Firefox extension, it's a great tool for when you do most of your work in a browser already. If you do some of your research in Google Books and Google Scholar, you can also easily clip excerpts from books and articles into your Google Notebook.

One additional nice feature is that you can invite collaborators to work on a notebook with you. If you are doing a research project in a group, for example, you can easily share your research with your whole group.

Online Office Suites

3) Google and 4) Zoho

Word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation apps are probably the single most often used tool among college students, and while none of the online offerings can yet beat Microsoft Office (which, for students, now only costs around $60 for the Ultimate Edition), the online office suites from Google and Zoho do have some distinct advantages. Office obviously has a lot more features, but not only are both Google Apps and Zoho free, they also allow easier sharing of documents and working on projects collaboratively.

And while the online tools to create presentations are still a bit crude compared to Powerpoint or Keynote, they are both worthy contenders, especially if you don't feel the need to add lots of fancy transitions to your presentations.

If we had to choose between Google's and Zoho's offering, our vote would probably go to Google, as the Google apps have a slightly more organized and professional feel to them, which, in the end, is going to make it easier to focus on the content of your documents.

Bibliography

5) Zotero

The standard tool for doing extensive bibliographies in academia is Endnote. While that is a great tool if you are writing a dissertation, Zotero is a great choice for less extensive research projects - and it's free. Zotero is a Firefox extension, so it is not technically a web app, but in its next version, the developers are promising the ability to synch your bibliographies to a web version of the tool, so that your books and notes will become available everywhere.

For now, Zotero lives in the status bar of Firefox, and it pops up a little icon in your URL bar every time it recognizes a compatible website. Zotero already supports the databases of a huge amount of libraries worldwide, as well as a lot of standard academic databases such as JSTOR, LexisNexis, InfoTrac, PubMed, or ScienceDirect. Besides curating your citations, you can also add notes, tag items, or add attachments (like pdf files of articles). Once you are done, Zotero will create a bibliography for you in most standard formats, including APA, MLA, or Chicago style.

6) EasyBib

If you just need to create a short bibliography, Zotero might be more than you need. EasyBib will just help you to quickly create a bibliography entry in MLA format - a favorite among literature teachers. It can also handle the APA format, but you will have to subscribe to the pro version of EasyBib.

If you really hate figuring out where to put a comma and where to put a semicolon in your APA style bibliography entries, those $7.99 a year for the pro version might just turn out to be a bargain.

Also, if you only need a quick bibliography entry for a book, check out OttoBib, where you just have to enter the ISBN number and it will give you a fully formatted citation.

Staying Organized

7) Google Calendar

There are lots of great online calendars out there, including 30 Boxes and Yahoo's calendar app, but our favorite is the Google Calendar, simply because it is dead easy to use, integrates nicely with GMail, allows for importing and exporting your calendar, and lets you publish a site with your free/busy information with the click of a button, so that your friends know not to bother you while you are cramming for that test.

8) Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk might just be the tool that will keep you on track. And to make things even easier, Remember the Milk also integrates nicely with Google Calendar, so you can manage everything in one place.

Picking the Right Class

9) Rate My Professors

As much as teachers don't like sites like these, Professor Performance and Rate my Professors can be useful tools when you decide which class you want to take. While almost every university makes you rate your professor at the end of the semester, schools never make this data public, so whenever you get a choice between professors, you really have no idea who the better teacher is. We like Rate My Professors a bit more than Professor Performance, simply because its search is a lot easier and the site is a bit more up-to-date. The site now also features a Facebook application.

Keeping in Touch

10) Meebo

As much as your teachers would like to think so, college isn't just about classes, papers, and long ours in the library. If you want to stay in touch with your friends no matter what computer you are on, Meebo is a great universal IM client that lives on the web. It supports, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk, as well as Meebo's own IM architecture.

What are we missing?

Are there other tools you use in school that we missed here? Let us know in the comments.

Flickr image by laffz4k.

One of the best things about using web apps is that you don't need to download updates, install new versions, or go buy a new boxed product every year or so. However, in Mint's case, the speed with which they innovate - they claim to implement customer-driven improvements every six weeks - meant their new features were being overlooked by their users. People who signed up to manage their bank accounts were often not aware that the site could help them manage their other accounts, too, since those features weren't offered at the time of initial registration. Calling attention to these features was the main goal of the site's redesign.

Today, the site launches with a new look and feel which brings the focus back to the major new features added to Mint since their launch: enhanced budgeting tools, the addition of brokerage and investment accounts, mortgage accounts, student loans, and auto loans. In addition, they've added six new "how to" guides that can help you with your major financial decisions. These include things like saving for retirement, paying off your student loans, buying a car, creating a personal budget, and more. The guides are the start of a new educational series for the site.

What It Looks Like

Below we have both the old version of Mint.com and the new version. Do you think the redesign is an improvement?

Before:

After:

Before (Features):

After (Features):

The New Mint: All Flash, No Substance?

For the happy U.S. customers who are able to use Mint.com, the redesign is sure to be appreciated as it really does give the site a fresh, new look and makes finding out about new features easier than before. However, Mint is still ignoring the needs of those customers who don't bank with large, national banking institutions. One of the most requested features is for Mint to allow for data uploads - that is, the importation of downloaded files be them in .QIF, .QFX, .QBO, or even .CSV or .TXT format. For those who chose to bank with smaller community banks or credit unions - a choice often made because of the typically lower fees that those institutions provide - Mint.com is not an option. That's a shame because if anyone is interested in using a service to save money, it could very well be these folks.

By keeping their niche so narrow so as to not include a good portion of the U.S. banking population, Mint.com is allowing its competitors, sites like Wesabe.com and Geezeo a big advantage. Today, both of those sites have FAQs that state "if your bank isn't available, let us know and we'll add it!" They also both support data upload. Meanwhile, Mint's FAQ, hidden away on their forums, reads "...we are adding new banks as quickly as we can," and "Mint currently doesn't support features that would allow customers to import data from another source (Quicken, Excel, etc.). We're looking to see if we can provide support for these down the road."

We hope that since Mint.com has a fresh new look now, they will focus on offering their Webby-award winning services to more people now, too.

When you're looking for color schemes, a quick Google search will lead you to a number of resources - in fact, there are so many it's almost too much. The problem with a lot of the apps you find today is that they are simply tools to provide you with the numbers of the web colors. While these are useful for designers who already have colors in mind, they're less using for those of us that are, let's say, design-challenged. What we need instead are apps that can provide color schemes for us so we can pick ones we like or apps that let us find our own sources of inspiration - like Flickr photos - and use those as the basis of our palette. To that end, here are five of the apps we find inspiring, but we're looking forward to hearing about your favorites in the comments, too.

Kuler

Kuler is an Adobe Labs color palette generator and explorer. You can use the Flash-based app to either create your own color scheme by setting your own hex values or you can search through, rate, and tag, and comment on the schemes that have already been created by others. All the color schemes can then be downloaded in the Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ASE) format which works with any of Adobe's Creative Suite applications.

Color Hunter

Color Hunter is a color palette generator that uses flickr photos to create a palette. To find color palettes on Color Hunter, enter a search term in the box at the top of the page. You can search by tag or hex color code or the image URL from flickr's web site. If you have an image of your on saved on your computer, you can upload it and get a color palette generated based on the colors in the image. You can also use Color Hunter to search by tag.

Color Palette Generator

The Color Palette Generator located on DeGraeve.com is a simple tool that also lets you use a photo from the web as the inspiration. It's a bit more basic than Color Hunter, above, but sometimes that's just what you need. Just enter in the photo's URL from any place on the web and the generator will create a color scheme based on the photo.

ColorJack

ColorJack is an online generator that lets you hover over a color on the site's grid to see themes that use that color. You can select which format you want to see your color scheme in (hsv, rgb, or hex) and you can then export it to Illustrator, Photoshop, or ColorJack Studio. Other ColorJack tools include the Color Sphere and the Color Galaxy, which provide alternative UIs for generating color schemes. A Mac OSX widget is also available.

Daily Color Scheme

Daily Color Scheme is an "everyday color resource" that provides you with the color schemes used by other web sites like 9Rules, for example. Using those sites as inspiration, you can bookmark their schemes, download them in your preferred format, or import the schemes into your design program like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Topstyle.

The new tool providing this functionality is the latest version of the Outlook Connector public beta. This downloadable software works to sync Outlook's calendar with Windows Live Hotmail's Calendar with the Windows Live Calendar Beta. Such an integrated offering is a surprise considering that Microsoft is a company that's sometimes known for launching what are perceived as too-similar, parallel solutions (think FolderShare, SyncToy, SkyDrive, Mesh).

The previous version of this connector allowed you to sync email and contacts data between Outlook and Hotmail for free, but calendar sync required a subscription service. With this new version, however, calendar sync is now free and it includes the ability to work with Live Calendar beta. And because Live Calendar also supports calendar sharing, those shared calendars will sync back to Outlook, too.

For someone who uses an Outlook calendar at work, keeps a personal calendar in Hotmail, and perhaps has a shared family calendar in Live Calendar, this new sync tool will be incredibly useful. Whether you're online or offline, all your calendars are available from one place: Outlook.

The release of this connector is a great example of Microsoft's firm commitment to their S+S (Software + Services) architecture. They intend for software to be the hub for your activities with web services available as an additional layer. S+S combines the power of the internet with the richness that is still, as of today, found mostly in desktop software (although web software is quickly closing that gap). This is an entirely different mindset than what Google and other web companies are offering - in fact, it's just the opposite. Google Calendar, for example, will be implementing Google Gears which is software that makes a web app available offline and then syncs your changes when you connect to the internet again. The battle between these two similar, but opposing, methodologies will play out over the coming months. The ReadWriteWeb audience of early adopters and web developers tends to think the winner will be web apps in the end, but the truth of the matter is that it's still too early in the game for either side to declare victory just yet.

Of course, the missing piece to the Microsoft solution is the fact that Outlook (or any) desktop software isn't necessarily available on every PC that you own. However, considering their new Live Mesh platform isn't designed to just handle file sync, but is designed to handle application sync too, it's easy to see what direction they're headed. Microsoft is still betting on software - they're just using the web as a tool which makes everything work together more seamlessly than it did before .

Do you think S+S is a viable solution for computing's future? Or do you think today's web apps should be focused on implementing offline sync? Or can these two opposing agendas co-exist? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Of course, we can't talk about the trend in open sourcing web apps without mentioning the big news about Reddit. Recently, the social news site decided to open up so that you can now build your own version of Reddit. The difference here is that Reddit is large enough to not be considered "niche" - it has 4.5 million unique visitors per month and has grown 1000% since the acquisition by Conde Nast's Wired Digital division.

However, when compared to competitors like Digg and Yahoo Buzz, it's clear that Reddit is the underdog here. If anything, the decision to go open source was a move to compete in a way that Digg and Yahoo cannot. When speaking as to what they hope to accomplish by the move to open source, co-founder Steve Huffman said that they're hoping users will tweak what they want changed and add new features. The beauty in this is that even if users develop new features, they can't necessarily be used to go and build a competitor to Reddit - because the code is open source, Reddit could just implement those features themselves.

Small Apps Open Up

While open source might be a good thing for a community the size of Reddit, there's still concern that when smaller web apps go this way, it means the development cycle is going to slow down.

Take for example, Enso, an app which provides an alternative way to interact with your computer, similar to what Launchy offers. In March of this year, this niche app also went the open source route via the revised BSD license. In this case, the move was most likely due to the fact that the Mozilla Foundation hired away three of the principals from Humanized, the company behind both Enso and Songza. But immediately upon the announcement of the move, there was concern echoing in the comments of the blog post:

Will the Humanized folks still be leading the charge on Enso? or are leaving it adrift?

and another pleaded...

Humanized, please don't leave Enso adrift.

As to whether Enso has indeed been set adrift...well, no one from the Humanized team ever responded in the comments section and the Humanized blog is now promoting Mozilla. A May 6th entry even let everyone know Mozilla was hiring and provided an email address to apply. In addition, four other of the May blog posts were about Firefox.

When it comes to FFtoGo, though, creator Golub assured me on Twitter that he's still developing the app, but he hopes others will start sending him patches soon. (We hope so, too!) Snackr also is currently going strong, but they only went open source on June 5th. Still, they've already posted a couple of test builds on Google Code, which implement new features like the ability to star new items, change ticker transparency, customize how old the items displayed can be, and more.

Even Bigger Apps Can Lose Momentum

However, the concern for the lack of development isn't entirely unfounded. Take for example, another open sourced app, this one from Socialtext, maker business social software. In July of 2006, they released Socialtext Open, an open source version of their wiki software. But it's a good thing they didn't stop development of their own because, by the looks of it, Socialtext Open has only had one patch in 2 years:

Excited or Worried?

Those are just a handful of examples of apps going open source, but there are many more. Of course, this isn't to ignore the fact that Sourceforge does quite well, it's just to raise the question - does open sourcing a niche web app really encourage more development? When the community is so small, if the creator doesn't continue to work on the app, how does the app really fare? And has a favorite app of yours ever been abandoned?

Our beloved Twitter now has a chicklet for users to display the number of followers on their blog using TwitterCounter. TwitterCounter displays your stats just like FeedBurner and allows you to see your growth (or loss) over the a period of time.

Plurk

Plurk, the underdog that no one's quite sure about yet, also has a follower counter. However, those who are using Plurk and sport hard earned high karma stats can now wave that work around too with a Plurk karma counter that comes in 3 flavors.

ReadBurner

Google Reader is one of the most popular feed readers out there. One of the best features of Google Reader happens to be the "Shared Items" feature. Sites like ReadBurner and RSSmeme aggregate these shared items and from the looks of these sites, there's a ton of sharing going on. ReadBurner offers chicklets for just about every page on the site. Keep up with the number of items shared for an author, source, or a user. Just head to any of the aforementioned pages and you'll see a chicklet ready for the taking in the top right corner.

Share Your Popularity

There you have it. These are three of the most popular chicklets out next to the FeedBurner chicklet, which we already sport here on ReadWriteWeb. The point of showing them off is not only for narcissistic purposes, but in a way, they can help to make your authority known. You can share your growth with your community and they in turn will be just as happy as you to help your numbers to grow. So we'd like to ask you, what chicklets are you showing off on your blog