Are you on Google+ by now? If not, head on over to our invitations post, and request an invitation. While Google+ puts Facebook to shame in many areas, one feature that it lacks is a tool to search users. You can hack together some attempts to search Google profiles, but that’s about it. At least one site is attempting to fill the void. Find People on Plus is a site geared towards- you guessed it- finding people on Google+.
The more I work on the computer, the more I realize that Google is probably right about the Cloud being our future. In fact, other than Photoshop and friends, the occasional game, and the desktop version of Evernote, I pretty much live in Web App Land. Outside of the obvious like Facebook, Twitter (plus related apps), and Gmail, there are approximately 30 web apps that I use or visit on a semi-regular basis — and that’s not including the Chrome extensions that are direct links to yet other web apps.
Here are the five that I use the most:
Okay, so I’m actually cheating a little bit and making my first web app a combination of three. If you’ve read 40Tech before, and especially if you’ve read me, you already know that these three apps are a huge part of my personal productivity system. I had to include them in my list, but I didn’t want them to take up more than half of it! Besides, all three are practically indispensable to me: Evernote for writing and quick ideas, Springpad for bookmarking and research, and Producteev for GTD task management and overall organization. I could do (and have done) all of those things with each one of those apps, but decided to play to their strengths and combine them for the best results.
This is another app I’ve covered before. Feedly is probably the best RSS/Google Reader client that I have ever used. The visual presentation of all of my feeds in a magazine format that learns what I like is utterly fantastic. I love it!
I don’t get a lot of time to watch TV or movies, but when I do sneak some in, I usually wind up on Netflix. The streaming movie and TV show catalogue is not nearly as well-stocked up here in Canada, but there is still a lot of great content, especially for $8/month.
Since Mint.com merged with Intuit and finally started offering its finance management awesome in Canada, it has lived in my browser. There’s still a lot of work I need to do with it to get the most out of the array of tools and resources it offers, but Mint is definitely a web app that is here to stay for me.
Dropbox is my main cloud storage service. I also use SugarSync, Box.net, iDrive Backup, MiMedia, and a few others, but Dropbox is the most developed — or at least the most supported by other services. I use it to backup files, to get them on to my iPhone and iPad easily, and to share files with friends, family, and business colleagues. That’s hard to beat.
There are, as I mentioned, a multitude of other apps that I use, and there are even a few that are threatening the hold of some of my current list. I’ll be reviewing those few soon, so stay tuned!
Now it’s your turn: what are your top five web apps?
Chrome’s Web Store houses all manner of apps — but they don’t have to be complex to be effective. Timer Tab is really nothing more than a simple countdown timer, alarm, and stopwatch built into a web page (accessible in any browser, including mobile Safari) — but the integration it enjoys with Google Chrome makes it incredibly useful. Time is a commodity that we’re all a little short on, and Timer Tab helps you manage it simply and easily.
The interface of Timer Tab is a minimalist’s dream. It’s uncluttered, functional, and oddly pretty as it basks in its own emptiness. The functionality speaks for itself: enter a time to count down, or an alarm time, and press the start button. The stopwatch doesn’t require any entry at all, just a press of the button, followed by a click on the pause/resume button as needed. Even the options are simple — there are only three, and you get to them by rolling the mouse over the the “more” link on the bottom of the page.
Timer Tab’s Chrome integrations allow for two important functions: desktop notifications and the flashing of the mini-version of the time that hangs out in the title area of the browser tab. This is a fantastic way to make sure your attention is brought to the alarm you set, and is especially helpful if you are trying to keep track of how much time you spend doing something on your computer, or to remind yourself to take a break. Notifications can be enabled or disabled with a single click in the options area, and if you want to, you can add a link to an image or a YouTube video as your alarm.
Theoretically, you should be able to add a YouTube video at a particular time index by adding something like &t=2m18s to the end of the link. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get that to work properly. If you have better luck, let me know!
Timer Tab is a simple, effective, and completely free/good looking way to keep track of time sensitivities when you are in the browser or just on the computer — which is often for so many of us these days. I recommend using it with any browser, but install it in Chrome to get the most out of it.
Timer Tab was created by Romuald Brillout, who also made Time Tab (a minimalist clock and calendar app), dooity.com (a light and simple list manager), and inboxn.com (a light hub for social communications).
What do you think of Timer Tab?
For some of our posts, we do like Lifehacker and other sites, finding articles about tech that interests us and then creating a summary post that links to the original article — replete with our own opinions, of course. :) One of my favourite sites is Web.AppStorm.net, which is part of the Envato network, and a great resource for web app reviews and articles. For this particular Web AppStorm-related summary post, I’m going to talk about Extragram, a fantastic web app interface for social photo-sharing service Instagram.
So why did I bother with that odd intro? Well, this time around, I have the pleasure of linking to none other than… well… me! My first article went live on Web AppStorm on Monday, and I didn’t want you guys to miss out. Read on for a summary of the sweetness that is Extragram!
If you’ve had the chance to use Instagram at all, you will have noticed that it is more than just another photo-app that has a few fancy filters. It not only makes your pictures look cool, it also has its own very Twitter-like social network. You can follow users’ photo-streams, they can follow yours, there’s commenting, conversation, @mentions, the whole deal. You can even share your photos on the big social networks and microblog sites. What you can’t do with Instagram is view or interact with your social account — or even your own photos — outside of your mobile device. That changed rather quickly once Instagram released its API in February.
Since then, there have been several web apps that have popped up with the sole purpose of creating a comparable, or even better user experience on a screen that doesn’t fit into the palm of your hand. Some other notables are Gramfeed, Instgre.at, and Webstagram, but for a slick and fully-featured user experience, the web app you want is Extragram.
Extragram stands out from the other web apps by doing two things: getting out of its own way, and adding extra features that compliment the Instagram experience.
The keyboard navigation is a nice touch, and works reasonably well — though it could be a bit tighter, overall. Other than that, Extragram is a great all ’round experience and the perfect compliment to Instagram. I highly recommend giving it a shot.
Check out my in-depth review here.
Some of my own Instagram Photos are here.
Get Extragram.
Get Instagram.
I’ll be writing for Web AppStorm fairly regularly over the next while, and am considering doing more summary posts here on 40Tech to make sure the readers here don’t miss out on the cool web apps I’ll be talking about. Before I commit to that, though, I would love some opinions from you about it. Let me know in the comments or send me a message via my contact form, Twitter, LinkedIn, or my personal site.
I hated this app. Not because it wasn’t fun, and not because there was something wrong with it — no, no, none of that. It was because it called to me in the middle of the night, squawking at me softly, compellingly; demanding that I play it over and over again until the wee hours before the dawn. Even now, as I write this, the little red bird that promotes the game’s evil is peeking at me with his sinister cartoony eyes, poking his head around the left-most edge of my Evernote window.
I couldn’t allow it. Angry Birds for Chrome messed with my productivity mojo — and this is why the Birds had to die.
I had been avoiding the game for months. I’ve got an iPhone — and an iPad too. I follow these things. I pay attention. I know exactly how addictive Angry Birds has been for people, so I avoided it like the productivity plague that it was (and is!). But all of that ended on one fateful day when I was trolling the Chrome Web Store for new and exciting apps.
It was late, you see, and I was tired. I had been working my butt off on some freelance projects — a website redesign plan, a proposal for social media marketing, some blog posts for a new productivity blog I’m working on (ironic, I know) — and I needed to blow off some steam. That’s how they get you, see? There’s that moment of weakness, and you see their ad — and suddenly you’re installing, clicking, and watching those poor little birds get their eggs stolen by those bastard green (but cute!) pig heads. Don’t question the logic of it — it’s freaking mesmerizing!
So I tried the first level. It was easy. Too easy, like all gateway drugs are. Just a little taste, you know? A taste for free.
Free? Ha! I spent the next few hours of my life firing bird after crazy, utterly enraged bird into green-pig-head strongholds. Dozens and dozens died for the cause — it was a bleeding massacre! But I took those little piggies down, man. I got ’em one after the other, after the other. I giggled maniacally as I toppled their houses around their green little piggy ears. I shook my fist and roared after them as they ran away again and again with the eggs of my allies — and I followed them determinedly into battle after glorious battle. Who cared that I had to get up in an hour? I was rocking this game! Physics was my bitch! I — damn, was that my wife’s alarm clock? WTF time was it anyway??
So you see… It wasn’t my fault! I had to do it. I had to go back to my Google Chrome start page. I had to open the Apps section — and I had to kill that app with a single brutal blow to the head. No mercy. Damned thing was f*#^ing up my schedule.
Have you killed any angry birds lately? Tell us your story in the comments.
