My Top 10 Web Tools

This will be one of my final posts for 2007 so in keeping with the top 10 lists from the year, here is my own top 10 list. These are the top 10 web tools I have found make my online life and work much better. If you aren't familiar with some of these I wholeheartedly recommend you check them out...and in case you were wondering, each one is free for use.

1. Gmail - Without a doubt this is my number one web tool. It's the hub of my online existence.
2. Del.icio.us - I love this site. It's my primary source for bookmarking websites. My page is at Del.icio.us/fourthbill.
3. Twitter - This is becoming a new favorite. Twitter is a microblogging tool that's one part messaging system, one part social network, and one part addictive. I'm finding it a great additional outlet to this blog and a new way to discover emerging ideas and connect with new people of similar interests. You can find me at Twitter.com/billseaver.
4. TinyURL - Once I got hooked on Twitter I found this to be an invaluable tool for referencing links and keeping my character count below the maximum.
5. Google Docs - If I ever have to collaborate with people on docs or spreadsheets this is my go-to resource.
6. Google Reader - I've only switched over to Google Reader in the last few months. I used to read my feeds with Sage but I'm really liking Google Reader and have made the full conversion.
7. Ping-o-Matic - Every time I write a blog post I ping a number of different services just to let them know it's out there. Ping-o-Matic makes that possible in mere seconds and that's why I like it.
8. Feedburner - Feedburner continues to emerge as a necessary tool for me. I use it to track both my feed stats and site visitors but it had me at hello with the blog post email feature that lets readers get these posts via email rather than coming to the blog or subscribing with an RSS feed reader. I think I can personally account for fifteen bloggers using Feedburner for that feature alone.
9. Facebook - Facebook has been my social network of choice most of this year and it's allowed me to connect with people that MySpace never did. Not sure why, but it did.
10. Picnik - Picnik is still one of my favorite websites. It's photo editing made easy and was actually integrated with Flickr recently as well. That's a double dose of goodness.

BONUS: Firefox - None of the above sites would be nearly as enjoyable and useful to me without my browser, Firefox. If you don't use it, quit using Explorer or Safari and get on the Firefox bus. It really is as good as everyone says. Now go download it.

Gmail Chat releases group chat feature

I'm logged into my Gmail all day long and love Gmail chat built into it. I've wished on several occasions that a group chat feature was available to have a discussion with more than one person at a time. I saw today that group chat is now available. Now we're talking!

Great iGoogle Gadget: Outlook Integration

Like many people I use Outlook professionally and Gmail personally. For those of us who have adopted Gmail and the full service of Google applications, we long for more integration between our various email accounts and calendars. I know one person who goes so far as to double up her professional calendar on Lotus Notes with her personal Google calendar. I'm personally not willing to do that much double work so when I heard about the Outlook gadget for iGoogle I knew I had to check it out.

Basically, this gadget (not to be confused with a "widget" which is the same thing though Apple has cornered the verbiage on that word so companies like Microsoft and Google have adopted "gadget" to say the same thing) brings your Outlook email, calendar, tasks, and contacts right into your iGoogle page. It's really pretty handy. If there's any drawback to this gadget it's that you have to open the tab in Internet Explorer if you're a Firefox user. The instructions give you a step by step process for how to do that and it's easily done in about two minutes.

I've been using this gadget for a week now and have been happy with it for the most part. If there's anything I dislike most it's just the fact that I have a tab in Explorer and anything I click within iGoogle now opens up as a new Explorer tab. It's not a big deal most of the time but I use the Del.icio.us extension in Firefox and it's not compatible with the Explorer tabs. Like I said, it's not usually a big deal but it has been a speed bump a couple of times. All in all, the benefits have outweighed the drawbacks so I plan to stick with it.

[HT to Ray for the link with other great iGoogle gadgets.]

Reconsidering MySpace

For over a year now I've been a vocal advocate for all forms of new media. One of those areas I've advocated and written about on numerous occasions are social networking websites and MySpace in particular. The benefits of social networking sites are numerous. You can connect with people you wouldn't otherwise know and cultivate opportunities for ministry with those relationships. The downside, however, is that MySpace appears to be increasingly filled with provocative ads that, quite frankly, I don't need to see.

When I set up my MySpace account over a year ago I remember thinking that some of the ads were on the edge but didn't seem much beyond what you would find on television at any given time. Since then, however, MySpace ads have gotten worse. Some of the new ads are videos of women essentially calling out to you to click on their ad to visit the site they're promoting...which is usually a singles site.

Last week I recommended one of our clients change course from creating a MySpace ad for the first time. The client had been prepared to build a MySpace page based on a my recommendation several months ago but given my new concerns for the site I suggested they use some alternative social networking websites. They agreed and may actually go a step further by taking down existing MySpace pages they have.

I've said in the past that MySpace is a good ministry opportunity and I still believe there is a lot of ministry potential. Where there are people who don't know Christ, there are opportunities for ministry. Unfortunately, the purity hurdles that a Christian man will have to cross to begin to engage that community within MySpace are higher than I'm prepared to go. I don't know how to reconcile the spiritual needs within MySpace and my personal desire for purity so for now my solution to this problem is to leave MySpace.

A few years ago I switched from Hotmail in favor of Gmail for similar reasons and I've never looked back. If MySpace didn't target men with sexually provocative ads and could curb the regular solicitations from women who want me to check out their webcams I might come back to it but for now (and maybe forever) I'm leaving MySpace. I'm not going to shut down my account, but I'm not going to be active within it either. I'm moving my social networking completely over to Facebook and LinkedIn. You can find me there. If MySpace makes significant changes I may be back, but in the mean time it will have to be your space. It's not my space anymore.

Switching to a personalized desktop - my dashboard for life

I've been a Firefox user for about two years now and I love it. I can't even remember what it was like to use MSN's Explorer browser. The default homepage for Firefox is a modified version of the Google homepage and that was all I ever really needed but a while back I got to messing around with Google's personalized homepage to see if I would like it. I didn't. Actually, it wasn't that I didn't like it, I just didn't know if I needed it. I was interested to know how Google's personalized homepage compared to some of the competitors in that market so I also looked at Netvibes and Pageflakes but none of these really seemed to be of significant value to me either for the same reasons. There was anything wrong with any of them, I just wasn't ready to use them. Now, however, things have changed.

In an effort to continue to consolidate information as much as possible I'm officially a Google personalized homepage user and am really liking it. I've got my Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Notebook, Google Reader (do you see a trend here?), and weather widgets all arranged on the page just like I want it. I've got a few other widgets there too like a Wikipedia search bar and a Bible verse of the day. I've created a tab with all the "news" stuff I'm interested in from numerous outlets so I can just jump over there and see the top stories from those areas.

With all the information we have available to us today the issue is no longer content, but filters and context (I got that from The Long Tail). A personalized homepage is serving to be a great filter for me to see a lot of information in a short amount of time with very little effort once it's all set up.

If you find yourself visiting the same blogs and news outlets on a daily basis you might want to do yourself a favor and roll it all up into one location with a personalized page. Since it's a web application so you can have it both at home and the office too. What else could you ask for?

Friends Don't Let Friends Place Banner Ads

I had a tough conversation recently. It was tough because I had to let a client make the wrong decision. In fact, I told them it was the wrong decision, and I was tactful, but they got the message. After my gentle protest and suggestion for taking another approach I was met with a resounding gong of silence (insert cricket sounds here) and it was then that I knew they were going to do it anyway. What is it? IT was banner ads.

The goal this client came to us with was to drive more traffic to their website but they already had decided they wanted to try to accomplish this with banner ads on a particular website they selected. After a few minutes of listening to them I just had to tell them that it isn't generally a good idea and that there are better (and much cheaper) ways to go about it. As I mentioned above they wanted to do it anyway...and so they are...but here's where we're really going to test this...

In addition to the banner ads we're going to put some video for this company's same product on YouTube. We'll be able to track the number of views and links from both areas and see what happens. I don't quite know what they're going to pay for a month of banner ads...but I know what they're going to pay for the YouTube video...$0.00. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I'll admit, I've got an issue with banner ads. I rank them right up there with the people who sell email lists that are usually just spam. Banner ads are the very reason I was interested in switching from Hotmail to Gmail a year or so ago (Gmail only has text ads). Banner ads just don't work most of the time. They're not a wise expense. An effective banner ad would have to be highly targeted on a very specific kind of site to even have a chance. For instance if Apple had a banner ad for an iPod accessory they're going to have a good chance of getting some attention for the ad, but even then most people still ignore them. By and large banner ads are ignored and with all the effective (and free) web 2.0 options today like blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, video blogs, Wikipedia, etc. there are much better ways to go. Needless to say I'm excited to see how this little experiment turns out! In the end I expect the score to be: Banner ads - 0, Web - 2.0.