TechMiso

The web is littered with service after service, each only a mere few keystrokes away. There is just about any service to fulfill any need – you name it, it’s been done by someone, somewhere. While there are a host of so-called “mainstream” sites, there are also a plethora of “underground” sites which not too many people are aware exist.

As I see it, the hardest problem with all the web services offered today is attempting to differentiate between what is valuable and invaluable. What is considered useful is obviously dependent upon each individual, but there is still a baseline of sorts. The quality services are spread virally, through word-of-mouth campaigns and user advocates. How else do we find out about new and exiting services?

It is with this framework in mind that I would like to take this time to address the various web sites and services I find beneficial – the following are the sites I use almost every day to fulfill a particular need or desire. After reading the article, I implore all readers to post comments about your favorite services, in the hopes that someone may learn about a new service they had not previously known.

I use a number of very much mainstream services as well as a few certain, relatively obscure services. Although I plan to cover both, it is the somewhat obscure services which I expect to be the most interesting to everyone – at least interesting in the context that you are now aware of these services and may consider them useful to a certain degree.

Daily Productivity

The easiest set of services to explain are what I would consider my “productivity suite” of sorts. As I mentioned previously, I am a Google addict. My life centers around Google and the various products they offer. With that said, I live and die by Gmail. Every last drop of email I read and compose is all handled by Gmail – has been since Gmail was born and I snaked an invite. I promptly and decidedly migrated from a homegrown IMAP solution and a Yahoo! mail account and dove head first in to Gmail, never looking back since.

I not only use Gmail for email, but for the Gmail Contacts as well. Although my main workstation is a MacBook Pro, all my contacts are stored in Gmail. In addition to using Gmail these two ways, I also use it as a pseudo task-manager, sending myself task reminders via email.

Google Calendar is next – every last bit of scheduling I do is through Google Calendar. Whether a haircut appointment, a reminder to get cash from the bank or a business trip to Dallas, TX, I make extensive use of Google Calendar for all my calendaring needs. As far as I have found, the set of features and power offered by Google Calendar is not currently matched by any online offering.

Google Documents is my online document library. All the writing I do right here on TechMiso not only resides as a blog post here on-site, but also as a “word file” within Google Documents. Although I do not use anything outside of the word processor on Google Documents, I find the “office suite” to be way more than adequate for my needs – it fulfills the job quite nicely methinks!

Feed Reading

Gmail is to email as Google Reader is to feed reading. Every last drop of feed reading I do is within Google Reader. It has the best interface and set of features of any feed reader I have ever used – and I’ve used just about all of them! My favorite features are the method used to handle “river of news” view, whereby I can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through unread items, which are immediately marked as read as I view the item. Couple that feature with only presenting me with new, unread items, and I am able to breeze through the 300+ feeds I read each day.

When I am not reading feeds in Google Reader, I can probably be found reading through the various “feed imports” from my friends in Friendfeed. There is a host of valuable information to be gleaned from Friendfeed, not the least of which are the comments left by the community members. FF is a blast for both the posts and the conversation.

Twitter is another fun place to hang out. I use twitter quite a bit, mostly from my iPhone more than anything though. Tweetie is without question the best twitter client for the iPhone. Jaiku and Pownce were halfway decent twitter clones, but both are either dead or ignored. Plurk is a really trippy twitter clone, offering a nifty horizontal timeline approach to your posts.

Social Networking

Everyone should know about digg – if not, go check it out. Digg is like an extension of the basic idea of delicious but taken to a new level. A pretty decent amount of quality links come across digg, although I do find the signal-to-noise ration rather lopsided in favor of noise. It is still a valuable site to visit because of the community.

If you have never heard of Facebook then you should go slam your head against a concrete wall. I use the site to keep in touch with certain non-technical friends, family and old school mates from back in the dark ages when I attended high school. Facebook definitely has utility, mainly because of the sheer amount of users roaming its halls. Anyone is sure to find something valuable on Facebook.

If you are a music lover, you will find last.fm a fun place to visit. All the music I listen to, both on my MacBook Pro as well as my iPod, is “scrobbled” to last.fm. I do this because last.fm keeps a historical account of the music I scrobble and allows me to track my tastes over time. Additionally, the site can find other people with similar musical tastes to yours by analyzing your music trends, and potentially suggest music you might find worthwhile.

If you are looking to network for real jobs, LinkedIn seems to be the most professionally driven social networking site around. I have received a great deal of offers through LinkedIn and find it a beneficial resource for that reason alone.

Flickr is, without a doubt, my favorite place to upload photography. Outside of the exceptional social networking aspects of Flickr, the site offers the best set of photo-centric features ever to-be found. Unfortunately, Flickr is owned by Yahoo! and may disappear at any moment due to the extremely rocky nature of their business. I won’t let that stop me so I see no need for you to be alarmed – the chances of Yahoo! going completely under are quite small. If you want to share your photographs, Flickr is the place.

Miscellaneous

I recently discussed browser bookmarks and how they are essentially obsolete at this point. Since bookmarks are pointless, I have latched on to delicious to replace the “local” bookmarks paradigm. Whenever I desire to “bookmark” a page, I save it to delicious. Now, 99% of the bookmarks I add to delicious are available for the world to see, but occasionally I do use the service to store private bookmarks I do not want to share. This is what makes delicious so nice – you can opt out of sharing on a per bookmark basis!

To really enjoy the delicious experience, especially if you are a Firefox user, you have got to install the delicious bookmarks extension. It replaces your existing Firefox bookmarks with those from delicious, allows for simple bookmarking to delicious and more. Greatest. Plugin. Ever.

If you travel frequently you might find Dopplr a fun spot. Although I added an upcoming trip to Dallas, I am not so sure I can say I would ever begin to use Dopplr on a regular basis outside of trip-taking. The site is nice, has a decent set of travel-centric features, but outside of that I just do not see any every-day utility with Dopplr.

EasyNews is the absolute, hands down, best site for accessing newsgroups. Need I say more?

That about sums up the various web services I use daily. Even though there are days where I feel I have found the end of the internet twice, I am positive there is a horde of sites I have left out or overlooked. But that’s what makes the internet so fun – the possibilities are truly limitless!

What sites do you use daily? What are some obscure sites you may consider worthwhile even though you do not visit regularly? Please use the comments to open up the conversation so we can all learn about new and exciting services which we have never heard of before.

Lastly, before you head off to comment – TechMiso can be found on Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed. Why not be our friend or join the group?