The new 100 most useful sites
英国卫报刊登的100个最有用的网站，原文如下：
Two
years ago most Britons didn’t have broadband and Web 2.0 was barely a
twinkle in a developer’s eye. Things have changed – as our cream of the
crop for 2006 shows
Thursday December 21, 2006
The Guardian
2004, the internet was a different place: there was, for example, no
YouTube, and most Britons online didn’t have broadband. That’s changed
dramatically: now, more than 75% of users have broadband, and the
arrival of Web 2.0 has brought sites where the interaction is as fast
as if it were on your machine. So we’ve revisited the "cream of the
crop" that we brought you two years ago.
Some of the crop is brand
new; some has stood the test of time. As before, we have 100 sites in
20 categories. That of course means that your favourite might not be
here (even if you suggested it on our blog). Email us with your
suggestions for the ones we should have included.
Many of the categories here are new since the last crop. Many of the sites from that time still exist, of course – and are still hugely useful.
One category that’s missing is mobiles, where data speeds haven’t kept up with broadband. Maybe in 2007?
Contributors: Charles Arthur, Kate Bulkley, Michael Cross, Bobbie Johnson, Vic Keegan, Jack Schofield, Keith Stuart
Applications
Why
have an application to run in your browser? Because for tasks shared
between people at different locations, it makes sense to access
password-protected sets of work. 37signals offers Backpack (note the
domain is backpackit) for simple tasks and the bigger Basecamp for
grown-up projects. Tadalist is simpler, being just to-dos (but isn’t
that what it’s about?), while Google’s Documents & Spreadsheets
requires a Google account (they’re free) and doesn’t try to compete
with Microsoft Office. Wikicalc is a free online spreadsheet, and
developing smartly.
Blogs: reading
There
are millions of blogs out there; you need to pick the best. Step
forward RSS (aka web feeds) and blog search engines to simplify things.
Technorati is occasionally flaky, but generally a reliable indicator of
what’s being blogged about. Icerocket runs it close. And you’ll need an
online aggregator to keep abreast of the feeds you’re most interested
in: Newsgator and Google Reader are good choices. Bloglines is an
excellent alternative feed reader.
Blogs: writing
To
do it rather than read it, you need a good set of tools. The
open-source and free software project WordPress has risen to
prominence, elbowing aside many rivals with its blog creation,
management and (importantly) spam-beating tools. WordPress.org is the
free software; wordpress.com offers paid-for, managed versions of the
free package. Blogger is the best of the rest; Vox is neat, easy and
free, and plugs into lots of social applications. Statcounter counts,
well, statistics for your site; the free Google Analytics (if you can
get an account) is good too.
Google’s
Gmail has become the web-based email system of choice for those who can
get access. Its main drawback is that it’s still an invitation-only
system in the UK. However, Yahoo’s free email service is a decent
competitor, and Microsoft has Live Mail. Unlike Microsoft’s old Hotmail
service, none will delete all your old emails if you fail to log on
every 30 days. Among the dozens of free alternatives, Bluebottle is a
decent option for its focus on spam filtering. The free version offers
250MB of storage and supports the POP3 and SMTP standards, so you can
use a proper email program as well as web access. There’s also
TempInbox, which provides free, temporary, throwaway email accounts
with no registration.
Gaming
There
are far too many videogame news sites on the internet today; you need
an aggregator like Gametab to filter through to the best. Pocketgamer
specialises in handheld games, while Gamasutra is absolutely
unmissable. Gamesfaqs has FAQs and walkthroughs (plus cheats, reviews
and previews) for loads of games. And the ESRB lets you search by age
rating.
Maps
Maps
matter, but once you’re past Google’s maps and satellite detail,
everyone’s thrown back on the Ordnance Survey’s data, which means
there’s little to choose between them. Ordnance Survey has improved its
site, and can at least now tell you which map to buy for an area; its
placename search is nifty. Meanwhile, the New Popular Edition site
shows how the country looked in the 1940s. Delightful.
News: mainstream
The
BBC marches on, adding more media forms while also letting users add
their comments. The New York Times site is vast (though it has shut off
some of its content behind a "paywall"). Both sites’ (short) RSS feeds
can be read on a mobile at bbcriver.com and nytimesriver.com. Google
News extends its reach, though the top headline is still whichever site
last updated rather than the one which is most accurate. Nowpublic is a
US rival to OhMyNews and claims 52,000 (and counting) "mojos" – amateur
journalists with mobile phones whose location can be figured out from
GPS or phone triangulation.
News: recommendation
One
thing that Web 2.0 is really good at is letting lots of people vote on
things. It can be (and is) abused, but generally the system works.
That’s seen the rise of sites which let people vote stories up, or
which news stories (and how) bloggers are talking about (at
memoerandum).The biggest is Digg, which overtook Slashdot earlier this
year. Reddit was recently bought by Wired magazine. Findory is slightly
different, learning what you like the more you use it.
Offbeat
Snopes
checks out unbelievable tales, scams and urban legends and debunks (or
confirms) them. Slightly less useful is the 100-strong webring of
Unusual Museums of the Internet. These include the Virtual Toilet Paper
Museum, the Old Calculators Web Museum and Signalfan’s museum of
traffic control signals. You can find links to lots of other offbeat
sites via the Weird Site’s Other Weird Links page. The Onion is the
web’s leading satire magazine, though with an American bias. Otherwise,
for five minutes of fun, try browsing B3ta. This UK site sends out a
weekly newsletter of cool links and runs a message board where people
post amusingly manipulated pictures. But be warned: it’s often
offensive – that’s part of the point – and most definitely rated NSFW
(Not Safe For Work).
Politics
The
MySociety team remains unbeatable for turning Hansard inside out with
Theyworkforyou and Publicwhip, but bloggers have begun to expose the
unwritten workings of politicians to greater public scrutiny too. Guido
Fawkes’ blog has the inside gossip from Westminster, while NO2ID
agitates on arguably the most important political and technological
issue around, while NHS 23 is a wiki outlining the problems with the
political, technological and medical drama of the NHS computer- isation
programme.
Public action
Now,
it’s time to bug someone in power. The idea that the web can make a
difference is growing; politicians are on the web and there’s an online
petition site at No.10. Pledgebank and HearfromyourMP are both part of
the excellent MySociety (mysociety.org)
family of sites enabling citizens to connect to decision-makers – and,
one would hope, vice versa. Netaction includes The Virtual Activist, a
manual for anyone looking to build and promote a cause online. Those
interested in helping out in their area might try Timebank, which finds
organisations to which to donate spare time.
Radio
Radio
now travels over wires, at least to our homes. The BBC dominates here,
but there are thousands of stations to choose from. AOL’s Shoutcast is
interesting: find whatever’s on right now (you can tune in via iTunes
or any internet radio-enabled player.) Radio-locator and Live-radio
list broadcasters worldwide, so you can find something new to listen
to. Reciva does the same, but if you buy its internet radio you can add
your own favourites online and they show on the gadget; or just listen
online.
Recommendation: music
Another
new category: being able to find stuff that’s similar to music you like
is increasingly important, both to listeners and to record companies
trying to profit from niches. Last.fm requires an application that runs
on your machine, and shows what other people with the same music like.
Pandora says you need a US postcode; so give it one, then enjoy its
expert-chosen stations. Liveplasma can search relationships in films as
well as music. Tuneglue is a relatively new venture between last.fm and
EMI, using data from Amazon and last.fm. Goombah requires a small
download and only works on music in an iTunes library, but has been at
it for some time.
Reference
Wikipedia
now dominates the reference side of the web, partly because its pages
are ranked so highly in Google. User-written, it’s not always reliable,
but is usually a good place to start. It competes with the Encyclopedia
Britannica, which isn’t free. However, another traditional alternative
is the HighBeam Encyclopedia, which searches more than 57,000 articles
from the Columbia Encyclopedia. Otherwise Jim Martindale’s Reference
Desk, started in 1994, provides an astonishing collection of links to
reference sources. For words, try Onelook, which indexes more than 7.5m
words in 931 dictionaries. It also has a reverse lookup to find words
from their meanings. Finally, Teldir (on the infobel site) has links to
the world’s online phone books.
Science
Alphagalileo
gives a view of public-facing science in Europe and is a counterpart to
eurekalert, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s
press announcements forum. Space.com remains fascinating for all things
spacey. Nasa contains a wealth of information. The growing importance
of climate change makes the RealClimate blog written by climate change
scientists important.
Search
Google
continues to tighten its grip on our hunt for information (it now gets
half of all searches) but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best.
Search can now encompass your hard drive, blogs (a separate category –
see above), images, peer-to-peer and even what used to be out there.
Blinkx remains unique with its focus on video, while Ask (now without
Jeeves) has made great strides recently, though it only gets a tiny
portion of searches.
Social software
The
browser has grown up: now it’s the path to meeting people of similar
interests and creating your own personal space online in a shared area.
Social networks have become a cliche, but that hasn’t stopped MySpace
becoming the biggest site online. Bebo is popular, Habbo is more tuned
to the kids, while Friendster and LinkedIn will appeal to the older
user.
Video
The
crowds are all over at YouTube, the poster child of online video (a
category too niche to merit mention two years ago; YouTube was founded
in February 2005). But it’s not the only place to find video. Revver
offers a revenue-sharing system (people pay to watch your video, you
get some cash). You can also start your own TV station at brightcove
and currenttv. And Videojug has demonstrations of how to do lots of
possibly useful tasks.
Virtual worlds
The
key distinction from social sites like MySpace is that virtual worlds
give you an avatar – your representation of yourself in the online
world. The advent of broadband allied to faster machines has made them
usable. When the BBC held a concert in Second Life, it seemed like an
anomaly; then IBM’s chief executive got an avatar, and suddenly
everyone’s there. Habbo Hotel is booming with teens. World of Warcraft
has millions of users; Everquest, its own culture. Or you can play the
Sims online. Whether an influx of new users will make these worlds more
antisocial remains open.
eqplayers.station.sony.com/index.vm
Zeitgeist
It’s
what everyone’s talking about. Some of these sites appear above because
they’re the places to go to find out whatthe webworld is thinking.
Watch them whizz by, but don’t forget to breathe. YouTube is the moving
picture of the web; Flickr the static one. Google Trends shows what the
world’s looking for; Digg, what it’s found. And Technorati shows what
it’s writing about. youtube.com flickr.com google.com/trends digg.com
technorati.com
Readers’ suggestions
VideoJug (videojug.com). Videos on how to do everyday stuff such as tying a tie etc. (HiddenAway)
Slideshare (slideshare.net) . For sharing presentations; Best Tech Videos (bestechvideos.com). Very techie tutorial videos;
TechXtra (techxtra.ac.uk). Has a long enough ‘tail’ to answer real queries. (RoddyM)
Online apps and desktops: Zoho (zoho.com)
; Cosmopod (cosmopod.com); eyeOS (eyeos.org). Online video editing: jumpcut.com. (hakluytbean)
Reevoo (reevoo.com)
is a very handy site for people looking for honest feedback on
products, as it only publishes reviews known to come from customers.
(TechMonkey)
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