Atlas Matters

Together with a few friends I’ve put together a list of really valuable web sites, applications and services. We were not able to rank order them (too many opinions and not enough time). But you can count on the fact that we really believe that the following could make your 2009 personally much easier, or have a positive impact on your business.  I didn’t sort by alphabetical order; there are some real nuggets at the bottom of the list… Take your time and check these out over the next few months. Feel free to share the list with others.

This list was collaboration of: Christian Gray, Joe Andrieu, Tony Winders, Mike Reid, Michael Lodge, William Hayes, Richard Weddle, Scott Lemon, Phil Windley and Ian Palmer.

TOP 10 as selected by the contributors (once again, in no particular order)

1. http://www.kiva.org – microloans, loans that change lives (cgray has personally contributed)
2. http://www.linkedin.com – professional social networking (free and premium) – best way to leverage your professional network
3. http://www.getfriday.com – virtual assistant, we first read about them in the book The World Is Flat
4. http://www.ning.com – start your own social network/project group today, very easy for non-techs
5. http://www.google.com/alerts + http://www.google.com/reader – stay on top of info in an automated fashion
6. http://www.zemanta.com – automatic links, associated photos, related articles and tags for your blog
7. http://www.zoho.com – Online apps for business.  Free for individuals.  Small fees for business.
8. http://www.twitter.com – if you don’t know about microblogging yet, it is time to find out – here is a quick read on the potential business value of using this tool http://blog.mrtweet.net/?p=69
9. http://www.tweetdeck.com – makes twitter easier to manage/use
10. http://www.helpareporter.com – get you quoted in news stories and position you as the expert

ALL THE OTHERS

http://www.qik.com – live video/audio streaming from your cell phone

http://www.getsatisfaction.com – hosted customer service solution

http://www.safaribooksonline.com – over 7,500 full text books and 1,500 hours of instructional video (FYI cgray has an interest)

http://www.copernic.com – desktop search (free and premium)

http://www.salesforce.com – sales force automation /CRM (premium)

http://www.plaxo.com – personal contact manager, automated upates, super de-duper and social graph feeds (free and premium)

http://www.hoovers.com – premium business information service

http://www.drupal.org – open source social network platform

http://www.twhirl.com – twitter enhanced user interface (free application)

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html – help schedule meetings in 4 time zones (free)

http://www.ning.com – build your own community/social network (free/premium)

http://www.skype.com - unified web  based messaging and VOIP

http://www.vonage.com – voice over internet ($25 unlimited US domestic calls and rich features)

http://www.tinyurl.com – makes long URLs short

http://www.lifehack.com – all the good short cuts for life

http://www.google.com – Still the best starting point for Search

http://www.trillian.cc – Multi-network IM client (AIM, Yahoo!, ICQ, IRC, Jabber…)

http://www.gotomeeting.com – super easy, cost effective online meetings

http://reader.google.com – RSS reader for staying on top of blogs

http://www.efax.com – simple, easy online fax service (incoming fax to email and vice-versa)

http://www.gotomypc.com – easy remote access to your desktop machine

http://www.facebook.com – social networking surprisingly useful way to stay in touch with friends

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove – easy distributed filesharing, workspacing

http://www.dreamstime.com – quality, low cost royalty-free images for anything (great for blogging and presentations)

https://www.highrise.com – project management

http://alltop.com – top news

http://www.joesgoals.com – goal tracking

https://www.getfriday.com/monthly.htm - virt help

http://www.zappos.com – best customer service

http://www.ethos3.com – best presentations

http://www.omegawave.com – physical workout recovery technology

http://search.twitter.com – search for all N on twitter

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp – video creation

http://www.PlanHQ.com – web 2.0 business plan/execution tool

http://www.BasecampHQ.com – web 2.0 project management

http://www.mrtweet.net – twitter “who to follow” recommendations

http://www.fliqz.com – video hosting

http://www.sharethis.com – sharing app for embedding within web UIs

http://www.pelotonics.com – Pelotonics is a better Basecamp than Basecamp!

http://www.magnatune.com – independent music site

http://www.pidgin.im – multi-protocol IM client

http://www.acunote.com – hosted Agile project management

http://www.mesh.com – cross-platform and hosted file synchronization

http://www.mozy.com – on-line backup

http://www.dialog.com/openaccess – and the invisible web (500 times the content on the web) to find citations to expensive, often peer reviewed, powerful content

http://www.google.com/alerts + http://www.google.com/reader – Google Alerts + Google Reader combination for automatic competitive intelligence gathering

http://www.FreeConferenceCall.com – collaboration

http://docs.google.com – collaboration

http://www.ThePoint.com – collaboration

http://www.WordPress.com – blogging

http://www.CauseCast.org – social networking for greater good

http://www.SocialVibe.com – social networking for greater good

http://www.Flickr.com – photo sharing and social networking

http://www.dotspots.com – user created content enhancing mainstream news

http://www.Mahalo.com – human powered search

http://www.magnify360.com – Online Advertising

http://www.valueclickmedia.com – Online Advertising (fyi twinders has an interest)

http://www.cj.com – Online Advertising (fyi twinders has an interest)

http://www.Gumiyo.com – mobility advertising

http://www.QuattroWireless.com – mobility advertising

http://www.itconversations.com – if you really want to find out what is happening in IT (fyi pwindley has an interest)

http://www.Zumbox.com – paperless mail sent online from street address to street address, no this isn’t email

http://www.newsforce.com – PR/News

http://www.snackr.net – creates an RSS ticker that pulls random items from your feeds and scrolls them on your deskstop

http://www.yammer.com – enterprise twitter with some collaboration hooks as well

http://www.TweetDeck.com desktop manager for twitter

http://www.Pukka.com – software to manage IT infrastructure (if you don’t know what that means, you don’t need it)

http://www.getdropbox.com – stroe, sync and share your files online

http://www.Zemanta.com – automatic links, associated photos, related articles and tags for your blog

http://www.Zentact.com – automatic agent that will identifies opportunities to reach out grow relationships

http://www.qik.com – live video/audio streaming from your cell phone

http://www.GetSatisfaction.com – hosted customer service solution

http://www.kiva.com – microloans – loans that change lives

http://monitter.com/ - Create 3 Twitter searches (e.g. your business, your CEO and your new product), this creates a feed.

http://280slides.com – Online presentation creation.   Share anywhere.  Better than Powerpoint (what isn’t).

http://twitterfeed.com – Snatches the rss from your blog and posts to twitter automatically.

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=wikipedia.org – Compare your website’s popularity to others

http://posterous.com – New twist on blogging, just email them and they post it

http://www.screensteps.com Really quick screenshot tutorials

http://www.varasoftware.com ScreenFlow – amazing screencast software

http://www.pandora.com Best internet music site

http://www.newsgator.com NetNewsWire and Newsgator Enterprise Server

http://www.twittercounter.com – ranks users and trends based on followers

http://www.blinksale.com – easiest way to send invoices online

Have a fantastic New Year!

If you are looking for more, see: http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html