These days, you probably use a lot of online applications without even realising. And soon, the promise of ALL your applications being served online will be a reality. Some people already work in this fashion.
With todays high-speed internet connections your PC is almost nothing but a terminal to the Internet.
Here’s a list of most of the sites I use daily. You’ll see Google features in the first few - I’m not sure it’s wise to trust everything to one company, but I don’t think Google is going anywhere soon - and they seem trustworthy enough. Google have built up a lot of goodwill over the years.
I will follow up with the applications I use daily another time.
Google: Gmail
Perhaps the best of the web-based mail services today. Gmail offers immense space, speed, and ease of use. Many forward *all* their e-mails to Google’s service and use tags to seperate individual inboxes.
Here’s an excellent tip I discovered recently to help you control your mail. Simply append a “+” to your Gmail address to create infinite mailboxes. For example, yourname+ezine@gmail.com or yourname+contact@gmail.com
Google: Reader
Google’s RSS reader service is a quick and simple way to keep on top of your feeds. Reader allows you to subscribe to feeds and view them with ease. In fact, if you are logged in to Google and select a feed, instead of displaying it Google will prompt you to add it to your Reader account or your homepage.
Google: Homepage
Once the domain of services like Yahoo and Netvibes a customisable homepage is today a great time-saver. I like Google’s flexibility, you can add a lot of great content, RSS feeds, and more to your homepage.
With a well designed homepage you can control your e-mails, read your feeds, store your bookmarks and much more in one place - independent of which computer you are using at the time.
Google: Feedburner
Google’s main interest in Feedburner seems to be the fact that it offers another place that they can place AdSense/AdWords ads. However, also with the Google takeover some previous “pro” Feedburner features are now free.
Feedburner helps you rank your feeds, check them, make them compatible, promote them, and much more. You can even, with a plugin, automatically serve your feeds via feedburner from your usual domain via a clever redirect.
Check http://www.netpreneurnow.com/wordpress/feed to see what I mean…
Google: Analytics
I’ve only recently started to use this but it’s a must for some important stats about your traffic and your visitors. By adding a line of code to your web pages Google will track literally everything for you. You can even set conversion goals and tweak your content to see how it pans out.
PayPal
This payment site has had it’s own fair share of controversy in the past, but the fact remains nothing beats it as a secure, quickfire way to accept payments. Your Paypal account can accept credit cards, cheques, bank deposits and more and it allows you easy access to withdraw those funds to your regular bank account.
The refund process is debatable: if a buyer simply decides they want their money back, they usually can. The fees can be pretty high, and some countries are excluded altogether, but Paypal is still my favourite way to accept cash.
Wordpress
My own Wordpress installation is another site I use regularly. Whether it’s writing posts, deleting spam, changing the look/layout, or adding features Wordpress’s control panel is a joy to use and very easy to pick up. Unlike “full” content management systems such as Joomla you can literally jump right in and start publishing immediately.
Arp3
My autoresponder of choice is another easy to use system. Once installed, you can create autoresponders, manage subscribers, broadcast messages, create tracking links and much more with ease.
Running your own autoresponder has it’s own pros and cons - most notably email delivery can be less than a third-party solution that has agreements with the major e-mail account companies. However, I’m more than happy with this and will continue to use it in the foreseeable future.
Webhost Control Panel
My current host of choice is Westhost, and whenever I need to create e-mail accounts, add domains, troubleshoot problems, or install a script it’s pretty simple from their panel. Previously I’ve used hosts that had Cpanel - and I think I probably prefer that - but Westhosts system is more than up to the job.
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporations website is a daily visit for me to catch up on the news. Even though I’m UK based and this is a UK company there’s also an international option for unbiased world news.
The site itself is a behemoth with an amazing variety of content, mostly linked to the TV shows. Because the BBC is publicly funded by the controversial “TV Licence” it can outclass privately created websites, something that is a sore point in the UK.
Stumbleupon
If I’m bored I hit that Stumble button in my toolbar. Stumbleupon is fun to use, but also has it’s serious side. It tends to give you results that popular and useful, so if - for example - you want to look for Internet Marketing sites just enter that term in it’s search box and stumble through those.
Digg
Digg is useful to see what’s popular on the web. I don’t use it as much as Stumbleupon, and it does seem to be heavily biased to US political news and subjects such as freedom of speech, but it’s still an important indication of the popular sites of the moment.
Online Banking
I do all my banking online, and most banks these days have a full online presence where you can perform all banking tasks from the comfort of your own home. Apart from cold cash, which you need to visit the bank or ATM for, you can do everything else from your PC.
Wikipedia
Want to research something? Wikipedia is usually the first port of call. Again, it can be a controversial site and it’s results can be biased but in the main it contains solid information on every subject under the sun. For fun, use stumbleupon to stumble through the Wikipedia channel - you’ll be amazed at the breadth of subjects people have written about!
What are your favourite sites?
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