Tad’s Jan 2009 Digital Lifestyle Part 2
Here are the indispensable web apps for early 2009. It will be interesting to see how this list changes between now and 2010. Note: I’m not going to describe these services in detail - that’s what the links are for if you’re unfamiliar with any of the following.
FriendFeed is my primary destination and habitation on the internet. It is the pillar around which pretty much everything revolves for me on the web. Most of my internet friends have a presence on FriendFeed. I get almost all of my technology and web-related news via FriendFeed. If you’re not on FriendFeed then you’re well behind the times.
Twitter is kind of ancillary to FriendFeed. For a long time I resisted using Twitter at all in favor of FF, but recently I’ve begun using Twitter more often. Why? There are some people that I like and respect who, for whatever reason, refuse to use FriendFeed. I decided that I didn’t want to shut off that part of my online life. And Twitter has its own delicious flavor which is different from FF. They scratch similar, but different itches.
Lindsay convinced me to try Evernote and after a few false starts, I finally “get” it. Evernote is my constant companion in the cloud. It has a ways to grow to be even more awesome, but even in its current not-fully-formed state it is incredibly important. Everything digital that’s important to me (and currently less than 25MB) goes into Evernote.
Stitcher is an iPhone/Touch app that I’ve found myself using every single day. I’m a news hound and I listen to their “Updated Hourly” channel several times a day. Almost all of my favorite podcasts (there aren’t that many) are on Stitcher too. Stitcher has announced an update that will make their service so much better I’ll be talking about it a lot more. I’m hoping they make an android version soon though!
Pandora is another iPhone/Touch app that I use every day. I don’t really care much for the web version of Pandora, but I listen to the Touch app every day.
Blogs:
I don’t read blogs nearly as often as I did a few years ago. Today I primarily read blog entries that my friends talk about on Twitter and Friend Feed. But there are a few that I look at nearly every day:
I used to use Google Reader and all sorts of other tools, but since I’ve been using FriendFeed I no longer feel the need or desire. My FriendFeed friends and their friends let me know what’s important to read. Anything that I miss I pick up on the few blogs that I read.
So, what indispensable websites or apps have I missed? Anything else I should be using on a daily basis to enrich my lifestyle?
What do you find indispensable?