Two cool web apps
I found two new favorite web applications this past week. The first is Bloglines and the second is 43 Things.
Bloglines
Bloglines is the most comprehensive, integrated service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing news feeds, blogs, and rich Web content.
That just about sums up what it does, but it doesn’t tell anything about why I like it. Prior to about 3 days ago I was using SharpReader as my rss reader. However, it had one big draw back: I could not use it effectively on multiple computers. I would have it open all day at work and would follow along with my favorite sites as they updated their content and everything would work great. However, when I got home, I would fire up SharpReader and I would have to sift through all the content I had already read during the day. Weekends were even worse.
Bloglines centralizes everything and allows me to track sites from one location regardless of what computer I am at. This allows me to seemlessly work with rss feeds at work and at home.
In addition, it is fairly simple to use and has a fairly straight forward interface. It is divided into two frames, one frame for your feeds and the other for their content. You can group your feeds into folders and then simply click on a folder to see all the new content. If you want to keep a news item around, then you simply click a little check box and it becomes sticky. The default is to remove any read entries.
Overall, bloglines is the solution that I have been searching for to manage all the rss feads that I like to follow.
43 Things
43 Things is something completely different. At a basic level it is simply an online todo list. It allows you to post the things you are doing or want to do and then share this list with other users. In addition, if you are doing something that someone else is doing, it will show you how many people are doing that same activity.
People have known for years that making a list of goals is the best way to achieve them. Why is that? First, getting your goals in writing can help you clarify what you really want to do. You might find you have some important and some frivolous goals. That is OK. You’ve got space for 43 Things on your list. Not every one of them has to change the world (but save room for the ones that might).
43 Things was created using Ruby on Rails and is usually one of 3 applications used as examples of the power of Rails—the other two are Basecamp and Ta-da List. This app is simply fun. There is no other way to describe it. It is fun to find things that you want to do and that other people are doing, it is fun to see how many other people want to do that thing, and it is fun to add comments to other people’s lists and see what comments get added to your list.
I have added a page to the site that lists my 43 things along with things that I have done or you can check out my list at 43 Things.