14 must use Internet based services

Internet has a whole lot of services to offer that can help us to automate, to organize, to manage, to synchronize, to backup, to share, to track things that impact us at both professional and personal levels. This post is all dedicated to find 15 such Online Services that are I feel are must for an individual. In the list, I have excluded the champions of Internet namely Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube for obvious reasons. Following is my list of Essential Internet Services.

#1 Delicious for bookmarking

Internet is flooded with Information and the chances of finding the article you read last week and "Shouted Wow" again today are doubtful. So what do you do. Typically, we save the link of the article in favorites on whatever device you are using to browse the internet at the moment. But you want to have the favorites to be synced across your Smartphone, your office laptop and the desktop at home so that you can read your article from anywhere and anytime. That’s where Delicious comes as a savior. Delicious is all about saving your favorites, sharing your favorites. You can access the favorites saved on Delicious from anywhere, anytime. You can tag the links for better search results. For businesses, Delicious plays a critical role in Building the vital element for the success of any business, the Trust. The link between Delicious and Trust is explored in detail in this blog.

 

 #2 Shelfari for books management

A famous quite about books goes like this "A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend."

One cannot experience everything in life and so a wise trick is to learn from others experience. I feel books are the finest medium that help you learn this way.  Books play a critical role in a shaping us all. Hence its becomes critical to manage your library, your wish list of books, what you have read, what you are reading and what you plan to read.

Now that everything has got a Social angle to it, why not have a social edge to your library also. Shelfari is the service that fulfills this social hunger for a library. It’s an Amazon powered service that lets you start adding books on an e-shelf under categories like I want to read, Reading, I have read etc. You can share your bookshelf on your site, on your blog and of course with your friends. You get to know what your friends are reading, join the communities to discuss about the books, authors. You can tag the books for easy retrieval. I have been using it for some time now and feel its an amazing service. Have a look at my bookshelf to get a feel of the services.

 

#3 Flickr,Pinterest for photo sharing and saving

Ok, so after spending time exploring services to manage bookmarks, to manage books, lets move on to a service that will help you manage your visual stuff i.e the pictures. There are many image based services though I use Pinterest and Flickr.

Pinterest is one of the most happening sites currently.

 Flickr has been around for a while and is powered by Yahoo.

 

There are some basic difference in the features and the core concept of the services. Here's an article to help you understand this basic difference before you embark on your journey in exploring these services.

 

#4 Google docs, drop box, Skydrive for online Data storage

Apart from the Pictures, bookmarks and Bookshelf, one of the most critical and important need of ours is to have a handy backup copy of the important documents like Certificates, passport, License. The key is to be able to access these documents anytime, anywhere and from any device. That’s where storage services like Drop Box, Skydrive, Google Docs come into picture. The idea of this post to introduce these services to my readers and hence I will leave the task of deep diving in the details of the these services for future. Here's a good article featuring the comparisons of various Online File Storage Services. The core idea is to get going with Online File Storage for the backup and anytime,anywhere access features.

#5 For Password Management

This is one service which I am exploring and yet to start using it. I made a Google search and found that and Keepass are two of the most widely used Password managers. I do not own this services and this review is only for your information. So use these services/software at your own risk. I suggest you to spend sometime reading this article that explores the 5 best password managers available.

#6 Mozilla thunderbird as email client

Mozilla has been on my laptop for quite a while now. Instead of logging in into my 3 email account, I use Mozilla to access them. The best part is that my emails that have been already downloaded are accessible to me even when I don’t have an internet. The other important feature of Mozilla that I use is the ability to support HTML signatures. I use it to promote SidsAvenue. Competing with Mozilla is Windows Live Email client which I used to use earlier. But it doesn’t support HTML signatures. I feel Mozilla is a must for everybody who has an email account.

#7 Google Reader.Goodnoos for managing your Feed subscription

Ok, So you happened to visit a site accidently and really liked it. You want to be able to know whenever new content is posted on the site. To achieve this, all you have to do is to subscribe to the RSS feed of the site to be kept posted. RSS feeds

For more than 3 years, I have been using Google Reader to manage my RSS Feed subscription. Recently I have started using GoodNoos just for a change. Google Reader has the social elements embed in it which allows you to share your favorites in your social network, tag articles as Favorites, add your comments on the articles, start following new authors etc. I have made my RSS subscription public so that my readers can subscribe to it. Browse to this page for details of my RSS feeds.

 

 #8 Blogger,Wordpress to maintain your personal diary or blog

One of the buzziest word we hear these days is blogging. There are quite a few bloggers out there. Of course I am one of them. So how do you this Internet based platform and why should it feature on this list of must have Services. I say Sky is the only limit. Use it as your personal diary, use it as a medium to express your thoughts, use it as a medium to share your knowledge and expertise with the world. You are free to do whatever you want to do with it. To emphasis more on this point, I Googled to find articles to know how writing helps us and found this awesome article that clarifies how maintaining a diary keeps you happy.

So if you cannot think of any other use, use Blog platform as your diary. Yes, the blogger platforms have the option of making the blog private. So your privacy concerns should be addressed. Follow the link given below to know how to make your blog Private in Blogger.com

Apart from diary keeping, having good writing skills will for sure give you an edge in your career, as we all have to do writing time and again in our jobs. Blogging is the platform that helps you to refine this skills of yours. When you are thinking of a new product or a service, your mind is clouded with thoughts. Writing will help you organize and clean the clutter of the random thoughts. Spend sometime on this post to know how writing helps your brain

 

#9 Simplenote, Evernote, Onenote for note taking

They say Ideas are like lightning, they can stuck you anywhere, anytime. If ideas are to be executed, Its critical to note them down for further analysis. Traditionally we have been using pen and paper. In this e-age, we have virtual notepads to take down notes. Thanks to services like SimpleNote, Evernote , MS OneNote. My favorite is MS one Note and I have been using it for quite sometime. I have found an interesting article that dives deeper into the Note taking service providers with a comparison.

#10 Slideshare to enhance your Personal Brand

Last but not the least, its Slideshare that has made to my list of 15 must online services for everybody. Slideshare adds the social touch to the presentation and thus lets you upload and share your presentations, access presentations made by others. I feel this services is a must to use as it helps you give a boost to your brand value. An individual can use it as a platform to showcase his talent and connect with potential job providers. For business, it is a platform to connect with users, to share details of the products and services, acquire new customers. As I keep saying, sky is the only limit. Spending sometime on the Wiki page about Slideshare is worthy.

#11 Re.vu for Web 2.0 based Resume

When every thing around us is going digital, web based and interactive, why not your CV. Re.vu is one such amazing online service to build a visually appealing and interactive Resume. Re.vu collects data from your LinkedIn profile, additionally you can add inputs directly using the Re.vu interface. I personally use it and found it outstanding. So go get going with re.vu and your personal brand a new avataar…

 

#12 Add life to your presentation using Prezi

Prezi is a service that pumps in life into the presentations we all are used to. It’s a cloud based service that allows you to create presentation that are dynamic in nature. I recommend watching this Introductory video about Prezi.

 

#13 Put the internet work for you using ifttt

Ifttt . This is an acronym for IfThisThenThat. This is again an amazing service to smartly manage your Internet based mundane and repetitive tasks and presence by automation . In nutshell, this service lets you create triggers based on a state change in your social account. E.g You can set a trigger to pin the photo to your Flickr Account as soon as you post in in your facebook account.

#14 Knowledge Management using Spicynodes

Spicynodes is a great service that lets you draw interactive and rich flowcharts, diagrams, organizational charts, navigation of your site, your own career plan. Actually, the limitation is only your imagination. I say use Spicynodes as a tool for Knowledge management.

Do share your experience of using these services…You are welcome to share your own list of Internet services that you feel should make to this list. I will be more than happy to if the list gets extended and everybody of us gets to make the most of the Internet.

Quote Courtesy : http://www.quotegarden.com/books.html

image courtesy :

http://www.stephenyears.com/wp-content/uploads/revu_logo.png

http://pushingsocial.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ifttt-e1328826665504.jpg

del.icio.us Tags: internet based services,web 2.0,photo sharing,online photo sharing,online resume,resume builder,note taking app,online apps,knowledge management,spicynodes,re.vu,slideshare,google reader,RSS feed,RSS aggregator,RSS manager