Saturday, September 19, 2009
Top 10 Underhyped Webapps, 2009 Edition
Lifehacker: "As with rock music, video games, and other awesome pursuits, great web applications often don't get enough credit for what they do well. We're revisiting and updating our favorite underhyped webapps to give a new crop of contenders their due."
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14 comments:
A few of these are winners, others not so much in my book. I've been using the Aviary online image editing suite for about 6 months for the odd jobs, and it's performed spectacularly even in comparison with Adobe Photoshop. I'm interested to try out the webcam conference call tool, even though I have worked with a similar (simpler but less secure) website called MeBeam for that type of meetup. A gadget that I used throughout my college app process that really worked for me was eFax - you are given a free fax number, but it's completely digital and anything faxed to you gets digitized and sent to your email as a PDF. Similarly, you can send documents directly from your computer and it prints off your recipient's fax machine. It was very handy for the applications that were not on the Common App; I could pick up a PDF of the application online, convert it to RTF and type out all the information, then send it right back to their fax machine without ever printing. I know people don't fax much anymore, but for the instances that it's necessary, eFax was very useful.
I agree with Brian that some of the Webapps not the most useful pieces of software. Some are just the same other popular apps that we see people use all the time such as Remember the Milk. I would love to use the PDF to Word app. There are so many times where this would be a great tool to have. A lot of the time I will download a PDF and I need to change information to suite my own needs. This will also be great when you need to type onto a PDF for applications. Although PDF allows you to do this it is extremely annoying to do. The web chat would also be a very useful tool for an office to have.
It seems like every time you turn around there's another person (or company) providing software for free to do what you used to have to pay for too much to do. Given the new focus on the web it's not surprising to see them as a bunch of individual chunks instead of a monolithic system. Sometimes that means they're easy to integrate with your existing workflows, other times that means that there's no way to get them to work with anything else, but at the price they're charging (nothing), who can complain?
I've used a few of these different apps on and off. Having dealt with quite a few customer service systems over the summer, the Fonolo service would be really useful. I've also used the Aviary application, and found it really useful, in comparison to other, occasionally expensive pieces of software especially in a pinch. The PDF to Word application also is useful for those who prefer to work in Word or don't have the program to edit PDFs. A lot of these applications are really useful for when you have to work on someone else's computer, and don't necessarily have all your normal applications. The fact that these are all free, and often comparable to software that you have to pay for is pretty awesome
This set of online apps is amazing. The PDF to work utility looks like a great tool. Another one is the Screen capture program. This is a useful tool that can come in handy for sending someone a "how to" video for a drafting program late at night. Other useful programs...well actually they all are very useful. It is too hard to pick just one app to that would be the best, but so far the most useful has to be the pdf to word conversion.
I find that the PDF to word would have been AMAZING to have before and the same with the chat app. im always trying to have multiple video chats on my my comp and it never works right. I also wish i had known about eFax. That would have saved me so much time on all my apps for college.
For some of these webapps I cannot see the fascination. Most of them are already easily accessible programs but I guess the term "free" is the marketing difference. The one app I actually have a problem with is the PDF to Word. Granted, that is probably the most usual app on this page because of all the ways one could abuse it to make life easier. Howeverl, isn't the whole point of a PDF, if not most of it, so that noboday can tamper with your work? Yes, it could do wonders for you, but it can also bite you in the ass if somebody abuses a PDF you put out there.
While there is something to be said about free programs that perform well, I have always had an issue with the idea behind them, especially open source software. What I see in these are the 'cheap' way out of purchasing or using a more efficient, better coded program or app that won't break on you or give your finished product a cheap look. Why would you ever need to use Aviary Suite if you were professionally editing photots? You'd have Photoshop, or Lightroom, because you know that those are better for your end result, and that the money spent will be made up in quality.
As far as the voice and video chat apps go, I can't bring myself to rely on an itty bitty java app when I'm in an important meeting that I cannot afford to cut out of. If you want to be taken seriously, use better software. Don't leave yourself at the mercy of web apps.
I am really liking the app to convert PDF documents to Word documents! This tool can save a lot of time and hassle. There have been many times that I have needed to alter documents, and myself not being especially computer savvy, have had a difficult time figuring out how to do so without messing up the format of the document. This seems like it would be so much easier to work with, and I will definitely be trying it out.
Some of these are very cool applications. I would love to be able to use TinyChat if I needed to have a conversation with many people all in different places. It seems like it would be a helpful application to have, or to have one of a very similar nature. Lovely Charts also looks like a fun application, especially when a large flow chart needs to be made! PDF to Word also is a brilliant idea. I have always hated that you can pull from a PDF document. This application would make life so much easier. Fonolo looks awesome, being able to skip through all those annoying sequences of trying to get to the menu you want with a company. Overall, theses are some very cool applications. I hope people continue to be clever and make more useful applications.
While a few of these applications I will have to check out (in particular the PDF converter… I have tried a few to little success), I have trouble putting my faith in an application that could stop working as easily as the internet could go out. While this applies less to things that rely on the web (chat and such), with things like the photo editor, I would not like to loose all of my work just because my internet connection inevitably gets slow.
I definitely agree with Brian and others that some of these are winners and some are losers. In particular I really like the chat application as a method of cheap and easy production meetings when you are far from the rest of the team. Or even when you are close, sometimes it is just too difficult to get people together for a quick meeting, when it is really easy for them to be online and chatting. Additionally I am really intrigued by the PDF-Word Application. This seems like a really useful program for everyone on a daily basis. How many times do we want to make small changes to a PDF, or copy text.
PDF to WORD sounds EPIC! I can't tell you how many times I've downloaded a PDF and wanted to rip info, images, etc out of it. Granted, you can usually selected certain text, but formatting and graphics have proved elusive to me, especially if the document has been flattened.
In general, I'm wary of online apps due to my internet connection speed, especially wirelessly. I've got big enough trouble sending large emails, I can't imagine editing .NEF images online. I sorta hope that a trend towards web apps doesn't take over. For certain platforms, like mobile phones, I can see the value. But for a fully functioning computer, it sort of seems like waste. All I really need at that point is a really fast internet connection....
I'm very intrigued with the idea of PDF to Word, but for the most part, it seems that a lot of these webapps are underhyped because there are other applications that are capable of doing the same tasks. That's not to say these don't seem useful and worth a chance, but I'm also not willing to immediately believe that these are the best choices.
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