You may have noticed that lately there has been a lot of attention for software that is not installed on your PC or Mac. Applications are not only moving more and more to smartphones and tablets, but also to the internet. Online computing in 'the cloud' is becoming popular, which is why we have selected twenty beautiful, special and handy online services for you.
1. Save Favorites
For years, Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) was one of the most popular sites to save, tag and search your favorites online. After Yahoo! took over the site, not much has happened and the company has even decided to close Delicious.com. Too bad for the avid users, but the good news is that there are plenty of alternatives that fill the gap that Delicious leaves behind. A good example is Diigo.com, which also offers the possibility to import your Delicious favourites. Like Delicious, Diigo.com is free and it's not inferior to it in terms of functionality. Diigo also offers new possibilities. For example, it can automatically place your bookmarks on your weblog on a daily or weekly basis. Do you use Twitter? Then you can now also have your Twitter favorites automatically saved in Diigo. For Android and iOS (iPhone) users, Diigo has an app to easily browse through favorites and save new favorites and notes on your smartphone as well. Of course there are bookmarklets and plug-ins available for the different browsers. In short: exit Delicious, welcome Diigo!
Diigo is a great replacement for Delicious that makes it easy to import your favorites.
2. Social Text Network
How long will it be before books, magazines and newspapers are no longer read on paper but only in digital form? It is the question of many writers and publishers. With the increasing popularity of tablets such as the iPad and the Galaxy Tab, the paperless society is getting closer again. The Scribd platform makes it a breeze to post your own documents online and possibly even monetize them (although that option is currently only available in the US). Tens of millions of texts have now been placed on Scribd and a total of more than sixty million times a month are read. You can log in to the service with your Facebook account. If you do not want this or do not have a Facebook account, you can also register. Scribd also functions as a social network. Like Twitter, for example, you can 'follow' people to see what they're reading or posting, and you can provide updates on what you're reading. Scribd is packed with interesting information in every genre imaginable, to keep you busy for many hours.
Scribd is a social network where you can find millions of texts and publish your own documents.
3. RSS and Network Feeds
Netvibes has been around since 2005 and we've written about it once before. Still, it is worth bringing this service to the attention again, because Netvibes has kept up with the times. It used to be mainly an RSS reader (similar to Google Reader) but the service has been developed further. You can log in with your Facebook account or create a new account. After that, it's easy to add resources. In addition to the 'classic' RSS feeds, you can also display the updates from your Facebook friends and add all kinds of widgets to your page, such as the weather forecast. Netvibes looks great, works amazingly simple and could just become your new homepage!
Netvibes has moved with the times and has been further developed.
4. Convert Online
Zamzar is a free online service that you may not use very often, but it can come in handy once in a while. Zamzar allows you to convert numerous file formats. Can't open a certain file and don't feel like downloading or buying a special program for it? First check if you can convert the file with Zamzar to a readable format. You can upload files up to 100 MB in size.
Upload a file to Zamzar.com and convert it to the desired format.
5. Share presentations
PowerPoint is great for creating presentations that you can then share with others via email. But what if you want to post this presentation on your weblog or website, so that your friends or colleagues can view it directly online? In that case, Slideshare offers a solution. Create a free account and upload the file to share to turn it into an online presentation. You can then easily insert it on your website or weblog. Slideshare supports quite a few document formats, such as Powerpoint and other Office components, OpenOffice and Apple Keynote.
SlideShare makes presentations quickly accessible by posting them to your website or blog.
