This will be one of my final posts for 2007 so in keeping with the top 10 lists from the year, here is my own top 10 list. These are the top 10 web tools I have found make my online life and work much better. If you aren’t familiar with some of these I wholeheartedly recommend you check them out…and in case you were wondering, each one is free for use.

1. Gmail - Without a doubt this is my number one web tool. It’s the hub of my online existence.
2. Del.icio.us - I love this site. It’s my primary source for bookmarking websites. My page is at Del.icio.us/fourthbill.
3. Twitter - This is becoming a new favorite. Twitter is a microblogging tool that’s one part messaging system, one part social network, and one part addictive. I’m finding it a great additional outlet to this blog and a new way to discover emerging ideas and connect with new people of similar interests. You can find me at Twitter.com/billseaver.
4. TinyURL - Once I got hooked on Twitter I found this to be an invaluable tool for referencing links and keeping my character count below the maximum.
5. Google Docs - If I ever have to collaborate with people on docs or spreadsheets this is my go-to resource.
6. Google Reader - I’ve only switched over to Google Reader in the last few months. I used to read my feeds with Sage but I’m really liking Google Reader and have made the full conversion.
7. Ping-o-Matic - Every time I write a blog post I ping a number of different services just to let them know it’s out there. Ping-o-Matic makes that possible in mere seconds and that’s why I like it.
8. Feedburner - Feedburner continues to emerge as a necessary tool for me. I use it to track both my feed stats and site visitors but it had me at hello with the blog post email feature that lets readers get these posts via email rather than coming to the blog or subscribing with an RSS feed reader. I think I can personally account for fifteen bloggers using Feedburner for that feature alone.
9. Facebook - Facebook has been my social network of choice most of this year and it’s allowed me to connect with people that MySpace never did. Not sure why, but it did.
10. Picnik - Picnik is still one of my favorite websites. It’s photo editing made easy and was actually integrated with Flickr recently as well. That’s a double dose of goodness.

BONUS: Firefox - None of the above sites would be nearly as enjoyable and useful to me without my browser, Firefox. If you don’t use it, quit using Explorer or Safari and get on the Firefox bus. It really is as good as everyone says. Now go download it.

I’ve been using the social bookmarking site del.icio.us for a long time. One thing I’ve never really done was use the notes feature on the bookmarks because I didn’t want to take the time to write the note. I would tag it as I wanted and move on. Today I discovered by accident that if I highlight a section of text on the page I’m going to tag with my Firefox del.icio.us add-on it will automatically import that text into the notes field. Maybe this is common knowledge to del.icio.us users but it wasn’t to me. I think it’s fair to say I’ll be using the notes feature a lot more from now on. It’s a great little shortcut.

Like many people I use Outlook professionally and Gmail personally. For those of us who have adopted Gmail and the full service of Google applications, we long for more integration between our various email accounts and calendars. I know one person who goes so far as to double up her professional calendar on Lotus Notes with her personal Google calendar. I’m personally not willing to do that much double work so when I heard about the Outlook gadget for iGoogle I knew I had to check it out.

Basically, this gadget (not to be confused with a “widget” which is the same thing though Apple has cornered the verbiage on that word so companies like Microsoft and Google have adopted “gadget” to say the same thing) brings your Outlook email, calendar, tasks, and contacts right into your iGoogle page. It’s really pretty handy. If there’s any drawback to this gadget it’s that you have to open the tab in Internet Explorer if you’re a Firefox user. The instructions give you a step by step process for how to do that and it’s easily done in about two minutes.

I’ve been using this gadget for a week now and have been happy with it for the most part. If there’s anything I dislike most it’s just the fact that I have a tab in Explorer and anything I click within iGoogle now opens up as a new Explorer tab. It’s not a big deal most of the time but I use the Del.icio.us extension in Firefox and it’s not compatible with the Explorer tabs. Like I said, it’s not usually a big deal but it has been a speed bump a couple of times. All in all, the benefits have outweighed the drawbacks so I plan to stick with it.

[HT to Ray for the link with other great iGoogle gadgets.]

With so many tools emerging on a weekly basis it’s hard for me to determine which ones are actually going to make my life easier. Every once in a while I’ll see one that really makes sense and this week I had one of those discoveries. I found Clipmarks, a Firefox add-on, that lets you very quickly highlight entire articles, paragraphs, sentences, images and video to blog or send as an email. I used this a few days ago to send part of an article to some coworkers and it worked out really well. I’m a big Del.icio.us user and am always saving links there but Clipmarks seems like a better way to pass along something I see or read rather than sending people a link to a page where the content on that page may not apply entirely. For instance, I can just clip an important paragraph or two without and email it to a friend rather than sending a link to an entire article with a confusing explanation like “hey, this article is decent but you’ve really got to check out the 6th and 8th paragraphs…those are really interesting.” Whereas Del.icio.us is really for my own reference, Clipmarks is going to be what I’ll use to send articles, blog posts, pictures, etc. to other people when a simple link won’t be sufficient.

When I first heard of the social bookmarking website Del.icio.us (simply pronounced ‘Delicious’) I didn’t really get it. Why on earth would someone need to save their bookmarks to a website rather than just use the bookmarks on their web browser? In time I heard about how other people used Del.icio.us and I finally signed up just to see what all the fuss was about. Then a funny thing happened. I good hooked. What I found with Del.icio.us was an entire world of functions that I didn’t know I wanted but now can’t live without. Here are the two big ones for me:

• Tags: The ability to tag every bookmark and even create my own notes and thoughts about that bookmark for future reference. The tags allow me create my own keyword topics around a general idea. For instance, I’m going to be speaking to a PR firm here in Nashville in a few weeks to give them an overview of web 2.0 and how it applies to their work. I’ve been bookmarking sites and stories recently with the tag “PR” to use for my upcoming presentation. I wouldn’t have had that without creating a folder on my browser before which isn’t a huge deal, but if a story comes along that I want to tag “PR” and something else then it’s no problem for Del.icio.us to let me categorize the link as many ways as I want but where would I put it if I only used folders on my browser?
• Web access: The fact that my bookmarks are always online has paid off numerous times. A week ago I was meeting with a few people and the discussion brought to mind something I had tagged recently so I was able to just pull it right up whether I had my laptop with me or not. I’ve gone to my Del.icio.us bookmarks numerous times when I haven’t had my own computer with me and it’s been great to get what I need for those occasions.

I read somewhere recently that you can learn a lot about what someone is thinking by watching their Del.icio.us tags. Bloggers on Wordpress can even use a widget to post their new Del.icio.us links for the day. I’ve discovered countless helpful articles and websites through other people’s links. Del.icio.us has become one of those tools I use every day for my own link collection and for discovery. If you want to see what I’m tagging, check out Del.icio.us/fourthbill.