This is a work in progress.
A lot of people say things to me such as “I wish I knew a way to send large files to family easily”, or “I hate Flickr but I don’t know anything better”. I’ve found that because I spend a huge amount of my time reading about and researching tech startups, I usually have a website that can help people do what they want.
This list is my attempt at helping people to find the best web apps to do everything in their lives – whether it’s finding the right flights and accommodation more easily, or better tools for researching. I hope to keep it categorized by what each web app helps you do. This also means that if you’re not looking for anything specific, you can just check out the web apps and try some of them out.
I hope to keep this list evolving and growing, so send me any suggestions of web apps that I can add to a specific category.
Photos & Videos
Snapjoy: The best way ever to organise your photos and enjoy viewing them later. You don’t have to do anything – they’re automatically organised and it’s such a smart app that it even deletes duplicate photos. I wrote a review of it.
Instagram: The best photo-sharing app for the iPhone. Lets you easily take photos and then apply cool effects, and share easily with social networks. Millions of users and a cool team behind it.
Vimeo: The higher-quality YouTube. Has a much more creative and artistic community behind it, plus better tools for browsing and sharing videos. I’d use this over YouTube any day. (In fact, TDTYTIS uses it for all our videos!)
Batch: Batch is “the easiest way to share a lot of photos”. It seriously is just that. You quickly and easily select the photos from your iPhone that you want to upload, and then you select who you want to share them with. Then they upload in the background. It’s that easy, and it’s let me share photos with friends that otherwise would’ve stayed stuck on my phone.
Travel
Hipmunk: The best tool for searching and comparing flights in the world. It’s unbiased, as Hipmunk takes no money from any airline, and also displays different flights in a really helpful way.
AirBnB: Lets you find the perfect accommodation in any city in the world. Whether you want to flat in someone else’s house, or rent a whole apartment, you can find it here. They have a brilliant website that lets you find accommodation in many different ways. I usually use AirBnB over hotels now.
Gowalla: Gowalla used to be the rival of Foursquare, but has recently pivoted to focus on recording the memories of travel. Their applications are great and they give you an awesome way to browse back through the memories of where you’ve been.
UsingMiles: If you’re a frequent traveller and have lots of different airpoints cards, UsingMiles lets you add all of these different accounts to one place and manage them all from there. You can view your air miles balances, expiry dates, and book flights directly through the web app.
TripIt: An app for organising all your travel. Simply forward the email confirmations you receive for flights, hotels, rental cars etc to TripIt and it will sort them all into a good-looking itinerary.
Gogobot: Gogobot is your virtual passport. It easily lets you add all the places you’ve been in the world (if you use Foursquare, it creates it automatically) and then you can share your passport with friends and rate places. Nice website design, and very easy to use.
Foursquare: Foursquare lets you check-in to your location and share it with your friends. But more importantly, it has incredibly discovery tools. Whenever I’m in a new city I’ll use Foursquare to find cafes, restaurants, and shops. It’s like a city guide on steroids, curated by locals and your friends. One of my most-used apps.
Information (Search, Discovery)
Quora: The best Q&A website in the world. Ask a question on any topic and have it answered by the most knowledgeable and influential people on that topic. Brilliant community, and answers to everything. I use it for things from homework help to business research.
Qwiki: An incredible new way to browse information. Actually, it’s not even browsing – it’s watching information. Search for any topic in the world, and Qwiki pulls in information about that topic from hundreds of websites and displays it to you in a short video. The best way to learn about a huge range of topics in a short space of time.
HeyCrowd: HeyCrowd is the future of surveys. It’s mainly used through the iPhone – you join “crowds” and then answer questions that are posted to that crowd. You can also ask your own questions and then sort through the results. It’s insanely addictive, but a bit of a time waster in all honesty.
Files & Documents
Evernote: A note-taking tool that you can use on any device, that easily lets you create and sort notes. The notes are all backed-up and synchronized on the cloud, so you always have your notes with you. I’m a paying member of Evernote and have created thousands of notes. If there was one app I couldn’t live without, this is it.
Kicksend: An awesome tool for sharing lots of files, however big they are. A million times easier than emailing files or even using Dropbox, for both the sender and the receiver.
Dropbox: This had to be here. Dropbox creates a folder on your computer where you can put any type of file, and this folder then synchronizes with the cloud so you can access those files anywhere. Really useful, and has millions of users worldwide.
Productivity
Things: This is an Apple-only suite of to-do list applications available on the Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. I’ve been using it daily for about a year. The design is incredible because it’s just so simple, and really lets you manage what you need to get done. Downside is that the apps are quite pricey – but completely worth it in my opinion.
Wunderlist: The free version of Things, that you can use on any device, including non-Apple products. It’s really good, although I don’t like the user interface as much as Things.
Evernote: See above for description. It goes in both categories.
Springpad: An alternative to Evernote. I personally prefer Evernote, but a lot of people like the extra tools that Springpad gives them such as barcode scanning. Springpad uses a web app instead of a desktop app on your computer, which is another thing I don’t like as much about it.
Penzu: Penzu is a digital form of a diary. It’s beautifully designed and lets you add entries of any length as often as you want and browse through them later. Mobile apps are available through premium subscription.
Music
Spotify: My favourite music application. Lets me stream every song in the world through the desktop app or iPhone app. I pay for premium membership which lets me store playlists for offline use, so that I can still listen when I don’t have Internet access. Because of Spotify I haven’t downloaded a song since I got it. One downside is that it’s only available in a few countries so far – I had to create my account while in Europe. But they’re expanding fast and will be global soon.
Grooveshark: A web-only version of Spotify that is available worldwide. I don’t like their interface as much as Spotify, and you can only download their iPhone application if your iPhone is jailbroken. But it means you can access every song in the world for free, and don’t need to resort to pirating music. I’d use this if I hadn’t been able to create a Spotify account.
Soundcloud: The YouTube for sounds. You can browse millions of different sounds, whether it’s voice recordings or songs, and follow people and artists. It’s got an insane number of artists using it and you can find some great music. If you’re an artist, make sure you upload your tunes!
Education
Khan Academy: The most amazing education organisation in the world. Salman Khan teaches every topic from biology, to calculus, to finance, and records ten-minute videos of each lesson. Anyone can then access these lessons through the Khan Academy website. It’s revolutionizing education and making it possible for everyone in the world to learn at their own pace.
Qwiki: See “information” category above for description. One of the coolest tools for learning new topics that I know of.
Codecademy: An awesome new web app that aims to give people an easy way to learn to code. They don’t yet have as many lessons as they should have, but they’re adding many more in the near future.
GoVocab: Simply the best way to learn vocabulary of a foreign language. I use this to learn vocabulary for Spanish and the results are amazing. The interface is brilliant and the activities ensure the words get stuck in your head. Badges and other game-aspects to make it fun, too.
Archiving and Memories
1000Memories: 1000M is more of an archiving tool for your family and friends than a photo organiser. It lets you scan old print photos using the iPhone app, called Shoebox, and them store them online for family and friends to view. You can also build a family tree and then add photos to each family member. It’s the best family history tool I’ve ever used, and the way they handle photos is great.
Memolane: This app pulls in information from all of your other social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare etc) and then displays the posts you’ve made through these accounts in a nice timeline. It’s a great way to browse through some of the things you were doing at a certain time.
Proust: Proust gives you a private place where you can select questions you want your loved ones to answer. They answer the questions, and their answers are stored forever. It’s in many ways a short-form of a biography about your family members.
Social & Communication
Path: Path currently only an iPhone app. It’s recently been relaunched as a “journal” for you to share with your close friends and family. The number of connections you can have on it is limited. It’s the most beautiful iPhone app I’ve ever used, and it really does help you share your daily life with the people who are close to you.
Between: Between is a Korean startup that has had explosive growth. It’s an iPhone app for couples that lets them share photos and cute messages with each other. If you and your girlfriend/boyfriend are nostalgic and cutesy then it’s a cool app.
