Site: Google Voice
Category: Editors' Choice, Oncoming Train award
The giant telecom industry is about to meet another giant force: Google. Its new telephony service is a real threat to traditional phone systems. Google Voice gets the "Oncoming Train" award since it's the product most likely to disturb existing services and companies.
While at the moment Google Voice needs existing phone networks to function, there's reason to believe the company will at some point begin offering phone service of its own, or at the very least work with mobile carriers (as it is with its Android mobile phone operating system) to create a Google-branded telecom experience. But unlike other Internet-based telephone solutions that require users to transfer their numbers and contacts to the new system, Google Voice will also work for people who don't move over all at once to the new system.
People who start giving out their Google Voice number instead of their existing landline or mobile numbers get value from the service even if they're not in front of their computers, since Google Voice works very well with existing users' phones. In many ways, Google Voice is a superior front-end to existing phone services, due to the ways it does visual voicemail (with voice recognition, spotty though it may be), SMS, and rule-based call routing. Google Voice is a very strong "gate" to other phone products, just as the Google search engine gates the Web for a lot of people.
This "last foot" position, the interface people use to access their other network services, is arguably the most valuable place a service can live. Google could well end up owning it for telephone services just as it does for the Web.
Google Voice handles voicemail, SMS, and all your mobile and landline phones.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Site: Search.twitter.com
Category: Editors' Choice; Look out, Google
Twitter itself is fun. Twitter Search, though, is another thing entirely. Twitter Search provides real-time search results on timely issues and news that even Google can't touch. It's this feature, not the Twitter social network, that could end up being Twitter's true path to revenue, as well as the feature that knocks Google off its peg as the master of all search.
Even Google execs have acknowledged that dealing with real-time search is one of the company's most important challenges. Twitter has stuck a pin in Google, and it's hurting. Twitter could, of course, simply choose to monetize its search engine using Google's own advertising technologies. But Twitter is getting big enough that it might not need Google for that. So what will Google do?
Twitter Search shows what the Web is thinking before Google does.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
Site: GoodGuide
Category: Editors' Choice, Best Newcomer
We created the Editors' Choice awards for products like this: Small and relatively unknown products that demonstrate real leadership, but that don't yet have enough traction to win in the user vote part of the Webware 100.
GoodGuide is a product recommendation system focused on "safe, healthy, and green products." It will tell you what chemicals are in your toothpaste, or if your socks are made with sweatshop labor.
The company's real value add is in acquiring the data on the products. There's an iPhone app for the service as well, so you can check on items when you're out shopping. As we said when the site launched: It's a simple story. But it's told very well.
Smile!
Site: OAuth
Category: Editors' Choice, Most Important Technology
OAuth is a developing standard that lets Web services interact with each other on behalf of users, without requiring users to give up their passwords.
Why do we need it? Best reason that makes it clear to almost everyone: Twitter apps. Currently, when you're using a third-party Twitter application, like Tweetdeck for example, you have to give the app your Twitter credentials--user name and password. That's a key to your entire Twitter account. An app like Tweetdeck could, if hacked or written maliciously, log in to your Twitter account and mess up your account, locking you out or worse. OAuth allows permissions to be set between services, so you could tell Twitter that an app like Tweetdeck could send messages on your behalf, but do nothing else.
OAuth is conceptually related with OpenID (another Webware 100 winner), which allows users to use one log-in to access several services. But it's quite a different thing. It enables a user's legion of Web services to work with each other on his or her behalf, even when they are not logged in.
Site: Present.ly
Category: Editors' Choice, Best Twitter Rip-off
Everyone wants to build a better Twitter. Or at least a profitable version of it. The best microblogging service other than the original is Present.ly, a microblog service for businesses. Present.ly launched with features that Twitter still lacks for business users. It lets users attach files, for example, and set up groups easily, which is great for teams.
Also, Present.ly is available as installable software, as well as in a hosted service. That means that all those paranoid IT managers who want to make their teams happy by supporting some Twitter-like capability can bring that functionality inside their businesses' firewalls. We don't necessarily think that's the best technological solution, but it does open a door to getting a deal done that might otherwise stay closed.
None of these closed, business-focused systems will ever be as big, or as important, as an open-to-all social platform like Twitter. But they do show us how these new concepts can be applied--profitably--to the world of work.
Tastes like Twitter, but it's not.
(Credit: CNET)
Sites: Evernote and Windows Live Sync
Category: Editors' Choice, Rafe's favorites
These products are Webware editor's Rafe Needleman's somewhat secret productivity tools. Neither are well-known products, but both enable a person who does a lot of writing on more than one computer to stay productive.
Evernote is a note-taking application that has both downloadable software and a Web app. No matter which machine--PC, Mac, or iPhone--you use to take notes, you can see them almost immediately on any other of your machines that have the software. You can also get your notes on the Evernote Web service. Plus, the text of photos uploaded to the service is indexed, so you can search for labels and signs you've taken pictures of. Not only is Evernote a clever hybrid (software/Web) app, but it's a strong note-taking product, competitive with Microsoft's OneNote. The basic version of Evernote is free.
Microsoft's Windows Live Sync is a file sync tool. It lets you connect any Mac or Windows computer's directories together, so that any file saved or changed in one is automatically synchronized to the others. If you use more than one computer, this product is fantastically useful. It saves you from having to worry about where you store your files. They're all everywhere. And it's completely peer-to-peer, so unlike competitive file sync tools that store your files on Web servers (including Microsoft's own Mesh), there are not storage or bandwidth restrictions. And it's free.
Evernote makes all your notes and pictures searchable from all your computers.
(Credit: Screenshot by CNET)
With Windows Live Sync you don't have to worry about where you store stuff.
(Credit: Screenshot by CNET)Site: Amazon Web Services
Category: Editors' Choice, Start-up's Friend
How can a bunch of kids in a garage create a Web service that half the people on the planet can use at once? By running their app on the cloud computing platform from Amazon Web Services instead of on their own servers.
Amazon Web Services, a collection of services include a computing engine, a database, and storage services, were created to be easy to provision (set up), and to scale as needed. The real benefit is that the developer doesn't pay for services delivered until they are. So if a site runs along at a few thousand hits a day it won't cost more than a few pennies to run. But a big spike coming from a Digg or Oprah link will automatically cause AWS to bring more resources to bear. The developer will be billed accordingly.
Web services a la carte
Venture capitalists, who fund startups, used to look askance at a Web company that couldn't run its own servers. Now we're hearing that they're considering financially irresponsible if they do. The cloud is where the new Web apps live.
Site: Farecast
Category: Editors' Choice, Best Exit
The founders of airline price forecasting site Farecast cashed out during a brief resurgence of the airline industry after the September 11 downturn and before the double whammy of the 2008 oil crises and the financial sector collapse.
We liked the service from the start. It did something no other travel site did: it predicted the airfare between two points on any upcoming date, and it would advise you when the best time to buy your tickets was--if you should buy now or wait a bit. Farecast officially launched to the public in May of 2007 with fare predictions for the United States only. Since launch it added international destinations, hotel price predictions, and price protection insurance.
The site is still running on Microsoft's network or "live" Web sites.
Buy now to fly later, or wait?
(Credit: Screenshot by CNET)Site: Cuil and Mobile Me
Category: Editors' Choice, Failure to Launch
A lot of Web services fizzle on launch. The "beta" label often provides a line of defense against launch hiccups. But every now and then companies overhype new products that simply aren't close to ready for prime-time launch. The two big winners of the Failure to Launch award for this Webware 100 are, clearly, Cuil and Mobile Me.
Cuil as launched as a competitive search engine to Google, built by ex-Googlers. Early demos looked good, but when the site actually opened to the public, it was a flop. It wasn't that it just did not work, but rather that it gave results that were bizarre and wrong. Unlike most services that simply shut down when they get overloaded, Cuil kept on chugging. It shouldn't have. The site is a lot better now, but it may never recover from its embarrassing launch.
Apple also got a black eye when in launched Mobile Me, its .Mac replacement, in July of 2008. Subscribers had trouble accessing the site, and some even lost e-mail. Steve Jobs fessed up, "It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store," he said in an e-mail. "We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence."
This should not be too hard for a search engine.
Site: Aviary
Category: Editors' Choice, Technical Achievement
Aviary started as a photo editor built into a browser, but since we first covered the app its developers have rolled out a vector editor, a color palette editor, and a tool for creating visual effects. All are delivered through Flash apps in a Web browser. The apps force you to reconsider ever using traditional software again.
The Aviary team also built in unique collaboration dn remixing tools, so artists can lend and borrow graphics and maintain intellectual property rights in the process.
Who needs software? This is a layer-based image-editing application running in a browser window. It's pretty snappy, too.
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