Webware

We just announced the winners of the 2009 Webware 100. Nearly 630,000 votes were cast during the voting this year to pick the best Web 2.0 sites and services. As with the previous years' awards, there were some surprises among the expected winners.

As in previous years, Google got the most awards--this year 11 in all. And also as in previous years, the social network Gaia Online got a disproportionately large number of votes, as did the big-in-China browser, Maxthon. Justin.TV joined Maxthon and Gaia Online in the list of Webware 100 winners whose huge number of votes outstripped their sites' influence among typical Webware 100 readers.

Surprises included a few products that did not make the final list of winners. Google's Blogger didn't make the cut, for example. In fact, Google had no winners in the hotly-contested "Social & Publishing" category at all; this category got more votes, 185,000, more than any other.

Digg also didn't place in the winners' lineup this year, nor did it last year. Although a "dugg" ballot for a contest like the Webware 100 can generate a big spike in votes, our traffic charts show that these spikes don't lead to the the sustained traffic necessary to drive enough votes to win in a category.

Readers last year suggested that Webware 100 include not just products that win the popular vote, but also products chosen by the editors of Webware as the best available. We didn't want to second-guess the wisdom of our crowd, but we did nonetheless create an 11th category, Editors' Choice. In this category, you'll find some of the smaller and less-popular products in awards subcategories we created just for them, like Technical Achievment, Best Newcomer, and Best Twitter Rip-off. There's also a booby prize in our Editors' Choice: Failure to Launch. It's a tie.

See the previous years' winners: 2008 | 2007

Read more about the Webware 100.

Acknowledgment: Thanks, PollDaddy, for Webware 100 polling technology.

Nearly half a million votes have been recorded so far in the Webware 100, our annual awards program where Web 2.0 users and Webware.com readers vote for their favorite online apps. Voting closes at noon Thursday, so if you want your opinion to count, go vote now.

There are 30 products in each of 10 categories, and there will be 10 winners in each, for a total of 100 products that get designated the 2009 Webware 100. Some clear winners have emerged in each category, but there are battles going on in each, as well as some oddities.

In Audio & Music, iLike is trailing and is not in the Top 10. Grooveshark's in the lead, and Pandora and Last.fm are neck and neck.

More people are voting in the Social & Publishing and the Browsing categories than the others. But in Social & Publishing, Digg has yet to crack the top 10 in the voting, although two-time Webware 100 winner Gaia is performing well (never underestimate the power of the teen girl demographic).

In Browsing, Maxthon is leading the pack just as it did last year, while Flock trails the list of the top 10. The usual suspects (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera) are doing well.

The Productivity and the Location-based services categories are getting the smallest numbers of votes, which means that some relatively small products may place in the Webware 100 this year. In productivity, Google Docs is in the lead, but Microsoft Office Live is doing well. Enterprise favorite Salesforce.com is not, though.

In Location services, popular online maps from Google and Microsoft are performing well, as is the local reviews service Yelp. Ask.com's online mapping product--a Webware editor's favorite--is falling off the map this year, though.

Other surprises: Woot has yet to crack the top 10 in the Commerce category, and Netflix hasn't yet cracked into one of the top spots in Photo & Video.

To vote in all categories, go to the Webware 100 now. Click into the slideshow below for more about the current leaders.

Images: Webware 100 front-runners

Webware 100 voting is now open

I'm happy to announce that we have opened the voting for the 2009 Webware 100 awards. This is our annual program in which CNET readers select the top Web 2.0 apps and services from our hand-picked list of 300 finalists.

This year--the third year we've done the Webware 100--we had about 5,000 qualifying submissions from which we selected the final 300. These are 300 very strong Web apps, spread into 10 groups of 30 each. We have a new arrangement of voting categories this year, including the important Location-based Services category for apps that provide local info, as well as mapping products. We also combined two 2008 categories, Publishing and Community, into a new category, Social and Publishing, recognizing that today, writing is a two-way activity. Publishing is, by nature, social. See all the categories.

There will ultimately be 110 Webware 100 winners this year. There's a special category that's not open to user voting: The Editors' Awards. I created this category because the popular vote isn't always enough to recognize some of the most important small or up-and-coming services. There will be 10 winners in this category, chosen by me and other Webware editors, in categories including design, most innovative business model, and so on.

All the winners will be announced on May 19.

I think it's worth noting that despite the pall of the economy, which has spelled the end of many interesting Web-based businesses, nearly all of the 2008 Webware 100 winners are still up and running. Only three (so far) have been terminated: Yahoo shut Briefcase; MotionDSP withdrew FixMyMovie and will release the function as downloadable software; and iWantSandy shut down when the app's developer took a job at Twitter. As far as I can tell, everything else is still in business.

Finally, a vote of thanks to the Webware 100 technology providers: I use Wufoo to run the nominations process. They make a great system for building online forms. Polldaddy (acquired by Automattic in 2008) supplies the voting technology for the Webware 100. Last year their system processed nearly 2 million votes without a hiccup.

Go vote!

See the previous years' winners: 2008 | 2007

The annual Web 2.0 Expo kicks off at the end of this month in San Francisco. As in years past, it should be an interesting conference with a ton of useful sessions for those involved in the Web ecosystem, as well as an exhibit hall populated by core Web 2.0 infrastructure companies.

You can get a 35 percent off a conference pass to the event by using the code websf09btd45 on the registration site, or better yet, win a free, all-access pass (I have two to give away) by participating in our contest.

Here's the game: Describe, in one paragraph, the Web service you want someone to build for you that hasn't been built yet. In addition to winning the free pass, I will harass the entrepreneurs and VCs I meet for next few months with the best ideas, trying to actually get them built.

Use the feedback system below to tell us what you'd like to see. If you haven't already, you'll have to register on CNET to post a comment. Or you can use Facebook Connect to sign on. If you use a CNET ID, we'll need to reach you through e-mail if you're a winner, so please be sure your e-mail address is current. If you've been registered on the CNET network for a while, use this form to check your e-mail address. If you use Facebook, we'll notify your Facebook account. In the case of multiple versions of an idea we like, the earliest entry will win.

You have 24 hours--I'll stop taking submissions at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday. Good luck!

The contest is now closed! We'll announce the winners on Monday Tuesday. Thanks!

Pick 'em before it's too late!

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET Networks)

Are you getting ready for the most exciting season in NCAA Basketball? So are we. And that's why we've created a public bracket for Webware writers and readers to create their own brackets and see who stands above the rest as the best March Madness performer in our community.

If you want to sign up and compete, sign up for a free CBS Sports ID, and once complete, follow this link to get to the Webware invite page.

You'll be asked to input a password. Type webware into the password field, and you'll be able to pick your winners. You can modify your picks until Game 1 on Thursday, March 19.

After each round, I'll be writing a quick update post, filling you in on who's winning, and once the tournament is all said and done, we'll announce the winner right here on Webware.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for CBS Sports, and join our NCAA Bracket. Good luck!

Click here to get to the Webware Bracket Challenge page, and don't forget the password: webware.

As an avid Twitter user, I'm constantly trying to find ways to extend its functionality and make it more than a place to converse with friends and discuss what's going on in my life.

Doing that can be quite simple. More often than not, I'll employ "Remember the Milk" or a similar tool that lets me use Twitter to manage my tasks. These tools typically work well and help me achieve my single desire: to fully exploit Twitter and get everything I can out of it.

But in recent weeks, I've realized that I've been missing the boat in a very big way. In the past I've used sites like Bloglines, Google Reader, and others to track prominent sites, and find out what kind of stories they're covering each day. Some are related to technology, while others focus solely on sports. No matter the topic, the RSS reader made it easy to find out what's going on in the world without being forced to go to all the different sites individually.

But in recent weeks, I've realized that each day I use the best feed reader of them all and I didn't even know it: Twitter. Since then, I've used it exclusively as a replacement to my RSS reader and I couldn't be happier. Believe it or not, Twitter is the best way to find all the best news.

People, people, people
I'm a firm believer that you should follow everyone who follows you on Twitter. I think it would make the community a better place and by doing so, you actually get more out of the service than by only following a select group of friends.

But I've realized now that it goes beyond just knowing other people. I now know that by following other people, your chances of getting more news, and getting it faster goes way up. And that's precisely why Twitter users have kept me from having to rely on my RSS reader for news.

Remember when US Airways flight 1549 landed safely in the Hudson River? I didn't hear about it in my RSS reader and I didn't even see it on TV. No, first I heard about it from folks on Twitter.

I simply checked Twitter to see what some of my followers were up to and almost immediately, a deluge of discussions on Flight 1549 cropped up. I immediately went to my RSS reader and discovered something I didn't expect: ... Read more

Welcome to the 2009 Webware 100 awards!

They're back! Just as they did in 2007 and 2008, the 2009 Webware 100 Awards will honor the people's choice for the best Web 2.0 apps and services. Last year, nearly 2 million votes were cast to determine the most popular Web apps. This year, the apps are better and the market is even more competitive, so we expect a vigorous contest.

There are 10 categories users can vote on in the Webware 100, plus an 11th category for Webware editors' special awards. Each category will have 10 winners. The categories this year are:

• Audio and music: Music streaming and download, podcasting, audio book services, recommendation systems.
• Browsing: Tools to access online content, including browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, and runtime engines
• Commerce: Retail, auctions, marketplaces, travel, event tickets, and real estate
• Communications: E-mail, chat, voice
• Infrastructure and storage: Web app platforms and tools; online storage and synchronization products
• Location-based services: Mapping, friend finders, business locators, geographic services (new category for 2009)
• Photo and video: Photo storage, sharing, and editing; video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation
• Productivity: Tools for work and organization
• Search and reference: Data and ways to find it; search tools and knowledge repositories like wikis
• Social and publishing: Social networking, shared online environments, content management, blogging, and micro-blogging
• Editors' awards: To be announced, but these will include awards for up-and-coming products, design, innovative use of technology, and so on.

See the previous years' winners: 2008 | 2007

Nominations are open

Nominations for 2009 Webware 100 are now open. If there's a service you think people should be voting for, nominate it now. Nominations will close on March 6. See full terms and conditions.

There's no need to nominate a site more than once, or to encourage friends to nominate a site that you have already nominated. Reserve your grassroots efforts for the voting phase, which will start after we've processed all the nominations.

All live sites that have been covered in the Webware blog so far will be automatically nominated, but if you are an official representative for a product that we've written up, please nominate your product and enter your contact information so we can contact you when necessary as the Webware 100 process progresses.

Qualifications for nomination: The service must be live by March 1, 2009. It's OK if it's in beta, but it must be an open beta. The site must be entered into 1 of our 10 user-voting categories. We reserve the right to recategorize nominations.

Once the nominations are closed, Webware editors will go over the entries, remove the non-qualifying and duplicate nominations, and make sure all services are in the correct category. Then we'll select the best services in each category for the finalist round. We'll make sure the most important, most innovative, and most useful products are selected as Webware 100 finalists.

Voting starts on March 31

Users will be able to vote on their favorite webware in each category. Voting will happen on the Webware site, and we also will distribute voting buttons and code to the finalists that they can put on their sites.

Voting will run through April. The top 10 services in each category, and the 10 additional editors' picks, will be crowned the 2009 Webware 100 on May 19.

Nominations are open now. What are your favorite Web apps and services?

Today, for kicks, I tried to draw a map of all the places I write content, all the places it is displayed, and all the intermediate services that re-post my content in places other than where I originally write it. It's a spaghetti of interlinked services, and it's becoming unmanageable. I think it's just dumb luck that I haven't created an infinite loop of republishing so far. Adding one more service could push things over the edge.

Although my profession is creating content and publishing it, my problem is hardly unique. I post a few times a day on Webware and Twitter, and I contribute to some other blogs and podcasts, and once in awhile I update Delicious and Flickr. But compared with some people in non-publishing jobs my output is modest. There are people active on multiple personal content services like Facebook, Digg, Vox, Blogger, and Youtube that produce more content than I do, and they're also using republishing services to make sure that all their friends, on all their networks, see all their content.

It shouldn't be this complicated (click for full-size).

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

The challenge is keeping track of all the connections between services. It's a tangle, as I said: I have Friendfeed republishing my Twitter posts. Ping.fm, which I often use to post to Twitter (and thus, to Friendfeed), could just as easily publish to Friendfeed directly. I just happened to set up the Friendfeed-Twitter link before I started using Ping.fm. I have Ping.fm updating several other nanoblog feeds, like Jaiku, Pownce, and Plurk. Meanwhile, my Webware article feed (just my stories) is read into Friendfeed and directly by Jaiku. I do not feed Webware into Twitter directly; I use a republisher called Twitterfeed. I am also using Twitterfeed to republish my ProPRTips blog into Twitter, which is strategic, since I get more readers for that blog's content on Twitter than the blog gets itself.

Twhirl, a desktop client for Twitter and Friendfeed that I dearly love, updates only one site at a time, so I can use it to send Twitter posts to either my main Twitter account or other specialized accounts I occasionally write to. Friendfeed reads in only what I write in my main Twitter account, though. And since Twhirl does not update other services I use, like Jaiku and Plurk, when I use Twhirl I need to be mindful that some of my followers on these other networks aren't going to see the posts.

It gets worse. Each of the sites my content ends up on (partial list: Webware, News.com, ProPRTips, Swagalicio.us, Twitter, Friendfeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Pownce, Kwippy, Flickr, Delicious, Digg) has its own communities. And I never know where a conversation will take hold. Since I'm most active on Webware, Twitter, and Friendfeed, I check those services more frequently. Sometimes something I write will spark a conversation on one, sometimes another. There's no telling. (By the way, Plurk gets a decent share of community action; every time I go there I think I should check in more frequently.) Disqus can do a lot of discussion bridging between blogs, but one thing it doesn't do is bridge communities between the microblog sites.

I am, so far, managing to keep most of these connections in my head, but I fear that if I sleep for more than nine hours I could forget how my network is put together. I could look at my sketch. But we really shouldn't need network maps to keep track of what we're doing where, should we?

So this is my challenge to the Web 2.0 community: Solve the personal content and community problem. Take the multi-publishing chops of Ping.fm, the aggregation features of Friendfeed, the republishing capability of Twitterfeed (with more functions, please), and the discussion aggregation of Disqus, and put it all together into one simple, easy-to-maintain product that acts as a hub for publishing, reading, and community in all these services. And while you're at it, make sure you don't steal traffic or community from the services you're front-ending; they all have personalities we want to keep alive.

Or should I drop it all and just write e-mail newsletters instead?

Coming soon: Webware joins the CNET family.

Starting Monday, CNET's Webware blog began its integration into CNET News.com. I'm thrilled we're making this move. We started this site in November 2006 to cover Web 2.0 product news for a new and growing audience, but during the past 20 months, Web 2.0 news has become a main part of the CNET News.com editorial product. So it's time to tear down the wall between the two sites and bring them together into one experience.

The Webware editorial mission won't change. You'll still be able to get to the home page by going to Webware.com. We'll still cover Web 2.0 news and reviews. In fact, Webware readers will get even more Web 2.0 content, since all the considerable News.com reporting resources that now cover Web topics will run their stories on the Webware page.

The original Webware team will continue to produce features like our Newbie's Guides and the Webware 100 Awards, as well as news and reviews items.

Only a small percentage of randomly chosen Webware.com visitors will see this change at first. We should be fully integrated into CNET News.com for everybody by late August.

Later this year, Webware will expand again within the CNET universe, but I can't tell you more about that just yet. Stay tuned.

See also: Preview: CNET's new, improved look