Open Thread: What are Your Essential Sites?
Web working covers a lot of ground: from coffeeshop bedouins to full-time telecommuters to home-office workers. But one thing holds us all together: we use the web to be productive.
What does that actually mean, though? Do you just fire up the browser when you have some particular web destination in mind? Or are you one of the people (like most of the WWD staff) who constantly has a browser window open, with your favorite web applications piled up in the tabs?
We have our own ideas about the most useful web sites and applications, but here’s your chance to tell us: which sites could you not live without? If there’s something always open in your browser, what is it? What are the top online destinations that any web worker should know about?
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ConstantContact.com — I use it to keep my face in front of my network.
I usually have Google Reader up with too many feeds to name. Offhand, these tend to usually have quality content that is relevant to this topic:
digital-web.com
thinkvitamin.com
smashingmagazine.com
alistapart.com
webdesignerwall.com
Bloglines, Google Reader, G-Mail, Grand Central and a del.icio.us tag such as ReadLater are usually open in Firefox tabs whenever I’m online.
When I first went to college I found myself jumping between computers, and so I went to managing all my work online. I had portable firefox open automatically on any PC i went to, and launch with Gmail, Writely (now google Docs), and Meebo. Between these I had email and IM communications, and all my work was just entered plaintext into google docs.
I try to avoid anything that might be a time waster or distraction and simply keep sites that are business focused open. These sites may be for performing work (i.e. tiddlyspot), or for quick reference (i.e. calendar.google.com)
my personal GTD wiki at tiddlyspot.com
igoogle.com and the few widgets I like
calendar.google.com
gmail.com
linkedin.com
sites.google.com – client specific sites, depending on which projects I’m working on
I always have FF open with at the very least Netvibes in the first tab so I can keep an eye on a multitude of RSS feeds (news, tech and various other subjects) and Gmail in the second tab. If I’m translating (as I am most of the time), I tend to have a number of translators’ resource sites open (terminology sources etc., professional translators’ forums etc.), plus at least one instance of Google for general subject research.
For me most commonly, its localhost and phpmyadmin, they’re open all the time as I always seem to be doing some web dev
But non web dev stuff, I always have
- google.co.uk (aka iGoogle)
- gmail
- google reader
As you can see, its pretty much all google, that is my launchpad to the net
Backpack, Gmail, Netvibes
definitely Gmail, Google Reader, Tumblr, Twitter. Those are the staples.
I’m on the Google train also: gmail, reader, calendar with 24/7 Flickr and Twitter (thanks to Carl McKinney).