Top websites of the year

Here is a list of top websites used this year.

Picnik
An online Photoshop? Maybe it's not quite that powerful, but Picnik is amazingly robust for a Web-based image editor. That it has tight integration with lots of great photo sharing sites like Flickr, MySpace, and Facebook is a bonus.

1Up.com
In a crowded field of gaming Web sites, 1Up.com stands out for its expert game reviews, news, and videos, and its active community. Read up on the gaming world while you're resting your thumbs.

BoingBoing
This "Directory of Wonderful Things" keeps getting wonderfuller, with spin-offs like BoingBoing Gadgets, BoingBoingTV, and BoingBoing Offworld. Each of them use the same quirky BoingBoing sensibility to dig up treasures around the Web

Hulu
Hulu's advertising campaign calls the site an evil plot to destroy the world; with the amount of time you can lose watching the free shows and movies offered, it might just be true. Who needs a TV when you have Hulu?

IMDb
IMDb is the Web's best source for finding out who that guy was that was in that thing with that other guy. Beyond solving bar bets, the site offers movie and TV news, clips, trailers, and even full-length video

io9
Hey, nerds! How about a nerd blog for your nerd interests? io9 covers everything science fiction and otherwise less-than-hip. Comic book superheroes, television time-travelers, and real-life robot-controlled rat brains; io9's got them all.

Nick.com
Nick's Web site has information on your kid's favorite shows (or your favorite shows¡ªadmit it, you like Avatar: The Last Airbender), full-length episodes, and browser-based games. Why waste time with Solitaire when you could play cards with SpongeBob?

The Onion
This venerable source of satire has moved beyond snappy headlines into the realm of Web video and audio. Tech fans will appreciate pieces like this not-quite-safe-for-work bit of hard-hitting reporting.

Someecards
Someecards has a wry e-card for every occasion, from birthday wishes ("Happy birthday to someone I feel incredible close to when I'm intoxicated") to cries for help ("I can't handle the pressure of making my own salad.") You can even create your own cards, if you think you're clever enough.

Pandora
Bored with shuffling through your iTunes music? Pandora throws a bit of the unknown and unexplored into the mix. Enter a song or artist, and Pandora creates an Internet radio station with similar songs. Try putting in Weird Al's "Fat." It'll be fun¡ªtrust us!

Boxee
A New Way to Enjoy Entertainment on your TV & PC
Online TV, movies, music, and photos - made easy for couch potatoes.

Kayak
Traveling would be a lot more fun were it not for all of the, you know, traveling. But just because every other part of the process is a nightmare doesn't mean booking your trip has to be. Kayak crawls hundreds of travel sites and tracks current promotions to help you get the best fare for your flight.

Mint
It's a scary time to be thinking about money, so you may as well get a little bit of help from our Editors' Choice for online financial services. Mint can track your income and spending, and help you build a budget you'll be able to stick to.

Simply Hired
In the current economic climate, it's probably best to cast your net as wide as possible. Simply Hired aggregates results from thousands of job and company sites, making job hunting as easy as its name implies.

Yelp
Want some Persian food in New York with a side-order of snark? Looking for a review of a Thai restaurant in San Francisco, prepared in iambic pentameter? Anyone who thinks business reviews can't be fun needs to Yelp more.

Digg
The ultimate user-submitted content site. Actually, it has no content, just links, all of which are voted upon¡ªdugg¡ªby visitors to the site, or any site that puts a Digg badge on its pages. Still one of the hottest places to visit to see what's...hot.

EW.com
Entertainment Weekly's online home remains one of the best all-around entertainment sites, with some real reporting on some fluffy bits of news, not to mention fun columns (its Lost analysis can't be beat), reviews, and even video. Thankfully, it's fluff we all enjoy.

Slate
The Washington Post's online current affairs magazine¡ªwhich was founded by Microsoft¡ªcontinues to deliver on much more than politics (entertainment and tech coverage is especially good), and with far more wit and clarity than is typical online.

Etsy
This excellent online store lets you both buy and sell handmade items, and has tons of one-of-a-kind treasures available at good prices. It's the Internet equivalent of a cottage industry, and we absolutely love it.

Trulia
An afternoon of browsing Trulia's real estate listings will either make your day or destroy your week, depending on whether you're shopping for a home or considering selling. Housing booms and busts will come and go, but through it all, Trulia is our favorite real estate site.

Ars Technica
The standard practice for news sites these days is to be a mile wide and an inch deep-write as many short posts as possible. Ars has always gone in the opposite direction, with refreshingly insightful reporting and commentary on the tech industry.

Engadget
In many ways, Engadget is setting the standard not just for the blogosphere, but for the whole tech media world. The site covers the world of tech gadgets with a level of skill and enthusiasm that is hard to match.

Instructables
Build things of limited usefulness out of household objects! That's the idea behind this fun, geeky DIY site. Browse for project ideas or just enjoy the weird obsessions of the DIY community

Lifehacker
I can't remember what life was like before Lifehacker, but I'm pretty sure it involved lots of wasted time, wasted money, and wasted closet space, and not nearly enough keyboard shortcuts. Optimize your entire online and offline life with this site's incredibly useful tips and how-tos

Phone Scoop
I don't know of another site that covers developments in the mobile/wireless world with as much depth as Phone Scoop. And if you're in the market for a new handset, check out the site's cool Phone Finder

TechCrunch
Though the dollars aren't swirling around Silicon Valley like they were a couple years ago, there are still leaks and rumors to report, mergers to scrutinize, and startups to evaluate. TechCrunch is on top of it, with an unparalleled network of loose-lipped informants that ensures that Michael Arrington gets the story first

Aviary
This site is giving Picnik a run for its money, offering online, Flash-based image editing, color editing, vector editing, image hosting, and even image capture of Web sites (using a Firefox add-on) which you can instantly open in the image editor.

Gizapage
Privacy might be the biggest problem with modern social networks. That and the fact that there are too damn many of them. Gizapage wants to fix both problems by giving you a single dashboard from which to control your social network profiles across sites like Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and your WordPress blog.

TinyChat
You need to have a quick conversation with multiple co-workers. Except some of them are working from home, the lucky bastards. Rather than try to get all your various IM services to cooperate in creating a multi-person chatroom that probably won't work anyway, jump on TinyChat and make an instant chat room that even supports audio and video.

1000 Awesome Things
You know what's awesome? Thinking it's Thursday when it's really Friday. Or the light turning green just as you get to the intersection. Or placing the last piece of the puzzle. This happy blog doesn't have 997 more awesome things just yet, but it counts down another bite of awesomeness every weekday. And that's awesome!

b@ TV
This crazy site is a collection of multi-angle videos of DJs spinning at popular clubs around the world, with an annotated progress bar so you can comment or tag different songs in the set. b@ TV won't appeal to everyone, but we're including it in our list for two reasons: 1) If you're into house music, it'll be your new favorite site; 2) We desperately want a site like this for live rock shows.

BookArmy
This social network site for readers features a recommendation engine and user reviews geared toward finding you a good book to read next

WorldWide Telescope
The Web client version of the WorldWide Telescope project puts the entire known universe right into your browser window. The site lets you travel around Earth, space, and other planets, sight-seeing via photos from ground- and space-based telescopes

MeeHive
Let's face it, The New York Times just doesn't get you, does it? MeeHive lets users build customized online newspapers based on their personal interests.

World Digital Library
Check out a treasure trove of some of the world's most important artifacts from 8,000 B.C. to 2009 A.D. World Digital Library features high-res images and a plethora of information on a number of priceless treasures, maps, and documents.

namechk
Worried that someone else will grab the journeyfan5757 username on your favorite social networking site? NameChk cross checks usernames across 122 sites, from the obvious (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube) to the more obscure (Fanpop, BallHype, ThisNext).

CarComplaints.com
If your 1979 Pontiac Trans Am is making strange noises like it's haunted by angry ghosts, you could take it to a mechanic, or you could go to CarComplaints.com to see if it's a common ailment and how much it might cost to fix. The site has a database of complaints searchable by make, model, and year, and even has special sections for the worst and most amusing complaints.

Voyij
Sometimes the price of a getaway is more important than the destination. Just tell Voyij what airport you want to leave from and it'll provide you with a list of the cheapest flights going anywhere. For the absolute best deals, leave your travel dates flexible, too.

AlternativeTo
Who has money to spend on software nowadays? Skip the pricey software packages with AlternativeTo, which lets you search for free software alternatives. The site makes it easy to find free replacements for Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Nero, Microsoft Office, and just about any other Windows, Mac, Linux, or online application.

Spiceworks makes the headline

The Austin-based company is coming out of the shadows in the channel, saying it has amassed a community of more than 65,000 MSPs (Managed Service Providers) worldwide, of which about half reside in North America.

Spiceworks provides a free systems management, inventory, and helpdesk software application, Spiceworks IT Desktop, designed for network administrators working in small- to medium-sized businesses.

Spiceworks IT Desktop is used to inventory, monitor, manage and report on software and hardware assets. It also includes an integrated help desk system. Spiceworks runs on Microsoft Windows and discovers Windows, Unix, Linux and Mac OS X machines along with other IP-addressable devices such as routers, VOIP phones, printers, etc. Spiceworks is an advertisement-supported application and is written in Ruby on Rails.

Apparently, Spiceworks has shown the IT world a way of integrating commercial software with
open source ambitions.

Xoopit sets the model

How can a small startup keeps the ambitions and finally sell the business in millions or more? Xoopit gives us a good answer.

The Xoopit technology searches files, photos and videos floating in users' Yahoo Mail and Google Gmail clouds and lets users post this content on other social networks and blogs. The software imports media from photo- and video-sharing networks such as YouTube, Flickr, Kodak, Shutterfly and Picasa. It seems that this service is just compatibility+a UI system.

On July 22, Yahoo confirmed its acquisition of Xoopit.

While Xoopit was free, CEO and co-founder Bijan Marashi told eWEEK last year he expected the company would place paid ads on the service, which is something that Yahoo will certainly try to do. Yahoo is already keen on improving ad sales on its home page with its clever My Favorites application feed section.

Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Yahoo Applications, explained the value Yahoo users will get from the Xoopit buy:

"Xoopit will bring phenomenal photo organization, improved photo sharing and the serendipity of discovering forgotten photos to Yahoo! Mail. Why is this such a big deal? Yahoo! Mail is actually home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world. And every day, millions of you use Yahoo! Mail as your primary way to share the photos of important moments in your lives. While social networks and community sites are great for sharing photos with everyone you know, we realize it¡¯s not for everyone or every occasion. For many, e-mail is still best for sharing photos among a more select group of friends or family. And now we're making it all that much easier for you."

Xoopit began life as a Gmail and iGoogle plug-in for Firefox before it began working with Yahoo Mail last year, but Lamkin said Yahoo will continue to support the Xoopit Firefox plug-in.

The Xoopit buy is the second piece of major news to have leaked from Yahoo this week, with AllThingsDigital and the Wall Street Journal reporting the buy plans just one day after the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the company was planning an opt-in beta test of its new home page.

If the pattern holds, Yahoo should be reporting a major search and online ad deal with Microsoft soon. Last week, AllThingsDigital and 24/7 Wall Street reported that Yahoo and Microsoft were working on a multibillion-dollar deal in which Microsoft would pay Yahoo to run its ads on Yahoo's search engine.

Again, Amazon is growing

10 years ago when we talked about Amazon, we meant "book store." Apparently Amazon's ambition is easily growing up in these years. An example will be the recent acquisition of Zappos, an online shoe-seller. Seems that Amazon's market focus is moving towards multiple angles. What is more interesting here is that this acquisition happens during this market time. It is easily undertandable that Zappos may be passing through a hard time. But on the other hand, Amazon seems to be in really good shape, right?

How is skype?

Well there has been quite a few years since skype first came into my ears, more than 400 million users have been living with Skype in their globalized lives. What we have been enjoying is the possibility of talking to the other side for free or at a lower price and with a decent phone quality at the same time. Skype allows multiple people to chat in the same session. Some kind of conferencing, right? A newbie in the market, oovoo, has been dragging more than 7 million users (most of them in the business domain) in the unified communication market. Oovoo's starting point is to provide video-conferencing functionalities which are very much used in the all kinds of business sectors. In the ression time, internet is a way to save the communication cost. Skype also starts to put its focus on the online collaboration and video conferencing functionalities.We will see what happens in the next 6 months.

What's interesting here, is that a start-up like oovoo still had the courage a few years ago to make an online communication business with the large popularity of existing tools such as skype and other commercial tools. That is the spirit of innovation and courage to challenge.