My Favorite Web Services

Working on the internet means that I’m online all the time. Or at least it seems that way. The saving grace is that I am online with a purpose, not just wasting time surfing Myspace. Being that I use the internet to serve an end, I am always looking for web-based services that can make my life easier in some way. Never more than in the last year or two, the internet has sprung up with some great web services that really make life easier. And the great thing, too, is that many of them are totally free. Let me share with you the ones that I use:

Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/)

For those operating a website, Google Analytics is a great option for capturing site statistics. The service is derived from Urchin due to Google’s purchase of that service in 2005. And in true Google fashion, the service is completely free. When first launched, Google ran into unexpected demands on this service and they had to severely limit the amount of sign-ups. At this point, though, I think they have things in order and, to my knowledge, you can get an account quite easily. I am using Analytics to track traffic on every one of my sites. For a freebie, the service is amazing, but true stat hounds will quickly see it’s limitations. One of those limitations is that it’s information on search engine keywords is a little limited.

FeedBurner (www.feedburner.com)

Feedburner is a service which allows webmasters to “burn” RSS feeds for their website. Of course, it is pretty easy to have your own RSS feeds independently of Feedburner. Most blog packages and CMS packages all generate RSS feeds. So, why would you want Feedburner? Because Feedburner not only ensures that the feed format is correct, they also offer a variety of add-on services to track readership, promote your feed, email items from your feed to a mailing list, etc. Feedburner is a good all-in-one kind of service for RSS feeds. And, of course, it is free as well.

DNSStuff (www.dnsstuff.com)

This site is a great, free tool for doing things like IP lookups, WHOIS lookups, pings, traceroutes, etc. Getting a strange e-commerce transaction and want to see if the guy is in some foreign country? Run an IP check on his IP address and find out their geographic location. Want to find out who owns a domain? Run a WHOIS report. This is a good site to bookmark for those times you need it. It looks like they just recently launched a membership service, however they still have free tools.

iWebTool (www.iwebtool.com)

These guys have a variety of web-based tools at your disposal, almost all for the webmaster. Things like domain checkups, SEO diagnostics, etc.

Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com)

Basecamp is a web-based project manager by 37 Signals. This is a great service, too, which emphasizes easy of use. As a developer, I admire the way this company approaches the field of application decvelopment. They focus on simplicity and the user experience, and that is the key to their success. But, if you need to coordinate with other people on your web projects, Basecamp is a nice option for you. There are some short-comings to the system, in my opinion. In some ways, its actually a little too simple. But, powerful nonetheless. I should note that I no longer use Basecamp mainly because of those shortcomings, but I still very much admire this service.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets (docs.google.com)

This is a free online word processor and spreadsheet app by Google. There are better ones out there, such as ThinkFree, but there is a certain stability to Google. For those in business, the great feature of this is the ability to easily share and/or collaborate on documents. So, it can be used for team collaboration. It can also be used to quickly write documents when you don’t have access to an office suite. There are easy options to save as standard documents (such as Word).

These are some of my faves, but I know full well that there are a bunch of great web services out there that I don’t use or didn’t mention. So, feel free to comment and let everybody know about your picks.