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Today, there’s never a lack of new things to see and read online. In fact, the biggest problem is keeping up with the stuff you really want to remember. It’s so easy to read an article or discover a new webapp you like, only to forget it and never find it again. Fonts and icon packs seem to be the easiest for me to forget; I’ll find ones I love, and then somehow never be able to find them again later.

There’s no reason you have to lose stuff you find online, though. Even in our fast paced society with new tweets and notifications coming in all the time, you can still keep up with the stuff you like online. With little effort, you’ll have a curated set of all your favorite things you’ve found online. We’ve scoured the net for 24 of the best webapps that can help you keep up with things you find online no matter where you are. Chances are you already use some of them, but keep reading to find some new ones that might be the perfect solution for you.

Bookmark Your Favorite Sites

Most of us have lost bookmarks when switching to a new computer or browser. That’s where online bookmarking solutions come in: they’re always the same, no matter what device or browser you’re using. Here’s some of our favorite online bookmarking tools today.

Store Notes Online

When you want to save more than just a bookmark, there are many online notebook tools today you can use to store your thoughts, links, and more. Here are some of the best ways to keep notes online about anything you discover online … or offline!

Keep a Copy

Sometimes it’s best to keep the web close by. For those articles you know you need to keep, you can always print them out or save them as PDFs with these tools.

Reading Apps

Perhaps you don’t want to save a link forever, but you would like to save it for now so you can read it later. Here’s some great services that make it easy to read articles you discover when you want, or archive them for later.

Conclusion

With all of these apps, there’s no reason you need to lose anything you’ve discovered online. You can bookmark it, save notes about it, save it to read later, and more. Best of all, most of these apps take little effort to use, so you’ll keep up with your favorite sites and apps without having to waste time organizing info. I personally use Pinboard, Instapaper, Simplenote, WordPress, and Evernote all the time, and now find it much easier to keep up with than my old system of sticky notes and random browser bookmarks!

How do you keep up with info you find online? Do you use any of these tools, or do you have other favorites? Let us know in the comments below!

TV shows are refreshingly awesome. The variety and depth of content available spanning various genre is unmatchable. Given the talent and strong content behind the TV shows, even multi-million dollar movies made with bankable stars are unable to set the box office on fire. What TV watchers need is an app that can help them keep track of all the awesome shows and their schedules.

Followmy.tv keeps a record of your TV history, lets you discover new and old shows and share them with your friends. Let’s take a look at how one can become an organized couch potato with this web app.

Overview

With the help of Followmy.tv, you can connect with friends as well as strangers to share your passion of the boob tube. Thoughful social integration features will guarantee that you will discover or rediscover new and classic TV shows!

That’s not all, Followmy.tv also feeds you real time information about airdates, friend activity and more. Followmy.tv is totally free to use and easy to sign up.

User Interface

After a quick email validation, you will be taken to the dashboard. Followmy.tv is created for ease of use. The development team actually boasts that they put continuous effort into that philosophy while keeping everything as lightweight as possible. Well, we are here to test their claims aren’t we?

I’ve seen a lot of dashboards that look empty and deserted upon first launch. At times, it would be so empty there wouldn’t be any real drive to start evaluating the app by filling it up with my data. However, that’s not the case with Followmy.tv. Yes, there’s no sample data here either, but the design is brilliantly done. I was so looking forward to using the app.

It’s incredibly easy to use and with only a few clicks; you can fully customize Followmy.tv to your needs. The web app has a web 2.0 design with a perfect choice of colors and elements that go easy with the eyes. Then there are the neatly placed helpful nudges pushing you in the right direction to start using the web app.

Using Followmy.tv

Ease of Use

I chose to follow the directions of Followmy.tv and started by selecting shows that I love. If I began to choose the shows I watch and love, it might take an entire day so I am limiting myself to just a few.

I was half expecting to choose from a boring list or use the search box to find what I am looking for. To my pleasant surprise there were comprehensively compiled categories based on user ratings, popularity and pilot runs.

Click on the show of your choice to bring up a page exclusively dedicated to that series. The pages are filled with story synopsis, episode runs, next scheduled episode and more. Hit Follow to add the show to your list instantly. An overlay that collects the information regarding how many episodes you’ve watched so far is a nice touch. This should help both when you start following others and those who choose to follow you.

This elaborate collection of information in the exclusive page is pretty awesome. However, I clearly missed the ability to add multiple shows on the fly from the category view. Like most fans, I know by heart the plot and characters of the shows I love, so an AJAX enabled option to add multiple shows in one go would be much appreciated.

Social Features

Blog style comments can be found in every show’s page and you comment and/or reply to others.

On the left pane you will find all the activity associated to this page. This includes all your activity and the activities in chronological order.

To start following people who are like minded fans, head over to the Followers section. Find the ones you like and click on them to access their public profile page.

Public profile pages have a close resemblance to the show pages we have seen earlier. You can see the shows they have recently watched and comments left by others.

Do check out the Time Wasted section of the profile page without fail. It gives an interesting analysis of all the time the user has wasted so far, watching all the TV shows. It’s a killer feature for people from the media industry to gauge the interests of various sections of people.

Scheduling Shows

For a quick view of unwatched episodes of the shows you have marked that you love, head over to the dashboard. Episode names and scheduled air times will be sitting there for quick access. After watching them or gaining access to them via iTunes, Netflix etc., mark them appropriately and they will be replaced.

To access the scheduled air times of all the shows you follow, you will have to go to the Show List section.

Another laudable feature is the calender view. All episodes are displayed in their respective dates and they all are populated across the board – for all the weeks they continue to air. There are options to import the calender information to your existing Google Calender or iCal app on Mac. The developers have covered all the bases. Absolutely brilliant!

Final Thoughts

I’m such a couch potato, if there’s an award for someone who watches so many shows from so many countries, in so many languages, I am pretty sure I will be among the top few. So, I was naturally thrilled to check out the app and to my delight, Followmy.tv turned out to be a rock solid companion.

I use Glue for getting recommendations, but I found Followmy.tv offered a more streamlined and easy way to keep track of airings. Without a doubt, Followmy.tv is the best app I have discovered so far this year. Good Times!

Share Your Thoughts!

Do you like the features of Followmy.tv? Are you aware of a better app?

For all the hubbub about native mobile apps, sometimes the web is still better. Case in point: the Readability app. Apple’s new in-app subscription rules made it impossible for the new reading service to add a free app to the iOS App Store without giving 30% of their subscription fees to Apple. So, instead, they turned their focus to creating a HTML5 mobile app that lets readers on all modern mobile devices read their favorite articles on the go. The web let them sidestep Apple’s restrictions and make their app multi-platform at the same time.

So, what is Readability, and why did their service cause such a stir with Apple? Keep reading to learn more about Readability, how it can help your online reading, and how their mobile webapp shows a new future for cross-platform mobile apps.

What is Readability?

Readability started out as a bookmarklet from Arc90 that strips away all of the extra contents of webpages, leaving you with just the article text and images formatted beautifully like you’d expect in a leading newspaper. The script was so popular, Apple even incorporated it into the latest desktop version of Safari as the Safari Reader feature. This year, Readability has been relaunched as a new service that lets you archive articles you want to read for later, or view them now online in a clean, easy to read, and customizable interface. The new webapp is a subscription service, but 70% of your subscription fee will be divided between the authors you’ve read from each month. This way, you can make the web a nicer place to read and support those who write the content you enjoy.

Signing Up

When you signup for a Readability account, you can choose how much you wish to pay per month. You’ll need to pay at least $5/month, but can choose to pay more if you want. Either way, 70% of your fee will go to the writers you read after each month. Now, just enter your normal info, and checkout with your Amazon account.

Once you’ve signed up, you can login to your account and start adding great content to read later. The easiest way to do this is with their browser extensions that let you either view the current page you’re reading in Readability, or archive it in your account to read later, much like Instapaper. Alternately, you can add the new Readability Bookmarklets to your browser so you can quickly add new pages without messing with a menu.

Save Your Reading

Now, with your new Readability account, you’ll never need to stop and read every new article you discover throughout the day. Instead, add them to your Readability account, and then come back and read them when you have time to relax and read. With the flow of information online that bombards us daily, it’s hard to really concentrate on what we’re reading. Readability can bring that back by letting you save reading for later.

Your reading list can be read in any modern browser, on your computer, tablet device, netbook, and more. If you like an article, add a star to favorite it. Then once you’re done reading an article, archive it to clean out your reading list. Again, this looks and works very much like Instapaper’s iPad app, only this time, it’s all in your browser. Plus, you’re getting to support the writing you enjoy with your Readability subscription.

Readability on Mobile – Even Offline

The most interesting part of Readability is its mobile webapp. After being rejected by Apple’s App Store, Readability focused on developing a mobile app that would work on any modern mobile device and still let you read your articles wherever you are. Just browse to http://readability.com/ from your smartphone or tablet, login with your normal account, and your articles will be downloaded to your device in an HTML5 database. The mobile webapp actually feels more full featured than many other offline reading apps, with a tabbed interface, style settings, and an option to add new links that will be downloaded the next time you’re online. Interestingly, the webapp only works offline on iOS devices directly from Safari; if you add the bookmark to your home screen, it’ll only run online. Even still, it’s impressive they’ve done this much with their offline mobile webapp, and hope to see more developers focus on creating cross-platform mobile webapps like this!

Conclusion

Readability is a very interesting service that shows how much one little bookmarklet can turn into. From a small snippet of code that Apple baked into Safari to a new reading service that supports writers and skirts Apple’s iOS restrictions, Readability has gone farther than you could have ever imagined from the start. Their unique service gives readers a great way to give back to the authors they love, while making it easier to enjoy their favorite articles anytime, anywhere.

The service is very similar to Instapaper and Read it Later, two other popular mobile and web apps for saving articles. With Readability’s web-only focus, though, it’s a unique fit for Web.AppStorm readers, and is definitely an interesting idea for writers and readers alike! Also, the monthly subscription fee may seem high, though if you’ve been wanting to give back to online writers you enjoy, this might be a great option for you. Best of all, if you want to support writing but prefer Instapaper on your iOS devices, you can add your Readability account to Instapaper for the best of both worlds.

Over the last twelve months the iPad has literally taken the technology world by storm. Apple has carved out a brand new niche in the industry, establishing the iPad as the best tablet computer available on the market. And the momentum behind this gadget shows no sign of slowing down…

Since the launch of the iPad, we’ve received countless requests from readers for a new site that’s completely dedicated to the device. I’m incredibly excited to let you know that today marks the launch of a new member in the ever-growing AppStorm family – iPad.AppStorm!

Don’t Miss Out: Subscribe Now!

We have some absolutely fantastic posts lined up over the coming week, and we’d hate for you to miss out… There are a few different ways to subscribe to iPad.AppStorm – hopefully one of the following options will work for you!

• Subscribe to our RSS feed
• Follow @ipadappstorm on Twitter
• Sign up for Email Updates
• Stay up-to-date on Facebook

Win an iPad 2!

To celebrate the launch of iPad.AppStorm, we’re going to be giving one lucky reader a brand new iPad 2!

This is the latest and greatest piece of hardware to emerge from Apple HQ, and today you have the chance to get your hands on one completely free of charge!

It’s a marvel of technology, and would be the perfect way to browse the new iPad.AppStorm site! Find out how to enter.

No matter where you host your website, something could happen that would immediately destroy all of your years of work on your blog. Your server could crash, your hosting service could accidentally delete it, or hackers could add malicious code that would take hours to clean up. Just like you (should) backup your personal computer regularly, your website needs backed up too so your data will never get lost.

There are many backup services for WordPress blogs today, ranging from plugins that email you a copy of your WordPress database to ones that archive everything on your site to Amazon S3. The new VaultPress service takes backup to the next level, making sure that everything from your site is redundantly backed up to multiple cloud services within seconds of it being saved on your site. Keep reading to see if VaultPress is the ideal backup solution for your WordPress powered site.

What is VaultPress?

VaultPress is a new service from Automattic, the parent company behind WordPress.com and many other services WordPress, designed to make it absolutely painless to backup your self-hosted WordPress site. It’s a webapp mixed with a WordPress plugin to give you the best mix of manageability and accessibility. VaultPress will backup every single part of your WordPress site, from posts and comments to settings and your wp-config.php file, and it does this as soon as they’re added or changed. Even better, it can automatically push security updates to your site and scan your files for vulnerabilities.

I’ve Got a Golden Ticket

VaultPress is currently a beta service, and to signup, you’ll have to get a Golden Ticket with a special signup link. You can signup to apply for a Golden Ticket on their site by adding your name and info to their tongue-in-cheek signup letter. Alternately, many hosting services, including DreamHost, Media Temple, and ServInt, are offering Golden Tickets to WordPress users on their servers, so you may be able to get one from your hosting service if you want.

Either way, once you’ve received an invite, you can signup for VaultPress to start protecting your site. VaultPress currently costs $15/month for complete backup of your site, no matter how large it is. Alternately, you can choose their $40/month professional service, which includes security auditing of all the files on your site in addition to the standard backup setup. To complete signup, you’ll need to add payment info, and then sign in with a WordPress.com account or create a new one.

Get VaultPress Setup

Now that you’ve got a new VaultPress account, you’re ready to add it to your WordPress site. You’ll get a link to download a unique copy of the VaultPress plugin with security codes specifically for your site and account. Install it in WordPress as normal, and seconds later you’ll see the current status as VaultPress uploads your site’s contents. It’ll backup everything, including uploads, plugins, themes, and all of your database data including posts, tags, comments, settings, and more.

You can also checkup on your site from your VaultPress account’s dashboard, where you’ll see some quick info about your site and can re-download the plugin, see its recent activity, change settings, and more.

Additionally, you can configure VaultPress to integrated more directly with your site. First, make sure VaultPress can remotely upgrade your plugin; this will help keep you site secure and running the latest version at all times. Then, you can add your MySQL SSH and SFTP info so VaultPress can backup your data directly and use less of your webhost resources.

Get More Info About Your Site

In addition to backing up your data, VaultPress can give you unique data on your site. Right from your WordPress dashboard, you can see the total amount of data that’s backed up from your site, along with the most recent activity on your blog.

On your VaultPress account dashboard, you can see even more interesting info about your WordPress site. VaultPress will list your most productive day of the week, the time you publish the most posts, as well as the most popular day and time. It adds all of this into a graph of your site’s vitality; the more activity, the better! It’s a unique way to look at your site’s data, and I’d love to see it integrated with the default Jetpack WordPress stats.

Get Your Backup Data

Although you always hope you’ll never actually have to use it, someday you may need to restore your site from a VaultPress backup. The great thing is, since it’s always backing up every little change to your site, you can quickly revert to a previous version of your site. If you upgrade a plugin, delete a post, or change a theme and then want to undo what you change, just download your VaultPress backup from the last backup before the change. You can choose exactly what you want to download, and then upload the original files back to your webhost. This is where VaultPress really shines; it helps you in those moments of change that you likely wouldn’t have a backup to fix otherwise.

This is also a great tool if you need to move your site to a new webhost. Just download a complete backup of your site, then upload it to a new install of WordPress on your new host, and you’re ready to go. VaultPress plans to offer a service in the near future that will let you upload your data to your webhost via SFTP from their site, which will be much faster than uploading your files via FTP manually.

Conclusion

So, is VaultPress really worth $15-$40 per month? That will definitely depend on your needs from a backup service, but for most professional sites that actually make money from their site, I’d personally say yes. VaultPress does a much better job at incremental backup than any other WordPress backup solution I’ve seen, and makes it almost impossible to lose data from your site. It’s not for everyone, and obviously $15/month is more than most basic shared webhosting options today. But, considering that VaultPress lets you backup sites of any size for the same price, it’s an especially valuable service for larger sites. Either way, it’s exciting to see more options become available that make WordPress easier to manage and help writers focus on what they do best: writing!