As 2010 comes to a close I’ve been thinking about the year and all the great content we’ve published. We’ve tried new post types, increased our publishing schedule and most importantly, we’ve dug into the best web apps on the planet.
While we’ve covered piles of web app news, I wanted to pull together our best posts from 2010 that are still relevant and useful to you as we step into 2011. Take a look! (There’s a ton of content here, so you might bookmark this post!)
The Top 10
In no particular order, we’ll start with ten of our best (hard to choose, they’re all great!) roundups and continue on from there (40 in total). Remember, bookmark this post for later; there’s too much content here to read in just one day!
1. The Ultimate Dropbox Toolkit & Guide
Dropbox, the app we all (at least many of us) know and love, has a plethora of advanced uses to make life so much easier in managing data between multiple computers and online. We’ve posted several roundups of tips and tricks for Dropbox and now we present our ultimate toolkit and guide.
We’ve pulled all our tips and tricks together and added quite a few more. Additionally, share your Dropbox tips and tricks and we’ll update the list to share the fun with everyone.
2. The Best Web Apps of 2010
2010 has been quite a year for web apps with HTML5 and CSS3 really beginning to catch on, giving web apps more power and capabilities than they’ve ever had before and bringing them closer to their desktop rivals—or completely redefining the way we do certain things (social media?).
With 2011 right around the corner, the AppStorm team thought it would be a great time to take a look back on 2010 and some of the best applications developers have brought us. So we bring you 20 of the best web apps from 2010.
In preparing this post, I was taken back by the incredible number of fantastic web apps I’ve seen this year, so it’s very possible you’ll find something new and amazing yourself. Go on and take a look!
3. 10 Fun and Free Browser-Based Games
Sometimes it’s necessary to take a break from work and do something a little more enjoyable — like play games! Of course your employer probably won’t allow you to install a desktop game on your computer but fret not, there are plenty of browser-based games to keep you entertained.
We’ve pulled together ten great browser-based games you should definitely check out.
4. 35 of the Best Facebook Fan Pages
Love it or hate it, Facebook is one great social network for individuals and businesses alike. With more active members (recently reaching 500 million) than the population of some countries, it’s easily one of the best places for marketers and fans.
After taking a look through tons of great Facebook fan pages we compiled 35 of our favorite and most inspiring. Have a look and share yours!
5. 25 Tips for Killer Facebook Marketing
Getting your brand a Facebook page is like getting a shop at the prime location of the newest mall in town. Footfalls come in automatically without making much of an effort. People of all age groups, ethnicities, income groups, etc are on Facebook. So are their friends, family and acquaintances.
The chances of your marketing campaign going viral and gaining a word of mouth momentum are immense with this mammoth audience. At the same time, even a small slip will derail the campaign and people notice that too. So what are the right ways and key steps that make a marketing campaign on Facebook a success?
6. 15 Web Alternatives to Popular Desktop Software
Web applications have come a long way. They used to be amateur imitations of their desktop counterparts, with only one or two functions and not at all practical. But my, have these web apps grown. Web apps these days have become so powerful and useful that in some cases, they’ve begun to replace desktop software.
Desktop programs are great and all, but they don’t provide the same benefits as web apps that make use of cloud computing. With most web apps, you only need a browser and an internet connection to access all your data online. That beats having to install annoying programs any day. To give you a better sense of how useful web apps have become, I’ve compiled a list of web tools and apps that can very well replace some desktop programs. I hope you take the time to try them all out. You’ll be surprised how well they work.
Without further ado, here are some great web alternatives to the popular desktop programs we all love.
7. 50 Great Web Alternatives to Desktop Software
Even without the help of the ground breaking features in HTML5, web apps have come of age. While not all web apps rival their desktop counterparts, some clearly do. One solid example being online To-do apps with invoicing and project management apps also competent enough for a neck to neck fight.
We’ve compiled a list of 50 worthy web app alternatives to standalone desktop apps. Let’s take a look!
8. The Top 8 Free Online Image Editors
Taking photos or making beautiful digital artwork is activities most people enjoy doing. Most people have heard of, and might be familiar with, Adobe Photoshop. It’s arguably the most popular image manipulation app around, especially for professionals. However, most people’s image editing needs would be met by apps available right in their browser.
While you won’t have the extensive capabilities Photoshop has, this list of the top eight image editing web apps will likely offer more features than necessary for most people in most instances.
9. 10 HTML5 Games Paving The Way
HTML5 is still a developing technology and we’re barley beginning to see its capabilities in more advanced uses such as games. Though HTML5 isn’t even in its infancy yet, it’s beginning to emerge and here are 10 HTML5 games paving the way.
10. 30 Best Free Online Games
Browser based games have always been there for those who have fallen on hard times. Times when no games are currently installed on their computer. Mac users especially have suffered.
Lest we forget those who have lost their lives searching for games only to starve before they found something worth playing for more than 5 minutes, it is time to be proactive. It is time to save my fellow Mac users, and all users looking for a browser based gaming experience, from a fate worse than death. That’s why I’ve compiled this list of 30 of the best online games to play, absolutely, completely, 100% freely, and from the comfort of your browser.
10 Great Online Support and Help Desk Apps
Here at Envato we use Kayako’s eSupport, which has proven to be an effective tool. It’s not super pretty, but it’s got a lot of functionality and if you buy the self-hosted version then you pay for it once and use it forever. This is a considerable price difference when compared to products like ZenDesk where you pay per user.
Top 10 Web Apps for Music Streaming
Whether you’re at home, work or on the road, music surrounds us. In the age of the internet though, we’re no longer limited to the radio you hear in the elevator, in your car or maybe while you’re at your desk working. Not only are we no longer limited by traditional radio but the same goes for mp3 players like iPods and Zunes.
Streaming high quality music from your desktop, laptop, iPhone, Blackberry or other internet connected device, is relatively common place now and becoming more commonplace as we increasingly move towards a cloud connected world.
We’ve rounded up the top ten music streaming and discovery sites and web apps to help you find something better or maybe just get started all together.
8 Apps to Chat with Random Strangers
In the 21st century, an online service has the potential to garner hundreds of thousands of hits if it is social networking enabled. Networking is the key. Now after a decade of connecting with real world friends online, people suddenly have the desire to befriend strangers. Let us not get into the argument as to what good can come out of such an idea.
There are quite a few online chat services that help people to connect with random strangers irrespective of their geographic location and we’ve rounded up some of the best.
15 Apps to Enhance the Tumblr Experience
Tumblr is fast becoming the micro blogging platform of choice across all sections of Internet users. The Tumblr app in itself is well rounded with a gorgeous user interface and nice set of features. Being the spoiled brats of the internet age we are, the quest for accessing and managing Tumblr from various platforms is always out there.
There are quite a few choices when it comes to tumblr apps. In this round up, let us take a quick look on the apps that help us to enhance the Tumblr experience.
Top 20 Photo Storage and Sharing Sites
Looking for the best way to store and share your photos? You’re not alone! There are many fantastic sites for photo sharing and we’ve rounded up the top twenty. One or more of these are bound to meet your needs and much more.
We’ve rounded up the top twenty absolute best photo storage and sharing sites, including pricing, storage, accepted file types and other core information to make your decision even easier.
10 Marketing Resources Every App Should Provide
This is for all you web app developers out there. There are ten resources every app should make easily available to members of the press, including bloggers, via their website. These are resources for people interested in sharing information, reviews or thoughts about your web app — with a few being tremendously helpful for your users.
If you offer a web app or service, you need to check this list to see what kind of marketing you’re missing.
101 Apps for Your Web App Startup Toolbox
With the multitude of web applications available today, it can be difficult choosing, let alone finding, an application that fits your needs and wants. There are so many fantastic apps available, many of which are bound to be beneficial for you and/or your business.
From mind mapping, design and development to collaboration, project tracking and accounting; this roundup of 101 fantastic web apps for startups and businesses are sure to reduce operating costs and increase both productivity and efficiency.
The Landing Page Design and Resource Toolkit
Landing pages are specially designed and optimized pages that companies create to target specific types of visitors. So for example, you might have a landing page for a particular ad campaign, or you might make a landing page that is search engine optimized for a particular keyword. In all cases the landing page is then designed to make that particular type of visitor do something you want them to do, usually to buy stuff!
8 Bug Tracking Apps
Any software project is going to need issue and bug tracking. The bigger the project, the more the developers and the larger the userbase, the more critical it gets to keep tabs on what issues are outstanding, what features are in the pipeline, what schedules you are keeping and what is urgent.
Here at Envato we’ve used a number of apps over the years including Trac and PivotalTracker. Our main tool however is Lighthouse which is generally a solid app and scales well for the many projects and many people we have using it. There are some issues with the app, mainly to do with the search tools and some of the UI design, but overall it’s been good to us with our problems with the app being of the “that’s annoying” category, rather than deal breakers.
Here are eight different options for bug tracking that you might like to check out. Most are web services with free trials available to take them for a test drive. If you know of any we’ve missed, leave a comment!
9 Email Marketing and Newsletter Apps
Email is arguably one of the cheapest, most effective marketing tools at your disposal. Assuming your subscribers have knowingly signed up to your email list, you have at your fingertips a group of customers who have given consent to hear from you at regular intervals about your product. You’ll still need to package your marketing so that it’s useful and informative for subscribers, or you risk them unsubscribing in droves. But with a bit of care and thought you can create emails that are both sales and user value driven.
Thankfully the technicalities of creating and sending large volumes of email marketing is quite simple thanks to a number of competing web apps. From MailChimp, the most well known of the bunch, to Interspire’s Email Marketer, a self hosted solution, the range is huge. So today we’ve compiled up 9 great email marketing apps here along with a set of email marketing resources for your perusal!
15 Amazing Apps for File Storage in the Cloud
In a new age of online solutions, it didn’t take long for a diverse range of internet entrepreneurs to target one of the most common problems for almost every computer user; hard drive failure. Suddenly, someone had the idea of allowing people to backup their files in the cloud and the rest is history.
I’ve brought together the best revolutionary new apps that allow you to store your precious files in the cloud and (in some cases) even share them with others! You can find them after the fold.
25 Awesome Google Search Tips and Tricks
We all love Google. It’s a great place to search and find things that we do not know about. The beauty of Google is its all powerful algorithm that executes billions of search queries. In addition to showing top notch search results, Google’s algorithm has a few interesting features.
We’ll be taking a look at a few tips that can help us tap into the full power of Google.
10 Amazing Apps Used by the Envato Team
If you’re familiar with the Envato network of sites, ranging from the Tuts+ network to the variety of marketplaces and even our own AppStorm network, you’ll know that Envato’s staff is a collection of people that live not only on the internet but by the internet.
Apps making the most of internet connectivity can easily make either a positive or negative impact on our income. Here are ten apps used by many of the Envato staff, that help us work efficiently from anywhere in the world.
10 Reasons I’m Switching from TweetDeck to HootSuite
TweetDeck is a fantastic app, don’t get me wrong. However, HootSuite offers the candy that’s more satisfying to my taste buds. My Twitter apps are what I call “always-on” because they’re one of the few apps I leave running and visible at all times. So, switching apps isn’t something I take lightly.
With that said, here’s ten reasons I’ve decided to switch from TweetDeck to HootSuite.
10 Great Sites to Take a Break and Have a Laugh
Laughter is the best medicine. Period. To keep up with the pace of a world moving at a lightning speed, it is absolutely essential to stay put and have a few laughs. If you don’t have a funny bone, get one and get it tickled often.
Personally, I consider this to be the golden era of hilarity online. Created by amateurs & professionals alike there is no dearth of funny content in every possible niche. After the jump we are featuring a wild mix of hilarious sites that are worth a visit.
20 Apps For Finding Creative Domain Names
Can cool domains names assure the success of a site, blog or brand? No, they can’t. However, a great product combined with a cool domain name does get the word around lightning fast. Selecting the perfect domain name requires patience, wordplay and more patience. Out there in the internet, there are bunch of web apps that help suggest, crunch and spin words to get hold of that perfect name.
While researching for this roundup, I discovered some really awesome web apps that can suggest hundreds of domain names based on broad based keywords and have listed some of them after the jump. Read on.
15 Awesome & Funny Web Comics
Who doesn’t love a funny comic strip? From those with the attention span of a Cocker Spaniel to the members of the Jane Austin book club, everyone has a couple of minutes to spare for a good comic. Born on newspapers, comic strips have featured largely mainstream topics due to the shackles of censorship.
But on the web it’s a riot. Niche after niche, every possible topic of interest is being made fun at by talented people. True, a lot of them tend not to be kid friendly or controversy free, but so is literature. We’ve put together a list of awesome web comics created by some truly brilliant people online. Care to join us?
The 10 Best Blogging Platforms
Do you want to blog but you don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re already a blogger and you’d like to check out other platforms and their offerings? Blogging is common place these days but new people are discovering and jumping into platforms like WordPress everyday.
We’ve gathered ten of the best blogging platforms around, along with some resources for things like themes, plugins and tutorials. Take a look at the best of the best and share your favorite resources or platform of choice.
10 Great HTML5 Video Players
You’ve probably heard about the HTML5 video hype relatively recently and the excitement over what is has to offer in comparison to Flash. That’s all great but not many people know what players or sites they can use to jump on the HTML5 video bandwagon.
I’ve rounded up 10 of the best sites that offer HTML5 video playback, embedding and/or customizable HTML5 video players. Read on and let us know what, if any, you use for HTML5 video!
10 Kick Ass Adobe AIR Apps You Should Try
Remember Adobe AIR? With advancements in HTML5 and even Silverlight, AIR seems to have been left in the back of our minds-at least here at Web.AppStorm. Adobe AIR has some pretty great apps, however, that are still rocking the AIR space and even leading their respective areas (like Twitter).
We’ve pulled together 10 kick ass Adobe AIR apps you should definitely try if you haven’t already. Take a look!
10 Fantastic Lightweight CMSes You Should Try
Sometimes less is more. When it comes to content management systems there’s a huge selection of feature rich, powerful and incredibly complicated options, but what about the lightweight jobs? Many of today’s popular CMSes are overkill for small, basic tasks where the extra frills just aren’t needed.
Today we bring you 10 fantastic lightweight CMSes that’ll get the job done without the extra bloat.
10 Ultra-Lightweight CMSes For Simple Projects
Each and every piece of content created is unique in some way and so are the many Content Management Systems available. Content Management Systems were supposed to be a wrapper that holds the content together in a preset format, however, over time, CMS developers have gotten ambitious and started adding as many features as possible to stay ahead of the competition.
The question is, how many people actually use all these features? A bloated CMS can also slow down a website, aggravating visitors. If you just have a single purpose website or focus is only on content that loads faster, flat file CMSes are a viable alternative. Check out our list of ultra-lightweight CMSes that don’t require a database to run.
Top 10 Google Chrome Extensions
Although FireFox is still king of browser add-ons, Google’s Chrome is surely gaining a great selection of extensions to make it an even more powerful and versatile browser. Checkout our top 10 Google Chrome extensions after the jump.
Top 15 Safari 5 Extensions
Firefox is the king of add-ons and it’s proven to be popular and successful, helping users customize and enhance their browser and browsing experience. Chrome followed in Firefox’s steps, offering a growing selection of fantastic extensions. Safari may be late to the show, but better late than never!
Though Safari has a very limited selection of extensions available, a decent starting gallery launched with the release of Safari 5.0.1. Here are the top 15 new Safari 5 extensions.
The 10 Best Free Online Arcade Games
Arcade games are so much fun. Their charm lies in the simple game play and quirky sound effects. Lots of popular and classic games from the arcade era are now available online, either in their original format or closely designed variants. While popular games like Super Mario are available online for free, they are not completely legal.
After the jump, you’ll find 10 great, fun arcade games that are free to play and available legally.
The 10 Best Free Online RPG Games
Online Role Playing Games (RPG) and in particular, World of Warcraft, played a critical role in making online gaming reach the masses. RPGs help people escape the rather boring real world to live the fantasy of being a knight in shining armor, an emperor as and when they please or something else entirely. They’re also great for taking a break from work!
Read on to explore some of the best online RPG games we were able to pull together.
The 10 Best Free Online Racing Games
Of late, it’s just not the apps that are escaping the shackles of the desktop, games are too and they’ve made quiet a splash online. From a single player 2D flash game, today’s online gaming rivals that of their desktop counterparts in 3D graphics and performance. Thanks to online gaming, you do not have to buy costly gaming gear or consoles to blow some steam.
Add to it the ability to play head to head with gamers from across the world, online gaming is a serious contender to games locked across proprietary platforms. Read on for a list of ten online racing games that are fun to play with and kill some time.
12 Fantastic Finance Tracking & Management Apps
Managing money can be as difficult as earning it. Proverbs like “A dollar save is a dollar earned” are awfully nice to read and quote but can be tough to put into practice. Starting to track the money you spend is one of the simplest first steps one can take. Once you see how much is going where, you will automatically scramble to cut down wasteful expenses.
Since our generation is known for its acute ADD, noting down every expense on a notebook or an iPhone app won’t last more than a couple of days. In the aftermath of the personal finance revolution spearheaded by Mint, there are a ton of online apps to help you pinch personal & business pennies and after the jump we’ve a compiled a few for your financial well being.
The Top 8 Killer Alternatives to Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most well known website analytics around, not to mention being one of the best. Although Google Analytics is a fantastic app to tackle your site’s analytics needs, there are actually several other options available that many would argue are better choices. We’ve pulled together eight of the best alternatives to Google Analytics and some information about each; price, plugins, mobile apps, real-time tracking and requirements.
Which analytics app do you use and why? Read on to see if there’s anything more fitting for your needs or if you have something you’d recommend.
10 Great Chrome Web Apps Built For Chrome
By now I’m sure you’ve heard of Google’s new Chrome Web Store and some of the great apps you can find there. What you might not have heard or found out for yourself yet is that many of the apps in the Web Store are actually just links to existing web apps. Lots of people were expecting more apps to be optimized to take advantage of Chrome’s capabilities, and they’re not.
We’ve dug through the Chrome Web Store to find 10 really great Chrome apps that aren’t just links to existing apps, they’re either specifically a Chrome app or optimized for Chrome. Take a look and let us know what you’ve found.