24 Things You Can Do with the Web
December 22nd, 2009 · apps, lists, music
It’s almost time for 2009 to rest its head and let 2010 take over. In the world of technology, there’s been a lot of innovation this year. The Web has come a long way since its humble years in the 90s. It’s amazing that while many of us are now mastering the Internet with our cellphones, many more are just now introducing themselves to the Internet and exploring all the cool things they can do with it.
If you’re reading this right now, you’re probably online, but I bet that we all didn’t get here the same way or at the same pace. So, I felt like sharing with you all the cool things I’ve learned to do thanks to the wonderful world that is the Internet and the World Wide Web. Here are just a few of the many things you can do thanks to mankind’s worldwide digital creation:
Let’s start with the basics. Today’s World Wide Web is a social world where we share words, pictures, videos, and anything else we can think of. So, what all can you share? The first couple may be obvious to most of us, but let’s lay them on the table anyway.
1. Write a blog. Feeling an itch to write? Then check out WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, Vox, Xanga, TypePad, or one of the other dozens of blogging sites out there. Get a free account and start writing! Most of them let you upload your own pictures and videos, and some let you hook up your own domain to it. Before you know it, you’ll be broadcasting your words and ideas to millions of people with your blog. It’s so easy even I can do it. :) If you’re not the wordy type, you can always just make a blog with pictures. Trust me: multimedia goes a long way. Check out PostSecret or FAIL Blog for example.
2. Make a photo gallery. Thanks to Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, Photobucket, and many more, you can make your own online photo gallery. Most of them are free and make it easy for you to share photos and create slideshows.
3. Post videos. If video is your thing, then you’ve got YouTube, Vimeo, Veoh, Blip.tv, and several more. Whether it’s to start your own video blog, share videos with friends, or whatever, there’s a video site that meets your needs.
4. Connect with friends. If you didn’t know about this one, you must have been living under a rock. Thanks to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Friendster, LinkedIn, and the like, the world is more connected than ever. Choose a social network and get in touch with friends, family, co-workers, and strangers across the world.
5. Webcam. Into video chatting? Want to send a visual hello to someone several timezones away? For one-on-one video chatting, check out Skype. If you ever watch Oprah, you’ll notice she’s a big fan of Skype, and she uses it to connect with people all the time, from celebrities to home viewers. For video chatting with several people, check out Tokbox. With Tokbox, you don’t even need to install anything (except Flash, but you most likely have it already).
6. Watch TV. Everybody knows about Hulu by now, but have you checked out Fancast, Megavideo, and SurfTheChannel? Fancast, like Hulu, lets you watch full episodes of your favorite TV shows. Megavideo lets you watch whatever users upload (which are often TV shows), and SurfTheChannel lets you search for whatever you want to watch, and it searches the other video sites to find the content you want. Who needs cable when you’ve got the Internet? By the way, for a more encompassing solution, check out Boxee.
Jango is a lot like Pandora.
7. Listen to music online. Pandora, Grooveshark, Jango, Yahoo! Music—take your pick. They’re all essentially online radios that you can customize to play the music you like. Most of them have ads, but for a monthly fee, you can get rid of the ads for good.
So I’ve covered the basics that most people know about. We take them for granted, but there’s quite a bit that the Web has given us that we weren’t able to do just a couple years ago. Here are a few cool things that weren’t possible or as easy to do online at the beginning of the decade.
8. Make your own website for free. Back when I wasn’t paying for webhosting, I wanted to start out with a simple free website. It wasn’t that easy, though, as the free websites out there were riddled with ads or made you do silly things like make 50 posts in a forum. Nowadays, we have more options. If we want to specialize, we’ve got plenty of options. For those who want blog sites, photo sites, or video sites, see the top 3 above. If you want something more flexible, however, try out something like Google Sites. If you’re a teacher and want a website to post homework for your students or if you’re a group organizer and want to start a website for your group, then this is directed especially at you. Google Sites is easy, requires no knowledge of fancy web stuff like HTML and JavaScript, and it comes with templates and stuff to easily customize your site.
