
Ask HN: Webapps you can't live without? - ameen
We all use Web apps/services(Gmail, BaseCamp, etc). What are some of these tools which are essential to you?
======
j45
\- <http://www.diigo.com> \- I was never able to use any online bookmarking
service for the last 10-15 years. Diigo got online bookmarking right. I would
frantically pay someone to re-build diigo for me if it ever went away. I can't
process, organize or navigate the internet without it.

The best feature is it's highlighting. We don't save bookmarks in our minds,
but specific sentences or paragraphs. Diigo lets us highlight those and saves
them right into my Diigo account/stream. I can then simply search diigo not
only by keyword or bookmark, but the phrases that stuck out to me in the first
place to make me want to bookmark it.

The second best feature is being able to publish the links to multiple groups
so effortlessly.

\- <http://www.fogbugz.com> (hosted) - keeps my consulting and product dev
flow going.

\- <http://www.freshbooks.com> \- Trivializes the slippery slope of managing
billable hours not only for you but for sub-contractors.

\- <http://www.bitbucket.org> \- Free, unlimited private repositories.
Beneficial to someone like me who has a lot of small projects. I hope Github
gets this soon.

~~~
hopeless
"Free, unlimited private repositories."

Best of luck to BitBucket but why on earth would Github do this? They're a
_business_

~~~
apsurd
Marketshare.

Everyone knows about GitHub because everyone shares links to their projects
hosted on GitHub! Same reason they provide <https://gist.github.com/> and
<http://pages.github.com>

Whether you eventually want to start your own business or just want to work
for a good company ; you still end up at the same place - in a team
environment, needing secure, painless version control hosting. I can tell you
right now there is no other service I would use or recommend other than
GitHub.

------
dangrossman
Someone asked this 3 days ago (with few responses), so I'm copy/pasting this
from then:

* <http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/> (IMAP/webmail)

* <http://www.sendgrid.com> (transactional email)

* <http://www.snapengage.com> (sales/support chats)

* <http://www.zendesk.com> (basic KB & support tickets)

* <http://www.github.com> & <http://www.repositoryhosting.com> (public & private repositories)

* <http://www.geckoboard.com> (dashboard of financial state of the company)

And I'm a power user of my own SaaS products:

* <http://www.w3counter.com> (realtime visitor analytics)

* <http://www.w3roi.com> (ad performance tracking)

* <http://www.dialshield.com> (automatically calls high fraud risk customers during the checkout process on my ecommerce sites)

~~~
brador
Got a link to the one from 3 days ago?

~~~
ohgodthecat
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3518985>

------
bleakgadfly
* Github (<http://www.github.com>) - This and HN/Reddit for fun. I use Github to review my previously comitted code, marking comments in the code of ideas and thoughts so I can correct them when I get home (for profit), and exploring different languages, profiles and projects (for fun).

* Workflowy (<http://www.workflowy.com>) - Dump all the stuff I might need to remember or note about a project or task here.

* Trello (<http://www.trello.com>) - Scrum-board for my tasks, planner for the summer vacation, my wedding, etc.

* Diigo (<http://www.diigo.com>) - To save bookmarks, notes on pages, highlights of stuff I might need to reference, etc

* Toggl (<http://www.toggl.com>) - To keep track of how many hours I work on each project

EDIT: Typo/format

------
tiernano
<http://www.Office365.com> <http://www.EverNote.com> <http://www.Twitter.com>
<http://www.Dropbox.com> <http://google.com/reader> <https://www.droprss.com/>
<\- my site, still in private beta... but still handy...

~~~
ameen
Interesting, How useful/reliable is Office365? I've gone the Google Docs
route, it works but wish it was better.

~~~
tiernano
i pay a fiver a month (euros) with my mobile phone provider, gives me exchange
email on all my devices, sharepoint for office and one note, one note online,
and lync... its very useful and very reliable.

------
jeffcapeshop
<https://trello.com>

------
kolev
<http://www.workflowy.com/> kicks butt! Gmail, Google Reader, Google Voice,
Google Docs, but everybody uses them...

------
hacker_jumper
<http://www.livelystocks.com> looks cool - thanks marketmonkey,
<http://www.corsvi.com> for tech news, <http://www.youtube.com> \- video
production showcase, <http://www.vimeo.com> \- ibid

and HN

------
Symmetry
Since the others I use have already been mentioned: <http://piperka.net/> It's
a webcomic aggregator, gives me a list of all the new comics that I haven't
read yet.

Also Hiveminder <http://hiveminder.com/splash/> for a really awesome to-do
list site, with nice collaboration tools.

------
evanhamilton
Here at UserVoice, we're in love with:

* <http://trello.com> Easy card management for tracking all of our projects and bugs. We've got boards for every department.

* <http://hipchat.com> Fantastic way to chat in rooms or with individuals. Keeps our two offices connected.

* <http://argylesocial.com> Fantastic social media monitoring, publishing, and most importantly, measurement.

* <http://airbrake.io> Error collector, which we publish into Hipchat. (More info: <http://blog.airbrake.io/awesome-airbrakers/uservoice/>)

* <http://optimizely.com/> Simple and powerful A/B testing tool

...and probably a bunch of others I'm forgetting. Thank you for creating these
wonderful apps, everyone!

------
potomak
* Gmail (<http://gmail.com>)

* GitHub (<http://github.com>)

* Tomatoes, pomodoro technique productivity tool (<http://tomatoes.heroku.com>)

* Reddit, procrastination (<http://reddit.com>)

------
marketmonkey
Gmail, Mailchimp, Basecamp, Highrise, LivelyStocks, Twitter, Github,
TradingView, Various Google Tools including (Analytics, Adwords, Adsense,
Reader)

<http://www.gmail.com>

<http://www.mailchimp.com>

<http://www.highrisehq.com>

<http://www.livelystocks.com>

<http://www.twitter.com>

<http://www.github.com>

<https://www.tradingview.com/>

~~~
skizm
Livelystocks needs a smart search for stock symbols. Just messing around I had
to lok up a lot of symbols on google.

I guess you could argue that if you have invested in a stock (emotionally and
financially) enough to want to see real time info that you should know the
symbol but hey I want to check out the app w/o having to google a lot of stuff
:D

~~~
marketmonkey
You're right. It's coming next week!

------
chauzer
* RescueTime (<http://www.rescuetime.com>) - time/productivity tracking

* Mint.com (<http://www.mint.com>) - personal finance/budgets

* Blueleaf (<http://www.blueleaf.com>) - tracking the performance of my investments

* Fitocracy (<http://www.fitocracy.com>) - personal fitness and weight lifting logs, also integrates with other apps like RunKeeper

* Producteev (<http://www.producteev.com>) - tasks management

* Quora

* Google Reader

* Google Music

* Gmail

* Dropbox

~~~
squidsoup
If you happen to have a spare Fitocracy invite, I'd love to check it out - new
years resolution is to get healthier! kit@nocturne.net.nz Cheers :)

~~~
chauzer
Sent

------
zeynalov
<http://www.trello.com>

<http://www.woopra.com>

<http://www.google.com>

<http://www.google.com/analytics>

<http://www.gmail.com>

<http://translate.google.com>

<http://www.facebook.com>

<http://www.dropbox.com>

<http://www.buzzstream.com>

------
bretthellman
I love....

\- dropbox: <https://www.dropbox.com/>

\- gmail: <https://mail.google.com>

\- KISSMetrics: <https://www.kissmetrics.com>

\- Google Analytics (real-time tab): <https://www.google.com/analytics>

\- Github: <https://github.com/>

\- HALL.com: <https://hall.com/>

------
jimmy1234
* Gmail * Google Apps * RT for helpdesk (<http://bestpractical.com/rt/>) * ActiveCollab fro projects & collaboration (<http://www.activecollab.com/>) * Tonido for file sharing and sync (<http://www.tonido.com>)

------
Johnyma22
* <http://etherpad.org> (Real time note taking) * <http://docs.google.com> (Google spreadsheets) * <http://hootsuite.com> (Manage social stuff) * <http://ping.fm> (More social)

------
aymeric
<http://weekplan.net> (7 habits weekly planner I have made)

<http://hackpad.com> (real time wiki)

<http://gyazo.com> (take screenshot and upload automatically)

<http://envolve.com> (add live chat to your web app)

------
herrherr
The really interesting part is actually to recognise how hard it is for a new
app to enter my daily-use list. It's almost impossible. Some make it in there
for a few days or weeks but will vanish quite soon.

Either I need the app for my daily work or it is a fire-and-forget service
that I once signed up for and that doesn't require any active input from my
site.

Anyway, here is my list:

\- pivotaltracker.com

\- github.com

\- dropbox.com

\- olark.com

\- gmail.com

\- google.com/analytics

\- hipchat.com

------
JAVagueArgument
Two not mentioned here that I use daily: \- DevIsland (for cheap sandbox
hosting) <http://www.devisland.net/> \- Freedcamp (for all project management,
like basecamp, but free and excellent) <http://freedcamp.com/>

------
chaz
This list of startup resources was posted to HN not too long ago:

<http://startuptools.pbworks.com/w/page/17974963/FrontPage>

HN Story: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077206>

~~~
mdoerneman
Thanks for sharing but this doesn't really answer the question. This is more
of a comprehensive list rather than a list you can't live without.

------
metaclass
I've switched from Google to Zoho services two years ago(I hate that
"conversation view" in gmail)

Zoho Mail turned out to be an excellent webmail app. BTW, their other
apps(Docs, Planner, Sheet) are definitely worth a try too.

<http://www.zoho.com>

------
csomar
in order

\- gmail (moving to own hosted email with Thunder in a couple of week, though)

\- Skype (all communications)

\- trello (manages all my projects now)

\- bitbucket (all private code, it's free)

\- dropbox (all files)

\- prgmr (hosting, and email)

other essentials but can switch easily

\- Google Analytics

\- Google Translate

\- SpringPad (they have a good Android app)

\- Google Reader

It's amazing that I don't depend on any mobile app or on my smartphone and can
go without it.

~~~
hessenwolf
Which Google Analytics app?

~~~
losvedir
<http://www.google.com/analytics/> probably. Does Google offer others? I'd
love to try them.

~~~
hessenwolf
No, I mean which one on the phone.

------
gnufs
NewsBlur for reading feeds

<http://www.newsblur.com>

~~~
benrmatthews
Have been using Newsblur too, but it doesn't work so well for Hacker News - it
doesn't display the article or the comments straight off, so you have to click
through twice on your mobile to read either, which is bad for navigation or a
slow connection.

Anyone from Newsblur here?

~~~
conesus
Yup. I'm the only person from NewsBlur. Got an RSS feed url that has full
text? I'd love to use that. Otherwise, I'm planning on building a Text view
that effectively extracts the article text. It's not highly prioritized, but
it will be after I launch social in a month or so.

------
amwelles
<http://getharvest.com> is the only one I use that hasn't already been
mentioned already. It pretty much saved my life when I started doing contract
work this year.

------
mlapeter
Self Control: <http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol>

I found this on HN a while back, it's like a lightweight RescueTime for
blocking news sites etc.

------
rachelbaker
One of my favorites, that I haven't seen mentioned yet: Beanstalk for private
repo hosting and deploys <http://beanstalkapp.com/>

------
slig
<http://chartbeat.com/> <http://www.joesgoals.com/> GMail, Analytics, etc.

------
simon_weber
Workflowy. I use it for all my classes and most of my projects.

~~~
dbergqvist
+1 for WorkFlowy, awesome service.

------
markwaters
<http://tt-rss.org/> \- Tiny Tiny RSS.

<http://roundcube.net/> \- RoundCube Mail.

------
zalew
* google, gmail & co

* <http://bitbucket.org>

* <http://mixcloud.com>

keep it simple, that's how I be.

------
2na
I must add asana.com which proved to be a wonderful tool that helps we
orgenize my tasks & lists.

I also started using iDone This which seems to be quite useful.

------
racerrick
I still use Tadalist (37 Signals app) instead of Basecamp.

And we use <http://feed.us> instead of a CMS on every project.

------
edanm
Dropbox, Facebook, Remember the milk, Google Apps (mail, calendar), Hacker
News

On and off, Google Reader.

------
bantic
instapaper -- saving articles for when I truly have time to read them (as
opposed to when I first see them -- while browsing HN during a mini work
break) has been a huge timesaver for me.

------
dochtman
GMail, GCalendar, Twitter, internal work app, work Trac, HN.

------
hobin
Google Search, Wikipedia, Dropbox, HN, Dilbert, Facebook.

------
sktrdie
youporn

~~~
angersock
Not sure why you're getting downvoted--would people treat a post about YouTube
the same? It's even an interesting technical acheivment.

~~~
ameen
If this is an app you can't live without, you've got to get out more.

------
adelevie
Github + Issues

~~~
designium
Gmail.com, linenode.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, google.com

~~~
adelevie
ok?

------
mdoerneman
* GMail

* Google Calendar

* Heroku

* Freshbooks

* Sendgrid

* Todoist

* Evernote

* Stack Overflow

* MerelyPoints (I created)

------
thekungfuman
<http://google.com/reader> <http://google.com/mail> and
<http://google.com/calendar> <http://google.com/voice>

<http://github.com> <http://dropbox.com>

<http://readitlater.com> <http://springpad.com>

