For someone who does his best to spend as much time alone as possible, I seem to have an awful lot of invites for social networks/web apps currently in closed beta. If you would like one, please leave a comment here with an email address or send me a note at the address listed on my about page. The invites are for:
Dropbox: I cannot say enough good things about Dropbox. It’s a file-sharing app that synchronizes files across different computers through the web. The small, unintrusive install works transparently in the background, simply notifying you when files have been changed. When preparing for my recent comprehensive exam, I would update notes at the library on my laptop and then come home and work on them on my desktop, all completely seamlessly. It also has an option for sharing files and folders with different users. (Yeah, I know Google Docs can do the same thing, but this allows you to use whatever application you want, which is handy when you’re working on long documents).
Brightkite: A location-based social network that connects people based on where they live and the places they visit. Haven’t used it much yet but it looks like it could have potential, particularly if you’re new to a city and are looking for people with similar interests.
Evernote: Like an online scrapbook, but way cooler than that. More than just a bookmarking service like del.icio.us, Evernote allows you to store photographs, notes and even has character recognition i.e. you can take a pic of handwritten note and it will digitize the text for you. So you could take a pic of a business card with your phone, email it your Evernote account and then access that information when you get back to your home or office. Cool huh?
Twine: For a while, people thought this was going to be the next big thing — Twine is supposed to be to one of the first ‘Web 3.0′ apps — but I’m not sure it’s panned out that way. Regardless, Twine is another social bookmarking tool that has a key difference: it tries to sort and classify articles based on the manner in which they’re tagged and then find similar articles for you. This cross-referencing across tags is what people are calling the ‘semantic web’. Can’t say it’s the easiest or most intuitive application to use, but it’s worth a try.
Socialthing!: This will only be really useful for those who use Twitter and Pownce, but Socialthing is a ‘lifestream app’ – i.e. it aggregates your activity across different networks like the aforementioned microblogging tools and sites like Facebook and Flickr.
