It’s that time of the year when we are bom­barded with these, and like all of us I am try­ing to develop the appro­pri­ate strategies for win­now­ing out the chaff. The list of Web 2.0 Com­pan­ies I Couldn’t Live Without is one that kept my interest. Michael Arring­ton has com­piled an intriguing list of service-based com­pan­ies that you may or may not have tried before. Some such as blue dot are provid­ing a new spin on exist­ing ser­vices, in this case the social book­mark­ing model of del.icio.us. I’ll admit I am giv­ing this one a try. Very nice inter­face. Deli­cious has mol­ded well into my work habits and so any improve­ments in this area can return instant pro­ductiv­ity gains. One thing I find rather ingeni­ous is that the ser­vice scrapes your blog for new entries and adds those links to your blue bot lists. Del.icio.us goes the other way and actu­ally posts your daily addi­tions to your tagged sites to your blog daily. There’s a couple of other one’s I hadn’t tried. I find Pan­dora of note. Have it ‘spin­ning’ as I write. The ser­vice cre­ates a cus­tom playl­ist based on your inputed music pref­er­ences. The most min­imal of effort is required. You simply seed it with a song or artist and then occa­sion­ally rate play­ing songs. We’ll see whether it actu­ally improves as the rat­ing give the ser­vice a bet­ter idea of my tastes. The third song sug­ges­ted was a thumbs down, but haven’t had a dud since.
Give the list a wee look. Who knows you may find some­thing unique you hadn’t stumbled across yet. Have fun and Happy New Year.