• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

Sorry for the random Dr. Strangelove reference, I just love it too much. Before we get started, here’s a video that will blow your mind – Flobot’s handlebars (on YouTube)! Watch it 2-3 times and look at all of the symbols and the storyline deeply.

Beyond the sites many of us use daily – YouTube, Google, some of us Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Fantasy Sports, and maybe CNN, there are a ton of awesome and useful tools out there on the Interweb. I will catalogue a number of my favorite tools on the net for you and talk about the significance of what I consider the coolest part of Web 2.0: collaboration!

Google docs

Google Docs is a powerful tool for creating and editing text documents, spreadsheets, and slideshow presentations (“Powerpoints”) collaboratively. In this case, collaboratively means that you can edit a document at the same time 1, 2, 3, 5, or 20 other people are! I love using Google Docs for any class project where I need to write something with other people. Of course the web-based document editor doesn’t have anywhere near the power of a computer program on your desktop, it is suitable for 90% or more of a student’s work. The presentation creation features don’t allow for anything near as cool as Keynote does on the Mac transition-wise, but its great for showing a presentation in a pinch like we did in class yesterday. The spreadsheet feature is surprisingly awesome because not only does it support some in-cell functions, but you can even use it to create forms (like a grade survey on where to do prom, or a signup form for who will bring what food to a class party). Other collaborative web-based word processing suites exist. An especially good one with some interesting business tools is Zoho.

Basecamp, Google Sites, Wikispaces

If you need to collaborate on a big (or small) project involving a lot of (or just a few! )documents or todo’s, there are many options on the web. I can highly recommend Basecamp and Google Sites. So far, Wikispaces seems like another powerful and well-built tool as well. Each is suited towards slightly different styles of working and collaborating. Experiment and see which you think will work the best for you. The order of them in the title is a rough spectrum from most to least structured.

digg, reddit, and delicious

I purposely did not capitalize the names because that is how they are written in the sites’ respective logos. These are each examples of quintessential Web 2.0 websites, because they exemplify the social web. These sites depend on their communities of users to define the content on the site. digg and reddit are social news sites where the users submit links to news articles, pictures, and anything else and then vote for which links they like the best. The articles which achieve the most votes the fastest¹ make it to the front page – the users control the content on the site! delicious (officially formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking website where users submit links and tag them. Many users use the site to find articles on particular topics, to find “hot” news articles, or just to organize their own bookmarks better using the tagging features.
1: A highly simplified explanation, they use some complicated alogirthms to prevent gaming of the system.

So why should I care?

You should care because all of these tools will make your life easier at one point or another. You won’t have to drive to a friends house to do a project, or email a document back and forth 30 bajillion times to get something done. You can better manage your college application process, or just finish a group research project with less stress. You can utilize the bored masses on the Internet to find and identify the funniest and best content on the web for you.

All of these tools, and more out there (see the links at the end of this post) allow for totally new methods for the creation, management, discovery, organization, and storage of media. Check them out, they really do make a difference.

A few of my other favorite tools on the web include Google News, Facebook (of course), and Google Reader.

Major shoutouts to Markdown for making the formatting for this easy, and Showdown for turning my Markdown into HTML for Wordpress.

Author’s note: For those of you who are wondering why I combined Web 1.5/2.0 web-based tools and Web 2.0 “social” collaboration in one blog post on seemingly somewhat unrelated sites, it is because everything here does fit the definition of collaborative tool. I do recognize that I might have muddied the waters a bit, but my goal is simply to introduce people to the breadth of the best-of-show tools on the web.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.