Top 100 Web 2.0 Sites

Here you are version 2.0 of the top 100 web 2.0 sites

thanks for your comments. By commenting on this post you will help enhancing the listing and ordering .

Video

1. YouTube: YouTube is a popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips.

2. Meta Cafe: Metacafe - Get the best internet videos - Funny videos, Amazing clips, Rare movies

3. Vimeo: Share your video clips. Upload video that you shoot with your digital camera, mobile phone, or camcorder. Share video by linking to Vimeo.

4. Daily Motion Publish, tag, organize and share your video clips.

5. Imeem: imeem is a social media service where users interact with each other by watching, posting, and sharing content of all media types, including blogs, photos, audio, and video. In one sense, imeem is a media-centric social network service, and in another sense, it is also a user participation service for online content.

6. ClipShack: ClipShack is a community for videophiles; a destination where people can post their video for general public viewing and comment, share clips with friends and family, post video to blogs, share...

7. vSocial: The fastest, easiest way to upload, watch and share your favorite video clips.

8. Jumpcut: The best place to create, remix and share movies and slideshows online. There's nothing else like it. Jumpcut Makes Movies, Simple.

9. Video Bomb: Video Bomb filters up the hottest videos on the internet: people submit links to the 'Incoming!' page and you bomb the best ones. If a video gets a lot of bombs quickly, it makes it to the front...

10. eyeSpot: Shoot, Mix, and Share your Video. Use the eyespot Mixer to edit and combine your videos, music and photos online! Share your video and mixes with the world for Free

11. revver : Upload, share videos

12. Avidbeauty: Avid Beauty is an entertainment community for iPod users. We offer iPod downloads which are available in playlists known as Podcasts. We also offer Flickr photo, YouTube video and LiveJournal integration into your member profile.

Music

1. last.fm: Generate custom streaming music stations with Last.fm by searching for and tagging your favorite artists. Build your own library and search the libraries of others to find who likes the same music as you

2. Musicovery: Discover new music based on your mood, this free webradio let you browse music styles and epochs

3. read.io :Read.io converts RSS feeds into podcasts via TextToSpeech. Many languages supported.

4. MusicStrands: Search MusicStrands to discover new music. Listen to samples, then tag good tracks and exile the ones you don't like to get clear recommendations, either on site or with an optional iTunes plugin. Then purchase music from a variety of vendors.

5. PODZINGER: PODZINGER - the world's premiere audio and video search engine

6. Upto11: Using tags and rankings, Upto11 suggests new music for you. Create and share your recommendations, tags, and playlists via a personal user page.

7. Pandora: Pandora is the music discovery service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites

Chat

1. Meebo: meebo, the web messenger that lets you access IM from absolutely anywhere. meebo supports msn, yahoo, aol/aim, google talk (gtalk), jabber and icq

2. Joopz: Allows users to send text messages from the Web to both individuals and groups, while enabling recipients to respond directly to the originating PC or Mac. Joopz web texts can be sent from any web-enabled device worldwide to any U.S. or Canadian mobile phone.

3. campfire: Simple, Web-based group chat for businesses, Campfire allows real-time sharing, editing, and collaboration for team members in a secure, password-protected chat.

4. Goowy: is a web based application offering free web and flash email service that enables you instant messaging, email, chat and much more

5. Gizmo: Gizmo Project uses your internet connection (broadband or dial-up) to make calls to other computers. With the click of a mouse, you’re connected to friends, family, and colleagues anywhere on earth. It’s just that simple. You talk clearly. For as long as you want. For free.

6. eBuddy: web based messaging for everyone, everywhere. e-Messenger is a web application that enables you to chat with your MSN, AOL and Yahoo buddies without having to install any program or Java applet.

7. e-messenger: Online messaging from eBuddy is a web messenger application which supports MSN, Yahoo and AIM (AOL). When your school or office has blocked IM you can use the web version of eBuddy with any standard JavaScript enabled browser, even behind a firewall.

8. ILOVEIM: eBuddy is a web messenger application which supports MSN, Yahoo and AIM (AOL). When your school or office has blocked IM you can use the web version of eBuddy with any standard JavaScript enabled browser, even behind a firewall.

Images & Photos

1. Flickr: The best way to stor, search, sort and share your photos

2. Zooomr:Universally the best way to share, search, store and sort your photos online.

3. Slide:

4. zoto

5. 23HQ:Are your photos stuck on your hard drive, instead of being shared with the people who matter to you?

6. Mybloop: MyBloop - sharing pictures, audio, and video for free, whithout storage limits and additional software to install

Blogs

1. Blogger: your easy-to-use web site, where you can quickly post thoughts, interact with people, and more

2. Weblogs, Inc: Creating trade weblogs across niche industries in which user participation is an essential component of the resulting product.

3. BlogCode: BlogCode.com is a fast, easy and intuitive source of blog recommendations based on the StoryCode.com model. It allows you to start with your favourite weblog (or perhaps even your own) and find...

4. blo.gs: lets you keep an eye on your favorite weblogs via the web and email. you can even put the list on your site: a blogroll that knows what is new!

5. BlogLines: a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content.

Bookmarking

1. Digg: Digg is all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the digg community. Share, discover, bookmark, and promote stuff that's important to you!

2. del.icio.us: A social bookmarks manager. Using bookmarklets, you can add bookmarks to your list and categorize them

3. Reddit: Reddit is a source for what's new and popular online. reddit learns what you like as you vote on existing links or submit your own!

4. StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon uses thumbs up and down ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages which friends and like–minded stumblers have liked

5. Blinklist: Real people with shared interests list the websites they care about. Rate sites you like or save them for later.

6. Blummy: A free tool for quick access to your favorite web services via your bookmark toolbar, Blummy lets you add and customize widgets that do practically anything: add pictures to Flickr, submit sites to del.icio.us, look up text in WIkipedia. Choose from hundreds of custom "blummlets" or create your own.

7. Techcrunch: TechCrunch is a blog about Web 2.0 products & companies, many of the posts written by Michael Arrington. The blog's first post was on June 11, 2005

8. Furl: Make your favorite web bookmarks accessible from anywhere with Furl's lightweight bookmarklet. Furl allows you to easily save, take notes on and share the links you've stored, or browse others' most popular bookmarks to find new and interesting things.

9. Spurl: Never lose track of a web site again with Spurl's free on-line bookmarking service and search engine. Spurl stores addresses quickly for easy access with a one-click bookmarklet and provides recommendations for new content based on your preferences

10. Trailfire: Bookmaking sharing software.

VOIP

1. Jajah: jah is a VoIP (Voice over IP) provider, founded by Austrians Roman Scharf and Daniel Mattes in 2005[1]. The Jajah headquarters are located in Mountain View, CA, USA, and Luxembourg. Jajah maintains a development centre in Israel.

2. skype: It’s free to download and free to call other people on Skype. Skype the number one voice over ip software

3. Private Phone: a free local phone number with voicemail and messages you can check online or from any phone.
   

Games & Sketching

1. Trendio: Trendio.com is an online prediction market. Users, instead of buying stock in companies with real money, buy stock in certain news subjects with fake money. Words available include those from the world of politics, sport, and entertainment. The more the word appears in the news, the higher the value of the stock. Currently, the site uses about 3,000 online internet sources to gauge the value of each word.

2. GameSnips: online games list, digg style. voting for each game, sort lists by latest or by votes

3. Pictaps: Roxik Pictaps - Draw a Character and Watch It Dance in 3D

4. Broadcast Game: The objective of the Broadcast game is to connect all of the terminals and cables on the grid to the central hub by fixing their orientations. All you need to do is click and rotate the cables, the terminals, or the hub.

5. Pikipimp.com : Ever wanted to add bling to your iomages? Pikpimp is a relly cool ajax application that allows you to drop and drag objects on your image. Save the image and add to your site!

6. Mainada: How aobut Comic Sketch (thanks Tiago)
   

Wikis

1. Wikipedia: The biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. Over two million articles and still growing.

2. LittleWiki: LittleWiki is a Web site where you can create public and private wiki pages. A Wiki is a Web site where anyone can enter and edit content. That means you can post and edit information about virtually anything you wish, and you can read what others have posted too.

3. Wetpaint: Wetpaint powers websites that tap the power of collaborative thinking. The heart of the Wetpaint advantage is its ability to allow anyone — especially those without technical skill — to create and contribute to websites written for and by those who share a passion or interest. To do this, Wetpaint combines the best aspects of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks so anyone can click and type on the web.

4. JotSpot: Create and share wiki pages with a WYSIWYG editor via Jotspot's secure wiki hosting. Install various "applications" to refine your wiki content - project manager, company directory, blog, forum, poll, calendar, and more - then invite others to contribute

5. PBWiki: Make a free, password protected wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich. Easily upload HTML, link files to your pages, integrate RSS, and more.
   

Office Tools

1. Zoho Office Suite: Online Word Processor

2. Google Docs & Spreadsheets: With Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you can: * Use our online editor to format documents, spell-check and more. * Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text. * Download...

3. Num Sum: Easy, Sharable Web Spreadsheets

4. Dictinary : Online dictionary

5. notifyr.org: Be ahead of the rest with notifyr.org. Notifyr is an easy to use tool which lets anybody easily receive instant updates on any web page around the world. Notifyr.org is ideal for those who want instant information on new stock, or new product release information. Best of all it's free - and always will be

6. ThinkFree Office: Have you ever wanted to edit an Excel spreadsheet on a Linux system? Have you ever wanted to show your colleagues a presentation on a computer not equipped with Powerpoint? Would you like to be able...

7. Numly: Numly is a web 2.0 startup offering next generation copyright and DRM licensing services for all things digital.

8. gOffice: Free online word processor, outpput can be pdf or html letters, allows personalization in letter templates..

RSS

1. FeedBurner: FeedBurner helps bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers get more value from the content they create. Our advanced feed management technology deftly delivers subscription services for...

2. Feed Digest: Feed Digest is a parser, regenerator, and syndicator for, and of, RSS and Atom feeds. It lets you do things like put the content of RSS or Atom feeds on your own site(s).

3. Attensa: Attensa, Inc. is a venture backed software company developing RSS readers, online RSS aggregators, enterprise RSS servers and RSS infrastructure software that automatically and intelligently delivers...

4. Tiny Tiny RSS: Tiny Tiny RSS is a web-based news feed aggregator, designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling as close to a real desktop application as possible.

5. Feed43: This free online service converts any web page to an RSS feed on the fly.

6. Feed Mailer: feeds direct to your email. (thanks John)

Emails

1. Gmail: Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want.

2. 30 Gigs: 30Gigs.com is invite-only web-based email that offers, you guessed it, 30 gigabytes of space.

3. Zookoda: is an email marketing application designed specifically for bloggers. Zookoda enables you to send a daily, weekly or monthly summary of your latest blog posts directly into your visitors inbox.

4. Sprout: osted email management for your sales and support email. No IT department required. Mailroom can organize your email and suggest replies to save you time and keep you better in touch with your customers. There is nothing to setup and it takes only a minute to get started

5. Gawab: Offers a web mail service with a number of features. Supports POP/SMTP.
   

News

1. NewsGator: Read all of your favorite news, websites and blogs all in one place.

2. newsvine.com: Keep track of breaking news with Newsvine: read "The Wire" for a direct stream of articles from the AP and ESPN, and read "The Vine" for Newsvine user submitted content and columns. Interact with other Newsvine readers by voting for and commenting on news, and write/maintain your own Newsvine column.

3. Gabbr :Gabbr is a community-based social news and blogging network which allows users to save and share their favorite top news headlines and blog posts.

4. wired: News site and magazine, covering technology, culture, business and politics.

5. Clipmarks: Bite-size hiligh-lights on the web.

File Sharing

1. Box.Net: Free online file storage and sharing from Box.net! Our internet storage service enables you to save, browse, share, & retrieve files, photos, and documents ...

2. AllPeers:Unleash your online experience and discover unlimited private sharing. Share private photos worry-free. No passwords to remember, no public access. Share your videos without uploading - save on hosting costs while saving time.No cumbersome interface. No sharing restriction. Private and secure. No spyware, no adware, no annoying advertisements.

3. MailBigFile internet application for file sharing

Others

1. Live: Microsoft web 2.0 portal

2. LinkedIn: is like Facebook for business professionals: Build yourself a business network to give you credibility in job searches and hiring, or use LinkedIn to reconnect or keep in touch with important business connections.

3. BaseCamp: Simple project management with to-do lists, milestones, time tracking, file sharing, calendars, and more. Basecamp is a solution for taking charge of communication, collaboration, and organization for projects big and small.

4. Side Job Track: A job tracking application for independent contractors, Sidejobtrack creates and manages invoices for goods, services, and time, then produces monetary reports to track payments and income.

5. Kayak.com searches hundreds of travel sites to give you the widest possible choice of flights and prices. It costs nothing to search and not a cent to book because we're not a travel agency.

6. TravBuddy is a site for people who love to explore. You don't have to be traveling across the world to use this site. Maybe you just want to share advice about a local restaurant you enjoy, or perhaps last weekend you discovered an amazing new place to watch the sunset, right in your hometown. Whether you are exploring at home or exploring abroad, the art and joy of discovery is still the same. Something that is familiar to you might be amazing and new to someone who is visiting.

7. Wayfaring is an interesting new site that lets you tag and create your own routes and places on Google maps

8. Omnidrive: As the world's first complete storage aggregator, Omnidrive allows you to bring all your files and content together from your desktop, devices and the web onto a single space that's easily accessible from any platform.

9. ma.gnolia: Build your web site and build community online

10. Ajaxian: Ajax related blog

11. Web 2.0 Sites: web 2.0 sites directory, for all web 2.0 related services.

50 - Fifty Coolest Best Websites OF Year - 2006

ENTERTAINMENT, ARTS & MEDIA

A variety of amusements, from classic rock to famous photography, collage art to custom radio, plus our favorite video web logs

Drawn! Jumpcut Sundance Splinks Wolfgang's Vault Photo Muse

Podcast Pickle Pandora The 9 YouTube

SHOPPING, LIFESTYLES AND HOOBIES
Yummy food, Hollywood fashion and helping hands for those do-it-yourself projects

Phone Scoop Delicious Days Not Martha Shop Intuition

Kids-In-Mind Mighty Goods Zunafish

NEWS AND INFORMATION
The Web's best war correspondent, a snarky sports blog, the pioneers of "social news" more

The Morning News Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone Charity Navigator Footnoted

Tailrank Deadspin Digg The Human Clock

STAYING CONNECTED
A humming social network, community sing-along, instant-messaging hub, mobile-launched pub-crawls and numbers-crunching by committee

MySpace Google Spreadsheets SingShot

Meebo Dodgeball

TIME WASTERS
Juicy celebrity gossip, mindless computer games and other guilty pleasures

TMZ Shockwave Yu-Gi-Oh Groove

Cute Overload Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas Number Logic

TRAVEL AND REAL ESTATE
An airfare predictor and subway guide, restaurant reviews and car sharing

Zipcar Farecast Kayak Zillow

HopStop CentralPark Yelp

WEB SEARCH & SERVICES
Ordering take-out, finding phone numbers and a slew of alternative search engines

Accoona Kosmix Snap Pixsy

Argali White & Yellow Blurb Seamless Web McAfee SiteAdvisor

Good Referential Ten 10 online operating systems

As we we’re waiting for Google to launch its own Google OS (if the rumours are true, of course), I’ve checked out 10 web operating systems and what they can do. Not many of them feel like finished and fully usable products, but there are some true gems among them.
Admit it: you didn’t think there were that many WebOSes around, did you?

Neither did I. You can find month or two old articles on the web which talk about a WebOS as a recently forged concept, yet to be realized. YouOS was practically the only one that had media coverage, so when I began the research for this article, I hoped to find five usable WebOS applications at best.

I was wrong. There are over 10 fully functional WebOS applications out there, and a couple more that are announced or in closed betas.

But what is a WebOS (not to be confused with another definition of the term, see here), or a Webtop , anyway ? Here’s a simple definition: WebOS is a virtual operating system that runs in your web browser . More precisely, it’s a set of applications running in a web browser that together mimic, replace or largely supplement a desktop OS environment. It’s a tough field to start in for a Web 2.0 entrepreneur, because to be successful you need to create several applications that are at least as good as other competitors, and you need to connect them all into a usable bundle. What’s also expected by most users is that all this looks decent, operates similarly to a “real” OS and behaves as a real “OS” would, and is relatively bug-free. Simply put, to gain real everyday users, your WebOS has to be damn good . We’ll see how these newcomers fare in the following months and when (and if) some big giant like Google decides to create their own WebOS.

So, without further ado, let’s see what the 10 WebOS services I’ve gathered here (in alphabetical order) today can offer to the user. Bear in mind that not many of these services are mature enough to receive a proper, thorough review; this is more of a ‘first look’ kind of thing than a full-featured review.

1. Craythur

Craythur is a completely new WebOS that puts big emphasis on looks, and it does that part really well, with a well chosen desktop background and transparent window borders similar to those Vista’s Aero. However, the apps themselves are more alpha than beta. For one thing, they’re mostly not translated from Spanish. They work, but nothing more than that; none of them can hold their own against any decent comparative application, web-based or otherwise. Since this is obviously an application at its very early stages, let’s just leave it at good-looking and come back in a few months to see the progress.

2. Desktoptwo

If there’s such things as “serious WebOS players”, Desktoptwo is one of them. It’s a Flash based fully featured WebOS which requires registration to try, immediately giving you your own mini-site and your own Desktoptwo email address to use. Desktoptwo is Flash-based, and while I’m not thrilled about Flash Web 2.0 applications, most of the OSes from this list work in Flash, and I must admit that some do it pretty well. Desktoptwo’s apps can be slow, and a certain amount of bugs are present (when i clicked on Message Board preferences, everything got garbled up), but not so much to ruin your experience with the service. One more thing: Desktoptwo opens in a popup, which is sure to annoy some users.

Feature-wise, Desktoptwo delivers and then some. You’ve got search, clock and sysinfo widget, a dock, MP3 player, RSS reader, Instant messenger, OpenOffice, HTML editor, notepad, and several others. Unfortunately, several of these open in popups, which somehow makes you remember you’re in Windows. Furthermore, if you close the Desktoptwo window and log in again, some of your settings are forgotten. However, your content, for example, the files you save to the desktop, or the RSS feeds you add in the very functional RSS reader are remembered over sessions, which is good. Overall, Desktoptwo does many things well, but it needs to iron out a few usability/UI issues to become a really usable WebOS.

3. EyeOS

Taking a bit of a different approach than other sites in this bunch, EyeOS offers you to download the EyeOS server files and install them on your on web server to use as you please. You can also try out a demo which is hosted on the free public server eyeos.info, which also provides free accounts of eyeOS to everyone who wants to use it without owning a private server. The public server is funded through donations, and there’s still quite a way to go, so if you like EyeOS, go ahead and help them.

EyeOS itself is functional, not too buggy, but a bit slow and a bit bland. You have your standard calendar, calculator, address book, RSS reader, simple word processor, file uploader and a few others, but they have pretty limited functionality, and they all look more like test apps than something you’d really use in day to day work. Furthermore, some of the options simply do not work, for example changing the wallpaper.

Although EyeOS seems to be an ambitious project, it doesn’t offer much more than, for example, Craythur. It looks nice, it works, but its apps aren’t interesting enough to actually use it for any serious work.

4. Glide

This text was actually postponed because Glide registration was closed until 19th of December, and I wanted to squeeze it into this list. And lo and behold; they’ve gotten real serious after the relaunch. So serious that besides free registration, they offer things like family standard and family premium plans (for the last one the fee is $149.95 yearly). For registration. they also require verification via an SMS message. This got me interested, as it is the only WebOS around that thinks of itself highly enough to actually start charging for the service.

And, to some extent, Glide delivers. It’s Flash-based, and it’s not really trying to mimic Windows or any similar desktop environment, choosing a unique GUI of its own instead. It lets you upload and store up to 1 GB of files, read RSS feeds, manage bookmarks, appointments, chat, create documents, view picturess. It’s also designed pretty well - at least at first sight. However, it’s somewhat similar to DesktopTwo in some areas, sharing a number of negative traits with it. First of all, some apps open in a popup, for which I really can’t see a good reason. Furthermore, some of the applications don’t seem to be as polished graphically as the rest of the interface. Some of the apps are just plain buggy - the Calendar simply did not work, reporting an error as soon as I clicked it.

These are mostly minor errors, but they add up. For me, an additional problem was the interface itself which is pretty confusing. It took time figuring out how to do simple tasks like reading RSS feeds, and once I closed certain areas of the Webtop, it was pretty hard to find them again. Like many other services in this list, you can definitely see that a lot of effort has been put into Glide, and some of its parts are done well, however it still has a long way to go (especially if you pay for it).

5. Goowy

Goowy is also Flash-based, but I don’t feel any of the usual negative traits that Flash can bring. It has lots of well-written and usable applications, it’s not lightning fast but it’s not too slow either, and it all works within the same window with the standard desktop-OS-like toolbar. The apps…well, the apps are great. They open in windows you can move around your webtop using a pretty precise grid, which makes organization really easy. You’ve got your standard file-uploader, mail application, RSS reader, instant messenger, bookmarks, calendar and contacts. All of these apps are very well made; for example, the RSS reading functionality is almost as good as in my online reader of choice - Netvibes. I wouldn’t exchange Netvibes for it just yet, but if weren’t able to use Netvibes anymore, Goowy would do just fine. Same goes for other applications, which makes Goowy by far the most usable WebOS in this list.

As far as settings go, you’ve got a lot to choose from. Actually, Goowy is so advanced that I almost feel bad giving it a short rundown instead of a full-featured review it deserves, and I will probably make up for it sometime. Let’s just mention it has a spell checker and a spam filter, which shows the devotion to detail in this product.

Although this text is not a contest, if I had to pick just one WebOS to use, Goowy would be it - and by a big margin. The learning curve is very short; it looks sexy, it has a solid number of well-written applications, and it’s all pretty-much bug free. Great job.

6. Orca

WebOS is a pretty complex application and there’s no two ways about it. So when I see things like “Muly” as one choice for the month of birth or when the “create account” button is missing altogether, I think “sloppy”. And that’s exactly how Orca turned out to be in the end.

I will utter three little words and 70% of readers will skip to the next item in the list: no Firefox support. And they’re right: you simply cannot create an application meant primarily for tech-aware users and not have support for the tech-savvy browser of choice. But even in IE, Orca is simply an unfinished, early alpha, hey-i-can-now-invite-a-few-friends-to-test-this product. Best of luck to the developers, but at this stage Orca is not worth your time.

7. Purefect

Purefect is also at an early stage of development, but it’s at least showing some promise. It tries to mimic the Windows environment completely, down to the icons, which is in my opinion the wrong path to choose. There are just a few apps, like file explorer, memory game and calculator, and as far as settings go you can set the display preferences. It’s functional, but pretty buggy (you can access other users’ files in the file explorer), and there simply isn’t much to do. Like Craythur, it might be interesting to check it out again in a couple of months to see if there’s any progress, but for now it’s just not usable.

8. SSOE

SSOE seems to be a project that’s looking far ahead. The author is the first to admit that the kernel of the OS is perhaps 10% written at this point and it gives you a choice of a relatively stable and a newer, unstable version to choose from.

And it’s all true. SSOE looks is more a technology demo than something you would even consider to use, regardless of which version you choose. But even at this early stage of development, I will feel free to give the author a pointer: those huge icons, and badly done brushed metal windows, are ugly. Noone is going to use them if they look like that. Other than that I can’t say much about SSOE because 80% of stuff I’ve tried to click on did not work. Best of luck in the future, next please.

9. XinDESK

XinDESK is the only one out of the 10 WebOS apps listed here that I didn’t actually try out, because they don’t have a demo or an alpha version yet. However, browsing through the author’s blog one can find some interesting facts about the service. Here’s a couple of quotes:

“The core of Xindesk is a WebOS featuring application that opens and saves the standard office formats. Xindesk is the first web operating system that works easily, even for people without deep computer knowledge. The WebOS is an open platform, just like Windows and Mac OS. This enables anyone to develop new applications.”

“Every Xindesk application you develop can also be installed on all versions of windows.”

All in all, it doesn’t sound too shoddy, and I look forward to checking out this service again when it’s available to the public. You can check out a couple of screenshots over at XinDESK blog.

10. YouOS

Before I’ve started writing this piece, the only OS I’ve heard something about in the news was YouOS. And you can see that a fair amount of serious development went into the product, as there are quite a number of useful applications here, including a very good chat client, IM software, file browser, RSS reader and a couple of others. The applications can be moved accross the desktop, look pretty much like standard desktop apps and respond well with some minor issues (for example, the resizing of the RSS reader window did not go too smoothly). You can browse through your open applications using a toolbar similar to the Windows taskbar, which also works as intended.

Unfortunately, YouOS is a bit lacking in the design department. It’s windows and applications are usable, but they’re certainly not beautiful. It does not impede the functionality, but it does somewhat diminish the overall experience.

As far as the general usability applications go, I’d say YouOS takes a second place to Goowy. Its apps are fully functional, but lack a few details, be it in the design or functionality department, that would keep me from using YouOS on a daily basis. However, YouOS is definitely a very serious contender in the WebOS field, and it might turn into a force to be reckoned with.

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So, there we go - a short scan of 10 web operating systems shows us that this neck of the woods is promising, but still young and suffering from many a beginner’s disease. I’d say that YouOS, Goowy and DesktopTwo are the names you should watch now and in the near future, while the others *might* turn into promising products, but we’ll have to wait a month or two for that to happen. Also, keep in mind that while it’s relatively easy to judge who has the best functionality, it’s much harder to see who has the best code, or the most solid framework to build upon, so it’s safe to say that we can expect a few surprises to happen here.