First off, I apologize for the title - I couldn’t resist. (If you don’t know what the title is talking about, see this video). I am a web developer, as many of you may know. I use software on my computer like Zend Studio, WinSCP, and Putty, as many developers would. But as I was working a couple weeks ago, I wondered what kind of web-based tools other developers use. There are a couple that I use for planning, documentation, and testing, but it’s not often I hear of a developer using web-based products, aside from source code repositories. I’m talking actual products for project planning, system administration, usability testing, collaborative development, and web services. So, I decided to make a compilation of products that developers may find useful. There’s a little bit of everything in here - some are still in private beta, but still worth mentioning. Let’s start things off with project planning.

Project Planning

Basecamp is a communication and project management application which has become a no-brainer for many in the industry for its simplicity. I personally use Basecamp everyday, whether it’s in my own company’s account or on a clients account. It has taken away much of the stress that usually comes with project planning and communication. Users can send messages, share files, manage tasks, track time spent on tasks, set milestones, and more.

Planix is a new product soon to surface from its private beta stage. It’s an interesting application which I think will appeal to many startups. Planix essentially aims to make it as painless as possible for you to estimate resources, scheduling, and the cost of projects in development. Its system allows you to input all your projects features, number of team members, and other details which it then uses to accurately predict development hours and delivery.

PlanHQ, an application which I’m personally excited about, is designed to help you and your team create and maintain your company’s business plan. It provides sections for each area of a business plan as well as financial predictions and growth graphs. How does this help with development? Well, it’s good to fully understand the product you are building and your goals with it. I have recently started using it with my team for our company, but its one of those things you have to really work on for a good while. It’s could be best looked at as a system as flexible as a wiki with focus on business plan development.

Competitious is a unique service that aims to improve your companies competitive edge allowing you to track and gather information about competitors. You can add competitors, track news clippings, and manage a comparison matrix of product features. Using Comptetious, you and your team can easily find what your product is missing and plan accordingly.

Unfuddle is a software development environment and projects management application. It’s focus is primarily on the development and maintenance of your software where you and your team can track bugs, use source control (subversion), track development time, send messages, and set milestones. In ways it feels like Basecamp, though where Unfuddle really shines is with bug tracking and source control.

Gliffy offers a great service that allows its users to draw and share diagrams online. Create flowcharts, wireframes, and even network diagrams. Have an idea for your server architecture or development process? Diagram it online, collaboratively work on it with your co-workers, and print it out when complete. There are other options out there, but I personally keep coming back to this one.

Development

Springloops is a source code management tool focused on web development teams for rapid collaboration. Springloops provides teams with source repositories (Subversion) for each server they add to their Springloops account. Team members can easily commit changes, view logs, back-up to previous versions of code, and easily deploy changes to your servers. Springloops also provides Basecamp integration allowing you to easily import projects and contacts to your account.

FiveRuns is, as they put it, “Web 2.0 system management nirvana.” It’s a hosted applications that watches your servers every move through a small virtual client installed on your system to monitor, analyze, report and predict the behavior of your systems. In other words, FiveRuns allows you to gain insight and understand what is happening when your server or application fails. And being that FiveRuns acts remotely, you can view your systems status from anywhere even if your systems are down. Looks promising, but what it does is beyond my experience to accurately assess.

CodeIDE is an interesting site that actually lets you program on the web. You can manage files, program in numerous languages, run your creations, and use command line. It even has a real-time chat where you can talk to other users who are programming on the site and watch as their errors come and go. As I said, it’s an interesting site, but I can’t see myself developing with it anytime soon. And they need a logo ;-).

OpenCode is a service for all you Java/Processing buffs out there. Developed by students at MIT Media Labs, OpenCode is a web-based programming tool which lets you compile and run Java applets online using Processing libraries. The site allows you to browse through works by other users, create your own applets, manage resources, and meet other programmers. I used to develop applets with Processing a few years back, experimenting with mathematical art, and it’s great to see such a development.

Mashery is a unique service for API developers that provides API security, usage/access management, tracking, metrics, commerce, performance and developer/community tools. Just create an API, plug it into the Mashery service, and build a developer community with documentation for your API, a forum and wiki. You can also track API usage, manage API keys, and even limit API use. For an example of Mashery in action, check out Truilia’s developer site.

Other notable services: Zimki, Versionshelf, Gyre, Workspace.

Code Search and Manuals

Krugle is an innovative code search engine which allows developers to easily search for code within source code files, technical pages, and open source projects. It’s interface allows you to open multiple tabs of results and documents as well as view web articles without navigating away from the site. Another unique feature is the ability to add notes and tags to source code files.

Google Code Search is another code search engine which crawls and indexes publicly hosted archives (.tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar, and .zip) and CVS and Subversion repositories. It’s very light weight and accurate supporting the usage of regular expressions and advanced operators for quick filtering. I like to use Google Code Search for because it’s fast and simple, but Krugle wins on the feature end of things.

GotAPI is an excellent resource for developers that provides quick access to dozens of reference manuals on one site. I can make a search through all the languages I work with daily and instantly find what I’m looking for or simply browse through a languages API tree. GotAPI also has a neat API search start page that allows you to instantly search through multiple manuals at once.

FiveRuns, the system management product mentioned above, is also developing a troubleshooting site, FiveRuns.net, to help you maintain and monitor your systems. The site has not launched yet, but from what I can gather on the coming soon page, FiveRuns.net will integrate with the FiveRuns.com system management service and provide information around all system types such as MySQL, JBoss, Ruby, Linux and Oracle. The information will be accessible in central information repository to help you resolve problems quickly and move on to other tasks.

Helphee is an interesting service in closed beta which allows you to quickly author and publish help documents online for your products. You can’t find much about the service yet, but what I do know is that it provides a simple means of structuring your documents in an Ajax interface with a WYSIWYG editor. I’ve also learned that you can collaborate with multiple authors and view advanced reports providing information about possible problem areas with your product based on user activity, which I think is particularly neat.

Other notable services: All The Code, O’Reilly’s Book Code Search.

Issue Tracking

Betabug is another soon to launch bug tracking site that titles itself, “Bug management for the 2.0 age.” Even though the service is in closed beta, you can find a live example of the system running to give you a rough idea of what to expect. The service has a big social feel to it allowing users to signup, add tags, comment, submit tickets, and more.

Porchlight is a simple bug tracking solution designed for small teams that allows you to manage projects, bugs, milestones, and team members. It also provides RSS feeds, email notifications, and iCal files to make it even easier for you to track bugs and keep up with milestones. Porchlight also has an API in the works and has recently announced Microformats support.

From the makers of Mephisto, a popular rails based blogging system, is soon to launch Lighthouse. Lighthouse aims to be “beautifully simple” and features email integration, private projects, extension by plugins, and a developer API. It also supports commenting on submitted tickets, messaging, and project milestones. What’s also interesting is the ability to add pages to your account for public viewing.

Other notable services: Bugja, 16bugs, Unfuddle.

Usability Testing and Tracking

CrazyEgg is a useful service that lets you analyze click activity on your site through heat maps, percentage overlays, and raw click summaries. It can help you learn what site design performs best, where ads could be placed on your site, and what areas of your site needs most improvement. Just run CrazyEgg on your site for a week and you may be surprised with what you find.

If tracking clicks isn’t enough for your testing needs, check out ClickTale. ClickTale allows you to track a visitors every move on your site. See what they click, where their mouse moves, and watch how they scroll through your site. Normally, when doing our usability testing for clients, we setup screen recording software and cameras, but using ClickTale would be much simpler. The product is in closed beta, but you can find a video of it in action on the ClickTale blog.

Wufoo, one of my favorite services, is an online form builder that makes it easy for anyone to create great looking forms and generate detailed reports on collected data. I use Wufoo for Solution Watch’s forms and have found the reports and statistics particularly helpful in deciding on a forms structure. Now, developers can harness the powerful reporting features offered by Wufoo through the new submit API allowing them to easily connect any form to its web service, collect data, generate reports, and view statistics.

Widgetbox is an open widget marketplace and syndication platform. It allows developers to publicize their widgets and widget users to customize widgets for use on their sites. In terms of tracking, Widgetbox provides developers with rich metrics covering widget subscription count, daily hits, referrals, and conversions. You can think of it as a Feedburner for widgets.

Other notable services: Formalive, Clickscapes, SiteShots, Clickdensity, Websort.

Widgets and Web Services

Pipes, Yahoo’s latest service, is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? Basically, Pipes allows you to grab feeds from services like Youtube, Flickr, and eBay and mash them up with in an interface allowing for the sorting, joining, formatting and querying of the aggregated data. Once you’re done mixing and mashing, you can create a custom feed that accepts user input and re-use on your sites. Really, I recommend just trying it to fully grasp its capabilities.

Dapper is a useful service that allows you to grab and use any web based content from a website. Dapper provides a simple interface that allows you to grab specific parts of a site, add some options to it, and turn it into exportable data for your own projects. You can look at it as building an API for any website. I could, for example, make a custom “Dapp” that grabs headlines from Digg for a specific search term on a certain page that would then notify me of any occurrences of my website. Combine this with Yahoo Pipes and then we’ll really have something special.

Teqlo, the most recent mashup service, allows users to mix and mash widgets from various services into one application. You can, for example, add a LinkedIn widget to your application with a search field by name and connect it with a contact list that interacts with Google Maps. It’s drag and drop style interface makes it relatively easy to use, though I still found it a bit confusing and you can’t yet publish your applications to the web.

What would a development roundup be without Amazon S3? Amazon S3 (simple storage service) is a storage solution for developers that allows them to store and retrieve any amount of data through simple web services. You can look at it as a big file system without a GUI (graphical user interface) that can only be accessed using REST/SOAP. It’s become quite the popular option for developers for its cheap prices and scalability. You could, for example, store images on Amazon S3 while running your service on your production server to cut down on bandwidth costs and scaling issues. Amazon has a good news release that talks about various companies Amazon S3 that’s worth a read.

Other notable services: Openkapow, MuseStorm, SpringWidgets.

Miscellaneous Tools

• WriteMaps is a web-based tool that allows you to create and edit sitemaps online. Add a site to your account, start the first page and simply branch off your sites architecture from there. WriteMaps also allows you to zoom in and out of your sitemaps and view sitemaps in an outline form.
• CSSFly is a very helpful, lightweight tool that lets you temporarily edit any public site in real-time. You can edit the sites HTML as well as select from style sheets used on the website. It’s even better when you’ve got the bookmarklet set to your browser for quick editing. Firefox only.
• Em Calculator is a new JavaScript tool that I came across that lets you calculate font sizes in em’s. If you work a lot with CSS, this may come in handy allowing you to convert font sizes in pixels to em units while keeping everything relative.
• WebWait is a simple tool that lets you benchmark test your website. Simply plug in your address, the amount of test runs, and the interval that each test is run. What makes this site useful to me is that ittakes into account Ajax and JavaScript processing.
• Tingelets are a set of bookmarklets for web developers that highlight specific elements on a page allowing developers to quickly see how their web layouts render in different browsers. At the click of a button, see if a divider element is spanning the correct width, or that a header element is offset.
• FireBug is every web developers dream Firefox extension. You can do everything from debugging to real-time editing of websites. I’ve been using it lately for measuring network activity, spotting JavaScript errors, and editing CSS in real-time. Very useful plugin.
• Ready.mobi provides an analysis of how your web content is likely to function on a mobile device. I’ve been meaning to make my site mobile friendly for a while now and I’m certainly going to be using this to validate it.
• Subtlety lets you create an RSS feed for any remote subversion repository. Handy for those who only use subversion and want to keep track of changes without having to check the repository.

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Popurls has quickly grown to be one of my favorite websites helping me keep track what’s buzzing around the web. It’s a simple site that aggregates popular social services and websites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Flickr, and more. Each site gets its own area on the page listing the latest items and users can hover over items to get a summary. It’s great because it gives you a quick glimpse at what’s buzzing around the web and beats having to subscribe to all of the sites.

It’s clear people like these kind of sites and Popurls has seemed to start a chain or a class of these sites carrying on the concept. I’m not exactly sure what to call these sites as they are basically one page feed aggregators, but I suppose it’s safe to say they present the links, media, and search in a portal like fashion. So, I am going to call these sites “portals” throughout the post rather then saying, “Single Page Aggregator.” Please, if you know of a better name to call these sites, feel free to add your input.

There are two portals that I check up on numerous times a day: Popurls and Digg View. Popurls for the latest buzz and Digg View for an easy to read overview of activity at Digg. Just recently a new portal popped up called Original Signal and Steve Rubel had mentioned in a post on the new portal, “There seems to be a new emerging class of sites like these that aggregate feeds for you.” I started thinking about it and agree that there are quite a bit of these sites now, some covering buzz and others specific topics, and so I decided to take a look around and see what I can find.

After compiling a list of portals, I grouped them into categories and decided to share them with you. Hopefully there will be at least one that will be of interest to you. You can find in my list of portals: Tracking Buzz and News (Digg, Del.icio.us, etc.), Tracking Web 2.0, Specialty Topics (Gaming, Tech Deals, Apple, etc.), Design Related News and Showcase, Media Aggregators, Build Your Own, and lastly, Tag Search Engines.

My Two Top Picks

Popurls: Most of you are probably familiar with this one. Popurls has the goal of bringing you the latest buzz around the web aggregating popular social services and websites and display them all on one page. Viewers can view popular headlines from sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Newsvine, and TailRank as well as keep up on media from Flickr, Youtube, Odeo, iFilm, and more. If your trying to find what’s new and buzzing on the web, Popurls is the place to be and most definitely takes place on my Firefox toolbar.

Digg View: I’m a big fan of Digg and try to keep up with the latest popular headlines as much as possible. I come across many helpful articles because of Digg relating to Web 2.0, web programming, database optimization, and other tech related topics, but I also use Digg to keep up with videos and gaming. However, rather then using Digg’s website to track popular headlines, I use Digg View. Digg View offers a one page overview of the seven Digg categories showing popular headlines during different time-frames of the day. The site makes it very easy to keep up with what’s popular on Digg and also marks stories that you haven’t seen in orange. I love it. I sit here all day refreshing the page over and over waiting for new orange headlines to appear so I can view the latest popular story on Digg.

Tracking Buzz (What’s Hot) and News

The following portals include the latest popular links and news from various social bookmarking sites, blogs, and news sources. You can expect to see these portals aggregating sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit. Personally, I’ll be sticking with Popurls, but maybe you prefer different.

• TheWebList: “A digest of the latest links other web users are visiting right now!” It’s basically the same thing as Popurls, but without the media. It provides bookmarking and search options and summaries when hovering headlines.
• popfeeds: popfeeds is a very clean and simple overview of popular feeds. If it weren’t for Popurls, this would probably be the one I would use because it’s very fast loading and gets straight to the point.
• ViralBabble: Although it isn’t all that pretty, one feature that I like about ViralBabble is archiving. Navigating to the bottom of the page will be a link to an archive section where you can actually view snapshots of previous days. So if you were out of the house yesterday and wanted to see what was buzzing, you can easily do so with ViralBabble.
• PopFeedo: By the makers of Feedo Style and powered by Feedo Style, PopFeedo aggregates and displays six popular feeds including Digg, Del.icio.us, Wired Technology, Reddit, Slashdot, and Yahoo’s Top News.
• 01b (Source): I probably shouldn’t be mentioning this one as it will probably be shutting down any day now, but 01b is Thomas Marben’s first creation that aggregates sites similar to his now popular, Popurls. Except this one aggregates a whole lot more sources, some in German.

Specialty Topics

You may be thinking, “Alright, why are you writing a post about these portals? Don’t they all show the same thing?” No! There are actually portals built for specific topics, such as gaming and photography. If you have an interest in a certain topic, maybe one of these can help you stay on top of relating news. If not, head down to the “Build Your Own,” area of this post.

• WiiNintendo: Nintendo fans, this one is for you. Excited about the new Nintendo Wii? If so, bookmark WiiNintendo to keep up with the latest news from Nintendo, The Wiire, Joystiq, and 1UP as well as videos on Wii from YouTube.
• Mashfot: Mashfot is all about photography. With Mashfot, users can find the latest news and popular links relating to photography and view the latest photographs from various photo sharing websites. View photos from Flickr and 23, news from Digg and Blogs, and links from Del.icious and Blinklist.
• PopDeal: Here is one for all of you tech-savvy individuals that want to save a buck or two on tech hardware. PopDeals brings you the latest tech deals from around the web by aggregating numerous websites specifically meant for deals on products, including DealNews, TechBargains, DealCatcher, and more.
• Don’t Meet Your Heroes: “Compilation of CSS and Web Standards related resources and news feeds from sources around the net.” The site claims to aggregate CSS and Web Standard sites only, although you will see a mix of other sources relating to Web 2.0, programming, Ajax, and more. Nice and simple page.
• xmlhttprequest: If you are a web developer, you can probably guess what this portal is about. Yes, Ajax. Find links to websites and news relating to developing with Ajax, keep up with sites like Ajaxian and ThinkVitamin, and keep up with Google’s JavaScript Newsgroup.
• MacScour: By the makers of Don’t Meet Your Heroes, MacScour scours the web for Apple news and Mac software updates. Keep up with latest news, software updates, rumors, reviews, and more.
• BozPages: Alex Bosworth of SourceLabs has created a neat site that basically allows you to make your own Popurls like page, or as he calls them, “simple one-off pages of RSS feeds.” He also provides some that he has created that aggregates feeds relating to Gaming, Web 2.0, Movies, Ajax, Google, and more. Only problem is that the pages seem to run a bit slow at times.
• Update: Original Signal Gadgets: Just as I published this post, Original Signal has created another site built to aggregate gadget related sites. The site includes Gizmondo, Engadget, CNET’s Gadget Blog, CrunchGear, and more.

Tracking Web 2.0

You’ve probably guessed this category was coming. The following portals aggregate blogs covering Web 2.0. If you like keeping up with all the new startups and products but don’t like subscribing to so many feeds, you may want to keep track of one of these sites. My personal favorite is Original Signal.

• Original Signal: Launched this month, Original Signal aggregates 15 Web 2.0 blogs showing recent posts and summaries. What’s also neat is that if you have visited the site before, new posts will stand out in bold the next time you visit. Original Signal is also by the makers of Digg View.
• Web 2.0 Workgroup: The Web 2.0 Workgroup is a small network of sites covering Web 2.0, which thankfully Solution Watch is a part of, and has a main page that displays each site aggregating three latest posts.
• Web 2.0 Reference: Web 2.0 Reference aggregates feeds relating to Web 2.0 and organizes them neatly on one page where you can sort them by Source or Category.

Design Related News and Showcase

Even though I am a web programmer, I’m definitely a sucker for anything design. I’ve known about a couple of these portals, but I grabbed my brother, Tim Benzinger, who is a graphic designer (also designed this blog), and had him help me gather some more for you.

• Most Inspired: Need inspiration? Check out Most Inspired, a portal that aggregates design galleries and showcases designs by hovering over each headline. I can spend my whole day on this site looking through all of the excellent design work.
• Enure Feeds: Enure includes feeds from popular design sites including k10k, lounge72, australian INfront, News Today, and more. Enure does not necessarily aggregate its sources but includes them using iframes. Nevertheless, it’s a nice portal that has some high profile design sources.
• Design Feeds: Design Feeds is a new one to me and I love it. It has many sources displayed in iframes, some that are galleries with visuals, others that are news relating to design and web development. The owner did a nice job at aggregating each source in individual frames styled to the sources appearance. I’m sure any designer can appreciate this site.
• Linkgrab: Linkgrab is a simple site that allows you to pick three design related websites and retrieve links from each. You can change the feeds at anytime and keep checking back. It would be nice if it allowed you to display more then three on a page.

Media Aggregators

For those of you that are interested in keeping up with popular videos, these portals may be for you. They are one page sites that display popular videos, with thumbnails, from video sharing sites. Warning, it is easy to waste hours of your free time watching videos ;-).

• The Internet TV Charts: “The Internet TV charts tracks the most popular online video clips each week from four leading Internet TV sites. All the best video clips, on one page.” Simple site showing popular Google and YouTube videos as well as links to Digg (video topic) and Videosift.
• vdiddy: Neat site that allows you to view videos from 12 different video sources. You can select a site and then watch the videos directly in vdiddy.
• Magg: Created with recently launched Dapper, Magg aggregates the latest and greatest movies from various video sharing sites. You can also search through the aggregated sites for videos.

Build Your Own!

Haven’t found any portals that caught your interest? Then build your own! I have three methods for you. You can use services offering one page aggregators, use your favorite start page site (ie: Netvibes), or use a simple Tag Search site and bookmark it for later reference.

• One Page Aggregators: I know of two services that can help you make your own portal in a matter of minutes. The first is SpeedyFeed (Example: Popular) and it basically allows you to import your favorite feeds and have them all displayed on one page in a similar format to Popurls. The second option is BozPages, which I had mentioned earlier. Simply head over to the website and add your favorite feeds to get a one page aggregator.
• Start Pages: You can also make your own by using a start page. I personally like to use Netvibes, but any start page will do. 3spots has an extensive list of start pages worth checking out. Also, if you are a Netvibes user, don’t forget about the Netvibes Ecosystem. You can add tabs on various topics to your account in a single click.
• Tag Search: The last method I am aware of is by using tag search sites. Now, it can’t be just any tag search site (well, it can if you want), but one that allows you to bookmark and retrieve results from multiple sources, preferably blog searches and social services. My favorite one is Newzpile. You can also use TagJag and the recently released, TagFetch. Just make a search, bookmark the page, and check back later for more recent headlines.

That concludes my findings! Hope you have found a portal that interests you. If you know of any other similar sites, feel free to comment below. And again, my two top picks are: Popurls and Digg View. Popurls provides me with more then enough of the latest buzz around the web and Digg View compliments Digg so well making it easy to keep up with popular headlines. If I had to choose a third, I would have to go with Most Inspired because it provides tons of inspirational work to browse through.

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Yahoo! has just released an amazing all new Yahoo! Local Maps Beta tonight at around 9pm (TechCrunch’s mention) and all I could say for the last thirty minutes was, “Wow!” Honestly, I haven’t been this impressed in a long time. One thing that shocked me was that Yahoo! actually stepped away from Ajax in this one and used Macromedia Flash instead. The new Yahoo! Maps also has some amazing features such as multi-point directions, live traffic, details, and an amazing new API that allows you to create Yahoo! Maps using Flash and Ajax! Yahoo! has certainly hit a grand-slam on this one.

The interface uses simple and pleasing colors with the main navigational elements on the left and the map on the right. The map looks similar to that of Google Maps, but don’t be fooled because functionality wise, it dominates Google Maps. On the left you are given access to easily search for directions, search for locations, or even select categories of locations on the map, such as gas stations or fast food restaurants. On the right is the map itself. You can click once to slide to a position, click and drag, use the scroll wheel of your mouse, and even directional keys on your keyboard for navigating the map. You will notice that when you move your position, the address in your browser will also change. Yahoo! has done some nice trickery here and actually sets the URL pointing to an anchor with the coordinates and other information in side of the ending string (everything in the URL after the #). Now, because they used anchors, it will update the URL and also allow for it to act as a permanent link. Now, try this: Drag from one point to another. Now press the browser back button. It will scroll back to the previous point with no browser refresh. Yahoo… brilliant. Also, on the right you will see a small box that allows you to easy zoom in and out or to drag a small gray box around that is the focus point on the map. This makes it easy for when viewing a map up close. Now, lets get in a little closer and use their location finding features.

On the left in the “Find on the map” area, you will see a list of categories. Select a category and you will see a list of location types to choose from. When you select on of these, Yahoo! Maps will actually plot each point with nice orange points (note that this will work better when zoomed in on a specific area). So for example, if you were to select the Entertainment category and then Movie Theaters, it will plot all the theaters in the area. Also when selecting the location type, you will now see a list of places to choose from in the place of where you selected the category. Hovering your mouse over one will make the point to open and show the name and making it easier to find the exact position. When you click on a place, it will collapse open with more details and the contact information. You can also click on the point itself and the contact information will show as well.

At this point, we are zoomed in and looking at locations plotted on the map. I live at point A, but how to I get to point B easily (one of the plots on the map)? Very easily. First, you may want to add your start position by going up to the “Get map driving directions” at the top left and filling in the black point A and then pressing enter. This will set your start point on the map. Now, back to the location plots we were looking at before. Simply click and drag the point right to the top left driving area under plot A. You will see that it will actually add the address right it for you. Now, lets make this even more interesting and drag and drop another point onto it. You now have three points in for your directions. Wait! Say that again? Yes, you can now do multi-point directions. Something that Google or Microsoft hasn’t even accomplished yet. So, knowing me, I wanted to play around with this more and by then a minute later I had up to the J marker (10 location points).

You will notice that as you add points, the directions will actually come up. You will see, turn left here, turn right there, etc.. between each point, which just blew my mind. You will also see on the map lines appearing that go from point to point. As you hover over each direction on the left, the lines will highlight and strengthen with darker blue to show what you are looking at. Another thing that I also like about directions on the left was that if you click on one of the instructions (ie: Turn left), it will collapse the box and show you a smaller map of the location right there so you can get a quick visual. You also may want to keep in mind two features for when making directions. “Reverse Directions” and “Roundtrip.” The reverse directions will do exactly as it says, it will take each point and reverse it giving you the opposite of your original directions, which is perfect for going somewhere and then driving back using the same path. Now, they also have the “Roundtrip” feature. Instead of just reversing your directions, why not just add onto them with more directions for the way back home! It will pretty much take the reversed directions and add them onto the last point, making it act as a round trip from point A to B and then back to A again. I am definitely using this for my next trip somewhere.

I had also mentioned that Yahoo! has made an excellent API. They actually made an API that allows you to use Flash OR Ajax for the backend. Which to me is amazing in itself. But from the looks of it, you can create some very feature-rich applications with it. Looking at some of the examples in the Yahoo! Maps Application Gallery, you can see how great it is. In the screenshot above, I have the MashUpcoming.com open. This is a map that shows you locations and events for Upcoming.org. You get to see real-time traffic, use local search, and even view event details all within the map. A few of the others that I found were really nice are the Flickr Maps and the Local Events Browser.

I am very impressed with this release by Yahoo. Just when you though Google Maps was big, Yahoo comes along with their own and in my opinion, feature-wise, dominating. Of course, issues may appear in time that I may have not noticed, but this is Beta! It just released, so just give it some time. If you come across an issue, send them feedback as they requested. We have been seeing some amazing work done with Google’s API and now I cannot wait to see what is going to be created with Yahoo’s. Some have even already made their own, such as this one for Silicon Valley. Amazing work, Yahoo.

View Yahoo! Maps Beta.

There has been a storm of Web 2.0 releases the last few days because of the Web 2.0 Conference. I took a look at some of them (from TechCrunch) and decided I wanted to review Zvents, the new San Francisco Bay event search (soon to be other U.S. metros as well). First impressions: Beautiful, accurate, ajaxy, taggy, social, and I am loving it. There are a lot of features with Zvents, but lets take the walk through some of them.

The main page is very clean and gets straight to the point with a selective search of events, venues, tags, groups, and people. The events search using a nice what, where, and when search format that makes it extremely easy to narrow down on an event. You could type in terms such as, “Concerts,” “Next Tuesday”, “Art,” “Web 2.0,” etc.. Also, if you see the screenshot above, you can see that I am in the Tags search. This is pretty slick because it uses ajax to give you auto-completion and even the results for the tag. You will also notice that the groups and people search does this as well.

Next, I went back to the main event search and tried the term, “Web 2.0.” 35 (at the time) appeared in a nicely ordered list. But, I didn’t want to simply choose a result. I wanted to see a map or a calendar of some sort and I was happy to find that Zvents does include this. If you look above your results, you will see links saying to view as a map, calendar, and other options like linking to iCal and search saving. So, I wanted to see the map integration and I must say, it is very nice. You can see how the map looks above (nice pins, by the way). When in the map page, you get your Google Map on the top and then the listing of the events below. The listing of events will have colored circles on the sides of them and the colors are to match the pins on the map. If there is a blue pin, look for the blue circle for its even details (or you can click on the pin, like you see above).

My next test was to search for concerts. So, I went to the tag search and typed in the tag, “concert.” It then brought up the results allowing me to select to view tag details, search for events or venues, select related tags (on the right column), or similar tags (below). I decided to view the tag details page, which you can see above. At default it will show the results in a three column calendar format. But I wanted a bigger range, so I went to the top and selected the 30 day view. Now I have an overview of events in a monthly calendar format. When hovering over n day with event(s), you will get a listing of the events in a tooltip type box just to give an overview. I really like that.

When you click on a day with events, it will then switch back to that day but on the 1-day view of the calendar so you get a listing of each event for that day along with venues. The events that are listed also give you an overview when hovering over it which is helpful if you looking for something specific. Now, lets go to the main event details page that will cover all the details for the event. This is what you see below:

On the left you will be given details for the when the event is and where it is. You will also see a website address (if any), description, and the price for the event. On the right you get a Google Map that plots the location of the event so you can easily find it. If you scroll down to the bottom you will see even more features. You have the ability to trackback an event on your blog with the Trackback URL they provide, add comments, and you can even add photos to the event! Very nice.

Few more last notes that I want to mention. Zvents also has a great developers area that you may want to check out. There’s documentation for REST and SOAP development. But before you can use this, you have to generate your API key by going to the bottom of your profile page. Also, you can include an Inline-Frame on your site, like you see on the Zvents Blog, by going to the “My Zvents” section of the site. In the “My Zvents” Page, you will see your calendar. Beneath the calendar is a link for creating the iframe code.

Overall, Zvents worked great and I can’t wait for the service to accept other U.S. metros. Everything was very easy to find and it really made me realize.. man, I want to move to San Francisco! But, the only issue that I personally had was about the use of AJAX. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the AJAX. But at some points, for example, when finding a day with events and viewing the calendar. When you click on a day and the events get listed, I feel as if it is another page and when wanting to go back, I click the back button. Which actually would bring me back to the search page itself without the results. Really, that is the only thing. Otherwise, great job Zvents team.

View Zvents: Discover. Do. Create.

As I was enjoying my usual everyday browse through del.icio.us, I saw a link for an article by Alex Bosworth, from SourceLabs, that was called, “Ajax - Live Apps.” Of course, right off the bat my interest was struck by all three words in the title: Ajax, live, and apps. The article talks about how Ajax is turning web applications into real-time applications and that the old days was a big pain to do this. And then he gave his example of a ‘real-time’ web application. The example that he made was linked, “imagine if you could see the most popular links and most recent bookmarks live.”

Wow, is this cool or what! Heres the run-down. SourceLabs LiveMarks is simple. On the left column, you have your popular results from del.icio.us so you are always up-to-date. This is great and all, but what is even better is the right column. In the right column, you have Del.icio.us Live. Just open the page and watch the links show up in real-time. Too cool.

This is an example, remember, so don’t expect too much on the visual end. There are no tags, no usernames, and no way to post. But, you do get a run down of quality links from del.icio.us. I easly just spent 30 minutes just viewing all the sites that are coming in every second or so. I had to stop my self just so I can post about this!

You know what else is great? You can view the source for Alex Bosworth’s example. You are given the HTML, JavaScript, and even the PHP used for the backend amd you can find it under the listing of popular links on the left column. Great work, Alex. I can stay on LiveMarks for hours!

View LiveMarks: Del.icio.us Live by SourceLabs.