Ask HN: Webapps you can't live without?

97 points by ameen ↗ HN
We all use Web apps/services(Gmail, BaseCamp, etc). What are some of these tools which are essential to you?

80 comments

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Gmail, Mailchimp, Basecamp, Highrise, LivelyStocks, Twitter, Github, TradingView, Various Google Tools including (Analytics, Adwords, Adsense, Reader)

http://www.gmail.com

http://www.mailchimp.com

http://www.highrisehq.com

http://www.livelystocks.com

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.github.com

https://www.tradingview.com/

Livelystocks needs a smart search for stock symbols. Just messing around I had to lok up a lot of symbols on google.

I guess you could argue that if you have invested in a stock (emotionally and financially) enough to want to see real time info that you should know the symbol but hey I want to check out the app w/o having to google a lot of stuff :D

Wow, thanks for sharing LivelyStocks! Having one of those moments when you see your abandoned project made! Cheers!
Interesting, How useful/reliable is Office365? I've gone the Google Docs route, it works but wish it was better.
i pay a fiver a month (euros) with my mobile phone provider, gives me exchange email on all my devices, sharepoint for office and one note, one note online, and lync... its very useful and very reliable.
I use Office365 extensively at home and on the go. OneNote in particular is a must-have for me, and it needs to be synced everywhere. Really wish it wasn't blocked at work. I have a Windows Phone so I can access everything over 3G, but working on a phone is nowhere near as comfortable as working on a laptop or even a tablet.
Github + Issues
Gmail.com, linenode.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, google.com
Gmail.com, linenode.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, google.com
Gmail.com, linenode.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, google.com
Gmail.com, linenode.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, google.com
Gmail.com, linenode.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, google.com
Someone asked this 3 days ago (with few responses), so I'm copy/pasting this from then:

* http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/ (IMAP/webmail)

* http://www.sendgrid.com (transactional email)

* http://www.snapengage.com (sales/support chats)

* http://www.zendesk.com (basic KB & support tickets)

* http://www.github.com & http://www.repositoryhosting.com (public & private repositories)

* http://www.geckoboard.com (dashboard of financial state of the company)

And I'm a power user of my own SaaS products:

* http://www.w3counter.com (realtime visitor analytics)

* http://www.w3roi.com (ad performance tracking)

* http://www.dialshield.com (automatically calls high fraud risk customers during the checkout process on my ecommerce sites)

Wow, that's a lot of useful apps. Quite a few of them look interesting, Dialshield in particular can be a lifesaver!
Dropbox, Facebook, Remember the milk, Google Apps (mail, calendar), Hacker News

On and off, Google Reader.

The really interesting part is actually to recognise how hard it is for a new app to enter my daily-use list. It's almost impossible. Some make it in there for a few days or weeks but will vanish quite soon.

Either I need the app for my daily work or it is a fire-and-forget service that I once signed up for and that doesn't require any active input from my site.

Anyway, here is my list:

- pivotaltracker.com

- github.com

- dropbox.com

- olark.com

- gmail.com

- google.com/analytics

- hipchat.com

GMail, GCalendar, Twitter, internal work app, work Trac, HN.
Since the others I use have already been mentioned: http://piperka.net/ It's a webcomic aggregator, gives me a list of all the new comics that I haven't read yet.

Also Hiveminder http://hiveminder.com/splash/ for a really awesome to-do list site, with nice collaboration tools.

in order

- gmail (moving to own hosted email with Thunder in a couple of week, though)

- Skype (all communications)

- trello (manages all my projects now)

- bitbucket (all private code, it's free)

- dropbox (all files)

- prgmr (hosting, and email)

other essentials but can switch easily

- Google Analytics

- Google Translate

- SpringPad (they have a good Android app)

- Google Reader

It's amazing that I don't depend on any mobile app or on my smartphone and can go without it.

http://getharvest.com is the only one I use that hasn't already been mentioned already. It pretty much saved my life when I started doing contract work this year.
Google Search, Wikipedia, Dropbox, HN, Dilbert, Facebook.
youporn
Not sure why you're getting downvoted--would people treat a post about YouTube the same? It's even an interesting technical acheivment.
If this is an app you can't live without, you've got to get out more.
- http://www.diigo.com - I was never able to use any online bookmarking service for the last 10-15 years. Diigo got online bookmarking right. I would frantically pay someone to re-build diigo for me if it ever went away. I can't process, organize or navigate the internet without it.

The best feature is it's highlighting. We don't save bookmarks in our minds, but specific sentences or paragraphs. Diigo lets us highlight those and saves them right into my Diigo account/stream. I can then simply search diigo not only by keyword or bookmark, but the phrases that stuck out to me in the first place to make me want to bookmark it.

The second best feature is being able to publish the links to multiple groups so effortlessly.

- http://www.fogbugz.com (hosted) - keeps my consulting and product dev flow going.

- http://www.freshbooks.com - Trivializes the slippery slope of managing billable hours not only for you but for sub-contractors.

- http://www.bitbucket.org - Free, unlimited private repositories. Beneficial to someone like me who has a lot of small projects. I hope Github gets this soon.

"Free, unlimited private repositories."

Best of luck to BitBucket but why on earth would Github do this? They're a business

The same question could be asked why Github gives away so many free repos to open-source projects... :)

Bitbucket is a business too. I have no issue paying them.

Besides, storing bytes costs pennies, or less.

Marketshare.

Everyone knows about GitHub because everyone shares links to their projects hosted on GitHub! Same reason they provide https://gist.github.com/ and http://pages.github.com

Whether you eventually want to start your own business or just want to work for a good company ; you still end up at the same place - in a team environment, needing secure, painless version control hosting. I can tell you right now there is no other service I would use or recommend other than GitHub.

I second Diigo. Been using this service for years and as a technologist having the ability to do a keyword search of your bookmarks as awesome, especially when you can upload to Diigo's repository.
Wow - hadn't heard of diigo but I'm glad you listed them - looks awesome!
Glad I'm not alone
I will try not to get my hopes up too much before I try it, but this may, this may, be what I have been looking for to manage bookmarks across browsers (and even across Windows installations if I need to).
Let me know how you find it and what works and what didn't... It sounds like you have a lot of bookmarks.
Workflowy. I use it for all my classes and most of my projects.
* RescueTime (http://www.rescuetime.com) - time/productivity tracking

* Mint.com (http://www.mint.com) - personal finance/budgets

* Blueleaf (http://www.blueleaf.com) - tracking the performance of my investments

* Fitocracy (http://www.fitocracy.com) - personal fitness and weight lifting logs, also integrates with other apps like RunKeeper

* Producteev (http://www.producteev.com) - tasks management

* Quora

* Google Reader

* Google Music

* Gmail

* Dropbox

If you happen to have a spare Fitocracy invite, I'd love to check it out - new years resolution is to get healthier! kit@nocturne.net.nz Cheers :)