#11 my best of the rest

I find the chart of winners of the SEOmoz Web 2.0 awards overwhelming. Well over 100 sites are mentioned, but I only have the name and category of each to guide me as to whether I want to investigate further. And of course when I do investigate further Inevitably I discover that many of these award winners don't offer Australian service. Annoying.

To supplement the SEOmoz list, I went searching for an Australian list. BRW provided a list of 100 Australian web 2.0 tools and sites. And I like the fact that this list provides a short but helpful description of each. But this list is limited to tools which are "significantly Australian" (whatever that means), not everything available in this country. So I'm making my own list, drawing on the two lists mentioned, and other sites I know and like.

Sites I've used and find useful or interesting:
-Google Maps and Google Earth for geographic information
-Geni for recording and sharing family history info (I set up the beginnings of a family tree on Geni last year while familiarising myself with genealogical research, and relatives from England, Scotland and the US have all continued to add to it since)
-Facebook for keeping up with friends, acquaintances, colleagues and family wherever they might be. Along with Geni, Facebook has contributed to my getting to know my extended family better, as they are all outside of Australia.
-Go2web20 a very handy index to web applications. Great for finding that web tool that you need and hope someone somewhere has created.
-Powerhouse Museum's new collection search.
-Booko an Australian online book/dvd shop meta-search site. Very handy for finding the best price.

Sites I've not really used, but think deserve more exploration:
-Lulu for self publishing
-RedBubble: allows anyone to share their visual artworks or writings, and to sell them as t-shirts, mugs, calendars etc to others
-Street Advisor: tap into local knowledge, and find the streets and suburbs to choose or avoid. (I do wonder how many reviewers are in the process of selling their homes, but an interesting idea.)
-BugMeNot: allows web users to avoid compulsory registrations by sharing BugMeNot's own set of logins.
-Feedity: create RSS feeds from any webpage