Listing Lists of Broadband Business and Productivity Applications

The world of Internet applications is exploding so rapidly it can be difficult to navigate the possibilities in order to understand the opportunities.

Here on App-Rising.com I sometimes struggle with how to give out as much information as possible without it becoming a firehose.

Well, today, I thought I'd point you all to some firehoses, namely a handful of lists/directories of Internet applications focused on making you and your business more productive.

I'll be covering many of these applications individually and categorically over the next year as I give them a try on my own, but for now, here's a pile of applications for you to sift through and discover one or many that may solve problems in your day to day life.

That being said, a word of caution: I wouldn't recommend trying to go through all these links in one sitting. There's just too much good info, so you're bound to miss something important and/or become overwhelmed.

Instead, bookmark this page and keep coming back to it across multiple sessions, whenever you have free time. Trust me, if you spend the time to look through these lists, I guarantee you'll find at least one application that fulfills a need you have (or in some cases you didn't even know you had).

And now, the links!

Office 2.0 Database - I came across this one today. It provides a tremendous list of applications that enable an office 2.0 setup.

It does a great job of breaking applications into type, citing their favorite in each category along a number of other possibilities, and if you click on an item it provides you with a little bit of marginally useful info as well as the opportunity to read reviews. As the site's still pretty new, there aren't a lot of reviews yet, but I'd encourage you to write one of your own as you try out applications for yourself.

101 Essential Freelancing Resources - Another discovery made today, which combined with the Office 2.0 Database inspired this post.

The applications in this list aren't exclusively for freelancers; I think anyone looking to be more productive could make use of at least some of these. And while there may be some overlap with the first list, they've structured their list in a different way and upon quick review definitely have apps not listed above.

Web Office: 2007 Year in Review - This recent Read/WriteWeb article delves into the happenings of the web office space. Web office apps are basically those that offer similar functionality to what you'd find in Microsoft's Office suite of apps, only through your browser and enhanced by features that take advantage of their connectivity.

The Toolbox Toolbox: 100+...Resource Collections for Web Workers - Now I'm going to get metaphysical on you. This is a list of lists as it's aggregated a series of articles that include topics like "10 Essential Mind-Mapping Links" and "7 Apps for Online Note-Taking"

Be careful with this one; there's so much info it could be easy to get lost. And yes, by adding this posting to my post, I've now created a list of lists of lists.

Productivity Toolbox: 37+ Tools for Taking Action and Getting Things Done - A shorter list of applications all geared towards making you more productive.

The Best Collaboration Tools - Working with remote people is a key aspect of what the Internet enables. This list cites tools that help facilitate that collaboration.

10 Must Have Online Office Apps - I'm not sure if these are all necessarily "must have" and many if not all of them are cited elsewhere in other lists, but if you're finding yourself drowning in all the information found on the sites above, this shorter list may be a good place for you to start. Applications are all given descriptions, and there's only ten to consider, not hundreds.

30 Apps to Run your Business By - At this point, we're definitely starting to run into some overlap in apps, but I think this list has more entries for apps that, as its title suggest, helps you run your business, like their first section, which covers time tracking and invoicing apps.

In conclusion: Many of these applications are not particularly bandwidth-intensive, some of them are not yet practical or worthwhile, others mimic the functionality of desktop apps but aren't quite ready to supplant them, but all this being said, there's a tremendous amount of great work that's been done to develop these applications, this space is becoming incredibly diverse, and even if they don't all require broadband there's little doubt they all perform better given more bandwidth.

It's remarkable to me to think that many if not most of these apps were launched in '07. It makes it hard to imagine how long these lists might be this time next year.

For any app developer who may be reading this post, though, one word of advice: when you're considering what projects to work on next, I'd encourage you to start thinking outside of the box.

There's a lot of me-too apps on these lists, for example there's probably a dozen to-do lists or more. I'm not saying don't try to compete in these spaces, instead my intent is to raise awareness about the fact I think there's a lot of apps that still need to be written.

There are a lot of business processes that do not yet have an online solution. I don't yet have a list of what some of those are, but I'll work on it.

The key point here is this: what do you want to be doing? Fighting amongst a dozen competitors for a piece of a pie, or introducing a brand new kind of pie that expands the audience and demand for broadband applications beyond the current audience of early adopters?