It’s the end of the year and for everyone who is publishing something, either for fame, fortune or simply as a pastime (much like knitting only with words and less needles), that’s a welcome time to fill those publishing slots with “best of” lists. It’s an easy way out of a total lack of inspiration, and since I’m as hard to inspire as the next guy, I find this practice quite agreeable.

Anyway, I was asked to contribute my top five Interweb services by the fine people at German tech blog netzwertig.com for one of their end-of-year surveys (the result of which can be seen here, in German). So I decided to let you know what I chose and why, mainly because I think it’s information so pressing, I shouldn’t withhold it from you, and also because I haven’t posted anything here for ages and that simply kills my Google ranking. So, without further ado, here’s my choices, in no particular order:

• Google Music: You heard that right. It’s Google’s Music service, which in its current iteration is basically an online repository for the music you own, allowing you to stream it to your computer or onto your Android device. It’s something I’ve used pretty much every day for the last couple of months and even with the advent of much-hyped Spotify, I will keep doing just that. Mainly because I don’t like Spotify for the obvious reason of more or less coercing people into sharing EVERY SINGLE SONG to Facebook. What a bore! Facebook sharing is so 2010.
• Remember the Milk: 2011 saw me return to Remember the Milk as my number 1 todo-list app. I’d used it for a while a couple of years back, but soon came to hate its lack of simplicity. Fast forward a couple of years and scores of simple todo-list apps and there I am: my life has become sufficiently complex to warrant a complex todo-list app. And I also quite liked the introduction of their very polished Android app. To make sure I keep using it, I decided to become a paying customer. It’s what I call the lazyman’s tax.
• Evernote: Ah yes, Evernote. The good old Evernote, which I came to hate for a while back in 2010, mainly because they so steadfastly refused (and still do) to create a Linux version of their desktop app. In the meantime, Nevernote, an open source version available for Linux, has been released and I realized that I don’t in fact need a desktop version after all. Today, Evernote is where I unload all the stories, recipes, articles, notes and whatever busy and important people like me need to unload into a second brain on a daily basis (speaking of second brain, there used to be a rather interesting service named Second Brain, which covered a lot of Evernote’s ground. Unfortunately, 2011 also saw the shuttering of that service, due to lack of funds).
• Dropbox: There’s no real way around Dropbox. It’s just too good and soon it will be so ubiquitous, people will hate it but still use it, mainly because everyone does (in case you’re not into subtleties, I’m referring to Facebook here). They introduced Dropbox for Teams this year, which is a great way to share space for a rather reasonable price. I received 20TB of free storage for writing that last sentence (disclaimer: that was a joke, I did not receive 20TB of space for writing this sentence – in fact, I rarely accept anything besides cash).
• Angry Birds: It’s a game, it’s addictive, it helps my understanding of physics. And that is all I will say in this matter.

And that is it. You can now return to your reading of the Top-100-HuffPo-Link-Bait-Articles of 2011. Or some such thing. Lady Gaga. Naked. Bieber. Twilight.

You! Apparently.

As the year comes to an end, many publications create their lists of best and worst and hippest and lamest and what else you can cram into lists.

TIME Magazine is doing the same, as they’ve been doing for a while (I don’t know for how long exactly…finding that out would mean I’d have to do research, and frankly, that’s not what this here is all about…most of the time). Anyway, this year’s person of the year is “You”, the guy reading this blog while at work, or the web 2.0 fanatic who reads everything any blog ever published even remotely connected to the phrase (any blog would include this blog, in case you’re wondering).

From an article from the BBC:

“It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes,” Time magazine’s Lev Grossman writes.

And:

Time praised the tool that made such broad collaboration possible – the web.

“It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter,” Mr Grossman said.

So, time to give yourself a pat on the back…and then please resume uploading those funny cat-pictures you took yesterday while drunk off your socks. Or whatever phrase you choose to wish in connection with being inebriated.

(image copyright:Time Magazine)

Just like thebeststuffintheworld, Standpedia gives random people with no real claim to expertship except for the fact that they know how to connect to the Internet the ability to leave their opinion on whatever they please.

While this surely is the apex of Internet democracy, I do wonder how long these sites will last.
See, both of them are nicely implemented. Thebeststuff is more like a collection of lists of what people think is the greatest stuff in the world. Well, the name really is quite straightforward. I has all the features of a social network type site, and it’s a fun way to kill time.

Standpedia is a bit more complex, they offer a more or less live discussion of various topics, giving people the option to add their comments and challenge other people’s views. They group these views and comments in a clean organigram-like interface. If I had a screenshot tool at my disposal right now (on Windows, so no KSnapshot), I’d show you, but alas, you’ll have to go there yourself to see.

Now, here’s what I think will happen to these sites. Well, nothing really. They’ll keep being fun places to check out once in a while, but more due to their obscurity than for their inherent value to the opinion seeker. Why? Because you’ve basically got a page that lets everyone add little comments about whatever they please, resulting in messy communication taken totally out of context, with no real information value to it. In the end, these sites will be fun for people who like watching micro-feuds on any kind of issue. Social network voyeurism, if you will.