10 Web Services to Check Out During Holiday Downtime

10 Web Services to Check Out During Holiday Downtimeby Clint Boulton

From software maker Adaptive Blue, Glue is a contextual network that uses semantic technology to connect people around everyday things—books, music, movies, stars, artists, stocks, wine, restaurants and more.

Plista is a social recommendation service and Firefox browser plug-in that overlays directly onto any Web page and lets you rate content on the site.

Zenbe is a free e-mail service that invites your other e-mail content to the party. Users import contacts; calendars from Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL Mail; and content from Facebook and Twitter, and organizes it in one console.

Hulu.com offers hit TV shows, movies and clips for free on-demand in the United States.

Is it a spreadsheet with a database for a back end or a database with a spreadsheet on the front? Whatever you decide, Blist is the ultimate list organization tool.

Unlike more static SAAS applications, EtherPad provides real-time collaborative workspaces for editing text. EtherPad also lets users copy and paste a link without sending e-mails.

DotSpots is an annotation Web service that lets consumers annotate news articles and other text content with videos from YouTube or photos from Flickr and links. The software then uses semantic matching technology to distribute each contribution to every instance of that meme across the Web.

A social search engine, Mobspin makes it easy to ask for and share recommendations with your friends across a wide range of topics, such as products, businesses, health, money and travel.

Socialcast is a microblogging tool geared for businesses. Yes, it’s a bit of Twitter for the enterprise and includes a version for the iPhone that allows users to chat with colleagues while on the go.

Designed specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Searchme lets users see Web pages without clicking through. Results are presented in a stack of pages that you can flip through or expand with your finger.