The World Wide Web keeps on evolving. With high-speed access and new tools, your browser is beginning to have the responsiveness and functionality as any of your desktop applications. New kinds of websites are being made, some where you can design your own personalized pages importing just the newsfeeds and features you need, others where you can build your own interactive encyclopedias, or contribute to mapping systems or graphs.

Most of these are in their infancy, all three are an experimental foretaste of the wonders to come. These may bear keeping an eye on.

CircleUp  http://www.circleup.com

If you find organizing social activities a bit like herding cats, this might help. CircleUp allows you to email or instant message a group of people, collects and summarizes their responses, and puts the resulting plan online so all your group can see it.

Trulia  http://www.trulia.com

Interested in real estate? This website, based on Google Maps, allows you to search for a new home by location, price range, features, and you can talk to people about their neighborhoods.

Wayfaring  http://www.wayfaring.com

Also based on a Google Map type interface, with Wayfaring you can create personalized tours, explore and even add to maps of others.

 by Jay Nelson, Editor

from SWCP Portal, July 2007