Top 25 Sites to Watch

PC World on the top 25 sites to watch out for and stay appraised of in the coming weeks and months. Client Spock, the new people search engine, is on that list.

Popfly is also on the list and it is described as a visual way to build your own mashups. When you see a term in PC World, its moving down the food chain, yet look at how long we talked about the term RSS (even in daily newspapers) before people really understood what they were and started using it. With Popfly, you don't need to know how to code - lots of drag and drop.

I've recently started playing around with NetVibes, yet another mashup service of types. Like Pageflakes (also on the top 25 list), you can customize one page with the news and information you want, including embedded widgets (or modules, which you can copy and paste into your page). You can also create additional pages to separate things out using tabs/dividers.

While both NetVibes and Pageflakes have the ability to import your feeds from a traditional news reader, viewing is clumsy and it doesn't appear that you can save certain feeds you have read you want to hang onto. A major oversight in my opinion.

The video mixing guys Eyespot made the list as well, which doesn't surprise me. I loved their model as soon as I saw it. (before their official launch). You can upload your videos to the site, and then use its tools to crop and mix them either with other clips you supply or with free video from the site. You can even add effects, transitions, and titles before publishing your video mix.

MyPunchbowl sounds interesting although I haven't tried it yet - perfect for someone like me who throws a lot of events and parties. Kinda of like an eVite on stereoids, it allows you to send pick-a-date e-mail messages to see which day works best for people and set up message boards (so you can see who can bring what for potlucks). There's a social sharing component as well so attendees can share post event.