14. Kickstarter
Got an idea that you think would work, but don't know how to get the word out and start raising funds? If so, Kickstarter may be a good place to start.
Whether you're an artist, designer, filmmaker, inventor, musician, journalist or explorer, Kickstarter can provide you with a no-risk way of seeing if your idea is good enough to get patronage from a wide variety of interested parties.
Simply say what you want to do, how much you want to raise and by when, and if you hit your target by the deadline you have set, you get the money to fund it.
15. 3liveshop
Phone operator 3 has mixed the high street with the convenience of online shopping. Well, in Sweden at least, where the 3liveshop trial was carried out.
You ask a real person questions about the product you want to buy via video chat, and not only can they answer in real time, they can add details to the chat screen such as images of the product, or details of talk plans or your online shopping basket.
It's powered by bespoke Flash multi-touch technology - you can see part of the assistant's desktop so they can drag and drop images and info onto the screen.
16. Join.me
How often have you tried to explain how a website works to somebody over the phone, only to find that they are lost, two pages behind, looking at the wrong menu? Wouldn't it be great if they could see what you were doing on your desktop?
Before join.me came along, the best way to do this was to take your laptop to them or send a series of screenshots by email. Now you can let up to 250 people share your desktop from anywhere in the world.
It's ideal for training, product demos andPC support, because you can let others see your desktop from any web-connected device.
17. Pinterest
Pinterest is a way to keep an online pinboard of the beautiful things you find on the web. It also enables you to browse and draw inspiration from the collections of others.
If you see something in somebody else's collection that you admire, you can pin it to your own collection, or just comment on it. It's oddly addictive, but has some real world uses too. People have used it for design inspirations when planning to refurnish a room, or to collect ideas for a wedding.
With millions of people giving it a try, Pinterest is already proving a compelling way to share ideas.
18. Rapportive
Like Xobni for Microsoft Outlook, Rapportive helps you make sense of the people you interact with on Gmail. Once installed, it simply adds their information to the side of email messages where the ads would normally appear.
It can pull in information from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, Flickr and MySpace among others, so if they use the same email address on all these services you can get a lot of information about your email contact all displayed in the Gmail window.
Now you never need to admit to forgetting a business contact again!
19. Hipmunk
As anyone who has ever tried to compare flights will tell you it's a confusing business. Different airlines have different costs, flight lengths and changes, and trying to keep track of it all to work out which flight is the best for you is nigh on impossible.
That's the problem Hipmunk was created to solve, and it does it very well. Enter where you want to go and when into its search engine, and Hipmunk will organise all the available flights in a simple timeline.
This shows you the difference in cost, the difference in airport changes, or the actual times of the flights in one glance.
