Keeping up with the news

How can you possibly keep up with all the new little internet-based software applications being placed online everyday? There are a few web-sites devoted to serving as portals to all these new apps. Here are three you might want to check on every few days: 1. Solution Watch. This site was created by 19 year old Brian Benzinger, a student at Gibbs College in Norwalk Ct. The site profiles new applications that Brian has reviewed and deemed worthy to pass on to this readers. These a real reviews, not just a cataloging of new sties that have come to Brian's attention. His most recent post describes an Ajax-based chatroom service you can add to your blog or website with just a few includes. 2. eHub. Emily Change is an award-winning web developer, designer, and consultant based in San Francisco. Her eHub site, updated nearly every day, brings us pretty much every new web-based application that she has run into. The stream of information from this site will inevitably bring something to your attention that you want to use -- or emulate. Unlike Brian, Emily usually justs points us to the site and lets us draw our own conclusions. But she posts longer pieces too, often interviews with the development team responsible for some new application. Recently, for example, Emily interviewed gOffice, developers of a browser-based office suite. If you are interested in how far the current move toward internet-based computing might go, take a look at what these developers are envisioning. 3. Techcrunch. Currently claiming 17,150 subscribers to its RSS feed, this blog's mision statement tells us it is "dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new web 2.0 products and companies." Creator Michael Arrington strikes a more bloggy, industry-savvy tone. In addition to telling us about the applications, he follows their fortunes in the trade press and blogosphere. Michael is also attuned to the competition between web2.0 developers: recently he devoted an inch or so to the competitive impact of Performancing's blogging plug-in for Firefox had on the Flock browser. Tags: web2.0, nptech