Great companies

Asomi’s blog | Great companies  

Below you will find a list of companies, applications/products and services that I’ve come across in the business and consumer spaces, and think have something great to offer. And, if you know of a company that should be added then send me the URL and I’ll have a look and add them. Online consumer services and applications

  • Fuser.com – how comes someone hasn’t come up with this before, a dream if you have more than one email address. Orgoo.com and Xoopit.com offer similar service.

  • Netvibes.com – only just started on this and it has massive potential. I’m on there everyday accessing lots of feeds and applications from one place.

  • Last.fm – never again do I have to wade through my MP3 player to create a selection of tracks from different artists, its all here.

  • Twitter.com – what a (great) crazy idea. I have signed up. This will become more than a craze and will become an integral part of more and more people’s lives – watch this space.

  • Youtube.com – I have seen postings of some videos I thought I would never see again on here. Its easy to go on there for a few minutes and end up there for hours.

  • Wikipedia.com – what can’t you find out about on here?

  • WordPress.com – these guys have made it really easy to set-up and manage a blog. Thank you, thank you. Let’s not also forget blogger.com

  • Londonnet.co.uk – live in London and want to know what’s happening, definitely start here.

  • Google.com – where do you begin with these guys, iGoogle maybe, Google maps, or the brilliant Gmail!

  • Del.icio.us – in truth I haven’t started using this yet, but I will and I can see myself with my list of favourites everywhere I go.

  • Top-table.co.uk – need a restaurant, want to know what’s hot and what’s not, go here.

  • Amazon.co.uk – great place to find that old album you’ve lost or never had.

  • Trip-advisor.com – I love this site and the people that write on it. It has saved me from going to places I would have hated.

  • Kelkoo.co.uk – I never buy any electricals without going here first.

  • eBay.co.uk – this has got to be the 2nd stop after Kelkoo! Watch me go on my new bike courtesy of these guys and the 000s of traders.

  • Trustedplaces.com – I like the concept, a bit like tip advisor for the food industry.

  • Gmail.com – this has to get its own mention. I used to hate webmail services and then this came along and let me view my email trails as discussions threads. Simple, that’s all it took to grab my attention and now I’m hooked.

  • Yuuguu.com – nice tool for sharing your PC with others and even accessing your PC from anywhere.

  • Bluebottle.com – this was suggested by someone who knows lots about email. It’s a simple and effective email service, especially if you want to avoid receiving spam (isn’t that all of use!).

  • o2.co.uk/emailtomobile – a truly great product, try it out if you have an O2 mobile and O2 broadband (or know some who has).

  • Linkedin.com – the business networking site that is great for maintaining and developing your business contacts.

  • Yahoo.com/groups – I once used this to support the running of my course and it worked a treat at providing students with the slides for the next session and saved printing them out (doing my bit for the environment).

  • Vox.com – a fully loaded blog service that includes adding video and lots of great designs.

 Online business services and applications

  • Zimbra.com – I can see why Yahoo have bought these guys, the applications look powerful and fully integrated.

  • Microsoft.com/popfly – I’m no developer, but this has got to be something great for mashing up content.

  • Mikes-marketing-tools.com – I stumbled on this and it has now been added to my favourites – contains some really useful information.

 Broadband and telecoms companies

  • Plus.net – these guys really know how to support their customers with all the key bits of information you need online in their members centre. Let’s hope that doesn’t change now you know what’s happened!

  • Clara.net – in a former job I used to love using their account management interface and everything you wanted was there and you did not need to keep calling them to do the simple stuff.

  • Tesco.com/mobile – I worked with someone who worked on their products for a number of years and had to be impressed by their methods of product development and marketing simple products to the masses.

  • o2.co.uk – I’ve worked in this company for the past 2 years and have been impressed by the focus on the customer. I’ve never been around so many people who will stop or halt something if the customer experience isn’t right.

 Enterprise application providers

  • Microsoft.com – some people hate these guys, but I just see them as the ones providing some great applications that give you most of what you want in your personal and work life.

  • Apple.com – great design and innovation. I thought the iPhone and iTouch were going to be lots of hype and then I played with both and they are truly amazing machines.

  • Processmaster.com – process mapping made simple for everyone in the organisation.

  • Tibco.com – always been a leader that many have looked up to.

  • BEA.com – this was the first place that I read about web services and they have since gone on to buy some companies that provide products that I have worked around and got to know over the years (Plumtree and Fuego – two ground breaking Portal and BPM enterprise products).

  • Metastorm.com – another leader in the BPM space.

  • SugarCRM.com – I was introduced to this a few years ago by one of my students and I went onto to look into them and the concept for both is great, with the added benefit

  • Salesforce.com – going from strength to strength with a strong ASP model that has proved many wrong.

 Online news and information

  • e-consultancy.com – I once got a template for an online project plan from these guys and it helped no end. But that’s not there main business, for news, research, facts and figures and the latest on online and e-commerce this is a place to start.

  • e-marketing-news.co.uk – a nice tidy site with news and information about the latest in online.

  • Nma.co.uk – want to know what the big boys and girls (and some of the smaller players) are doing in the world of online this is one of the main places to go.

  • BBC.co.uk – a list of great sites is not complete without a mention of bbc.co.uk, I’m on this every day without fail and without a mass of the latest information, news and football scores would be void from my life.

  • Telegraph.co.uk and Guardian.co.uk – both of these guys really keep a finger on the pulse for technology that (will) affect the masses, and are always there or there abouts with the latest news.

  • Marketingweek.co.uk – great place for the latest industry news and regular features of current practices in the industry.

  • Brandrepublic.com – what you cannot find on here about marketing probably hasn’t been written yet!

  • Theregister.co.uk – great for news and information on the technology and telecoms sectors

  • Silicon.com – want technology news from a business perspective this site has been running for years and never lets you down.

 Keep watching this space as this list will continue to expand.