Web 2.0 Tools

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of MindManager because of one-click "fold / unfold" and "follow link" operations.

Turn your ideas into pictures. From floor plans and landscape designs to process flows and technical drawings, Gliffy Basic's shape libraries and intuitive interface will help you create diagrams instantly. Only Gliffy makes it this easy to share, publish, and even collaborate with family, organizations, and co-workers.

Create a Mashup Create a mashup without writing a line of code. The Mashup Creator lets you combine different web sites together to form cool, new creations. Click on the Mashups menu for pre-built examples.

Go ahead and install Blurb BookSmart™.Learn More. Download Booksmart Choose the book you’d like to make. Play around. Add photos, blogs, stories, the works. Your book is done, and yours to share and sell. System Requirements For Windows Blurb BookSmart™ Version: 1.9.1 released October 19, 2007 Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, or Vista

OpenBusiness is a platform to share and develop innovative Open Business ideas- entrepreneurial ideas which are built around openness, free services and free access. The two main aims of the project are to build an online resource of innovative business models, ideas and tools, and to publish an OpenBusiness Guidebook.

The launch of Picnik a couple of days ago brought us yet another online photo editing tool. Like Fauxto, Picnik uses Flash, whereas most of the earlier editing tools all use Ajax for in-browser editing. Since all computers come with basic software that rotates, resizes and crops photos, there needs to be a compelling reason to use an online service. Uploading a photo to such a service, editing it and then downloading it back to your hard drive too high of a cost. To compensate for this, most services allow you to transfer the edited photos directly to Flickr, Webshots or other online photo services, saving users the trouble of making round trips uploading and downloading. Most of these online services also offer editing tools that go beyond simple rotation, resizing and cropping and start to creep into Photoshop territory. Here’s a few of the better ones, along with our most recent testing notes:

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

Packet Garden captures information about how you use the internet and uses this stored information to grow a private world you can later explore. To do this, Packet Garden takes note of all the servers you visit, their geographical location and the kinds of data you access. Uploads make hills and downloads valleys, their location determined by numbers taken from internet address itself. The size of each hill or valley is based on how much data is sent or received. Plants are also grown for each protocol detected by the software; if you visit a website, an 'HTTP plant' is grown. If you share some files via eMule, a 'Peer to Peer plant' is grown, and so on.

users of social sites are looking to be rewarded for their efforts. In fact, there are already plenty of services that will pay you for your participation. Here are nineteen of the best, plus a few bonuses

2006 was rich on creative, beautiful and unusual design concepts. We’ve seen a lot of whitespace, many examples of readable and usable text-design, badges, stars, rounded corners, shapes, gradients, mirror and 3D-effects - just name it. Let’s take a close look at some of the most beautiful designs we’ve seen in 2006.