A little over a year ago, a former colleague of mine from AOL posted this terrific list of “Shiny Objects” for the Web. Frank Gruber is a smart, savvy, and connected dude and a lover of ‘Shiny Objects’. I urge you to check out some of the tools he has listed here. Oh, and he also makes a guest appearance in Guy Vaynerchuk’s book “Crush It!” . I’ve included a link at the bottom of the list back to Frank’s original post in case you want to see it in it’s original form. Enjoy!

Shiny Objects for Communications

AOL Mail – You’ve Got Mail! It’s an iconic phrase and AOL Mail still has a lot to offer via Web mail including corporate and collegiate hosted solutions
Gmail – For email that allows away messages and recently added Gmail Video Chat
Other Inbox – an email inbox for your other email
Skype – VoIP calling and messaging over your computer for a lot less than a standard phone
AIM Instant Messenger – For instant messaging using AIM client and within Gmail
AwayFind – Enables people to connect with me quickly via a form that sends a message to my mobile device
Facebook – This social utility offers an opportunity to communicate with some of my friends and family
Bebo – A social networking site that focuses more on entertainment and having fun
Twitter – This microblogging platform is great for communicating to a larger group of friends like a broadcast instant message both online or via text message
DropCard – Helps manage your contacts and sends text message enabled business cards

Shiny Objects for Videos
TubeMogul – For easy distribution of my video podcast videos onto as many platforms as possible in only a few simple steps
Viddler – A video platform I use which offers a slick video player with inline comments,
Blip.tv – A video platform that offers a way to create a video podcast feed and distribute videos
Vimeo – A video platform that offers a very crisp picture and even HD quality videos online
YouTube – For online videos shorter than 10 minutes but by far the biggest video player
12seconds.tv – A niche video site devoted to 12 second videos
Seesmic – Threaded conversation-based video streams
Flixwagon & Qik – Mobile video application offers streaming video to the Web
UStream, BlogTV & Mogulus – Both offer streaming video from your laptop to the Web
Hulu – For watching movies and TV shows on my computer (usually hooked to a TV screen)

Shiny Objects for Blogging & Community
Typepad – A hosted blog platform – SOMEWHAT FRANK, is powered by Typepad
WordPress – An open source blog platform – the TECH cocktail site is powered by WordPress
Tumblr – A microblogging platform – I use it for sharing links, photos, videos, etc
Sweetcron – A microblog platform like Tumblr you can host yourself
Ning – Create your own community site with relative ease including blogs, forums, videos, photos and more
KickApps – Offers a more developer oriented social networking/community in a box product
BrightKite – A mobile blogging lifestream of photos, notes and posting your location to connect with others around you

Shiny Objects for Storage
Evernote – A digital dropbox with a desktop, Web and mobile component
Syncplicity – Software that syncs all your stuff from various computers into one place
Drop.io – An online storage locker for anything without the need of an account to set it up
Remember the Milk – Enables me to create to-do lists that can be pulled into Gmail or accessed on the iPhone with a pro account

Shiny Objects for Content Discovery
Mixx – Social news site that users contribute content on a long tail variety of topics
Digg – Social news site that users contribute and vote on the content of a the perfect news homepage
Delicious – Social bookmarking
StumbleUpon – Content discovery by stumbling upon new things
Shareaholic – A consolidated sharing extension for Firefox

Shiny Objects for Content
Twitter Search – formerly a startup called Summize
Google Alerts – Alerts for monitoring the Web
Filtrbox – New more sophisticated alerts product for monitoring the Web
Lijit – Blog search engine which offers search analytics

Shiny Objects for Social Lifestream
SocialThing – Aggregates all your profile updates and your friends into one lifestream
FriendFeed – Creates a conversation around your lifestream
MyBlogLog – Creates a community and lifestream around your blog community contacts

Shiny Objects for Travel
Tripit – Organizes and shares your travel plans like a personalized travel agent
Dopplr – Share your travels online with others
TravelFli – Helps you to maximize your frequent traveler program rewards (still in private beta)

Shiny Objects for RSS
FeedHub – Creates a personalized feed list based on your reading habits
AideRSS – Ranks items in a feed by popularity
PostRank – Provides integrated tools to enable you to customize your RSS subscriptions
Alltop – An online magazine rack of RSS feeds

Shiny Objects for Money & Finance
Quicken Online – Simple online money management site
Mint – Money management suite looking to help to save you some money
Geezeo – Money management suite looking to help you manage your money better
TipJoy – Send anyone a tip or money over Twitter or online
SmartyPig – Looking to help you put money away with a “smart” and social savings plan application
BillShrink – Free personalized advice for how to save money

Shiny Objects for the iPhone (find them in iTunes App Store)
Shazam – Finds music by listening to a tune
CameraBag – Fun “lomo-like” photography application
Yelp – Reviews are now ready for on the go
BrightKite – On the go mobile microblogging based on your geographic location
Urbanspoon – Offers a fun “Shake” feature which helps find new places to dine
AP Mobile News – The best news app I have seen as it offers a way to watch videos, email and text stories and read news while on the go
Pandora – Personalized music streamed to your iPhone
AOL Radio – Listen to radio stations from outside your local area anytime
AIM – Easy to use on the go instant messaging
Facebook – A must have for any Facebook user

Original post by Frank Gruber