30 Useful (and Unknown) Web Apps You Need to Bookmark
You’ve probably heard about Wolfram|Alpha. It was, after all, supposed to be the Next Big Thing™ in search, providing curated data in response to a wide range of semantic queries. And although it never quite hit the mainstream, it still has some very interesting capabilities. Our favorite is its ability to answer complex algebraic question in a clear, readable fashion. For instance, type “minimum of 13x^2 - 25x +7” into the search bar and Wolfram|Alpha will return the minimum value of the equation, as well as the associated value for x and a graph.

Can't keep track of all your wish-lists, recipes, notes, and scribbles? We recommend Evernote, a handy webapp that helps you organize it all. Evernote offers both web and desktop interfaces to organize your text, pictures, and audio, as well as a web clipper to grab the things that interest you online. And, best of all, it all syncs to the Evernote cloud which you can also access via your smartphone. All your posts are taggable and searchable. Make a notebook titled "life" and clip that fancy camera you or your special someone wants to a note titled "wish-list." You'll never run out of gift ideas again!

Google Voice finally brings voice over IP to where it should be. This free web app not only lets you make calls over the internet, but actually assigns you a phone number (or you can pick your own) with voicemail that you can access both online and though any actual phone. The interface, which will be familiar to Gmail users, shows you transcripts of your voicemail, lets you make calls for no charge within the United States, and send text messages. You can even record custom greetings for your contacts and avoid people you don't want to talk to by marking them as spam.

Ever since Microsoft rebranded their search efforts “Bing,” they’ve been churning out one improvement after another to catch up with their rivals. One place that this has been most noticeable is in Bing Maps, which has grown from the also-ran Live Search Maps into a real contender for the title currently held by Google Maps. Features that set it apart include silky-smooth zooming and panning with Microsoft’s Silverlight-based web client, and a suite of “Map Apps” which add all sorts of functionality to the map, including integration with Photosynth and Flickr.
Newsmap.jp (don’t worry about the .jp domain, it’s not Japanese) is a web app for people who find the news just a little bit too… drab. Newsmap creates a colorful treemap out of the news, arranging popular stories on web news sites into squares. The bigger the square is, the more important the story. You can sort stories by type (world, national, business, etc) or by age, if you’re only interested in the most fresh stories.
Keep reading for more great web apps!