Average Jane's Latest Online Toys

These days, there's almost nothing I enjoy more than playing around with various Internet-based services.  I do the majority of my online shopping at Amazon and Ebay.  I try to keep up with BookCrossing, even though I've let it slide a bit lately.  If asked, I would gladly pay to use Evite because it works so well for me.  (On the other hand, I cancelled my Meetup.com subscription the instant they decided to start charging for it.)

Those sites are all ancient history by now.  Lately my attention has been drawn to some newer online fun:

• I finally signed up for a Flickr account, mainly to have somewhere to put my camera phone photos.  I'm a rather poor photographer with an unfortunate tendency to take way too many pictures of cats and flowers, but I hope to eventually improve my eye for a good shot along with my technical abilities.  Here are my photos, in case you want to observe the cliche-o-rama for yourself.
• One great new online tool is Backpack.  Backpack gives you the ability to organize a project or some other aspect of your life with online to-do lists, photos, notes and other information.  I'm using it to plan my summer trips to New Orleans and the BlogHer Conference.  I also plan to use it to keep track of all of my household bills that aren't automatically debited from my checking account.  I use the more robust 37Signals planning software, Basecamp, at work for project organization.
• Last but not least, I've mentioned how much I use del.icio.us to keep track of my bookmarks these days.  I have the posting shortcuts saved on every computer I use so I can bookmark any site I find that I think I'd like to visit again.  I use it so much now that I think I need to start using an RSS reader again.  I still have a Bloglines account, and my goal is to get more familiar with the way it works so I don't waste so much time checking my 100+ favorite blogs for updates every day.

What's your favorite online service these days?  How has it changed the way you use the web?

Comments

[Huts]

I never knew what del.icio.us was, sounds interesting.

[Cagey]

My #1 online tool is my banking. I can't imagine not having it now. I would like to check out del.icio.us and bloglines as well. I will do that when I give my job the boot here in a few weeks.

I thought Backpack looked appealing, but I already do most of those functions in my Palm, which is always with me. I would hesitate to do something online that I can't carry with me.

I will definitely be signing up for Flickr soon - I have heard through others that is a good one.

Bookcrossings is so awesome, but I, too, have been laggard in taking advantage of it. I have a huge stack o' books just waiting to be entered.