Web-based word processors, spreadsheet applications, and other productivity tools are pretty popular in the web business arena these days. But, a recent NPD survey of 600 PC users showed that most have never used a web-based productivity suite.

• 94% of US computer users have never used a web-based productivity suite
• 73% have never heard of a web-based productivity suite
• 21% have at least heard of one of these apps, but have never tried it
• A whopping 1.5% use a web-based productivity suite along with desktop apps
• 0.3% use web-based productivity suites exclusively

The companies pushing these application suites have a lot of work to do in building awareness in the market. The good news: there is a lot of growth for them to go after.

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I came across this list on Squidoo of Social Bookmarking and Networking sites. It seems like this is rapidly becoming a crowded marketplace. At the time of this post there are 156 sites listed. On the top of the list: StumbleUpon, Squidoo, Lensroll, del.icio.us, and digg.

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At first glance, NewzNozzl looks like yet-another-digg-clone. NewzNozzl is different because you cannot submit stories directly to the site. Instead, they take the high rated stories from del.icio.us, digg, reddit, propeller, newsvine, and StumpleUpon and put them through another social filter of voting.

From the NewzNozzl About page, “Unlike most of the other social news sites, we don’t take story submissions - instead, we let the other social news sites discover (through their community) what’s interesting and important. And then we take the very best of those stories and let our users figure out which of those stories is really interesting and useful. This lets us show only the very best stories out there, quickly and from a really wide array of sources.”

Once a story hits NewzNozzl there are links attached to each entry that allow users to submit the story to the other social bookmarking sites. So, if a site is sourced from digg, a user can then submit it to StumbleUpon with a click.

When a story becomes popular enough a wiki page is created allowing users to expand upon the story. There is also a “tip” system. “Users can use cash to vote up a story. It’s a sliding scale - the more a user “Tips” a story, the less actual votes they will get out of it. Which is perfect, as users CAN slant a story they want, but the more they want to do so, the more pain it will cost, in the form of decreased cash.” “Cash” in this case refers to Nozzl tokens which are earned by being active on the site.

NewsNozzl’s mission… to become a hub of the best social bookmarking sites. Should be an interesting challenge.

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Matt Schlicht has started embedding Hulu videos on his site OpenHulu which is a free site without the pesky need to get invites to a private beta (like Hulu).

For those not in the know, Hulu is an NBC and News Corp. joint venture publishing full length television episodes and movies.

While Hulu provides the embed links, something tells me they aren’t going to let OpenHulu play for long. I have yet to see the Hulu interface so I can’t really speak about where there advertising is placed, but unless it is all in the videos then they are going to be clearly losing some cash.

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Boxbe has created a new spam fighting service. The concept is simple, they add a privilege system to your email. Senders on your white list get through, senders not on the white list are held for review. Held messages can be verified manually by the sender with a bot-proof test (CAPTCHA). Those helpful spammers that we all love have the option to avoid the verification process by paying an “access fee” that you set.

Boxbe works with just about every email setup you can come up with, including Gmail, Yahoo mail, Outlook, and your own domain.

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WooMe is trying to capitalize on the speed dating craze by bringing the activity online. The idea: find a session that interests you and then meet up to 8 people in 8 minutes. Sessions can be sorted by location, age, and the importance of looks. The description of sessions didn’t really impress me and they are ultimately free form. The about page on WooMe suggests that you can create a session based on your interests, such as “TechCrunch Readers in San Fran”, but it seems like everyone’s sessions are just “want to meet people” or “wanna chat?”. Another issue is that lack of sessions, for instance there were none in my region. Ok, maybe the site isn’t popular yet, but with this model you need people to attract people.
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Grouptivity is hoping to capitalize on the “Email This” link that is found on almost every website today. Publishers replace their own “Email This” with a link to the Grouptivity service which offers private discussions, sharing and bookmarking, and “content voyeurism”. Grouptivity has also launched iPond which tracks the emailing of stories in a Digg-like manner.

Mashable

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