There are a ton of cool things to do on the Internet. New doors are open to everyone. I’m surprised how often we take it for granted that everyone is in on the latest trend in tech. Here is my humble addition to a list of things that I think people should be using online.

1. Twitter – News *stream*, or should I say FLOOD. Follow smart people, get smart (filtered) news and info. Want to blow your news mind? Get tweetdeck and put in a search for any hot topic. (Don’t follow #earthquake unless you want to feel constant fear).

2. Facebook – Connect with your family and friends. Be benign on Facebook! The Internet is public, immortal, and Facebook does hate your privacy.

3. Amazon AWS/EC2 - What you don’t need a virtual server? You sure about that? Not for your blog? Not even if it scales infinitely? Not even if it’s free?

4. WordPress – Joomla and Drupal are cool, but WordPress is the king of the web page CMS.

5. Gmail – Seriously, stop deleting your email, get a gmail account. Use your own domains (Google Apps is still free for < 10 users).

6. Google Docs – If you haven’t had 10 people all editing the same spreadsheet at the same time you have not Cloud’d it up.

7. Cloud Music (Google Music, Amazon Music Locker, iCloud, Soundcloud, Spotify) – This is new, try them all out, find new music, sync your own.

8. Google – Search done right. Everyone has been playing catchup for a while now, and I’m sure that one day they will, but until then, google.com

9. Snopes – The Internet means rapid access to information sharing, but many people share false information. Sites like snopes.com

10. Shopping - Deal sites like slickdeals.net, fatwallet.com, woot and more track deals as they happen, often with good comments on how to maximize them. The people on some of these sites are mad geniuses when it comes to getting the most for your buck.

11. Skype – Everyone has it, get on and video chat your friends in other countries for free. Ride this one until Microsoft torpedos it, and we all move to Google Chat, which you should be on already via your gmail account.

12. Linux – If you are even slightly technically inclined, Linux opens the door to you (for free) to everything from high end movie effects to  computer forensics. Get started with a Live CD from Ubuntu (Your computer is probably 64-bit, and you probably want the desktop version – You can boot the CD and use Linux without doing anything to your computer), and NO it does not run Office or any Windows program, but it does run thousands of cool programs.

13. Photo sites (Picasa, Flickr, Smugmug) There is no reason you should be burning a photo CD to send to your friends and family. Get an upload utility, and start putting your photos on the ‘net. You don’t have to share them, and I would highly recommend NOT sharing them publicly unless they are very public information. I do not post pictures with faces in them without permission from the person owning the face, and, in general, don’t do this.

14. Education (Khanadademy, Alison.com, MIT Open Courseware, Instructables, k12) – There are too many to name, and pretty much access to infinite information is it’s own education. Don’t think that just because a skill isn’t directly computer related that you can’t learn howto do it online, and for maybe for free.

15. Wikipedia - What is a wikipedia? Well, a wiki is a website that anyone can edit the pages of, so, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Not always right, but rarely uninformative.

Well, I hope this helps. Please send me your lists or additions (comment below, or email to jon@jonzobrist.com).