Google Labs (http://labs.google.com/)
One of the interesting developments that the Internet has brought along, has been a revolutionary change in the software development cycle: Instead of waiting years to perfect an application and then release it, bug free to a willing marketplace, developers are now happy to release early versions and let the market test, fix and improve the software. Reduced costs, more innovative ideas and a faster time to market; a win, win all round. If you’re looking to try something new on a site, here’s the place to look.

Blogpulse (http://www.blogpulse.com/)
For those of you who are Nielsen fans, you’ll enjoy this free service.BlogPulse is a search tool that analysies and reports on daily activity in the Blogsphere. Simply type in the name of the client, product or service, hit Trend Search, select the time period you want to view (up to 6 months) and hey presto an instant report, with links to all the blog activity. A great one of pre-meeting client research.

WeatherBonk (http://www.weatherbonk.com/)
Nope, its not rude (honest). This is a really useful tool which ‘borrows’ some of the applications that are in available in the web to provide a new service. Essentially it is a site for the amateur meteorologists among us, amongst other things, WeatherBonk allows you to enter a start and end destination, and will give you a travelplan, with traffic information and a 5 day weather forecast for your route. One of the regional team members, methinks…

Nike Run London (http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/#mapit)
And here we see an application in application, so to speak. An oldie, but still great, this was one of the first mainstream uses of a freeware application in a commercial campaign. There are vast communities of runners, people need shoes to run, Nike sell shoes. So Nike used Google Maps to tap into the community by providing a service that would be instantly useful: allow runners to plot their routes. Simple. Very low cost (you pay nothing for using Google Maps).

As the campaign developed, people could update thier timings and eventually use chips in their shoes to automatically update a database, which allowed them to track, analyse and compare their performance over time. And no salesman flogging shoes. The campaign is rightly a global phenomenon and has seen huge increases in Brand Favourability and Purchase Intent (I’ve no idea about sales).