Browsers, webapps, and innovative ways to use the web

I started using the beta of the new webapp me.dium. Me.dium talks to a browser plug-in and displays the activity of other me.diumers in your "neighborhood" of the web (the sites you're using or have used most recently) in a sidebar. A picture is worth 1000 words:





In addition to this bit of eye-candy the sidebar enables you to chat with the people you see browsing "nearby." It adds a social aspect to surfing the web that web-services have been trying to achieve ever since del.icio.us.

Messing around with me.dium today got me to thinking about the innovations that have really revolutionized the way I use the internet. I hesitate to include me.dium on that list just now: it's just a fledgling app, and I'm not really sure that it's one I'll keep using just now. There have been a few technologies, however, that have fundamentally changed the way I use the internet.

The one that most immediately comes to mind is RSS. For the uninitiated, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and, as the name suggests, it provides a way for producers of web-content to distribute their media in a manner which doesn't require their consumers to visit their webpage. Using an aggregator (I use NetNewsWire, but there are many free services like bloglines) you can view the RSS feeds from many different sources in a single window. For example I can read news from the New York Times, CNN.com, BBC.com, and so on in a single window.

Nothing else has really had as big an effect on my internet use as RSS, but runners-up include 1Passwd, Firefox (and now Camino), and Digg. Am I missing out on any current web-revolutions? Is there something you can think of that changed the way you surf? Answer in the comments!