Here's a list of the communication, Web 2.0 and social networking sites and tools that I've come to love the most over 2008. The list is by no means exclusive, but these are the ones I've had the most experience with, and wouldn't ever want missing in my online life.

12. Google Reader. Since putting Google Reader to use earlier this year, I've found no better way to keep up to date on the various blogs and news sites that I read. Before, it took an army of "live bookmarks" and a sidebar add-on for Firefox to keep track, and that only gave me a feed-by-feed view of things. Google Reader instead aggregates my feeds, and lets me share important articles with others at the same time.

11. Wakoopa. Had I known about Wakoopa earlier in the year, no doubt it would rank higher on my list. While the site is still undergoing fine tuning, this service to tracking and sharing the applications you use on a daily basis is great! I wrote an entire blog post not too long ago about Wakoopa and what makes it great; in short, it's like Last.fm for applications.

10. Last.fm. Like listening to music? Interested in what your friends listen to, and want to know about the songs they think you'd like to hear? Look no further than to Last.fm, a site that keeps tabs on your musical tastes and that of the people you know. Not only does it let you know about what your friends find hot in music, but lets you discuss various musicians, albums, and individual songs as well!

9. Geni.com. As someone who likes to know his family history, I've found Geni.com to be a great site for this purpose. While most genealogical sites are little more than glorified databases, Geni.com starts you off with a great view of things: an actual family tree. And as more people use the site and add their relatives and ancestors, the possibility of discovering family members you never met always increases.

8. Stack Overflow. Launched by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood earlier this year, Stack Overflow is a combination of Q&A website and wiki for programmers. Being a programmer myself, I was drawn to the site like a moth towards a flame. The site's reputation system makes it easy to promote the correct answers to a question, while not denying any goodies to those who provide alternate but still reasonable explanations.

7. microformats.org. While not really a service in the sense of the other sites on this list, microformats.org is still important to me because the idea of microformats—methods of marking up semantic information within the confines of HTML—struck a chord with me, enough that I went through the site and started adding them wherever appropriate. With the Operator extension for Firefox, or Oomph for Internet Explorer, you can find these for yourself, or visit microformats.org, a wiki that documents them for ideas on adding them to your own site.

6. Flickr. I doubt there is a photographer alive who is on the internet and yet hasn't at least tried Flickr out. While the free service is limited (only your latest 200 photos are ever available and you can only have three sets) the site and its options and possibilities are great enough that it's worth the $30 CAD per year. I've been throwing many of my photos from events and journeys here, and so far it's failed to disappoint.

5. Disqus. When I first started up coldacid.net I used Drupal's default comments module to allow commenting on the site. At the same time, I didn't want to allow anonymous comments, fearing spam and similar problems. Unfortunately, people don't like having to sign up to every single site just to post comments. Disqus solves this problem by handling comments for you. Now, a person can have a Disqus account, or just supply a valid e-mail address, and can comment here or on thousands of other websites!

4. Goodreads. I am a voracious reader, and a hungry collector of books. After a database I used for tracking my collection was lost, I tried various applications to manage my collection, but each one failed me in one way or another. Finding Goodreads was a godsend; not only did it do a better job than the desktop apps I tried, but it also allowed me to share my collection with the world! Now you can see just how nerdy I am by the books I've read and own.

3. Zemanta. The secret weapon of blogging. Zemanta is a great tool to help bloggers, as it helps you find content, links, and related articles that can spruce up your blog posts, or support your arguments. While at first I was somewhat critical of its functionality, Zemanta quickly matured and is now something I couldn't blog without. To the fine folks who've crafted this fine tool and continued to maintain it, I salute you!

2. Twitter. If people thought I talked too much in the real world, they'd hate to see me on Twitter. This microblogging service is the one that started the craze. Twitter lets me express myself in quick bursts, share blog updates, and spread the ideas of others like a digital smoke signal. Sometimes the best messages are the shortest ones, and that 140 character limit has me talking more on Twitter than I've ever done on this blog and perhaps in real life.

And my number one pick…

1. FriendFeed. While almost everything else on this list dealt with getting the word out to others, FriendFeed lets me get what others are saying. There's only so much a feed aggregator like Google Reader can do, but with FriendFeed I get to follow the activities of people I'm interested in much better, ranging from their Twitter updates, to the books they share on Goodreads and Amazon, and about 40 other services (and counting). FriendFeed is a friend aggregator, and with its real-time view, I keep it in my Firefox sidebar so I always know what my friends and other people are talking about.

Of all the services I've used this year, FriendFeed is the best, bar none.

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