10 Services with Realtime Functionality

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It seems like "Real-time" is a term that's getting a lot of usage lately and seeing a rise in terms of trends. Services that have some kind of real-time functionality surely receive more attention from users. The reason it gets so much attention is not just because it's trendy, in most cases it can simplify online work. The rise of it also derives from the need to do everything faster and more efficiently, after all, it's part of the web evolution. Now, of course not every service should have this ability, but for many services this real-time function can offer a huge added value to the people who use them.

Here are some good examples:


EtherPad is a realtime collaborative text editing service. As you edit the document area, your changes are seen live by everyone else. You can create your own pad and share with up to 8 people. There's no account required. This makes it easy to use the product, but also means you can't keep track of a list of your pads online.

SkyGrid streams filtered content in realtime. The service gathers up millions of articles online - including top mainstream business news sites, blogs, news releases, and other information. Then SkyGrid filters the articles to find which ones are from trusted sources.

chartbeat shows you real-time traffic to your website and allows you to set alerts for any downtime or spikes in traffic. In addition, chartbeat lets you track arbitrary search terms in twitter. Monitor your website name, URL, or anything else you'd like.

Friendfeed (beta) streams you & your friends updates in realtime. You'll see your friends' photos and messages stream in as they're shared. Comments and likes also get displayed as they happen. Still missing the speed control feature.

Delicious Spy allows you to see in realtime what people are saving to their delicious accounts right now. You can share links directly to Delicious, Digg or Reddit network from within this app, and you can also save links for later (something that Friendfeed should embrace)

Twitzap is a realtime Twitter monitoring app. You can create channels, and track the stuff that matters you the most. On top of that, TwitZap users can tweet each other in realtime using the Twitter accelerator technology even while Twitter is down.


I wrote about Twazzup few days ago. It's a realtime search engine for Twitter updates, with lots of useful features. I switched from the regular twitter-search and never looked back...

This one is absolutely a treasure. It's an image search powered by twitter & twitpic that shows realtime saved pictures. TwiPICK lets you to search by keywords and also show you the number of Retweets ontop of the picture itself. You can stop the madness in anytime.


Monitter is a personal twitter monitor, it lets you "monitter" the twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what people are saying about stuff that matters to you.


If you haven't tried Zemanta go download it now, or at least try their interactive Demo! So far I tried this on my blog platform (Blogger) and my Gmail - Overall, it searches relevant links & photos while you're typing your blog post or email. Amazing little plugin with an excellent usability.





Update:
I don't know how it slipped my mind but Blip.fm is also a fine service that enables you to see your friends published music in realtime. Get instant blip updates from the entire community. And listen to free streaming music from a global community of internet DJs.