Product pipeline: Aaron Schmidt looks at the latest in consumer software and electronics and their implications for librarians.(Product/Service Evaluation)

Whether your work or personal goals for 2006 are to be more productive, get organized, or increase communication, the web-based tools listed here can help you meet them. Most of these products have been branded as part of the "Web 2.0" movement, but don't worry if you find the term to be vacuous. It's not the fault of the software!

These applications have a number of things in common. First, they are all either free or inexpensive. Being web sites, they can be accessed from any connected computer, providing a high degree of flexibility for where and when to use them. Next, most of them use Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, otherwise known as AJAX. Since these tools often run on XML, there is support for RSS, which is simply a flavor of XML. It is a highly flexible computer file that can be easily read by other computers and applications, so RSS feeds from one piece of software can be used in other places. Last, but not least, these programs are easy to use, so more time can be spent actually using them rather than struggling with them.

Ultimate IM

We have already seen the power of instant messaging (IM) for professional and personal communication (refer to the "Libraries That Use IM" section of the Library Success Wild for evidence:snipurl.com/ khjl). If you're using IM as part of your reference desk duty; you are likely familiar with juggling your AOL Instant Messenger[TM], MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and GTalk (or other Jabber) accounts. Programs like Trillian and Gaim partially solve this problem by allowing users to aggregate screen names from competing networks into one interface. But such convenience can leave IM power users wanting when they're forced to use computers …