The 100 Best Products of the Year

If you’ve been desperately looking for a way to participate in the fact that the average consumer spends 110% of their take home pay, then you’re in luck, ‘cuz PCWorld has just release their annual The 100 Best Products of the Year list.

No fears though, even though I don’t see how they can be products, some of the items on the list are actually free!

While the list will be pretty geeky for most, even if your glasses don’t have masking tape on the corner, you should still be able find some interesting discoveries in the list.

At #3 is Craigslist which is a cult classic of a web site. It’s funny how a simple web 1.0 site is so 2.0 all of a sudden [don't get me started on the whole 2.0 thing]. Craigslist is a very cool classified ads site that is a must-visit web tourist location.

At #6 is Google Earth…I agree, a very worthwhile product.

If you haven’t wasted your whole day on the first two, then we get into some actual products:

At #10 is the brand new [actually I didn't think it was even out yet] Apple Boot Camp, which allows you to install and run Windows on your Mac.

Mac Dual-Booter (free) Astonishingly, Apple has finally given its blessing to running Windows on a Mac, with this utility. Next up: running the Mac OS on a Windows box–or pigs flying through the sky.

The Engadget blog and Mozilla Firefox [my browser of choice] are at number 13 and 12 respectively, but my favourite of the top 20 has to be at the 19 spot: RedOctane’s Guitar Hero

Video Game ($70) RedOctane’s Guitar Hero lets you indulge in your long-standing air-guitar fantasies. This Sony PlayStation 2 game is completely addictive, and has remarkably wide appeal across age and gender lines. Everybody wants to go all Clapton with the included guitar once they see it in action. Well, okay, a few arhythmic types don’t care, but they probably weren’t air-guitaring “Infected” in the dorm back in the day, either.

Wonder if it comes with a big-hair wig?

Well in my opinion the list deteriorates pretty fast from there in terms of interesting stuff that is worth mentioning. Conspicuous by its absence was Gmail which, to my surprise, has become my default email application. So lock up your credit card and head over to PCWorld and have a look.

This post was written by Jon Symons, see my short bio. Or use the contact page to get in touch.