The Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Hmm. What's this doing here? Bit controversial but I reckon it's worth thinking about. Participants can place Portals on a site and then invite people to take a tour via their Lightposts of relevant sites, with a commentary. Ratings help you avoid rubbish. Students will think you've gone mad but it's not so much of a game or dsitarction as first appears.

http://pmog.com

Want to take notes about a particular Web page? MyStickes are like sticky notes for the Web. Once you've registered (free), you can add sticky notes wherever you like. When you come back to a page, the sticky will be there.

http://www.mystickies.com/

A fresh and fascinating new search tool that uses clouds of associated words with updated links as you move to focus in on what you are looking for. Very smart interface and a recently launched kids' version too which is fun.

http://quintura.com

Collect notes and ideas from web sites you are researching in one easily accessible place. A great tool for sharing your files with colleagues and students, keeping track of your work from home or in college. There’s also an optional Google Notebook extension for your browser to make adding content even easier.

http://www.google.com/notebook

If all you want to do is get some feedback or set some questions in a hurry then you'll find this tool can help you do that in minutes. There's also pollit.com but the results page has annoying ads.

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/

Wink has evolved and ceased trying to compete with del.icio.us by concentrating on the social in social bookmarking. As well as a people searching tool this has several other uses and provides a great way to add bookmarks

http://wink.com

Generally regarded as the leading bookmarking tool, del.icio.us has maintained its clean and efficient interface, providing both access to all your bookmarks and to others that people have tagged similarly. It's taking a while but tagging is becoming a key to finding our way around the web world, e-portfolios and information management. Del.icio.us clouds can be very effective classroom tools too.

http://del.icio.us

Live is the new Microsoft initiative for online services, and this site gives you the ability to locate local services using sophisticated mapping to show the results.

http://local.live.com/

Google Maps is a very similar system in every respect, and its mapping is very responsive to zooming and panning. There are, of course, also the marvellous Google Earth and fun Google Moon too!

http://maps.google.com/

http://www.rollyo.com

http://search.ask.com

http://vivisimo.com

Include your own questions and a list of responses in a web page, blog or VLE page. Great little tool, smart design - and a long-awaited use of Web2.0 technology.

http://polldaddy.com

Who said the sky's the limit? take your students on a trip to the stars and get the facts on what's out there, near and far, in this beautifully presented tool, now bearing a BBC brand.

http://www.open2.net/science/
finalfrontier/planisphere/frames.html

Another universe exploration tool which is actually being used in some of the centres where you lie back in a chair and get taken on a trip through galaxies.

http://www.stellarium.org/

Useful survey tool that you'll see being used by several agencies nowadays. Why send ill-designed paper surveys out when you can do it on-line and get the results nicely collated and displayed for you?

http://surveymonkey.com

Excellent and beautifully designed tag / bookmarking tool which claims to tag the universe, amongst other things. Nice addition enables you to list all your blogs which is handy.

http://technorati.com/