Top Web Apps for the Real World: Seattle and Boston Startups Make 2008 List

Seattle and Boston, two of Xconomy’s network cities, have something extra to be proud of today—at least when it comes to Internet startups. Each city contributed two companies to a popular list of the year’s best Web applications for improving customers’ real lives.

That’s according to the tech-news blog ReadWriteWeb, which has published its list of the “top 10 real world Web apps of 2008.” These are Web services that help keep people’s offline lives more organized and efficient. The categories were finance, health, education, politics, nonprofits, and travel. Without further ado:

—In Seattle, the teacher/student community site TeachStreet won in the education category, while the airfare-tracking site Yapta won in travel. TeachStreet expanded to the San Francisco Bay Area last month, from Seattle and Portland. Yapta is in the process of closing a funding round of at least $2.7 million.

—In the Boston area, the social-networking sites PatientsLikeMe and Sermo, both based in Cambridge, MA, won in the health category. PatientsLikeMe is an online community for people with life-changing medical conditions like Lou Gehrig’s disease, HIV, and Parkinson’s disease. Sermo is a site where 90,000 doctors exchange information about medical practice. Sermo recently signed a deal to open up access to this network to financial industry experts who subscribe to the Bloomberg Professional information service.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.