Five alive: top tools, take two

A year ago I started a mini-meme (on my old blog clogger) about the 'five tools you can't blog without'.

Now I'm back and 'enthusiastically blogging again' (Wade's words, not mine), I thought I'd do it again. A year on, my top five's shifted somewhat. Back in 2006, my list was:

1. Blogger
2. Technorati
3. del.icio.us
4. Statcounter
5. YouTube

Nowadays, it's more like:
1. Blogger
2. Google Analytics
3. NetNewsWire
4. YouTube
5. Technorati

Note that Google now owns the majority of my blogging toolbox... And, ideally, I'd add iGoogle and Google Blog Search to my 'necessities' list if there was space. I suppose I just tried it once and it seduced me.

In other news, del.icio.us doesn't really have any use for me any more, and Statcounter's limited functionality (unless you pay, of course) was blown out of the water by Google Analytics and the slew of free features. I include Technorati (merely for tracking) but grudgingly as it's soooooo bloooooody sloooooow.

Anyway, in the great tradition of the meme (which doesn't happen enough any more - let's call it a flashback to the heady days of 2006), I'm going to tag some blogochums and see what happens. Does anyone even monitor their inbound links any more?

Drew, Wade, David, Righteous, Tebbo - are you there?