It’s time for another edition of the twelve Web tools of Christmas, back by popular demand.  Each of these is a new tool, service, or piece of software that I’ve found useful in the past year.  But, since it’s the holiday season, each of these tools is also free.

1. www.evernote.com — Evernote is the ultimate clipping application. It lets you clip files, screenshots, text, photos, and images on any platform, including phones, and keep those clippings organized, synced, and searchable wherever you are.  Evenote’s search functionality is really quite impressive. Evernote can recognize text in images, and that makes that text searchable. Looking for that photo with your friend in the Bon Jovi T-shirt? Just search for Bon Jovi, and you find the photo. On a more practical level, I use Evernote to take photos of receipts and invoices. It gives me an extra copy for my records and makes it much easier when I’m filling out reimbursement forms.
2. www.skitch.com — Skitch is just a really easy, simple-to-use screen-capture and image-editing utility. You can grab a section of your screen or a shot from your webcam, highlight an area, add some text and quickly make images for tutorials or other learning materials. Like Evernote, Skitch is both an application and a Web service. That means the images you create are easy to share and embed on any site.
3. www.slideboom.com — There are lots of services that let you share PowerPoint presentations on the Web, but I haven’t found one that does it as well as Slideboom. Unlike the other PowerPoint-sharing services, Slideboom doesn’t strip out any audio or video files you have embedded in your presentation. It also keeps any transitions and animations that you have built. In addition, any notes that you have added to a slide are included in Slideboom as closed-caption transcriptions. If you happen to be a Windows user, there is a free PowerPoint plug-in that lets you upload presentations to Slideboom directly from within PowerPoint itself.
4. www.sproutbuilder.com — Need a simple mp3 player to put into your Blackboard class?  How about adding your Twitter feed to your faculty-information page? Spout lets you do it with no programming knowledge. Sprout is a Web-widget or “mash-up” creation tool. It lets you take content from other places on the Web, like a YouTube video, an rss feed, or a Google doc and create a mini-application that combines that information into one package. Here’s an example of a fairly advanced “Sprout” I built in about an hour. Note: Its been scaled down to from its original size to fit in the blog post

5. www.animoto.com — As a video producer, I often get asked if I can take a series of photos from an event or seminar and create a promotional video. If I ‘m pressed for time, I let Animoto do the heavy lifting. With Animoto, you upload your images, your music track, add a little text, and—presto!—you have a professional and sophisticated slideshow animated to the beat of your music. Animoto offers free, all-access accounts for educators and students. The accounts keep videos private so any video created for a class assignment is freely available for everyone in the class but blocked to the outside world.
6. www.ustream.tv — Speaking of events and seminars, Ustream lets you broadcast your event live to Web audiences. Plug in a camera to a computer, log on to Ustream, and you are broadcasting your event. Your audience can ask questions by using the chat functionality. It’s a great way to extend the audience of events and provide the campus experience to online students. There are other tools that allow for live Web broadcasting, but Ustream’s simple interface and ease of use gives it the edge over the competitors.
7. handbrake.fr — HandBrake has been the best DVD-ripping software for a couple of years. However, HandBrake is now no longer limited to DVDs. The latest release accepts other video files as a source, which makes Handbrake a great, high-quality video-encoding solution.
8. www.celtx.com — Celtx is an independent filmmaker’s dream come true.  It’s a scriptwriting word processor, a storyboarding tool, and a production calendar all rolled into one.  It lets video producers keep all of a production’s documents centralized and organized. Celtx’s online repository, Production Central, allows you to collaborate on production documents on the Web with your team and share best practices with other producers.
9. feedly.com — I love Google reader.  It’s fast and efficient—but not that pretty. Feedly is a Firefox 3 plug-in that leverages the power of Google reader and makes it prettier. Feedly allows you to browse your feeds with the look and feel of an online newspaper and magazine. Feedly also adds functionality that’s not available in Google. For example, Feedly offers a one-click tweet feature that automatically adds a tinyurl address to the article, which makes sharing interesting articles simple.
10. www.inquisitorx.com — Inquisitor is another browser plug-in. It becomes a part of your browser search box and makes searching faster and more elegant. Once it is installed, start typing, and Inquistor will start giving you search results and options before you are through.  Inquisitor also learns from your searching history and gives you results based on your past searches. The more it’s used, the better the search results you’ll get.
11. http://ubiquity.mozilla.com/ — The final browser plug-in to make the list, Ubiquity has the most potential in saving time and making the computing experience more enjoyable. It’s an attempt to add natural language commands to browsing. Say you want to grab an address, map it, and then send that map to a friend. Normally, you would highlight the address, open Google maps, map the address, copy the link, and then open your e-mail and send the link to your friend. With Ubquity, you just highlight the address, launch ubiquity, and type “map,” “e-mail,” and your friend’s name. Its easier to understand the power of Ubiquity by seeing in action. Take a look at the video below.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo

12. http://openid.net/  — OpenID is not a tool or a service but an initiative. Ever get tired of having to sign up up for multiple services with a myriad of user IDs and passwords? The OpenID plan is to have one universal ID for all of your Web services. Once you have an OpenID account with a provider you can use that username to sign on to other sites. Google has recently become an OpenID provider so if you have a Google ID or Gmail account you are already part of the program. When asked to sign up for a new service, look for the OpenID logo and just use your Google ID to sign in. Here’s a directory of sites that already accept OpenID accounts.