I spent much of July in the UK with the "Traveling Geeks" a group of journalists and bloggers meeting with leading European startups.

JD Lasica, the tireless organizer of the trip, recently put together a list of our favorite tools and apps: Coolest power tools of some top geeks.

With so many choices out there, I'm always fascinated by what others are using. Personally, I try to use as many cloud based apps as I can so that I can work from any computer, mine or maybe yours. Here's some favorite Traveling Geek apps, please see the original post for full list:

JD Lasica

- I just started using HootSuite 2.0, a Web-based, Ajax-smart Twitter application that I find superior (so far) to the downloadable Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop apps. (I'm @jdlasica on Twitter.)

- Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheets, which are superior to Google Docs (though I use the latter when forced)

- Snapz Pro X, to capture images and movies from any Mac computer screen

- Paparazzi, a wonderful tool for Mac users to capture entire Web pages -- even the portions that appear below the fold

- iPhone apps: Google maps (for location), Stanza and eReader (for reading), experimenting with Twitterfon, Tweetdeck, Twittelator and Simply Tweet for Twitter, Evernote (for keeping notes online), Loopt and Google Latitude for geo-awareness, Yelp for restaurants, Rocket Taxi, iTalk and QuickVoice (for interviews and recording random thoughts)

Robert Scoble

- Friendfeed ("Friendfeed is my chat application.")

- PeopleBrowsr, for social media search

- Mindjet, for mindmapping presentations

Howard Rheingold

- CopyPaste Pro: "If I had to recommend only one tool for Mac users, this would be it. It remembers the last 200 objects of any media type that I cut or copied to the clipboard."

- Social Media Classroom

- Diigo, a research and knowledge-sharing tool

- iPhone GS for video and Mobypicture and Pixelpipe apps

"Sky" Schuyler

- FeedWordPress: Sky configured this plug-in to suck our individual blog feeds into the TravelingGeeks.com WordPress blog.

- YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plug-in), a Firefox plug-in for Firefox that finds related posts within my blog and I have configured it with a special CSS so it also displays little thumbnails next to the suggested posts.

- PGP to encrypt email and confidential data on his computer.

- Zemanta, the Firefox plug-in. "I can't believe how much better my posts are, how much more relevant and complete they are."

- BBEdit for plain text processing ("I use this more than any other app except browsers")

- OmniGraffle: Like Visio, it lets you create diagrams to group concepts together graphically.

VMWare Fusion is the VM he uses to run Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.04; he "tests" incoming viruses by running WMWare "sandbox," which he then throws away after infected.

Meghan Asha

- Shopstyle, a shopping application that provides a visual search for online goods.

- Tumblr, a blog platform and app that lets you publish videos and pictures from your cellphone, especially useful for lifecasting or moblogging.

- iPhone apps: Mint, Yelp, Stanza (free app that lets you download and read from a selection of more than 100,000 books and periodicals), Pano ($2.99 app that lets you take seamless panoramic photos on your iPhone), and TalkBubbles ($4.99 app that lets you add dialogue in comic strip-like bubbles to your photos)

- Skitch lets you annotate websites with comments, drawings, arrows, etc., then upload the sketch to their website and share it or blog it. "It's just plain fun," she says.

Susan Bratton

- MobyPicture for syndicating my photos and videos from my iPhone and Mac across all my social nets simultaneously.

- TweetLater Professional for scheduling tweets in advance.

- Trackur for online reputation management and social listening.

Craig Newmark

- Pine, an old-timey email application

- iPhone apps, including Rimshot and Trombone (sound effects)

Renee Blodgett

- EasyTweets: manage multiple Twitter accounts, SMS and email keyword alerts, schedule, import feeds, and more

- GroupMail, a way to send personalized email marketing campaigns from your Windows desktop

- Acronis for data backup

- MobyPicture

- Sharpcast for syncing your data across the Web

- Voyij.com for travel searches.

Tom Foremski

- Ecto to post when offline but he is switching to MyBlogEdit and MovableType for their additional functionalities.

- He uses the su.pr url shortener from Stumbleupon for tweeting posts -- now or later.

- iMovie 8, "a great tool for quick video editing and upload"

Ayelet Noff

Some of the tools Ayelet used most during the Geeks' trip:

- FriendFeed

- iMovie

- Tweetdeck

- iPhone

From:  Coolest power tools of some top geeks.