Thanksgiving means spending time with family you either love or hate, eating ridiculous amounts of food, watching parades and football...not celebrating tech companies and gadgets, right?

Well, we hope you'll indulge us as we take a moment to share the websites and apps we and LAUNCH readers are thankful for. They make our work lives easier and our personal lives richer. And of course we are grateful for the people who build, improve, tweak and debug them every day.

Add the websites/apps/gadgets you're thankful for in the comments below.

From the LAUNCH staff

Spotify because...
-- it has changed my music consumption experience for the better.
-- it has my back when I forget to charge my iPod.

@Spotify
https://www.facebook.com/Spotify

Rapportive because...
-- it literally makes doing my job so much easier. I know who someone is as soon as they hit my inbox, and I can see if the email address I guessed is correct.
-- it's a huge time saver in finding email addresses, Twitter handles, job titles, etc.

@Rapportive
https://www.facebook.com/rapportive

Instagram because...
-- its #filters and #tiltshift make my amateur photography look spectacular.
-- it got me excited about photography again, and it lets you into other's personal lives in ways tweets cannot.

@instagram
https://www.facebook.com/instagram

Waze because it saves me from wasting time in LA traffic.

@waze
https://www.facebook.com/WazeApp

The Zagg keyboard by Logitech, which has essentially turned my iPad into a computer.

@ZAGGdaily
https://www.facebook.com/zagg

Mint for helping me keep my finances in order and reminding me when I go over budget (which is most of the time).

@mint
https://www.facebook.com/mint

Developer Mohamed Mansour's Google+ Chrome extensions and his Google+ API -- he makes a good product better and cares about helping people.

@mohamedmansour
Google+: https://plus.google.com/116805285176805120365/posts

Google Maps for helping me navigate new places, plan roadtrips and see a street before I ever set foot there.

@googlemaps
https://www.facebook.com/GoogleMaps

Google Docs because it makes working together easier, and you have your documents wherever you go (as long as you have an internet connection, of course).

@googledocs
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Google-Docs/8998469997

Dropbox because it eliminates ridiculous running-around-the-office-with-a-flash-drive moments.

@dropbox
https://www.facebook.com/Dropbox

Tweetdeck because it allows me to always be tweeting, even when I'm nowhere near a computer.

@tweetdeck
https://www.facebook.com/TweetDeck

From LAUNCH Readers

Dan Ruswick [ @ruswick ] says, "I'm thankful for ifttt and Quora. Ifttt makes everything else on the web a lot more useful. Quora is the best way to find info about anything. Where else can you have Kevin Systrom answer your questions about @instagram?"

@ifttt

@quora
https://www.facebook.com/quora

Dan Lynn, co-founder and CTO of FullContant [ @danklynn ] says, "I'm thankful for WriteThat.Name, which keeps my contacts up to date using data from email signatures."

@writethatname
https://www.facebook.com/pages/WriteThatName/183896871696601

Bart Lorang, CEO and co-founder of FullContact [ @lorangb ] says, "I'm thankful for Rainmaker! It populates my google contacts with social profiles."

@get_rainmaker

LAUNCH Blog