12 Coolest Web Apps To Simplify Your Business

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

This is one of the very best list of its kind where you can find incredibly useful and life saver FREE web apps that you probably never heard of and these would be great enough to bookmark or just for get in your knowledge. I hope everyone of you will like this list, you can try these whether you are an office worker, a manager, a supervisor, a student, a home user, etc.These are really amazing in respect to their features. This is the list of 12 Coolest Web Apps To Simplify Your Business (You Probably Never Heard Of). Just take a look at them and share your thought’s here.

You are welcome if you want to share more useful web apps that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter , follow us on Google Buzz and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

YourAM

YourAM is a web based solution. There is no software to install. YourAM is built to automate your appointment management so that you can simply focus on your core business. This can be used for busy individuals or large organizations that need to automatically track, organize and manage appointments.

Meetifyr

Sometimes you just want to know which night in the next few weeks is best to meet up with friends. You don’t need a intergrated lifestyle tracking solution you just need to know when people are free. Meetifyr is the worlds simplest online shared calendar. You create a calendar, add your name and availability then send the link round to your friends to see when they’re free. It’s really that simple, try it if you don’t believe us.

BetaEasy

BetaEasy is equally useful for web sites/applications as well as for classic  desktop applications. This service helps you to built your own community of users who will cooperate with you and contribute to your website/software improvement. All feedback is collected in one place, priorities are clearly identified, feedback is turned to improvement. It’s really easy to get started.

Springnote

Springnote

Springnote is a great way for you to create notebooks for ideas, interests, multimedia, projects, and documents. It allows you to create pages, to work on them together with your friends, and to share files.

Preceden

Preceden is a free web 2.0 timeline visualization tool that lets you you make simple, powerful timelines for just about anything. This is perfect for autobiographies because our timelines lets you organize your life’s events into layers like relationships, location, education, jobs, etc. By organizing events in layers, you can see exactly how the important events in your life overlap.

Reddynote

Reddynote is a clear and comprehensive work platform, where all your tasks are being listed. Only a quick look on the platform allows you to see your status, tags (keywords) and progress of every single task you have.

CalendarFly

CalendarFly is the next generation free scheduling solution. CalendarFly is uniquely suited for school systems, sports teams, families, and any other organization because it automatically maintains and updates the schedules of teachers, administrators, coaches, parents, and students–making it easy for all of them to connect in real time and real places.

Bill4Time

With Bill4Time, you will always know where you money is going and how your business is performing. Monitor employee progress, client activity, unbilled time, and everything else you need to successfully manage your growing practice.

HiTask

HiTask

HiTask is a friendly and easy-to-use task management system that anyone can start using right away. It is designed to satisfy both sophisticated followers of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” methodology and anyone who just needs a quick and easy tool to manage their everyday tasks.

Needtomeet

You can use Needtomeet’s free and simple calendar to find a time that works for everyone. It will help you to see everyone’s availability at a glance. It is simple no-fuss way to find a time for your event. You dont need to download anything, no registration, and best of all, it’s free for everyone.

MakeSomeTime

MakeSomeTime

Tracking time has never been easier. Keep your times organised by clients, projects and tasks with MakeSomeTime. This is super easy and having simple user interface. No clutter. Just what you need to get your work done.

Fileshare HQ

Fileshare HQ is a great place to store and share files. You can upload files using the easy web admin, or you can use FTP and load direct to your account. You can use FileShareHQ from the web, or with your favourite FTP client, to upload files and share them with the team, clients or friends.

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Woopra Is Becoming Another Feature Rich Alternative To Google Analytics

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

If you are a professional blogger or webmaster, there is a good change that you track your site’s traffic and analyze to learn how to better your website or blog. Such measures are an absolute must if you want your website to have a mark on the web. Most webmasters use Google Analytics for this purpose.

Although Google Analytics is the most popular application for this task and does a great job at tracking traffic, Woopra proves that there are areas in which Analytics falls short.

Before I get into Woopra’s features, let me tell my readers that this tracking solution exists as a desktop application (for Windows, Mac, and Linux), an online application, and very soon will be usable on the iPhone.

Woopra has been declared better than Google Analytics by a number of sources, including the Washington Post What sets this service apart is its comprehensiveness.

Stats

This amazing service lets users not only track their traffic using a variety of tools, but it lets them do this in real time. Moreover site owners can have live chats with their site’s visitors.

Woopra also lets users monitor multiple websites. A one-stop service is created for monitoring all your sites. Through the quick site tabs at the top of the Woopra panel, you have one-click access to your registered blogs.

blogs

This traffic tracking solution comes in free and paid plans. Click here for details.

plans

If you have any questions about Woopra you can always check their FAQ page  or visit their homepage here.

Packing features clearly better then Google Analytics’, all webmasters should give Woopra a go.

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7 Situations When Designers Outsource (To Other Designers)

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

Have you ever missed a client deadline because you were too busy?  Ever had a client request a type of design that you don’t offer?  One of the best kept secrets of successful designers and studios is ‘designer-to-designer’ outsourcing.  Designer-to-designer outsourcing involves one designer (such as a web design firm or graphic design studio) using another designer (often a freelance designer or sub-contractor) to help complete designs for their own clients. While there are scores of freelancers available (probably many in your own city), there are some emerging, and very powerful, online services that are setup specifically for designers seeking to outsource client projects.

For example, last month Entrepreneur.com featured DesignCrowd and its new Graphic Design Outsourcing Service that lets design studios outsource to other designers around the world.  Whether you use a service like DesignCrowd, or a freelance designer you find in a directory, outsourcing is an important part of a designer’s toolkit.  Here’s how design outsourcing works (using DesignCrowd as an example):

OutsourceDesignProcess_SmashingApps2

Once you acknowledge that, in general, outsourcing is useful – the main battle for a designer is selecting the right project or task to outsource and the right person or company to outsource to.  This post focuses on the situations that a graphic design studio or professional designer should consider outsourcing to another graphic designer as well as some of the resources designers can use in those situations.

7 Situations Designers Outsource to Other Designers
Here are 7 specific reasons or situations where graphic designers will often seek to outsource to other graphic designers:

1) Preventing Client Loss (due to capacity) - if you find yourself turning away clients because you’re too busy – or (worst of all) find yourself taking on clients who become unhappy and then leave when you don’t meet a deadline – then you need to increase your ‘capacity’ to take on client projects.  Outsourcing is a good option in this situation as it can add design ‘capacity’ to yourself, your team or your business with minimal setup time.  For custom design projects, we recommend using  DesignCrowd’s online design outsourcing service. As DesignCrowd has around 10,000 designers and lets you use multiple designers on each project you run, essentially, they can provide access to unlimited capacity.

designcrowd-screenshot-small

2) Up-selling / Value-adding – outsourcing can also help you expand the services you offer clients. For example, if you’re a web designer and your client is a start-up business, up-sell them to a logo and then outsource it externally.  If that works, try offering them stationery design as well and maybe even some banner ad designs to help with marketing their website and business.  Doing this can help you offer services as a value add (and win clients that would’ve otherwise gone elsewhere) or simply make more money on each project by ‘up-selling’ (think the McDonald’s famous ‘would you like fries with that?’).

3) Completing Repetitive Tasks  – often times, larger design projects involve detailed, repetitive design work.  For example, if a brochure design project involves picture clipping of 200 bicycle photos then use an online picture clipping service.  If you’re a good designer trying to grow your business, your time is better spent selling to potential clients than doing time-consuming grunt work.  If you have a 50 page toy store website, and have the designs mocked up in Photoshop then a PSD-to-HTML conversion service like PSD2HTML.com is in order.

psd2html-screenshot-small

4) Meeting a Tight Deadline - this is a specific type of capacity problem.  If you’ve got that sinking feeling you’re going to miss a client deadline, the solution might be a short term capacity boost – something to speed up that project.  If your deadline is 12 hours or less and you can’t get an extension, consider buying a template design.  Alternatively, use one an online service with a pool of international as they will A) have designers available 24/7 and B) you can potentially take advantage of timezone differences.

5) Enhancing Creativity - another genuine reason to outsource will be to keep your clients (whether they be regular or new) happy with the level of creativity and originality you’re producing.  If you, or your team, find yourself creating similar designs for multiple clients or similar designs for the same client maybe you need a third party to give you some fresh ideas or add some diversity to what you’re delivering!  In this situation consider running a design contest through a service like DesignCrowd (that pays designers participation payments even if you don’t use their design).  The design contest approach is particularly useful for projects that require concepts such as web page layout design and logo design projects.

designcrowd2-screenshot-small

6) Technical Work – if you’re a graphic designer who’s familiar with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop but your project requires something technical (like website coding or Flash design), don’t knock back the client, consider taking it on and outsourcing the technical aspect.  If you don’t know someone who has the skills to do the work, consider using an online service like Rentacoder.com to find a provider.

rentacoder-screenshot-small

7) Outsourcing Components – where possible, consider outsourcing graphics components (such as photos, icons and buttons) of your broader design project.  Break it down your project as if it were a problem and solve it in parts.  There are loads of great stock photo and icon websites – Istockphoto.com is a good place to start.  If you need a custom design, consider one of the online services I mentioned above or look to use a freelance designer.

Summary: offer fries with that!
Designer-to-designer outsourcing can help you take on more projects and offer a broader set of services to your clients – both of which can help you earn more money.  The traditional approach to outsourcing design (using freelancers) can bring with it its own problems – for example, freelance designers can get busy with other clients; or they might be limited to a specific skill-set or style.  Graphic design services like DesignCrowd.com can help solve these problems and are great resources, not just for designers who are seeking work, but also for designers that need to outsource client graphic design work.  Remember, next time you’re pitching to a new client, don’t forget to smile and ask “would you like fries, a logo or a website with that?”

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myPortablePIM

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

myPortablePIM is designed to be portable and used from
a USB stick so that you always have your data with
you. It includes a password manager and access to your
data can be password protected. Features include: Desktop
calendar; address book; GMail checker; task launcher;
image viewer; RSS feed reader; access to current weather
and forecasts; and more. (in Business and Productivity)

ColorCode

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

ColorCode is a free advanced MasterMind clone with
lots of different game variants, from the very easy
up to really challenging ones. You can combine any
color count from 2-10 with any column count from 2-5
and allow or not pegs of the same color. Or you may
select one of the 5 predefined levels of difficulty. (in Games)

AHD Subtitles Maker

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

AHD Subtitles Maker is a useful application that was
designed in order to help you create and edit subtitles
for your movies. Create the most common text-based
subtitle formats in minutes. Use the time format (Second,
Millisecond) to guarantee the most accuracy. (in Graphics)

KcFTP

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

KcFTP is a small, portable, independent FTP program
with all the basic features of an FTP program. Upload
file, download file, create folder, delete folder,
delete file, rename folder, and rename file. (in Internet)

ICE ECC

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

ICE ECC is a file verification and repair tool that
allows you to protect your important files and sensitive
data against digital corruption using Reed-Solomon
codes. ICE ECC supports a single file or multiple files
and it works with directories too. You can easily protect
a whole CD-R, or DVD-R disk or any files or folders,
from digital corruption. (in System Utilities)

Jigsaw Puzzle Lite

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

Fun freeware jigsaw puzzle game with nice interface
and categorized puzzle collections. Create your own
puzzles from your favorite pics with any number of
pieces. Simple and handy puzzle-solving interface:
expanding “side-boxes”, “ghost image” behind the scene
and “thumbnail” image. (in Games)

"The Word" Bible Study Software

Posted by admin | General | Tuesday 30 March 2010 8:00 pm

‘In the beginning was the Word’ Bible software was
created as a valuable tool for every Christian who
wishes to study the Bible. It provides unique features
for Bible study and organizing thoughts and notes in
an easy and straight-forward manner. Main features
include: Multiple Bible translations in many languages
with full support & handling for Greek texts; Unique
Parallel view of multiple translations at once. (in Home and Hobby)

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