Google Sites
July 23, 2008 in 4 out of 5 stars, A service, Collaboration, Free, Hosted "Office", Hosted software, Issue trackers, Productivity, Project managementGoogle Sites: A poor man's (pretty darn good) intranet. An online, Google-hosted wiki-meets-project management software service. Google gobbled up Jot Spot (a hosted wiki service headed by Joe Kraus) before it even really got going, it was later re-born as Google Sites. Google I have a growing and widely dispersed team for my latest venture. I've set up a Google Sites website which is serving as an "intranet" for this team, and it's working quite well. It's like a wiki in that anyone (whom you allow) can edit or add pages or documents. It also has several built-in tools to help you create things like, a file download repository, a todo list, an issue tracker, or an announcements board. Most anyone can set one up and manage it, it's not difficult, there are no HTML skills required. You have some limited control over the look and feel; for example you can easily brand it with your own logo and colors. They've made management of the site very simple. You can invite others as owners, collaborators or just viewers. You can also optionally make the site visible to everyone on the internet. You get 100MB of storage space for free, and can bump that up to 25GB per account for their paid version which costs $50/user/yr. They even have an API. My primary beef is no discussion forum built in. That would make it twice as valuable for us. Even if they just took Google Groups and married it in, we'd have a winner. This is a huge omission. I would also like the option not to have previous versions of all my pages available to everyone. It's not a huge deal, but I don't need the last umpteen version of a page viewable forever, and there's no facility to disallow this. Free for most everything, $50 per user per year for the deluxe version with lots of storage space. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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There are also many more options available through "Gadgets" like a Google Calendar, a Presentation (read: Microsoft Powerpoint-like document), or a Spreadsheet. Plus hundreds of third party gadgets like maps, weather, games, news feeds, and chat. Not to mention a million other useless things no one would ever want (Woody Allen quotes?). Fortunately it's easy to ignore that stuff.What could be improved?
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ReviewBasics
October 16, 2007 in 4 out of 5 stars, Collaboration, Design, Free, Hosted software, Productivity, Project managementReviewBasics: Hosted software that allows you to submit, for review by others, a website, an image, a document (Word, PDF, Powerpoint), or a flash video. Others can add comments, drawings, emoticons, text, etc. SharpStyle Labs, Inc. It's an impressive technical accomplishment. It's polished and easy to use. Plus, it offers nice controls for the author: You can have comments visible just to the author, or to all reviewers. You can you write up a set of instructions for your reviewers. It offers a comments history. When done, you can filter all your stuff by date, by reviewer, and by files which have reviewer comments on them. If you need to do asynchronous reviews, and/or if you have a geographically distributed team, this is a great resource. It feels a bit slow (which is probably because it's so rich, so that's forgivable). If you want to submit a website for review, you can't do it as you are creating the workspace (like you can with everything else), you have to create the workspace, then dig around for it (they tell me this is going to be addressed soon). Free Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Altiris Software Virtualization Solution
October 9, 2007 in 5 out of 5 stars, A piece of software, Free, Productivity, VirtualizationAltiris Software Virtualization Solution: A software prophylactic that any PC user can easily use. It's software that allows you to install most any piece of software on a virtualized "layer." Then at any time you can remove the layer or deactivate the layer and it's like it never existed on your system at all. Altiris First of all, it's very easy to use. It sounds intimidating, but it's not, give it a try. I have a client who needed me to rip some video off the web. It was streaming video and there was no easy way to do it, but there were several spooky looking software programs that claimed to be able to do it for me. I didn't want any of those vile characters with their spyware diseases and other incendiary cargo gumming up my system. Furthermore, after the first program didn't work, I didn't want it fighting with the second one I installed (and 3rd and 4th and 12th). It was a dirty, filthy job and when it was done my system needed a long hot shower. Enter SVS. Because I had installed each piece of software on its own layer, when I was all done, I deleted all the layers, and my machine never knew we'd visited the red light district. This software can also be used in an enterprise setting to deliver "software packages" (or layers) out to other computers. Additionally, you can even find pre-virtualized software packages available for download now. Install, test and play with confidence. It's PC only. It doesn't work with some software. (Software that sinks deep hooks into the system. But this is rare.) Free for personal use, $29-$55 for multiple node settings. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Internet Retailer Magazine
July 9, 2007 in 5 out of 5 stars, A magazine, FreeInternet Retailer Magazine: A free magazine (print, or online) focused on information relevant to internet retailers (and associated consultants, developers, etc.). Vertical Web Media LLC It's a magazine consistently providing indispensable wisdom, ideas, statistics, data, analysis, case studies, and success stories. I'm a recent subscriber and I can't believe I didn't know about it earlier. A couple examples: in this month's (July 07) issue, I learned that adding three or more payment options at checkout (e.g. Credit Cards, PayPal, Google Checkout) has raised sales by an average of 14% according to payments processor CyberSource Corp. I also learned that Amazon (at the top of the list) spent $662mil on technology in 2006 on revenue of almost $11 billion (!!). Overstock.com was 2nd with $65mil in expenditures on revenue of $788mil, and Netflix 3rd with $48mil on revenue of $997mil. I can't recommend the email newsletter. It's far too often and noisy. The spam/content ratio of the magazine is what you might expect for free, but the gems are easy to find. It's only free for those in the U.S. :( Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Google Alerts
February 20, 2007 in 3 out of 5 stars, A service, FreeGoogle Alerts: A service where Google will send you an email anytime a term you specify is found by its crawler. In other words: roughly any time a certain term is used on the Internet. Google Because you can use it to watch what others are saying about you, your business, your industry or whatever else would give you a competitive advantage. If desired, you can narrow it down to just what blogs, or the news say about a search term. You can also limit how often it emails you. From as-it-happens to once a week. This service use to be horrible, inaccurate,
incomplete, and late when it worked at all. About a month ago something
magic happened and suddenly it works as advertised. Free Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Tubetorial
December 20, 2006 in 4 out of 5 stars, A website, Free, ScreencastingTubetorial: A site featuring polished, well-done video/screencast tutorials. Brian Clark and Chris Pearson Free videos with excellent instruction focused mostly on online ventures including online marketing, Adsense, blogging and various other money-making stuffs. They even have some beginner HTML tutorial bits.
Check out killer stuff like:
They also offer a handy RSS feed so you can keep up to date on the latest additions. Plus they're looking for suggestions and additional videocasting talent. Browsing the content felt a little clunky. Free like fruitcake from Aunt Betty (only much tastier) Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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The Bootstrapper's Bible
November 22, 2006 in 5 out of 5 stars, A book, FreeThe Bootstrapper's Bible: An ebook full of wisdom, ideas and inspiration for startups/bootstrappers/entrepreneurs.
I originally bought this book back in June of 2003 (it's free now). I was a struggling entrepreneur of just a few years and in my quest to read everything Seth had written, I purchased this ebook from Amazon. I devoured every word like a starving hyena on the fresh carcass of a Wildebeest. Seth Godin Bootstrapper's Bible might be an immodest title, but it's right on. This book is well written, well thought-out, and perfectly targeted at those of you who would read this blog. It includes sound principles for startups, pitfalls, case studies (including one of id software who was last decade's 37signals), and practical steps for getting it right. If you want to get re-energized, re-motivated and re-educated about your venture, this book is a must-read. Free! Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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MediaFire
October 26, 2006 in 4 out of 5 stars, File uploading services, FreeMediaFire: Another service offering simple file uploading/downloading through a web site as an alternative to emailing large files (as well as essentially offering free bandwidth for file downloads). MediaFire There are several players in this space, these guys are the first to hit a home-run. The service is ad supported, so it's free but should still survive. The interface is near-perfect. No signups required, no maximum file size to worry about, and a host of simple delivery options when you're done uploading. It has a sexy upload meter showing you your progress. If you'd like an account to manage your uploaded files, it offers that too. All that, and it's free. These guys are a testament to the power of doing something right. They're getting oodles of press, attention, and business. I'd like them to do a slightly better job of selling the benefits of their service and facilitating their use for novices (e.g. the "don't email large files, use us" approach that DropSend has taken). This would make it easier to unceremoniously refer clients, family members, etc. without having to help them understand why or how. I must admit some slight nervousness about how they'll handle crushing bandwidth bills when this starts being used widely as free hosting/bandwidth for popular files. Will AdSense revenues be enough? Free Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Google Analytics
August 22, 2006 in 5 out of 5 stars, Analytics, Free, Hosted software, SEO/SEMGoogle Analytics: Web analytics (statistics + analysis) software that anyone with a website can use. After Google initially launched this service, they were crushed with interest and they shut down new sign ups. However, after several months, the gates are open again. Google (although they bought and tweaked Urchin's product to create this). The information it provides is super-rich without being unwieldy (unwieldiness is a common ailment afflicting analytics software). It has great visual representations of your information, making it easily digestible. This includes graphs, charts, and a very nifty site-overlay showing you where and how people click through your site on their way to conversion Also, Geo-targeting map representations, date-range comparisons, and more. It's simple and quick (just a few minutes) to integrate into your site, just drop a snippet of code on each page you wish to track. Some of the more common data feels buried. The data is always about a day old. Potential for some tin-foil hat anxiety about Google's increasingly Sauron-like all-seeing-eye. Astonishingly Free Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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You can use it to track simple traffic statistics, but you can also you use it (and here's the real power) to track conversions and associated behavior (this is the heart of Seth's point number 5). It integrates closely with your AdWords campaigns but can also track any marketing initiative you run, Google-based or not. It's hard to overstate the power and importance of that. If you do commerce online, you're insane not to be using this to measure.
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CellTell voiceNote for Backpack
August 2, 2006 in 3 out of 5 stars, A service, FreeCellTell voiceNote for Backpack: If you have a BackPack account, you now can send voiceNotes from any of your phones (e.g. cell, office or home) straight to your Backpack page. Additionally, if the page has been shared, then others can see your messages also. CellTell.tv Since Nov 2005, 37Signal has said they would have this type of feature. Now its available as a free add-on. Here are ways you can use this... 1. Register all your numbers, and let your family call you on the voiceNote number instead. This helps with constant interruptions and you can check for the message from anywhere. 2. While in the car and you have that great idea, call your voiceNote number and capture it. 3. Create a cell phone driven audio blog by sharing a Backpack page w/ a bunch of voiceNotes. voiceNotes should indicate the user's local timezone rather than PDT.
The volume on playback within Linux is low. Free Reviewed by Ali DanialiWhat is it?
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