Well, to start things off for 2009, I decided to share a list of some of the great online/web-based tools that helped me and my business grow in 2008.
Twitter - www.twitter.com
Takes a little getting used to, but Twitter is an amazing social platform that allows you to communicate with others around the world. Especially popular with web/graphic designers, and online marketing types, your Twitter connections can be a powerful way to solve problems and learn new things (not too mention a great place to hang out and chat).
Wufoo - www.wufoo.com
One of my new favorites, Wufoo provides an advanced and powerful online form builder to collect the information you need. Whether you’re building a customer satisfaction survey, a contact form, event registrations, or more. Wufoo has the flexibilty to do it all, including easy integration options for your website.
Mailchimp - www.mailchimp.com
Simple, Powerful, Fun Email Campaigns. What else can be said about this awesome web service that includes cheap, pay as you go email campaigns, thorough reporting, and an extensive api?
Backboard - www.getbackboard.com
Get feedback on documents (Word, Excel), Powerpoint, images (including Photoshop PSD files), webpages and free-form text. Backboard also features multiple versions of a project, email integration - just send an email with the file for review attached, desktop upload and SSL encryption.
Plans ranging from Free for one non-commercial account (unlimited “backboards”) to $49 p/month
Wordpress - www.wordpress.org
An amazing online publishing tool, with features and extensibility to fulfill a wide range of applications. Build a simple Wordpress blog for starters, or for the more advanced, build an entire content management system off of the Wordpress core.
Google - www.google.com
- Analytics - www.google.com/analytics - Free website statistics
- Webmaster Tools - www.google.com/webmasters - Free webmaster tools for your website
- Local - local.google.com - Create a free Google Local listing for your Business
- Gmail - mail.google.com - Free web-based email that makes it easy to keep in touch
- Apps - www.google.com/apps - Free tools to enhance your business intranet, includes branded calendar, email, documents, chat, and more
- Calendar - www.google.com/calendar - Free web-based calendar to help you keep track of tasks and synchronizes with the majority of today’s calendar software
Basecamp - www.basecamphq.com
Basecamp is a web-based tool that lets you manage and track projects (or simply ideas) and quickly create client/project extranets.
Harvest - www.getharvest.com
Harvest, online time tracking and billing software for PC and Mac. Possibly the world’s best new time tracking, invoicing, web-based application, including integration with many of today’s online applications such as Basecamp, Excel, and Quickbooks.
Pandora - www.pandora.com
Pandora radio is the personalized internet radio service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites. Create your own personalized web radio station, and Pandora takes care of the rest.
Ringcentral - www.ringcentral.com
Get a toll free number and hosted phone services, including a virtual auto attendant, hosted voice mail, internet fax features and more.
Dropbox - www.getdropbox.com
Not only does Dropbox provide your own personal online storage and file synchronization service, but you can also provide public or private access to any and all of your hosted files (think client files, photo galleries, etc.). Did I mention that Dropbox works across all platforms (PC, Mac, Linux, and Online) to give you access to your files anytime, anywhere.
So if you haven’t had a chance to try out these amazing new online services, be sure to give them a spin in 2009.
Nice list! I use quite a few of them. Instead of Basecamp, I use DeskAway for managing my projects and collaborating. Basecamp is too expensive and is also not providing the required features, they hardly listen to their users. Whereas DeskAway (http://www.deskaway.com) is almost half the price of Basecamp and provides the best features and service as compared to Basecamp. DeskAway is also developing day by day and moreover it is more customer centric and do listen to their users. Checkout their Free Plan which they are offering without any end limit.
ReplyDeleteAwesome list. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteHi Dharaa,
ReplyDeleteI work for www.nomadesk.com, which offers easy and secure file sharing, wherever you are. I read your post on Dropbox with great interest and just wanted to add NomaDesk to the mix.
NomaDesk, trusted by mobile (“nomadic”) businesses for several years now both in Europe and the U.S., has similar features such as the ones you mention. We are convinced that the more data gets synchronized, the more likely it gets compromised. Therefore, NomaDesk includes an encrypted virtual drive that keeps your files securely available off-line and remote file shredding and IP-tracking with TheftGuard. Of course, we impose no limits on storage and bandwidth.A Mac version is on its way.
NomaDesk works with a local client and allows access to your files from anywhere on the web. We have very good reasons to work with a local client, next to the already "traditional" web interface (e.g., box.net, the late Xdrive, etc.):
(1) 100% availability of the data, regardless of network quality
(2) 100% performance when editing files, using any type of program
(3) 100% simplicity; just drag-n-drop files to synchronize and share them
(4) 100% security on the PC also: the virtual drives that NomaDesk creates on the PC are encrypted and can be shred remotely via our online TheftGuard service.
The bulk of our users, which are SOHO and SMB teams, appreciate the straightforward and secure file sharing they get through using the NomaDesk client software. You should know that in most cases NomaDesk replaces the traditional file server, FTP and VPN - with success!
Please let me know your thoughts.
Kind regards,
F.