WorkHappy.net: killer resources for entrepreneurs

PBwiki

May 26, 2006 in 4 out of 5 stars, Hosted software

What is it?

PBwiki: It is a wiki farm which allows anyone to create a wiki website for free.  Wiki technology lets you create web pages within your browser, with simple text formatting and easy linking to your web pages.  The technology was invented by Ward Cunningham, a software engineer / guru.

Who makes it?

Coceve, Inc.

Why is it the killerest?

PBwiki is fast.  You can create a new, free wiki in seconds.  All you need is an email address, so they can send you a password.  PBwiki servers are very responsive; your pages update immediately.  PBwiki gives you the features you need and then stays out of your way.  You can make your wiki private, if you want.  If you know HTML, you can use that too.

What could be improved?

PBwiki needs to provide backlinks.  This is a wiki feature that tells you what web pages link to the current page.  The tutorial could also be beefed up.

How much does it cost?

Basic is free; Premium features are $5/month

Rating?

Reviewed by Dave Raftery

Editor's note: PBWiki is the wiki tool I'm personally most excited about. Wiki products I've seen so far are unimpressively difficult to use and understand for most people. PBWiki is actually making brilliant strides in this area through their obvious and simple interface and intelligent help and support.

TimeTracker Firefox Extension

May 23, 2006 in 4 out of 5 stars, Free, Productivity

TimeTracker Firefox Extension

What is it?

TimeTracker Firefox Extension: A FireFox extension that tracks how much time you spend browsing per day.

Who makes it?

Juan Casares

Why is it the killerest?

This was profiled on Lifehacker a few weeks back and I installed it. It has since had a dramatic impact on my productivity. The simple act of measuring how much time I'm wasting browsing around has been eye-opening and enlightening (and depressing). 

I'm now in competition with my buddy to see how little time we can rack up on our clocks per day. While this has caused some creative time wasting workarounds, it has also really helped me stay focused. I even find myself trying to be more efficient in how I browse the web (reading bloglines at light speed for example). Three weeks later and I still love it.

I spend a great deal of time on the web for work related items (being a web dude and all) and fortunately this plugin allows you to filter out certain sites so that visiting them doesn't run the clock.

You can also pause the clock by clicking on it to ensure that browsing at 6am before your run doesn't count against your productivity.

What could be improved?

A manual clock reset might be nice. It resets every night at midnight however and for my use that's fine.

How much does it cost?

FREE like Sunday afternoon garage sale furniture

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

Happy Quote

May 16, 2006 in Happy Quotes

“Far better it is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered with failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that know not victory or defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

(thx Garrett)

TracksLife

May 12, 2006 in 2 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, Productivity

What is it?

TracksLife: A spiffy, simple very, very lightweight cross between a spreadsheet and a database designed to help you track stuff.

Who makes it?

WebJillion

Why is it the killerest?

You can keep track of almost anything with Tracks - spreadsheets/databases that combine columns of money, numbers, words, paragraphs and yes/no's. If you ever forget to update - and you will - you can have the Friendly Trackslife Remindbot send a link through email or RSS politely reminding you. And - if you want - you can share your progress with friends, family, coworkers, bloggers - whoever!

What could be improved?

I'm not sure this service is worth paying for. It's well made, and fun, but the free version might just be enough. Adam (the owner) has recently taken steady employment with JotSpot, so although I can't imagine needing much of it, support might have a few kinks to work out.

How much does it cost?

4 Account levels -- Free to $10.99

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

Bare Naked App by Carson Workshops

May 10, 2006 in 4 out of 5 stars, A blog

What is it?

Bare Naked App by Carson Workshops: A simple blog where they document the building of their next web app.

Who makes it?

The Carson Workshop Clan

Why is it the killerest?

By documenting some of the little steps, including estimating timelines and costs, picking freelancers, branding, naming, and legal decisions, they're freely giving visitors the benefit of their experience (which they gained building DropSend). Entrepreneurs, particularly those building a web app, will instantly relate with the information here.

It's so common to find yourself wishing you had a yardstick to measure your own decisions against. Bare Naked App is a nice yardstick.

Make sure you start at the beginning. I just read every word. This is good stuff.

Kudos to the team at Carson Workshops.

What could be improved?

Even more detail, but they've got a web app to build! So I suspect we'll have some good post mortem information like they provided with DropSend.

For some unfortunate reason you won't pick up all the posts if you only look through the archives by date.

How much does it cost?

Free

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

Harvest

May 8, 2006 in 3 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, Productivity

What is it?

Harvest: Online time tracking and reporting application.

Who makes it?

Iridesco, Inc.

Why is it the killerest?

I've been looking for something like Harvest for years. 

As a freelancer I keep track of my time religiously, but the available tools are either bloated desktop-based uber-business apps or worthlessly oversimplified calculators.  I didn't want something that just let me record my time - any piece of paper could do that.  I wanted something that would actually calculate my time for me.  I just wanted to clock in and clock out and let the computer do the calculations.  Harvest does all this and much more with a fun and intuitive interface.

I can set up multiple projects and tasks and use it for billing clients.  I love the multi-user feature which allows me to have employees and subcontractors keep track of their own hours and submit them to me for approval.  I can even send reminders when they forget.

The reporting section is perfect for invoice time.  I can see at a glance how many hours each person worked on a particular project or task.  The application is designed well and the AJAX is handled beautifully throughout the application.  It's actually fun to track your time!

I've kissed my desktop applications goodbye.  Hello Harvest!

What could be improved?

Harvest is very young.  The developers are hard at work on feature additions, but there is definitely still room for improvement.  I've submitted my feature requests and gotten the impression that they actually want to hear from their customers and are actively working to make the application what their users want it to be.

How much does it cost?

$5-60/month + free account

Rating?

Reviewed by Timothy Gray

EditSite.net

May 4, 2006 in 3 out of 5 stars, CMS, Hosted software

What is it?

editsite.net: A technically impressive, point-and-click, template-driven, hosted website creation tool aimed at moderately tech-savvy individuals or organizations wishing to build and maintain a rich website without worrying about technical details like hosting, programming, FTP and HTML editors.

Who makes it?

Ilkka Huotari

Why is it the killerest?

A solid CMS. It has an impressive hosted editing (WYSIWYG) tool and file management system. Once you get the hang of how it works, you can have a site up and running quickly that is easy to maintain. When logged in, you can even edit your pages in place. Click a bit of text and it toggles to edit mode where you can make and save simple changes.

Features include, calendar, discussion forums, photo albums, blog, a form editor, file archives, slideshows, email, search, simple yet attractive design templates, RSS feeds, and even some juicy AJAX love just for fun.

It works well in all major modern browsers and generates fairly clean code.

This is obviously a labor of love for Ilkka (the creator). He's very responsive to support requests, tries hard to improve based on feedback, and is constantly improving and polishing.

What could be improved?

It's not for complete novices (although motivated novices can pick it up quickly). It's for someone wishing to have fairly powerful control and features (and the learning curve that comes with that power), while still being shielded from the deeper technical details.

How much does it cost?

Free plans, up to $30 per month

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

Central Desktop

May 3, 2006 in 3 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, Productivity

What is it?

Central Desktop: Easy to use  collaboration software.  It can be used it to create custom "extranet" workspaces. It includes tools to manage software deployments, assign tasks, track progress against milestones, document versioning, and more. It just does a whole bunch of stuff pretty darn well.

Who makes it?

Isaac Garcia & Arnulf Hsu

Why is it the killerest?

Because it allows moderately tech savvy yet skeptical office drones to run a small business with dozens of people and 50+ active projects, well. 

What could be improved?

An Outlook plugin to dump emails into a workspace so the conversation is archived might be nice, and a Salesforce.com plug in would be great. 

How much does it cost?

From Free to $249/mo

Rating?

Reviewed by Doug Mitchell

iRows

May 2, 2006 in 3 out of 5 stars, Hosted "Office", Hosted software, Productivity

What is it?

iRows: iRows is an Online (web based) spreadsheets application, which lets you create, share and collaborate online. With just a web browser, you can access your spreadsheets from anywhere. iRows supports functions, charts, sort, dynamic stock prices and a lot more. You can upload or export Excel, OpenOffice and CSV files.

Who makes it?

Yoah Bar-David and Itai Raz

Why is it the killerest?

Spreadsheets are killer applications, and iRows makes spreadsheets accessible from anywhere, easy to collaborate on,  and easy to display in other pages (like blogs)

What could be improved?

It could use more functions and be multi-lingual. They have a few more ideas on their "What's new" and "What's planned" page.

How much does it cost?

It's free

Rating?

Reviewed by Suzan Bird