CartoonStock
November 14, 2005 in 3 out of 5 stars, A serviceCartoonStock:
On-line library of cartoons instantly available for licensing and
download for all publishing, presentation, merchandise and electronic
uses. CartoonStock Ltd Similar to CartoonBank.com, however where CartoonBank represents work that has been published in the New Yorker Magazine,
around 100 artists in all, CartoonStock represents around 300 artists
worldwide, has twice as many images searchable on-line and represents a
wider variety of art and humor styles. You can also syndicate
a cartoon to your own site and get affiliate revenue if visitors click
over from it and buy something. You can send free "e-greeting cards." The site is quite unattractive and somewhat hard to use, something
they claim to be working on soon. The director had this to say to me
about it "We will shortly be redesigning the entire site and enhancing
the services and range of images on offer." About $12.00 for classroom educational use, $32 for presentations, $44 for a non-commercial website. (more here) Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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BillingOrchard
November 9, 2005 in 4 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, InvoicingBillingOrchard: Online billing and invoicing software. Very simple and clean interface allows you to setup all your clients, send pdf or html invoices, and give your clients a "billing center" where they can login and view all their invoices, time, etc. Craig Rowe It has time tracking, payment integration with paypal and authorize.net. It even has automated recurring billing. The system also has some great add ons like a support ticketing system and a knowledge base.
This online application is great for freelancers or small boutique design studios. Its a great tool to use in tandem with basecamp. There is a project management module that could be made more robust. All in all the system is solid, easy to use, and gives your business a nice professional polish. Starting $14.95 per month Reviewed by Gianni D'AlertaWhat is it?
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Happy Links
November 7, 2005 in Happy Links- 9rules round 3 submission is Nov 14th for 24 hours. Polish up your blog and give it a whirl, these guys are insanely cool to work with.
- Jason Fried takes "Bubble 2.0" to task. "This is premature, cover-your-ass babble. Babble 2.0, not Bubble 2.0. Bad business decisions by a few don’t equal a bubble. Funding companies without a future isn’t a bubble, it’s crappy investing."
- 10 Most Practical Blogs for Entrepreneurs. Those all look great with the possible exception of number 3.
- Creating Passionate Users offers advice on how to spend your marketing and ad budget. "Let's say your marketing and/or ad budget doesn't have the same legs it used to... Or maybe you don't even have a marketing budget." (Man I love this blog).
- 37signals dusts off the Holiday E-Commerce Ideas report. Superbly done, chock full of great "duh" ideas for getting ecommerce right so you maximize Q4.
- Ramit lectures us on greed... and makes some good points. "Everybody seems to be in a big fat hurry to make money. I call this greedy, but not in the traditional sense of the word. It's greedy because I don't think it should be the first thing on anybody's mind."
- Solo-Tees offers a (moderately interesting) interview with Problogger Darren Rowse. "I don’t have too many long term goals - the online entrepreneurial space shifts and changes so quickly that I increasingly am finding myself setting monthly, weekly and even daily goals that are just as significant."
- Matt Eliason offers some excellent, insightful things to consider when launching an affiliate program. "Most affiliates are a waste of time. Yes, it is a sad fact - from my experience and from others who run an affiliate program, somewhere between 89-95% of affiliates either won’t generate a sale, or if they do, they will be so slow as to be and administrative anchor..."
- How to Boost Your Blog Traffic.
- Essential Resources for Creativity (163 techniques + 30 tips + books)
- How to Start a Business without Money. This is puffy advice, but he's onto something with his "become an expert" + boostrapping thing.
- 10 Ways to Please Us, the Customers. "You should worship at the altar of good design and make customer satisfaction your religion. These should be your commandments."
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Trillian
October 31, 2005 in 4 out of 5 stars, A piece of software, Free, ProductivityTrillian: Per the website: Cerulean Studios I'm a Professional Virtual Assistant, and maintaining contact with
my clients, and potential clients visiting my site, is critical to my
success. Trillian is an easy-to-use piece of software which
allows me to manage all of my chat systems via one sleek
interface. No more multiple multiple windows and logins to Yahoo!
Messenger, AIM, MSN & ICQ--Trillian handles everything for me! Free - one of my favorite 4-letter words! Reviewed by Lori DavisWhat is it?
"Trillian is a fully featured, stand-alone, skinnable chat client that
supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC. It provides
capabilities not possible with original network clients, while
supporting standard features such as audio chat, file transfers, group
chats, chat rooms, buddy icons, multiple simultaneous connections to
the same network, server-side contact importing, typing notification,
direct connection (AIM), proxy support, encrypted messaging (AIM/ICQ),
SMS support, and privacy settings.
Without stealing your home
page and with no other included software, pop-ups, or spyware, Trillian
provides unique functionality such as contact message history, a
powerful skinning language, tabbed messaging, global status changes
(set all networks away at once), Instant Lookup (automatic Wikipedia
integration), contact alerts, an advanced automation system to trigger
events based on anything happening in the client, docking, hundreds of
emoticons, emotisounds, shell extensions for file transfers, and
systray notifications."
Who makes it?
Why is it the killerest?
When I'm "away," I can change my Trillian status message to show that
I'm away on all of my chat systems. Trillian also shows me the
status of my e-mail accounts, and allows me to rename the screen names
of my contacts.
A gorgeous piece of free software that helps me kill, every day!How much does it cost?
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Jewelboxing
October 26, 2005 in 4 out of 5 stars, A product, DesignJewelboxing: A spiffy jewel case you can use to house your next masterpiece on a CD or DVD. Think software, your latest album, your portfolio, or your next proposal. Coudal Partners This case is pure rugged quality. Most of the garbage out there passing itself off as a CD or DVD case is wimpy, flimsy and decidedly unimpressive. With Jewelboxing cases you stand out immediately. Packaging and design are often what separate the winners from the losers. With these, you'll never be a loser.
Jim Coudal personally shepherded my order through and was responsive, friendly, and efficient. After you order you'll get a digital design template for the case you selected in PDF/Illustrator/Freehand/Quark/InDesign/Pagemaker/Photoshop format, so you can quickly get after the task of creating top-notch innards for your Jewelboxing case. And to make it even easier the blank innards come with them too. And this is top notch paper, perfectly designed for consumer grade printers, the end result is radiant. So yeah, pre-perforated and scored trayliners, insert books and disc labels (with a few extras in case you screw up).
These guys are easy to order from and have thought of everything.
Here's what some other industrious folks have done with their Jewelboxing cases. Starting at $54 for a 20 pack of Kings, or 30 pack of Standards. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Happy Links
October 19, 2005 in Happy Links- Venture Voice interviews Jason Fried on this podcast. For those of us not suffering Jason Fried fatigue yet (boo to those who are), this is a great interview. Slow at first, but Jason hits his stride toward the end and says some great stuff. As I was listening and quoting parts of this to my friend over IM (he asked me to pause so he could hurl half way through), I figured out why I enjoy following JF: His success gives me permission to follow my gut, even (and especially) when it bucks conventional wisdom. He does so himself (almost with blinders on) and it's hard to argue with his success. Kudos to him for sharing his formulas for success so freely.
- This presentation by Steve Jobs where he announced the new iPod, iTunes and iMac was the most inspiring thing I've witnessed in months. Yes it's Apple koolaid in liberal doses, but I don't own a mac, or an iPod or even iTunes. What's amazing about this presentation is watching Jobs as he conveys the energy of Apple's success. (75% market share with mp3 players, 85% market share of legal music downloads). Witnessing him in action, his passion, his excitement, and his innovative spirit -- he personifies what it means to matter in this new economy. He is a glimpse into the future, and it is exciting. I bet you can't watch this without contracting insomnia.
- Due diligence and light bulbs, a post by yours truly (sorry) where I talk a bit about the nerdy charge that comes from playing with spreadsheets as part of due diligence. "This is the moment I hadn't expected. This was the sweet side effect of doing due diligence. I'd had a stroke of genius looking at those rows and columns. And so it began. I started tweaking, get rid of these expenses, add this new one, take that one out. Run it again. And there it was..."
- Ideas for Startups, another brilliant essay by Paul Graham. "I think people believe that coming up with ideas for startups is very hard-- that it must be very hard-- and so they don't try do to it. They assume ideas are like miracles: they either pop into your head or they don't. I also have a theory about why people think this. They overvalue ideas."
- PC Magazine reviews a bunch of free resources, office suites, anti spyware, firewalls, etc. The navigation through this mess is almost too cumbersome to bother with, but there are some helpful reviews here.
- Top 10 places to find free images for your blog (or anything else for that matter).
- Jakob Nielson talks about blog usability -- top 10 design mistakes.
- The Flip 2K5 where Anil Dash compares his take on 1.0 vs 2.0 "built to flip" companies.
- Entrepreneur's-Journey guide Yaro Starak bought one of those 10px pieces on the million dollar homepage, and reports on the results.
YouSendIt
October 17, 2005 in 4 out of 5 stars, A service, File uploading services, Free YouSendIt: Similar to Dropload (send large files to anyone without using email), but you can send larger files (1GB), and you don't need to register. YouSendIt Inc. Easy to use. No need to register. Send files up to 1GB. You can also
send stuff securely (over SSL). SSL transfer is bound to have some
performance issues for huge files, but secure transfer is sometimes
needed and this does it. They also claim to virus scan every file
sent. Wired likes em (although how Wired thinks these guys are in the same camp as bit torrent is beyond me, that's just ridiculous). It also appears they keep the file around for 7 days, or a "limited
number of downloads" (they don't say how many) even after the recipient
has picked it up (unlike DropLoad which nukes it after right after the
recip picks it up). They also give the sender the link to download the file if they wish (DropLoad does not). They've got a few other services like a way to send "photo albums" and some website integration stuff where you can allow visitors to send you a file, and it links them to a YouSendIt page where when they send the file, it comes to you. It doesn't send the sender a confirmation email once the file is
picked up (like DropLoad does). This is a big omission in my mind. I'm always intrigued when outfits like this, without any discernible
revenue model (except a Google AdSense ad on the confirmation page
after an upload, and on the download page), are hiring,
offering something completely free, and seem to have a whole business
around what they do (YouSendIt Inc?). They claim they want to become
"the FedEx of Digital" and they must have some grandiose plans (and
funding) far beyond what this offers. They also have an open source piece of software that claims to help you resume broken downloads (I didn't try it). It doesn't allow secure (SSL) downloads however. Free Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Happy Quote
October 14, 2005 in Happy Quotes
"Put one dumb foot in front of the other and
course-correct as you go."
Happy Links
October 7, 2005 in Happy Links- Seth Godin finally reveals what he's been working on for the last few months with his skunk team. We knew it was called Squidoo, now we know what it does with his new ebook. And thus starts the meme of the lens!
- Rob offers some great advice on how to hire like a startup. "In an ideal world you would take as long as you want to fill a position... But sometimes you don't have the luxury of spending four or five months to fill a position. There may come a time in the life of your company when... you need to hire people in a hurry."
- Problogger Darren Rowse interviews fellow "six figure blogger" Manolo. Some great tips in there about building a lucrative blog.
- The real 7 Habits of highly successful people.
Writeboard
October 7, 2005 in 3 out of 5 stars, Free, Hosted softwareWriteboard: Shareable, web-based text documents that let you save every edit, roll back to any version, and easily compare changes. 37signals Writeboard does just what it says it does, and does it well. It isn't a wiki, it isn't Writely,
it isn't even fancy, it's just a simple way to collaborate with someone
(or alone if you want versioning) on some bit of text, and keep track of
any changes you make. There's no formatting, no fancy Word integration,
just simple collaborative content editing.
I used it at length yesterday with a client. We were proofing
an outline for a project, we both contributed to it, we could track
changes, it was spiff.
I also like that I can compare 2 versions and see what changes have been made. Quite cool.
It's super simple to sign up and use. No accounts required, just
create the board, invite your friend to collaborate with you (through
the in-page invitation sender) and craft your masterpiece together.
It also keeps you from writing over each other's work by letting you know if someone is currently editing it.
You can integrate your writeboards as pages in Backpack (and integration with Basecamp is coming).
You can subscribe to a writeboard and track changes through RSS.
You can export your final documents (or any version) to an HTML or text file.
They've thought of lots of little details that make it a pleasure to use. A tight, simple, small, well done little application.
(Sounds like 37signals doesn't it?) Part of it's redeeming value introduces a pain. Because you don't create an "account," if you wish to have multiple writeboards you've got this
hodge-podge of scary URLs and no way (except with Backpack, which is actually pretty cool) to tie them
together, edit them with a single login, etc. It gets kind of messy. Note: here's a hidden feature to help you retrieve all writeboards associated with your email address. The neat freak in me would also like the ability to delete certain versions for good. Free like pumpkins at midnight. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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(WorkHappy.net interview with 37signals founder Jason Fried here)Why is it the killerest?
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