Balsamiq
May 8, 2009 in 4 out of 5 stars, A piece of software, Productivity, Software Development Balsamiq: It's a tool that anyone can use for making web page mockups. In the early stages of creating a web site, or specifically a web application, there's a period of time when you need to wireframe, or sketch out rough ideas for page construction and layout, without necessarily worrying about the precise design of the pages (i.e. colors, fonts, exact shapes, etc). Balsamiq is a tool designed to help you do that. It has various "elements" or building blocks that you can drop on your page to construct your mockup. Balsamiq Studios LLC In mocking up the screens for my current hair-brained idea, I decided to take Balsamiq for a spin. What I found was a tool that was delightfully easy to use, and rich enough to make me feel like I didn't have to compromise on what I wanted to do in order to use the tool. The unexpected bonus was that in perusing some of the element options it sparked some creative ideas for approaching my user interface. Tip: on the free web version, when you’re done with a layout, you can export it as an image (PNG) and you can also export some code which you can paste into a text editor, then re-import next time you return to the site and resume working. It’s a poor-man’s “save.” I assume this is just a limitation of the free web-based version that I used, but I’d like to be able to have multiple pages I can work on at the same time - and a generic template I can use as the starting point for subsequent pages. There are workaround for this (export/import and delete elements you don’t want) but it’s a bit clumsy. Also, on the free web-hosted version, you get a nag screen every 5 minutes. If you are moving an element at the exact moment the nag screen pops up, the element becomes stuck, and you can't select, edit, or move it. (Note: to work around this, I found refreshing the page to work - but do that with caution, you could lose everything, so do an export first). Free for web version, $79 for desktop version Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Microsoft BizSpark Program
February 9, 2009 in 5 out of 5 stars, A piece of software, Productivity, Software Development, Virtualization, Web/Tech Biz Spark: Virtually free* access to all current Microsoft software, plus some additional support from peers and other Microsoft partners, if you care to get involved in the social side of it. Microsoft One of the biggest and most painful expenses for a startup can be software. Windows and Office primarily, but if you're a Microsoft developer – this is an outrageous deal because it includes everything you get in an MSDN subscription (note: it is an MSDN subscription). If you're a startup, three years old or less, and make under $1 million per year, you're eligible. This is basically all Microsoft software. Signup was pretty simple. There are a few hoops they want you to jump through to verify that you qualify, but they're tame. The big hurdle was getting a sponsor. I emailed this guy, explained my qualifications, and he hooked me up a couple days later. Twitter friend Geoffrey had good luck with this guy. This is worth tens of thousands of dollars and can be a real boost when you're boostrapping. Well, obviously this is for Windows users only. Hey Adobe, the web startup community would kill for an offering like this from you. *Free to enroll, you agree to pay $100 when you exit. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Elance
August 8, 2008 in 4 out of 5 stars, A service, Collaboration, Hiring, ProductivityElance: A place to (primarily) find freelance help, and also to find work as a freelancer. Elance, Inc. Elance has been around for a while (at least since 2002) and serves a wide range of businesses. I won't speak to their breadth, just their value to me as a non-Fortune-500-level entrepreneur. Elance's real benefit is in finding inexpensive (many of their providers are in Asia and Latin America) help for more specialized tasks that I can't afford the time to do myself, or that I don't have the skills to do myself.
For example, I have about 1,000 product images that I need the backgrounds removed from in Photoshop. My friend needed a customized Flash video player designed for his site. A quick (relatively simple) post on Elance, and we found the help we needed within 24 hours.
I like how careful they are about vetting businesses and providers to ensure everyone is the real deal. They also have an escrow service (free for businesses), and a fairly robust messaging and agreement system to make sure everyone knows what's expected and how the project will pay out. My results have been very satisfactory. The site is pretty complex, and as such, it's a bit cumbersome to use (I did muddle my way through without reading much and just guess-clicking and did ok however). Some of the communication structure feels more like insulation designed to make sure Elance gets their commission than a way to make my life easier. Most of their project management constructs are far too elementary to be useful. Free for businesses, providers pay 4-6% plus a monthly fee depending on usage. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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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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RescueTime
July 2, 2008 in 4 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, ProductivityRescueTime: A time management and analysis program. RescueTime (3 guys rocking it with some YCombinator funding to start) Because it achieves the holy grail of being fun to use, and darned useful too. It consists of two parts. An application (software) you install on your computer (PC or Mac) and a website which reports on your time usage. While it's pretty helpful even with zero configuration effort (just install and let it go), you can really make it come alive if you spend a little time telling it about the things you do through simple tagging, and rating for productivity. It's an intuitive process that unfolds as you want it to. The usability is solid. The first benefit to me was realizing just how much time I was frittering away with useless garbage. It was troubling information. Well, harrowing is more like it. And it has already changed how I use my time. As an entrepreneur, being accountable even if only to RescueTime is proving to be very valuable. The old "what gets measured gets improved" adage once again proves true. I'm rigorous about measuring so many other things, it's a little embarrassing I haven't applied that better to my time until now. I guess I just needed the drop-dead simple "do it for me" solution that RT provides. In addition to measuring time, RT lets you set up goals, which it then tracks for you. Some example goals might be "spend more than 3 hours per day working on my secret project" or "spend less than 1 hour per day on email." They also have some paid features that allow groups to use it together so you can compare how you spend your time versus the average member. I haven't dived into that. Everything I'm using is free. I've really resisted having a big crush on RT, but have so far failed. I love it. This is still immature software, and it's important to know that going in. I sincerely hope they can make their revenue model fly so that they can evolve this to the point where they build on the killer progress they've made so far. In fact, if they would address the issues I'm about to outline, I would be perfectly happy to pay a modest fee (say, $4/mo) to keep my records indefinitely (right now they only keep a 3 month backlog) and have the following features: 1. I'd like to do intra-application tagging. For example - if I'm writing a poem about my dog in Word, I'd like to tag that differently than a work proposal for a new client. As it is today, they only break things out that way for the web browser. 2. I'd like to be able to manually enter time. Right now it only tracks your time at the computer - which it does spine-tinglingly well. But if I have an off-site meeting, I'd like to enter that in as productive time to gather a more accurate picture. My other lingering concerns are privacy, and support. Privacy: You're sending some potentially pretty sensitive information up. They've got some mechanisms in place to limit what you send if you want. For example, they've got a web site whitelist so you can say "only send specifics from this set of websites" so you'd specify the top 20 or so websites you frequent, and everything else would be sent as generic web use. You can also easily turn off logging for a period of time, you can tell it to ignore certain data (which is claims to delete and ignore), and finally if you have a panic attack, you can delete your account and all data, which presumably deletes it all from their servers. However, even with all this, the privacy policy still feels a little weak. Essentially stating, "we'll never look at your data, unless we need to" [link]. Mint.com for example says something more like, "we won't ever look at your data, and couldn't if we wanted to" [link]. Obviously Mint.com deals with more sensitive data - but for many users, that doesn't matter. Support: This is a pretty minor concern, but I'll mention that I ran into some odd logging times, sent an email to support, got an almost instant personal reply (under 1 min) with some information, and a request to send some debugging logging information to them, which I did, but I never heard back (it's been about a week now). It wasn't a critical issue, it's free software, and it actually seems to be behaving properly now (I may have just done something stupid) so I didn't push it. Free for individuals, unlock some groupy/teamy goodness starting at $7.95/mo for the first 6 users, and $7.95/mo more per user after that. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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The software logs the applications you use (a plain text log). By default it logs in two-second increments to paint a pretty accurate picture. Then every 30 minutes it beams this information up to the mothership. The mothership is a glorious reporting site you can pull up to see how you're using your time. It features all manner of reporting graphs and charts. It shows you how productive you're being, where you spend your time, how you're doing on your goals, and more. 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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TaskBin
September 18, 2007 in 3 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, Issue trackers, ProductivityTaskBin: It is a group task management tool. It helps you allocate tasks to your team members and is built around the concept of sharing tasks as a group (or groups). All of your tasks are visible to others and can be shared. Other members can add tasks to your plate or edit tasks already there. Mangospring Very smooth interface, attractive, feature-rich, and for a group working on a project, it offers a simple way to share and keep track of tasks. Nifty constructs like softer deadlines (today, tomorrow, next week, sometime soon) introduce an interesting (and more real-world?) way to prioritize tasks. It has a highly annoying construct where it forces you to add first and last name for anyone. None of the marketing pages outline what the "premium" account is, or what it costs. The confirmation link they email you is beastly-long, but not a hyperlink (easy fix, guys!). Free for everything I could find. There's mention of a "premium" account during signup, but I never saw anything else about it. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Google Docs and Spreadsheets
October 11, 2006 in 4 out of 5 stars, A service, Hosted "Office", Hosted software, ProductivityGoogle Docs and Spreadsheets: From Google's acquisition of Writely coupled with Google Spreadsheet comes Google Docs and Spreadsheets. A hosted, Gmail-like service which provides (you guessed it) a hosted document and spreadsheet editor. Just login with your Google/Gmail account to get started. Google Google is hit and miss on interface design (or maybe we just need to get used to their approach). This one is done quite well. The options are simple - and happen to be the only ones I think most of us care about anyway. The upside? No bloated confusing morass of menu options. All your documents are in a nice, clean, hosted centralized location allowing you, or colleagues to access them from anywhere. You can even upload existing doc(Word)/rtf/xls(Excel)/csv etc documents to the repository. The collaboration stuff really is nice. Send invites, track revisions, chat (IM-like, right in the window) while you work together on a doc, etc. (It's similar to Writeboard only with richer collaboration tools). You can also invite folks to view, but not edit. You can also export your creations to common formats (doc/rtf/xls/csv/pdf/html/open office). PDF export is a pretty darn cool feature. Has a very nice spell check. The spreadsheet (doc too?) allows you to autosave periodically to keep you from losing work (nice touch). You can also post word docs to your blog (nice clean drop-down+click setup for Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, SquareSpace, BlogHarbor, Blogware). And you can manually set up other services, including TypePad and Moveable Type, but it takes a bit more finessing. Works in IE and FireFox (haven't tested others, although I suspect all modern browsers work.) I'm not sure how comfortable we'll be having our documents hosted such that without a connection (read: airplane, vacation, etc.) we don't have access to them. Do rich collaboration tools and a hard-drive-crash-resistant hosted repository outweigh the annoyance of that? They are quite simple in functionality - probably 90% of what we all need, that last 10% may be a deal breaker for power users, especially the spreadsheet side. It's not as eerily omniscient as Excel, if you rely on that. Free Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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SlimTimer
August 1, 2006 in 3 out of 5 stars, Free, Hosted software, ProductivitySlimTimer: A timer to keep track of time spent on work tasks. Richard White Because its much simpler to use than ordinary timesheets, web or otherwise, and you get more accurate data to boot. It has spiffy reports allowing you to easily digest your time data. You also don't have to fuss with setting up clients and projects... you just setup tasks, tag them for reporting purposes (like billable) and off you go. It's still evolving so the main improvements would be around making it scale better for larger teams. Also the reporting while sufficient still needs some extra features to allow customizing them to the rules of an individuals businesses. Fortunately, the creator is accepting and acting quickly on suggestions. FreeWhat is it?
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