The web is changing faster than ever,
thanks to the Web 2.0 movement which includes Ruby on Rails, Ajax, sleek design and
“hover links with colorful background”. Are you up to the task of keeping up
with it? In this article you will discover how to use those technologies to improve you
life and business starting at no cost.
At the moment there are several excellent Web 2.0
applications loosed on the web, but usually they lack several features in order to compete
with the big guys. Fortunately with the power of APIs, soon some of those applications
will combine into a more robust solution.
+ Work Area
ProtoPage
Bad: Not enough widget applications, no JS support.
Does your monitor look like a sunflower at a distance from
all the yellow sticky notes? Why don’t throw all that into the web? By doing so, you
will be able to share it with co-workers and friends and access it form different
locations. There’re several solutions out there, but the one that excels in usability
is ProtoPage. The edge from this London based company is the ability to drag your panels
without being constrained into a grid and to resize it. Also, you are able to create
several “desktops”. One could be for your personal life, the other one for
business, etc. The service is great, but it lacks more widgets other than just the
Weather.
Tip: Since you are not allowed to add a JS script, use the
“Iframe tag” with the “src=page_with_your_js.html”. This will pull
anything you want into your Protopage panel.
+ Sending Invoice
BlinkSale
Bad: The user cannot save the products and services to
avoid typing again next time.
This is a software niche in which the creative and
innovative power of the web did not touch for a long time. Consequently, small businesses
were confined with proprietary software like QuickBooks, which is expensive and cluttered.
BlinkSale is a very nice start to bring the financial industry into the Web 2.0 and
hopefully shake things up a bit. The greatest thing about BlinkSale is to have your
invoices in XML/RSS rather than a proprietary format. Although, at the moment, BlinkSale
is not a replacement for QuickBooks yet due to lack of capabilities such having products
and services list, reports and etc. BlinkSale is a basic invoicing solution for small
companies, but this is just the beginning of a revolution in this area. Just wait until
BlinkSale and Basecamp have their API out and well distributed. That would make several
big corporations tremble, or to write fat checks to the owners.
+ Project Management
Basecamp
Bad: You cannot set the time for your meetings in the
milestone and some drag & drop capabilities would be great.
Online collaboration can give you the edge over your
competitors by allowing your customers to log in and see how the project is going, add a
file or a “to-do” item. Basecamp can be use for a wide range of situations. From
a Web Design company to a wedding planning, this is the service to use. You can set up
different users to access different projects and so on. This is a great out-of-the-box
solution for any occasion, easy to use and open for collaboration.
+ Calendar
Planzo
Bad: Design is a little cluttered and RSS feeds are not
well tagged.
One of the biggest headaches of the modern world is to sync
your calendar. Most people have to struggle in organizing themselves among Outlook at work
and sticky notes at home. Planzo delivers a nice start towards solving that problem by
delivering reminders via email and SMS and connection with iCal.
But be careful, sometimes in the attempt of organizing
yourself, you’ll end up with 10 different accounts in several services and that may
worsen the situation.
One possible solution is to combine all services through
RSS into a “work area” like ProtoPage. Then you can have the invoice list, your
calendar, etc., all delivered into one place. |
