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Web Apps for Your Business
Ok, I realize that Web 2.0 seems to be the decade's buzzword and you are probably getting tired of it; but, you have to understand that this is the second renaissance of the Internet. Ideas are being created at a rate never seen before in human history, and collaboration has exceeded everyone's wildest imaginations. Though we're supposed to have jet packs and visiting distant stars, science fiction authors never quite predicted the cultural revolution that has occurred in the last seven years.
Web X.xx (Is that better?) reinforces Sir Timothy Berners-Lee's original purpose for the net, that is be used for collaboration and share information (for researchers). Of course, like everthing
the real world, the internet didn't stay confined to just that, and now I can stay updated on David Hewlett's life minute by minute while watching a homemade video on YouTube about the dangers of smoking.
Alright, enough of my rambling. Web X.xx has become synonimous with anti-productivity, frivolity, and uselessness. However, that is not the case. There are literally thousands of web apps/operating systems out there to increase productivity, improve project management, and decrease expenses.
Collaboration
These two Google services almost perfectly integrate with one another combining the best web-based email with a very good document/spreadsheet editor. Gmail uses tags to categorize your messages instead of the old-fashioned folder system, and its spam filter is one of the best in the business. Also, the Gtalk application allows you to communicate with your friends, family, and coworkers with ease, since you don't need to download any software.
Google Docs is an almost perfect online office suite, just missing a PowerPoint application. It opens a wide variety of files including Microsoft Excel and Word documents with ease. But the true magic comes from GDoc's ability to open Gmail attachments and save them without having to touch your hard drive. From there, these online documents can be shared with as many collaborators or viewers as you want, making sharing much easier than having to email an updated version of that report.
Personally I know of one company that uses Google Docs to host their time sheets, allowing their employees to update this billable hours quickly, securely, and easily. This decreases the amount of time allotted for time management and increases productivity.
Zoho
Is another great web application, and although it doesn't integrate with Gmail at all (which doesn't really matter to those who don't have accounts) it encompasses the entire Microsoft Office family offering alternatives to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Their suite of software doesnt just stop at these three applications, project management, email and collaborative options are also available, but sadly I haven't used them.
Zoho
Is another great web application, and although it doesn't integrate with Gmail at all (which doesn't really matter to those who don't have accounts) it encompasses the entire Microsoft Office family offering alternatives to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Their suite of software doesnt just stop at these three applications, project management, email and collaborative options are also available, but sadly I haven't used them.
This internet telephony company has literally revolutionized international communication. For computer to computer teleconferences, Skype stands above the rest since it is: Free, Easy to Use, is about as Private as you can get. Every home and office has a computer, and with Skype's software, you can easily invite and setup meetings in the office, region, nationally, or internationally if you have a good internet connection. For big companies this might not be a great thing, but for the smaller start ups this can help cut costs immensly.
Also, with the introduction of SkypeIn and SkypeOut, businesses (or home owners) can pay for an account that allows them to call any landline or cell phone in the world using their computer, and don't have to worry about minutes when calling within North America. All of these things are done through the computer and internet connection, so it helps consolidate the bills and number of devices that are taking over the office.
Visual
Flickr (image hoster and organizational tool)
One of the first and best web companies out there, Flickr was purchased in 2005 by Yahoo and continues to offer the same two plans: Free and Pro. The free account is very good, but there are several limitations. The Pro account is only $25 USD a year so just spring for the extra, it's definitely worth it. A comparison of the two can be found here.
I've used Flickr for several different things from personal to business and the organizational system is genius. Tagging allows you to attach keywords to photos so that you can locate it easily. For example the picture below is tagged with:
This allows me to easily photos from "Rogers Pass" or photos I took in "2007" or "July". This tagging power can be used to organize inventory like this guy.
I did quality assurance for one company and as a result took literally thousands of photos. Flickr was a godsend since it allowed me to put out a weekly one page report with a couple of photos to demonstrate that week's progress, but I also included a flickr photo address so that the client could see every single photo taken.
Example: To organize the chaos, I recently gave a Client a link to my account. Each week's photos would be held within a 'set', or folder, to held organize the images chronologically. But each photo would have tags such as "july" "2007" "day" "night" "loading" "paving" or "main st." so that the client could either check each week (by clicking on the set) or see all photos from a particular...
Month ("July")
Time ("day")
Activity ("paving")
Location ("main st.)
These are usually the four types of keywords I use when tagging an image. It keeps things simple and easy to remember.
There are so many more things to do with Flickr, this section hasn't even scratched the surface (apologies for the cliche). Factors such as the API interface, the community, operate slideshows off of the site... these will be demonstrated in depth in the near future.
Vimeo
In the media world YouTube is getting all the glory, but truth is, it kinda sucks, and isn't the best place for businesses to post their corporate videos or company related media or even if you're just looking for some sort of privacy. I have to say that Vimeo is fairly good for a professional or private person. It has varying levels of privacy, a clean minimalist interface, the quality of the videos is better than YouTube because they utilize Flash 8, and finally, they allow the user to download your video file in it's original format.
This last option is great, it makes up for the fact that Vimeo has a 250 MB limit per week (which if you compress properly is probably more then enough). Your coworkers, clients, friends, family can all take the moving pictures with them! Of course there are other sites such as blip.tv and veoh that do similar things, but I have to say that the overall design of Vimeo lends itself to a more mature, professional environment.
Slideshare
Though Flickr has a slideshow feature that works very well, if you truly want to export your presentations try out this site. It's main purpose is just to share PowerPoints, but there is a great option called Slidecasting available. Basically, it's a slideshow combined with an mp3 (a song, narration, or audio recording of your presentation). First you upload your PowerPoint or Keynote 'deck' along with a recording of your presentation and voila! Your performance and art is internetted. Now I haven't used this feature extensively, but Guy Kawasaki tried it out with success.
I look at this as a wonderful way to teach new employees. It's a cheap, easy way to create training 'videos' on a small
Ok, I'm finished for this posting, I'll do another one soon and hopefully it was informative. I would just like to thank Scott Beale / Laughing Squid for the use of his Web 2.0 photo!
