Joincube – Business Organisation by Social Network
The social network approach is taking off in an increasing number of ways, and one of the ones gaining popularity is to use it to run your business. Joincube provides a social network platform that lets businesses and organisations work as a team, communicating and sharing information using tools that are said to improve time management by almost 40%. As one who finds constant meetings eat into time that could be spent productively I can believe this. Important though it is to meet face-to-face at times, it’s vital for businesses to realise the internet means it’s not necessary to call people over for a personal meeting for many types of communication.
No doubt a private social network platform is a good solution. This one has no sign-up fee, a free trial period for all levels of service subscription, and the subscription can be cancelled month by month. It’s not expensive, although a bit more than services such as ning.com and socialgo.com, so what does it add that these platforms don’t have? The answer is that it’s already tailor-made to run a business. Each user’s main dashboard gives an overview of everything happening, while file sharing facilities are designed for team business use and collaborative editing.
Task management features help organise work, while to-do lists, the ability to organise sub-groups for tasks, and ways of highlighting work to be done and marking it as finished or not finished, should all make the work go more smoothly. All the features of social networks are also there, including instant messages to keep in touch privately with team members, and microblogs where you update your status so everybody can see what the others are doing. Links to Wiki pages that everybody can update add an extra way of working together.
After the free trial period prices start at $24 per month for up to 15 users and 5GB of storage, with prices rising in stages to a maximum of $149 per month for an unlimited number of users and 200GB of storage. If users decide not to subscribe during the free trial period there will be no cost, and all levels of service include support, by email for entry-level members or faster methods for the high-end subscriptions. It’s possible to switch the names of users on the service so that a basic package could work if you only need to include up to 15 people at a time, and it’s also possible to downgrade as well as upgrade at any time.
Maggwire – Magazine Articles Online
While Maggwire is at beta stage it’s free for readers, and well worth a look. Subscription services for individual well-known publications are already successfully established so there’s good potential for Maggwire when a premium service emerges. The difference with Maggwire is that it aggregates articles by a huge selection of magazines – 650 at the time of writing this review and growing. The selection of magazines is impressive, including major titles and a vast range of subjects.
The website is well laid out with the possibility of searching by publication title or via a toolbar of main subject categories, each with a drop-down menu of sub-categories. The articles are then arranged according to popularity and ratings given as feedback by readers. Rating the articles lets Maggwire see where your interests lie, and on future visits it will personalise the service to suit you.
Clicking on article titles takes you to each publication’s website, and Maggwire also lets you share articles you find interesting by email or on social networks. There’s a Maggwire community so you can post comments and discuss the articles. With reading moving more and more into digital form the likelihood is that services will be needed to select articles and books that should only be available by subscription, and a comprehensive website like Maggwire would have a key role to play.
MissUpload – Online Storage and Backup for Large Files
MissUpload provides online storage and remote backup for large files, including images, videos, audio and flash. As a broadcaster I know it’s essential to have backup for large files so this type of file hosting provider is welcome, and the website states that the uploading and downloading tools are sophisticated, which is also important. MissUpload can also be used to share files with people you specify, so it’s a handy way of letting other access files that are too large to be sent by email. Each of these services can be found on separate websites, but it’s convenient to have them all in one place. It also means users can access their files from various computers without having to carry around USB sticks that could get lost or damaged.
All kinds of files can up uploaded, within legal regulations, and a delete link is provided for files so that they can be removed. If they aren’t deleted by the user they have an expiry time and will be automatically removed in the free and registered versions. The free version has a max upload file size of 25 Mb, download volume of 50 Mb per day and files are deleted after 30 days. The Registered and Premium versions allow more, with the maximum subscription increasing to uploads of 5000 Mb, storage space of 100,000 Mb, and download volume of 10,000 Mb per day. The Premium version also has no adverts and extra facilities such as URL upload, downloads accelerator support and downloads resume.
MailMyWeb – Browse Websites via Email
This is a service for people who are blocked from surfing the internet by their organisations, so it will be somewhat controversial but will no doubt be popular among those wanting to surf freely at work. It employs an ingenious method so that users can browse the web via their email client, as email is permitted by most employers. My question would be how secure people will feel about using their email to do this as it’s a deliberate breach of their employment conditions and could be spotted by IT admins. Setting that aside, it could be a useful way of accessing the internet via email in other situations too.
It’s a free service, once you fill in registration details, including the email address you are permitted to use. To start surfing the web it’s quite simple: you send an email to robot@mailmyweb.com with ‘help’ as the subject to get instructions by reply email. After that it’s possible to access any website, including videos and search engines, by sending an email to robot@mailmyweb.com with the URL as the message subject. An email comes very quickly in reply with the webpage in the body of the text. If you click on any of the links they are automatically sent as an email to MailMyWeb and the new page appears in a reply email. For search engines the same method is used, with the URL of the search engine as the subject of the email and the key words included in the text preceded and followed by ###.
Although it looks and feels like surfing the internet it is all actually going through the email client. It’s a little bit more fiddly than straightforward web browsing, but not much, and only a few of the links didn’t work for me – not bad considering it’s still in beta. The links that didn’t work were complex ones, and most straightforward links did work. As it all goes through the email client the result is a long list of emails you have used to access pages, so remember to delete all of these before they get spotted! I’m busy thinking of other ways this can be used to access the internet in places you only have email access, as I’m sure it’s also useful in ways that aren’t job threatening! Leave your ideas in the comments.
Spreeder – Speed Reading Made Easy
These days there seems to be so much text to get through that speed reading is a skill well worth acquiring. Spreeder provides a free online speed reading tutorial and also lets you copy in your own text to be read. So it doubles up as a method of learning to read faster and also a tool for reading your own documents quickly. To try Spreeder out you can copy and paste a document into the window on the main page and start reading it one word at time at speed. Then you can click on settings to read the text in larger chunks and at different speeds. Gradually it should be possible to read larger chunks of text at increasing rates.
The main ways this works are to get the brain to scan and read faster, and also to stop the habit of drifting off or continually reading back over text. With one chance to read a chunk of text you get in the habit of taking it all in at one glance. Spreeder has extra facilities, including a ‘bookmarklet’. This lets you select text in your web browser, open the Spreed bookmarklet in another browser window, and there you will find the text preloaded with no need to copy and paste. Some types of reading are best when done at a leisurely pace, but for much of the work we need to do it would be better to be able to get through it quickly, making Spreeder a useful tool and training resource.
Mitto – Keep Your Passwords in One Place
Mitto is a secure password management site which lets you store all your website passwords together. We all have times when we forget the passwords we use for the many websites we access, and the temptation is to have an easy-to-remember password and keep it the same for all websites. This is not a secure option, but not being able to gain access to websites is frustrating, as is the need to keep setting new passwords when we forget. So sites like Mitto are popular and useful.
This is a free service, and easy to use. It works anywhere and isn’t limited to the user’s main computer. To set up automatic logins via Mitto, the user goes to the Add Sites option to include their main websites in a list, and once the passwords are included these can be accessed by a single click. The Mitto website assures security, with the methods used explained in detail, and points out that by using it to access other sites there’s less chance of falling victim to Phishing. Mitto also keeps a track of logins so users can check to see when they last used websites. This would also help them notice if anyone else is using their account, so this technique could be a help against identity fraud.
ImageRaters – Post Images for Feedback
All the funny, startling or intriguing images you find online can be posted on ImageRaters for others to enjoy and vote on. Members add photos which go onto a ‘Queue’ page where they remain unless they get at least two votes, then they move to the main pages. Voting is by a thumbs up or down, the negative responses taking points away. The highest rated photos go into a top 10 and there’s a definite satisfaction in getting positive feedback from other members.
Photos need to be added by giving a link to a website, and ImageRaters helps users by telling them clearly how to right click on images they want to post in order to find the URL. Members could also post their own photos (recommended sites are given where photos can be uploaded) and photoshopped images are invited along with unaltered ones. A snappy caption to attract attention helps appeal to voters, and it’s almost impossible to look at some of the comical images without voting for them. Comments lead to discussion between members, and it’s possible to post links to websites for more information on the images. No doubt this will appeal to those who work with art and photography and want to provide links to their own websites.
TwitCritics – Movie Reviews from the Twitterverse
Why listen to the views of just a few critics before choosing the movie you want to see when you could listen to the Twitterverse? TwitCritics has a full listing of movies and invites pithy reviews in the usual brief Twitter format combined with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down judgement. Reading through the comments on a few movies made me realise how soon you could decide which TwitCritics are on your wavelength and could guide you to a choice you would also enjoy.
The site is a joy of simplicity and clarity, which is what you want when quickly looking up movie reviews before heading for the cinema. Movies can be sorted alphabetically by name, in descending order according to the number of positive reviews, by the number of tweets, and by most recent activity. All of these are relevant ways to sort information, as number of tweets could show more about popularity than the number of positive remarks. A movie that stimulates discussion could be worth seeing even if the positives and negatives are equal.
The site is fun and colourful, with red, amber and green indicators to show which movies are worth viewing according to the TwitCritics consensus. Due to the compulsory brevity the reviews have a liveliness and joyful feel which makes this a site I’d come back to when choosing a movie.
OneMarketplace.com – Sell Items on Multiple Sites
With various sites offering the chance to sell new and secondhand items it makes sense to use more than one to reach as many potential customers as possible. Checking them all would be time consuming, so OneMarketplace is a useful service which allows you to enter details about each item you’re offering on one website which will then list it on the others.
I tried it out and it’s easier to use than some of the other sites, with simple steps to list an item to be sold or shared. An Add Item Button leads to a prompt for the name and description, and a photo can be uploaded before offering the item for sale or to share. With unwanted items it’s possible to offer free sharing with marketplace friends, an email list and social network followers. It takes a single click to post this information on Facebook and Twitter.
Selling items is equally straightforward. After adding the item and photo the user can select other places to sell, including eBay, Craigslist, Oodle (Facebook, Myspace and AOL), OLX, Vast and Twitter. It’s stated on the website that the items can be listed in more places than this and that the aim is to include every popular auction, classified and social network with a marketplace. An option to donate items to charity is also planned. After a free first listing the service is financed by a subscription of $18 per year to sell to multiple marketplaces, while sharing items is free.
Buildy.net – Design Floor Plans
Buildy.net is a free service that lets you create or design floor plans using a tool that’s simple but leads to professional results. The floor plans would be useful for estate agents, holiday rentals, or just to share the layout and look of your home with friends. It’s possible to add photos of the exterior of the building and also photos of the interior to display each of the rooms. Once the plan with photos has been created it can be linked to websites and social networks, and used in advertising and flyers, or shared in personal communications.The tool to create floor plans is intuitive, offering a variety of simple ways to work on the layout for each storey. Clearly labelled buttons offer Add Room, Add Door, and Add Window options. These can be moved and adjusted by dragging and stretching, or by filling in the measurements. Buildy.net prompts the user to add photos while clicking on each room or the exterior. With the correct measurements and a set of photos it would be possible to produce an impressive and appealing design to attract buyers, renters and holidaymakers, or just give friends and family a virtual tour of your home.