Working as I do inside of the Web hosting industry, there are not many tools out there to help business owners keep tabs on invoicing employees for work or to help keep track of the time that they have worked. Most of the time you just have to send it in yourself, via a text file or some other document. There has to be a better way of doing things though.

That is where Time59 comes into the picture. It is the perfect timekeeping and invoicing tool for any small, medium or big time business. It allows users to set up clients and projects, enter time worked, and then produce invoices. Keeping track of this stuff via the Web means that you can do it from anywhere as well.

The Online system creates invoices based on the time you have already entered and therefore eliminates re-typing and manual calculations when generating invoices. This is a pain for me. I like to keep track of all the invoices I have sent in, so I have created a template text file to use. Having this content created for me and making it customizable would be a blessing for sure. You can directly email the invoices to clients or print it out and then send it via regular mail.

So where is the catch? Well, I don’t know if this could be used for every business out there, and there is also a price attached to the product. If you want to try it out though, Time59 does have a 30 day free trial.

Tags: timekeeping, invoices, online, business, tools, payments

The folks at Ewidi are taking an old idea and are trying to make it new again. Most people would say that there is nothing “Web 2.0-ish” about message boards. They might be the crazy old uncle that sits in the corner of the Web as far as innovation goes.

Here is a little more about the project from the developers.

Ewidi is a universal messaging board that allows users to publish, search and interact with other members any where in the world, and whose interface can be displayed already in 26 different languages. It???s free, fast and very easy to use; users can publish choosing simply a user name and a password, no personal data is ever requested or needed and anonymity and privacy are preserved all through the process.

Ewidi allows you to exchange up to 20 small messages with the other user assuming by then both of the users would exchange contact details in case they wished to get in touch with each other directly. A very interesting idea I do have to say and I wish the all the best in the world.

I do have to say as a final good note about this service, is that it is just compelling to browse and see what all has been posted thus far. If you are looking to do some random reading, this is a good place to start. It is amazing how much content they have up thus far.

It really is a world wide affair as well, because there was a lot of stuff on the Web site that I had no idea what it really meant. So you go check it out, and I will go find my Spanish to English dictionary.

Tags: message boards, forums, web, tools, content, discussions

Well you know they have run out of innovative ideas when sticky notes go Web 2.0. Well, at least that was my first thought when I had a look at Ubikuo. After spending a little time with it though, I do have to say that what I see has impressed me thus far and I can not wait to see what these folks do in the future.

First things first though, what is Ubikuo? This is another Web application that defines itself as being “Web 2.0″. Oh sorry, most of the world does not know what that means either. Let me try again. Ubikuo gives you the ability to create sticky notes on the Web. Now that is an idea we can all understand.

Here is what the developers of the Web site have to say about it.

Ubikuo is an online service providing storage of public and private notes, viewable any place, anywhere with an internet connection. Ubikuo introduced the idea of ubiquitous web notes, viewable in pretty much any modern web browser. You can create up to 20 notes each with its own title, color, font, size and position, all visible in your Ubikuo workspace.

Alright, so you can create notes on a Web site and make them public or private. What else is there? Well, you can take them to your dashboard if you use OS X Tiger. You can use them via your mobile device, if you visit their special Web site for doing so. You can even get a list of your notes send to you via an RSS feed.

Over all it is a nice idea - but I do not understand what problem they are solving with this Web application.

Tags: sticky, notes, ubikuo, web, applications, rss

Every so often, like many of you out there, I run into a word that I do not know the meaning of. Now instead of looking for a dictionary or typing it into Google, I have found a better way to find results. MetaGlossary is my new best friend when it comes to looking up meanings for words Online.

MetaGlossary is not a search engine, it is more of a dictionary on steroids.

I really like this tool. It provides a simple way to find definitions Online. You are also given more than one, so if you have a hard time finding the “right way to put it” you should have several options to choose from. For anybody that spends a lot of time looking at text - I just love it. It does what it is suppose to do, and what else could you ask for from a Web site?

Here is what the developers of the Web site have to say.

“Meta” means beyond, more comprehensive, or more highly organized, and with respect to other dictionaries and glossaries, MetaGlossary is all these things. MetaGlossary harvests definitions from the entire web, the world’s largest, constantly-updated repository of information. Hence, it surpasses traditional dictionaries, which grow more out of date with each passing day. MetaGlossary is as dynamic as the web, offering the most current information out there on the most contemporary topics.

The only thing I can find about this Web site that I do not like is that the definition page that you get to after you type in a word is a little confusing to navigate. I think they are trying to do too much at once.

I would like to see them maybe highlight the top definition and then list the others under it. I am sure it will get tweaked with over time.

Overall I think this is a great tool for folks that need a quick definition for a word they may not know.

Tags: dictionary, web, application, meta, define, tools

When it comes to Web development and design we all like to create one thing to slap into our Web page in one corner or the next. Sure, it might be used a lot or very little - but it is nice to know it is there. What am I talking about? Your forms, of course. Web forms are sometimes difficult to create, but with FormLogix your difficult days should be over.

So what is it that FormLogix is offering that others are not?

FormLogix is an Online tool that is free to use. Using the form generator, anybody can create free Web forms, Web databases and “Contact Us” Web pages. The tool is really unique and is free for you to use.

So now the only question we have to answer is who are these people behind the project and why are they doing it?

Our Mission is to respond to the growing need and demand for high quality digital web forms, and to the time consuming and costly process of creating them. We strive to do so with our form creator tool, which was designed to be flexible and user friendly as well as innovative.

We believe in providing our clients not only with the best tools, but also with the best service. Our product is, after all, tailored for them. We aspire to become a globally recognized provider of web database and form processing tools.

Want to see some samples of the forms you can produce? They have a few demos out on their Web site for the world to check out and view.

Tags: free, forms, generators, web, design, layout, tools

Now maybe you have not bought into this whole notion of the social Web. Come on, bringing people together to do your work for you (I didn’t mean to say that) is Web 2.0 in a nutshell. One new and exciting Web site that my eyeballs have graced is Yoople. What is this Yoople? No, it has nothing to do with yogurt - it is a people powered search engine.

Yoople is what you would get if you mixed Yahoo with Google and you added the power of the public. Saying this is just a neat business model is an understatement. Here is a block of text I got from the Web site that should help you better understand why they are doing this.

At Yoople Project we believe that Web Searches are quite good, but not as smart as a human brain could do. As today we are forced to accept the order given by search engines and click the results as they are, unfortunately this does not mean the human searcher agrees with the returned results index. Moreover clicking a result does not mean the website contains the contents we were looking for.

Seems simple enough, right? Who says that we should have to bend to the will of the search engines for good results? With us all working together we could build the ultimate search engine. Now the highlight of this Web site is also what could bring it down. It needs people to make it work. Hopefully they will gain enough momentum to create something grand, because I like what I see so far.

Tags: yoople, google, yahoo, people, social, search

Think you are over worked and under paid? Well welcome to the party buddy, because there are a lot of us in that same boat. When it comes to working, it is sometimes hard to find a way to compare your own salary against other people who do the same thing in your area of expertise. Well, that was untill PayScale was launched.

Here is the company line on what PayScale is all about and why it was launched.

PayScale Professional provides employers with accurate, reliable compensation detail never before available. My PayScale and PayScale Premium give individuals the accurate facts and negotiation know-how they need in order to make smart, informed career decisions.

Now what is PayScale all about? it allows you to get accurate, real-time salary reports based on your job title, location, education, skills and experience. If you are looking for a new line or work - or you want to hit your boss up for a raise, this is a good resource to have in hand.

This is also a nice tool for employers to do research from so they know how much they should be paying that person that they just hired. All around - it is a nice Web 2.0 application that I could see going a long way in the Online business arena.

Tags: salary, job, pay, compare, find, careers

One thing I can never turn down is the word free. You never know when you might need something, so if it is free - you had better hurry up and snatch it up. One free thing that I found recently was a collection of very nice looking icons for the world to use. These twotone icons would be perfect for any design that is looking for a little extra perk in its step.

Here is a little more information about the icons from the designer.

my custom icon set, twotone, is now 100% free. every icon in the set, every colour, and the PSD to change the colours to whichever custom colour you want. you can use it on your blog, website, application or intranet.

As I said before, the “free” aspect of this is very hard to turn down. I only wish more designers would release icon sets out there like this for the public to use. This is a sure fire way to make sure that your designs get used - and you get a little free press for your work along the way.

The only catch in the deal is you have to let the guy know where or how you ended up using his icons. I say that is a pretty fair trade. Pick them up for yourself, and make sure you tell the designer thanks.

Tags: free, icons, images, design, custom, twotone

No, MySpace is not just a place for you to waste countless hours looking at really ugly designs. It is not just a place for perverts to pretend they are thirteen year old girls or for thirteen year old girls to pretend that are perverts. MySpace is a great place to build a little more publicity for yourself and your Web projects.

Sure there are some good things and some bad things about MySpace. I will give you your points on that no matter which side of the fence you are on. If you are not using MySpace to pimp out your products though, you are missing a really big audience.

I setup my own MySpace profile so that I could have yet another place to plug my podcast and Web sites. Some other good examples of this would be Chris Pirillo’s MySpace. Look at that bLaugh cartoon there, nice product placement. Another example would be Roy from ReviewMe.

Like it or not, you have to go with what is popular, and right now having a profile on MySpace is just that. Don’t feel like you are selling out though, because honestly it is not that bad at all. I have met a lot of people via MySpace that I might have not of met before. It is a good tool to reach an audience that might not visit your Web site or listen to your podcast without it.

In my opinion, you need all the help you can get when it comes to publicity, so no rock should be left unturned.

Tags: myspace, press, publicity, plugs, social, networks

You never want to lose all of those Web pages you have spent years and years bookmarking. Losing all those important URLs could lead to headaches, stress and maybe even death. Ok, so maybe I have never heard of anybody actually dying because of this - but it could happen. Well, to save your life and your favorite, I have found for you the GMarks extension for Firefox.

Here is a little more about the GMarks extension from the developer.

GMarks helps you sync and manage your bookmarks with Google Bookmarks. Use the sidebar to manage and access your bookmarks, the GMarks toolbar for fast access to important bookmarks, and the Quick Search to find bookmarks like the Google Desktop. Nest your labels with a customizable separator in the sidebar or the toolbar.

GMarks allows for easy migration to and from Google Bookmarks. You can import your Firefox bookmarks to Google or export your Google Bookmarks to a bookmarks.htm file. GMarks is completely separate from your Firefox bookmarks and does not remove or hide them.

This Firefox extension is for versions 1.5 and up of the browser. To pick it up and use it yourself, all you need to do is download it from the Mozilla Add-ons Web site.

Tags: firefox, google, extensions, bookmarks, gmarks, backup

I love simple. Simple answers to simple problems. Going after the, “we like it simple as well” crowd DropBoks has yet another good Online file hosting solution. Now you have heard the story before, you had read the book - you might even have it memorized by heart. Business offers hosting, hosting is free, people dance in the streets with joy. It is a business model that works.

So what is DropBoks doing that other places might not be? Well, each account has 1 GB of storage space available. You can upload and download files (any format) as large as 50 MB. I like that, these are limits I can live with as far as free file hosting goes. Now what do they ask you to do in return? Do you have to punch a money? No, you have no ads to deal with right now.

All they ask is that if you like the service - just donate one dollar. One stinking dollar, and that is only if you “want” to for an excellent service. I say that is about as fair of a trade as I can give you today. Check them out for yourself, and I would love to hear any personal feedback you might have about them.

Tags: hosting, free, simple, files, storage, web hosts, web hosting

Every so often we all find a gallery of photos or pictures and we want to find more in that same series. Now if you see a picture named “mitch3.jpg” you have to think that there is a “mitch1.jpg”, “mitch2.jpg” and so on, correct? Well Picsir is a new service that does it’s best job to fill in the blanks and helps you find those other images that you wish to see.

You can think of Picsir as a picture scanner and gallery creator. It does not host the images for you, it makes them easier to see and access. It works by incrementing numbers in the original file name in attempt to find and display more images that might follow a similar pattern.

Another nice feature that is built in after you find the gallery you are looking for is that you can create a tiny URL to copy and use to share you gallery with others or to save it for later.

You can also add the quick and easy access to this right into your browser. All you need to do is drag a simple bookmark to your bookmark bar and you are good to go. All in all this is a nice tool for those galleries that you find Online that have really ugly interfaces. If they are ordered by one way or another, Picsir will do its best job at trying to figure out what it should look like.

[Check Out the Demo]

Tags: picture, search, ordered, graphics, gallery, viewer

Of the many (and I do mean many) photo sharing and hosting Web sites out there, one of the ones that does not get that much press is Photoblog. With a name like that, you know what it is and what you are suppose to do. What makes it any better than all the rest of the photo uploading Web sites though?

Photoblog was started with the thought of being able to easily preserve memories of daily life and share them with friends and family. Photoblog offers a free photoblogging service with unlimited uploads and infinite storage. Now anytime I hear “unlimited” I get a little nervous. I have not tested the boundaries of this offer, but I guess they do not really expect anybody to try to upload every photo they might have in one day.

This service helps you organize your photographs and thoughts. Keeping them organized, you can do so neatly by date. By doing so, you can thereby save special moments in your life. You can also share or look back on in the years to come. Not only does Photoblog serve as a great way to organize your pictures it is also a neat way to keep your friends and family connected and updates on the happenings in your life and pictures from the places you have been.

Tags: photos, blogs, sharing, graphics, upload, unlimited

When it comes to personalized start pages, it seems like everybody is copying the next guy down the block. It has been a while since I have seen anything really new or different here. Personally I use Google’s personalized home page because of the Google Reader widget. There are other choices out there though. One of those choices is YouOS.

Now what YouOS is trying to do is market itself as a web operating system. What does that mean? Well it is “fancy talk” for saying they are a start page with a lot of goodies inside. If you are not ready to sign up just yet, you can try out the demo to get a feeling for it. They have RSS, mini browsers, sticky notes and everything else you have come to expect from the Web 2.0 start pages out there.

One really neat thing that I like is the tab feature. Each widget that you have on your virtual desktop has a tab, so it makes switching between them very easy. It is very easy to tweak an existing application or write your own. So is YouOS the next big thing or just the next start page?

Tags: start page, web 2.0, online, widgets, rss, desktop

Do you want me to let you in on a little secret? Your favorite Online place to shop is not the place where you can get the best deals. Sure, you should shop where you feel comfortable, but you might be missing a lot of good offers if you do not look elsewhere. One of my new places to find the proverbial goods is SecretPrices.com.

They allow you to find what you need, get the best price for it and save loads of cash in the process. What is not to love in that transaction? SecretPrices.com allows bargain hunters to research products, compare prices and find special discounts. Every month merchants and manufacturers release hundreds of money saving promotions through mediums such as online coupons, rebates, and other promotional discounts.

There is no reason why you should be missing out on any of the offers.

You can either type in and search for what you are looking for, or click through the tabs on the top to do some browsing. With the days of Christmas shopping left dropping like flies, maybe it is about time you checked SecretPrices.com out for yourself.

Tags: deals, shopping, online, prices, offers

Now I am not one to complain a whole heck of a lot, but it does bug me that with most domain name auction Web sites you have to pay a monthly or yearly fee to take part. Now if you only have one or two domains to sell - and you don’t expect to make a fortune off of them - how is this fair?

Well I guess I am not the only one who feels this way - because 4Domains has recently launched a new service named DotPound.

Domain registrar 4Domains announced on Tuesday it has launched DotPound, a domain auction site that is free of listings and transaction fees. “Our motivation initially for this site was to offer some of our larger domain customers an exit strategy for their large domain holdings,” says Chuck Steinberger, CEO of 4Domains. “But as the project grew we realized that we could also increase the demand for registering new domain names and buying expired domain names if we provided a free auction service.”

A big thank you goes out to the folks at 4Domains to see that there really is a demand for this type of service out there today. Now I am not sure how well the service works, but if anything it is a nice start. It isn’t about how much money you can make on each person. We are not cattle here - we are real people. If you can draw in a lot of people to your idea you are in line to make a boatload of cash along the way.

Tags: free, membership, auctions, domains, dotpound, 4domains