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Bounce – A fun and easy way to share ideas on a website

Helvetireader

Helvetireader is a userscript that pares down Google Reader to the essentials. In particular, it is made for looking at just unread feeds in the expanded view, using Keyboard Shortcuts instead of on-screen buttons. It’ is not going to suit how everyone uses Google Reader, so you can take the CSS and personalize to your hearts content!

Better GReader

Better GReader is a Firefox Add-on that adds a menu of options that you can enable within Google Reader. You can find a list of the scripts featured at the download page.

Smart Subscribe Button

The Smart Google Reader Subscribe Button places an unobtrusive feed icon in the upper-right portion of the screen, allowing two-click subscription to feeds that are encountered and also lets you know if you are already subscribed to that feed or not.

Read it Later

Read it Later is a Firefox Addon that allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest.

Google Reader +

Google Reader + Twitter adds an option to posts allowing you to tweet that post with one press of a button.

Google Reader + Bookmarks adds an option to posts allowing you to add that post to Google Bookmarks with one press of a button.

Google Reader + Facebook adds an option to posts allowing you to share that post on Facebook with one press of a button.

Google Reader + Delicious adds an option to posts allowing you to add that post to Delicious with one press of a button.

Wrap Up

So, that’s that. Those are my favorite Google Reader game changers that are always inhabiting my reader. If you want a few more options take a look at Mashable’s 50+ Google Reader Extensions and Scripts For Firefox…that should keep you busy for a while. Also, if you have any favorites not mentioned here, please comment with a link!

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5 Tips to Improve Google Reader

Who is the team behind SixCentral?

SixCentral is comprised of 3 members: 2 developers and 1 UI designer. The lead developer, Wess Cope, has over 10 years of industry experience with a vast knowledge of many different languages including Python, the primary language of SixCentral. Sean Kerr also has over 10 years of industry experience and has most recently been involved in the formulation of D, an entirely new programming language.  Ryan Scherf handles all aspects of user interface and experience design.

Who designed the web app and how did you decide to settle on the final design?

As noted above, Ryan Scherf was responsible for front-end design and development. There were really two simple objectives to the interface:

1. We didn’t want anything too ’stark’ and ‘boring’. We realized that we would be marketing to designers in the short term, and felt that we needed an application design that would make us stand out against the competition.
2. The product needed to be easy to use. Since our target market was freelance designers, we could not assume that they were extremely technical or savvy, so therefore needed to ensure the experience was easy enough for any demographic.

What is the main reason that you came up with a Client Proposal Organization & Management System? (i.e. others made a bad stab at it, there isn’t anything else in the market etc.)

The idea actually came about as Ryan went off on a rant about not having an automated way to manage his freelance business. There is really not tool exactly like ours in the market (although one conveniently ’sprung’ up as we started developing). The niche seemed too critical to pass up, so we threw up a landing page with some ideas and immediately had hundreds of people asking about it.

What were some of the pitfalls that you ran into during the building of this app?

Our biggest pitfall was always time. All 3 of us have full time jobs and families, and trying to find time at the end of the day to work on the application was really a struggle. We really started off on the right foot and released our first beta in a month, however we lost steam as the day jobs started demanding more time from all of us. Staying on track while life was happening around us was really tough — but we somehow pushed through.

What is your monetization for this service? (advertising, monthly plan etc.)

To monetize the application, we plan to provide two separate plans: a free plan, and a subscription plan for $10/month. The free plan will be limited to a lower number of interactions with SixCentral, while the pay plan will have unlimited access to all of the features and interactions. This was as much of a fun and team building project as it was to make money, so we are just really excited to launch it and move on to the next project.

Managing client proposals is something that has to be kept secure. How have you addressed this situation for SixCentral?

Each client is given a private URL, based on and created by the SixCentral user. For example, a client like Apple could potentially receive a URL like: http://username.sixcentral.com/apple. Once a client goes to their client login page, they will have to use their e-mail address as well as a password created for them by the SixCentral user to log in.

We also plan to use a secure socket layer or HTTPS for a secure connection to the user.

The screenshots of your applications look amazingly clean and simple, how does this relate to having a great UI and ultimately a great UX for the end user?

We feel that the UI is the most important part about building any app. Sure, the technology is pretty cool behind the app (Django), but without an easy-to-use and simple UI, the users won’t come back. As we mentioned above, this is especially true with our target market of freelance designers, as generally we as designers are very opinionated and have an eye for when things are right or wrong.

One of the options that SixCentral has is Follow Up reminders. How crucial is having follow up reminders so you don’t let potential clients and potential business slip through the cracks.

As freelancers, we are generally awarded the luxury of missed or slipped deadlines and usually it goes unnoticed. However, unless you have an amazing memory, we all forget certain items each day. Our follow-up reminders were designed to help you stay on track, whether you are managing one client or dozens. Keep on track with your timelines will show your clients a professionalism and timeliness that they may not have experienced before with other freelancers.

Automation of your proposal process is going to be a great way to streamline your proposal process and keep you on task and not wasting time shuffling through papers. How did you manage to pull this off successfully in this app?

We’ve broken out Proposals into 5 main pieces: Overview, Purpose & Goals, Process & Deliverables, Pricing Specifics and Other. This allows the user to be completely organized in terms of having a structured framework for their proposals, as well as the flexibility and vagueness to where the sections are left for interpretation. We have also implemented Textile, so the markup within each section can become as rich as they’d like in terms of bulleted lists, bold text, etc.

The key feature for Proposal automation is the ability to import previous Proposals to where you can simply just duplicate an older proposal (or perhaps a proposal template you have created). The idea is that you would create a single Proposal template that you could then in turn duplicate and use time and time again.

Have you pursued/will you pursue an iPhone counter part to this app? Why or Why not?

We do have plans to create versions of SixCentral on different mediums in the future using our custom API. An iPhone app is a bit tricky because of the heavy content that could perhaps be included with each Proposal. We’re examining different ideas of read only views, or even allowing for you to comment on your different projects, but not necessarily pump the full functionality of SixCentral into an iPhone app — it’s just too complex.

Need More Six Central in Your life?

Here are some places you can connect with the brand and the guys from the interview.

Site | Twitter | Ryan on Twitter | Wess on Twitter

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Behind The App: Six Central

Questions:

Did the disappearance hurt them networking with their key customers since they didn’t tell anyone where they went?

Will the rebranding after such a long time hurt the brand?

Is this a good example or bad of how to work on an app?

How should Brands handle this situation?

Links:

unblab.com

Old Site Design

Old Splash Design

Unblab on Twitter

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Discussion: Does Brand Consistency Matter When Launching Your App?

So, take that basic concept, throw it into the cloud computing environment and you get services like SugarSync and Dropbox. Ok, so technically speaking, they are (NAS) Network Attached Storage, but please spare me my illusions. I have a RAID array!

What they do for creatives

These two services provide instantaneous backup of all of your creative work and allow you to access it from anywhere with an internet connection. If you combine one of these services with a Portable Web Toolbox, you could have a completely mobile office.

How they do it

Once you create an account, you create a folder that will hold all of the data that you would like to backup and access on-the-go.

When you save something in this folder, it automatically syncs with the app’s servers, putting your work in the cloud. If you upload something through the website, it will be saved in this folder on your computer. The awesomeness kicks in when you add in more computers.

An example setup

I currently have a pc with Windows XP, a laptop with Windows Vista and an iMac with OS X Leopard. To really give these services a run for their money, I have both of them running out of a single shared folder. This means that every file that I save gets sent to the Dropbox server, the Sugarsync server, my laptop and my pc. (I’m currently working on my mac in Espresso, but I have done parts of this post on my laptop with Dreamweaver and on an XP PC at work using notepad (by accessing the website).

Each time I click save on the html file that I am writing this post in, I can actually see the notification pop up on my PC, indicating that a file was updated. I have not actually run benchmarking tests, but I firmly believe that these service networks are faster than my home network. The simple fact that it is automated instead of manual is the real “time-saver”.

What they do different

At their core, both services function almost exactly the same. Files are saved in a folder, which get updated on the website and on as many computers as you like. The difference is how you can interact with your data with mobile devices.

From what I experienced, it seems that Dropbox focused on creating a web app for access, while Sugarsync put their focus an iPhone app. You can use each service through your mobile device to upload, download and view your files, but of the two, Dropbox has the more polished web app.

For iPhone users, Sugarsync made a rockin’ app. It is very fast and easy to navigate.

What they cost

Each service currently has a free trial that gives you full functionality and 2GB of storage. Both of them also run affiliate programs that enable you to earn earn extra space if you invite others and they sign up.

While 2GB is great for testing them out and seeing if you would like to use them, you really need more space to be working in the cloud! For Sugarsync, packages range from 30GB – 250GB and are priced from $49.99 – $249.99 per year. For Dropbox, you can choose from 50GB or 100GB packages and they are priced at $99 or $199.99 per year.

Of the two, you get more gig for your buck with Sugarsync. Either option is significantly less than the hardware that you would have to purchase to run a redundant backup on one machine.

Why you should be using them

• Automated protection against crashes. If my mac died right now, I would be able to finish this article on my laptop or my pc from the point of my last save. (As soon as I got done crying).
• Worldwide access to your files. No matter where I am tomorrow, I have the ability to access this article to edit it.
• Save embarrassment. Now I know that you are probably much more organized than I am, but I am willing to admit that I have saved files on the wrong machine and/or forgotten to save them on a usb drive before going somewhere that I needed them. If you think there’s the slightest chance that could happen to you, these services can save you some face when showing up at a client’s office to show them your masterpiece!
• Sharing. All of your items can be shared with others as well. Each service has the ability to create a shared folder that you can send invites to access.

Try them, they’re free

I suggest that you sign up for both services, save some files and then access them online and on multiple machines. This will allow you to determine which interface works best for you. Once you’ve done that, I believe that you will see how great these apps are and how much time and hassle they can save you.

As for me, I’m just happy to finally have my RAID, even if it is in a cloud!

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RAID Clouds: Backup and Syncing with Dropbox and Sugarsync

Firefox

Use – Web Browser

Bonus – Install Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar to complete your toolbox

Size – 27-77MB (depending on addons)

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Thunderbird

Use – Email Client

Bonus – Also has RSS Capabilities

Size – 25MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Sunbird

Use – Calendar, Scheduler and GTD

Bonus – Leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on

Size – 17MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

OpenOffice

Use – Office Suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database

Bonus – Compatable with MS Office, Word Perfect and Lotus

Size – 231MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Notepad++

Use – Text Editor

Bonus – Major features include syntax highlighting and auto-completion

Size – 10MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Xampp

Use – Setting up an integrated server package of Apache, mySQL, PHP and more

Bonus – Available in both a full and lite package depending on your personal needs

Size – 221MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

FileZilla

Use – FTP Client

Bonus – Has an intuitive drag and drop interface

Size – 9MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Gimp

Used For – Editing Images

Size – 67MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

7zip

Used For – Compressing and Uncompressing Files

Bonus – Compress and Uncompress 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, and TAR. Uncompress RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB, and NSIS

Size – 2.5MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Sumatra PDF

Used For – Viewing PDFs

Bonus – Extremely small and starts very fast

Size – 1.5MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

VLC

Used For – Media Player (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, WMV, mp3, ogg, avi, DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols)

Bonus – Can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network

Size – 32MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Toucan

Used For – Synchronise, backup and encrypt data

Bonus – Includes portable variables, point to places on you USB drive no matter what its drive letter is

Size – 3.1MB

Download Portable App

pidgin

Used For – Instant Messaging

Bonus – Works with AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo and more

Size – 50MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Your Turn

Were there any apps essential to your toolbox that I left out? Leave me a comment and let me know.

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Portable Web Toolbox

An interview with Mike McDerment, CEO of FreshBooks

“Billing should be simple.” Is one of the underlying principles to FreshBooks, what personal experience drove you to creation of this app? At what point did you say: “I have had enough…. I need to make my own version of this” ?

In January 2003 I was using Word to invoice the clients of my design agency. When you use Word, the best way to invoice an existing client is to open an old invoice that has the client address info in it already, then enter the new invoices details. So that’s what I did – I opened an old invoice, entered the new info and saved it. Then I said, “F$#%^$%^%$!!!” because I forgot to rename the old file so I lost the old info. That was it, I literally said, “there’s got go be a better way” and I spent the next two weeks of my spare time and built an online invoicing service to bill my clients.

Tell us a bit about SoftwareasaNetwork.com

Software as a Network (SaaN) is an approach to the design of web apps. Traditionally business apps have been designed as silos. You have your account, and you invite me into it to do work. I have my account, and I invite you in. Trouble is our accounts are distinct entities in this paradigm and I have to log into your account, you have to log into mine and managing all those URLs, usernames and passwords is a massive headache. Enter SaaN.

When you build a web app, you want to start with the network you want to build in mind. Then you want to build experiences around the individuals in that network. Silos aren’t necessary –and they never were – they’re the result of short sightedness on the part of designers and developers. Accounts should talk to each other and each user should be able to stay within their own account to get their work done.

I have an analogy I like to explain this. Lots of people use collaborate remotely using web apps. Many times they do it from within their own homes wearing pajamas. If two people choose to work together, neither is forced to relocate themselves to the location of the other. Why does software insist that you do? With FreshBooks’ online time tracking and invoicing network, our users stay inside their own accounts to get work done – they don’t need to relocate – even if they are working for someone else.

How did you come to the decision to launch and expand on a new model?

The inspiration for our networked model came from my own pains, and those of our customers. I used to run a design agency, and I worked with contractors who did software development. In the early days I used to bring in all the work and dole it out to my contractors, but as their businesses grew, they started inviting me to do their design and project management. The consequence of this was – at any given time – I might owe someone $7000 for their work, and they might owe me $12,000 for mine, but since we were using Word and Excel and/or QuickBooks to do our invoicing, it was incredibly hard to figure out who owed who what without actually doing forensic accounting and sorting through a million emails. This whole process stunk, and it ate up time and energy. At FreshBooks customer dinners across North America we heard about these pains time and time again from our customers. FreshBooks’ online invoicing network is the solution to this problem.

Since FreshBooks accounts now talk to each other, it’s easy to tell who owes you money and, what you owe them. When another FreshBooks account holder invoices you, you can choose to receive their invoices inside your FreshBooks account. If you have 10 contractors who are all invoicing you, you now have a standardized platform to receive all your invoices instead of getting 3 different Excel templates, 2 QuickBooks invoices and 5 faxes. The time savings working on a platform like this is enormous. That is just the invoicing part of the equation, what about time tracking? FreshBooks covers that too.

If you have contractors who bill time on your projects, now you can manage them easily in FreshBooks. Simply add a contractor to a project and they will get an invitation to join your project (if they don’t already have a FreshBooks account they can get their own account for free and at no cost to you). When they log hours to your project from within their account, you can see those hours and stay abreast of their contributions. Also, as I’ve outlined above, it’s dead easy for them to invoice you when their work is done.

Got privacy concerns? FreshBooks manages all the sensitive data, and only shows it to the right people at the right times. Your contractors never see your client’s name or address, and your clients don’t see your contractors. Your contractors can set a rate to bill you at, and you can rebill your contractors to higher rates without your clients or your contractors ever knowing. This is how it’s done in the real world, so we built FreshBooks to manage these pieces of your billing process.

Your UI is simple and clean. Why is it important for the UI to blend into the background so the user can concentrate on the point of the app?

I played a bit of hockey growing up (bear with me here), and I played defence. You know the mark of a great defencemen? You don’t notice them. I’d say the same is true of your application when someone uses it – you want them to get into an unconscious flow where they don’t even notice they are using your application. If they do notice it, you want them to be experiencing surprise or delight (“that was…fast, helpful, easy, hilarious…”) – kind of like when a defenceman scores. J

So with that in mind, I like to distinguish UX (User eXperience) rather than UI (User Interface) – it drives the point home that you are designing experiences, not interfaces. We have a concept at FreshBooks called “4E”, which stands for “Execute on Extraordinary Experiences Everyday”. We’re in the experience business and using our app is part of that process, and so is calling us on the phone or sending us an email. It all matters, and while the app is the core, we think in terms of a holistic experience and every step in your app is part of that.

Need More Freshbooks?

Site | Twitter | Software As A Network

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Behind The App: Freshbooks – Painless Billing

So, I was lucky enough to score an invite to a new app called Notable, created by ZURB. I say lucky and I really mean it. This app rocks!

Feedback

Notable is designed to be an app that teams who create websites can use to give feedback on projects. Their website states that it is the “Easiest way for teams to provide feedback on websites.” It is not only the easiest, it is also the most extensive. Within minutes of receiving my invite, I had a site into the app to begin testing. (To make this very easy, they provide a Firefox add-on which lets you capture a site with a single click.)

Feedback, Feedback, Feedback

As an app fan, I have tested out multiple feedback services. Notable utilizes familiar controls to highlight and comment areas, but expands greatly on the overall functionality. I immediately started highlighting areas of the site that I imported and making comments. When I was done, I noticed a down state on “Screenshot” and two buttons for “Code” and “Copywriting”. Can you guess what they let you do?

You got it! You are able to switch over to the source code and mark it up. It also strips all of the actual copy writing from the site and lays it out like an office document for easy reading and review. When I finished playing with these features, I saw the huge potential that Notable has. Most feedback apps that I have tested are geared towards making revisions or getting approval. Notable is designed to manage a project from start to finish.

Everyone can use it

Each person involved in the creation of a website can, and probably should, use this app. For a decent-sized project, you may have a designer, developer, copywriter and project manager. Oh, and don’t forget: the client! Notable provides a centralized location to review and provide feedback for all aspects of the design process. Understanding the need for this tool to be used by the team and also to get final approval from a client, Notable allows you to set permissions for each user.  (This means your client won’t have to see the designer/developer arm wrestling that went on during the building of the site.)

It’s all about the Team

Along with the ability to give feedback for multiple areas of the project, you also get the ability to view this feedback in several ways. This is vital when working in a team environment, where people have different preferences for consuming information.

Features Include:

• Section Feedback:

Each comment is highlighted with a yellow background in its viewing area: screenshot, code and copywriting.

• Dashboard Style:

Feedback is also displayed in well-designed layout including a screenshot with feedback list, each snippet of code that was commented on and any text that was commented on.

• PDF:

At the click of a button, a very eye-friendly pdf is created featuring the applicable parts of each section. (The one used in this sample was 1.3mb)

Those are the features that stood out from the crowd, but they also offer the standard ability to email feedback and send invitations for users to access the workspace.

My feedback

Overall, Notable was a joy to test out. The design is minimal, in the best way. It stays out of your way, providing excellent navigation with good usage of colors and sizing for buttons and titles. Creating users is very simple and the organization available for projects is deep. It takes a little getting used to the difference between workspaces and sets, but makes great sense once you have arranged them properly.

It’s hard to criticize functionality on an invitation-only beta app, but the one thing that I would like to have improved is importing a site without using the Firefox add-on. It is very easy to find how to import an image using the website alone, but I could not find a way to import a site by just typing a url. I highly recommend that you request an invite and check out this app. It has huge potential!

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Team-Oriented Feedback with Notable

I have setup multiple apps that I run like this but one of my favorites is Instapaper. If you’re like me you have 65 tabs open in your browser and you sometimes need to clear those out and check them later. Instapaper is an app that lets you add the links to their service through an applet and then you can look at them later. Great! So now I can get rid of my 65 tabs in firefox and be more productive because I don’t have all of these other distractions.

Video How-To

Resources

Instapaper

Fluid App

Instapaper Restyled

credit to finding this add-on to TimVanDamme Site | Twitter

Fluid Icons Flickr Group

Free Menubar Icon

instapapertif

This is designed by me (chadengle) I am giving this icon away free for whatever you wish. Did you end up using the icon? Take a screen cap and add it to our flickr group.

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Using Menu Extra SSB’s for Better Productivity

Elliott you describe yourself as being someone who makes complicated web apps. What would you consider to be complicated?

That’s a good question. It’s really a bit of a marketing line – most of my apps are actually very simple. I guess it really means that I build apps which can do some involved, and traditionally difficult things – but by using powerful tools, they’re easy to do. What used to take hundreds of lines of proprietary code, now takes a few elegant lines of re-usable code.

Filetweet is an intuitive idea for twitter. What prompted the idea and what problems did you run across?

Well, I’d been dealing with files and attachments in applications, and I was trying to come up with an app which filled a specific gap. Sending files on Twitter has been done before, but not very elegantly – and only with Basic Auth, where you give someone your password. I thought I’d try and make a simpler one. It helps to imagine a tweet as a tiny email. You’ve got a sender and a recipient, and you’ve got content, but you don’t have attachments. Sometimes it’s useful to draw these kinds of silly parallels.

I came up with the idea and built it that night – it wasn’t too difficult. It uses S3 for storage, and the fantastic Twitter Auth plugin. Actually, just before I was about to launch, Twitter changed an API setting which broke quite a few Twitter OAuth apps. We all had to downgrade to an older version of the gem, which doesn’t break with Twitter, just to get things running again. It only took a couple of hours, but it sure was conspicuous timing.

Why did filetweet become something that you felt users on twitter needed?

People share files with each other all the time – by email, over IM, in web apps – I figured I’d just make the process one step easier. That’s the trick: if you can make an everyday activity easier for someone, you’re ahead.

From your site I get the feeling you’re fun and relaxed. Why is this an attitude that helps you in your everyday tasks?

It’s good not to take yourself too seriously – at least from time to time. It lets you keep a healthy perspective on what you’re doing, and I guess it helps to makes you more approachable.

What recent things have you had in the pipeline?

I’ve done a few apps recently: Spreadtweet, a Twitter client that looks like Excel, Blocky, a Twitter spam-blocking app, Whobuilt.it, which lets you claim the sites you build, FileShare HQ, an FTP file sharing app – it’s been a busy year!
None of them other than FileShare HQ actually make me any money, but I guess that’s how it goes. They were all a lot of fun and great publicity, and people seem to find them useful, which is very rewarding.

If you had one mulligan (do-over) in your career what would it be?

Hmm, good question. I think I would’ve tried getting into Rails earlier – I remember looking at it when it was new, and thinking, “That’s a bit too tricky.” Turns out, there’s a lot to gain from difficult things.

What are the 5 most valuable apps you use on a daily basis?

Reddit, if that’s an app. Twitterriffic, Textmate, GMail, and Basecamp. Other than that, Safari. Oh, and Skitch. I also use Spreadtweet constantly, just so that when people ask me this question I can plug my own app.

For Carsonified’s event booking system: what were some of the steps you had to take to make reliable app?

I liked the error reporting and 500 pages the best. On the very rare occasion that something went wrong, and the site served up an error page, the user was given about 5 ways to contact me directly. This turned out to be great, because I’d get an automatic notification that something went wrong, and I’d be half-way through fixing it by the time I got the user’s email. Sometimes, you send out a message to someone who’s having difficulty, and it’s the last thing they’re expecting. It’s hard to imagine a website being in touch with its developer in real-time, so it’s a welcome surprise when someone says “Hey, it looks like you’re having trouble booking – how can I help?” Error pages are inevitable. Unfortunately, if you do your job properly, you don’t get to do this very often.

We usually just avoid talking about error pages, but you have to deal with the realization that things do go wrong. It’s not always your fault – but you have to know what happened, and when, and most importantly WHO had the problem, so you can help them.

What is with your affinity for pink?

Interestingly enough, pink was a masculine colour before World War 2 – and blue was feminine. It’s interesting to see how completely the roles have changed, and yet how immutable they seem now.

As for me, I guess it’s gotten to the stage where pink is so stereotyped in one direction that I felt it’d be nice and refreshing to try and roll with it. It’s always good to have a visual identity – so someone can say, “I recognize this style; I know who this is.” As with fashion, pink is pretty inoffensive these days – if you’re confident, I think you can pull it off.

What are some great resources for new devs to draw upon to learn and grow themselves into better developers?

The internet, and your own spare time. There are far too many resources to name – everything is available 24/7, and everything is free – the only difference is your level of commitment. People are always asking me, “I’d like to get into development – where do I start?” I don’t actually bother answering any more, because these people never end up actually doing anything. If they were really interested, they’d already have started by themselves. It just takes time – spare time, weekends – in general, the more time you spend trying new things, the better you get. Asking for a shortcut before you’ve even started is just lazy.

Figure out who you really admire, and then just set yourself up to do what they’re doing. Chances are, they’ve spent a lot of time choosing a path. Once you’ve mastered that, then you can try and reinvent the wheel – but don’t start Day 1 by writing your own PHP framework, because you’re wasting your time.

If you do ask for someone’s advice, take them up on it. If someone suggests Rails, try Rails – there’s no law that says you can’t use more than one framework. People like to see their advice being taken seriously – if you spend time and effort giving someone advice, and then they don’t take it, why would you bother the next time?

Finally, once you’ve started, make sure that you can always look back at what you were doing 6 months ago and cringe. That means you’re improving!

Need More Elliott In Your Life?

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Behind the App: Interview with Elliott Kember

Seesmic releases an update to their app

iPhone 3.0 Software Update Launches

TweetPsych Launches

iPhone 3GS ships and is ready to buy.

Sirius-XM Finally Comes to the iPhone Platform

Facebook Launches Usernames

Photo by pshab

Tweetdeck refresh + iPhone app

(read our review here)

Shaun Inman Launches Fever

(read our review)

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This Week in Apps – 6.15-6.19

To make the most of the Hot list, Fever asks you to make a simple distinction between essential and supplemental feeds. Essential, must-read feeds are Kindling. Supplemental, low signal-to-noise feeds are Sparks. Sparks ignite Kindling raising the temperature of items and links that should not be missed.

Fever is an awesome alternative for readers because it lets you know what you need to read. I felt like I needed more information or a demo before I made my $30 purchase so here is a video review about the app.

Availability:

Fever comes as a web application. This means that is open to PC and Mac users. However you have to host it yourself so if your server doesn’t support a Unix-like server (no IIS) running Apache, PHP 4.2.3+ and MySQL 3.23+ then you can’t run it. The good news is that it also has an iPhone version as well. This makes it super easy for you to take your feeds with you and keep them in the same exact order that they were in when you left your desk. You can also run fever using Fluid App (highlighted here) and I am 99.9% sure you can run Mozilla Prizm as well. This means you can have an awesome stand alone reader to use with your feeds.

iPhone Images

Where can I connect with the Creator Shaun?

Shaun is on Twitter he also is the creator of HaveAMint a fresh look at your website traffic. Shaun also has a blog and a wicked looking website.

Twitter Buzz:

Future Posts?

I am going to play around with Fever more and get to know the ins and outs of it. I plan on making a review of it vs. Google Reader to see if the app lives up to its $30 price tag compared to its free G-Reader counterpart. Where ratings are given to both of the apps and the +/- are weighed to see which one is the best bet depending on what you want out of your reader.

Stay tuned for the post. The best way is to subscribe or follow us on twitter so you don’t miss a beat.

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Fever: Creative RSS Solutions for Busy People

1. What brought you into the idea of making CurdBee?

This was the time we were looking to smoothen the billing process since our inception in early 2004. At the beginning we had just a handful of client accounts to manage so the spreadsheet + .doc template solution was sufficient enough to send a decent invoice and keep track of the activity. But as we entered in to more contracts things got complicated with billing tuning to be a key priority with more work to do (e.g. periodic invoicing, collection tracking, etc.), which made us look for solutions available from paid to free, proprietary to open source, hosted to installable applications. There were quite a few excellent solutions but they were either beyond our budget or way too complex for what we wanted to. This made us think of creating our own simple solution to meet Vesess billing needs while saving time for more productive stuff. With this in mind, we created a single screen billing app and replaced our spreadsheet + .doc solution quite smoothly. Days passed and everyone started to talk about Web 2.0, with software as a service. New and innovative solutions were being added to the marked on a daily basis. We realized this would be the ideal time to enter the small business product market, which was an idea we had in the back of our minds for awhile. We selected our billing app which we developed for our own use as an entry point, and a few months down the line, CurdBee came in to play as a free service targeted at entrepreneurs/SMEs with similar needs to us, and yet enjoy simple solutions.

2. During your thoughts on branding and identity what other names did you toss around before you landed on CurdBee?

That’s what happens more often. You spend most of your time picking the name, looking for the .com availability than concentrating on creating a better experience, something even we did in our other projects. But for some reason, whether you believe it or not, CurdBee was the first and the last name we came up with for our billing application. CurdBee was the first project name we assigned internally since calling it “the billing application project”. By the time we completed the product, all the team mates were in love with that name and even the .com was available. In our culture Curd is a symbol of success, purity and Bee on the other hand stands for the efficiency and team spirit, both of which worked well with our product.

3. What kind of hurdles did you have to overcome in making the CurdBee application?

While the design and development of the product was not easy by any means, we were able to execute the idea on par with our original intentions. The hardest part in getting CurdBee out the door, then, was adapting it to suit our clientele. As new players in this field, we were starting out from scratch, and a lot of what we did was a trial and error process as we worked hard to ensure that the features which our future users would want were included in the application. After a lot of testing and debugging, the first version of CurdBee went live almost year ago (June 2008) and we discovered that we had hit the nail on the head. People liked the product and we were lucky to get featured in LifeHacker, MSNBC, etc. which resulted in more account signups. Since then, we have been constantly evolving based on our users’ needs, and this is what we plan to do in the future as well. Being a team from outside the United States and Europe, we also had to work hard to win our users’ trust, and did so by offering a totally free product for about 10 months. After we had a steady user base, we naturally took the development of CurdBee to the next stage.

4. If you were doing this all over again what is some insight that you could pass on to new app developers that would be beneficial?

Know the purpose of your application and who will eventually use it. Do adequate research and find out what majority of the users want in common, and then aim to develop those features without complicating your product by overloading it with features. Especially in today’s vibrant post-Web 2.0 world, there really is no excuse for creating products that nobody uses. Get out there, find out what people want, and make it. Be humble and ready to change – your users will always be the ones to impart the lessons you need to learn. If you ignore them, they will ignore you.

5. How important is keeping a clean and functional UI when making an app especially one that deals with something so critical like billing?

For us it’s all about the UI. Simple, clean and functional interfaces. It doesn’t mean we ignore other stuff like code quality, scalability, security, etc. when it comes to apps, but we strongly believe that the majority of the people put more weight on what they see and how they interact compared to how good the backend is when selecting their products. Billing is a common function to any business whether you are a lawyer, web designer or a plumber. So as the designers, our objective was to make billing, something you enjoy irrespective of your knowledge, computer literacy, experience, etc.

6. Through CurdBee you can customize your colors to make it to your liking. How is customization important to keep a users experience positive?

Yes, CurdBee does allow users to customize their branding by changing colors and adding their logo to invoices. However with the introduction of the PRO version, we have gone couple of steps forward by letting the users have full control over their messages (invoice notifications, reminders, etc.) and have created a platform with that focuses on features such as recurring billing, estimates, etc. We really hope these customization options would create a positive user experience allowing more users to fulfill their needs at minimum cost. Everyone wants to feel unique, and at CurdBee, we pride ourselves in giving each of our users the ability to customize their experience. We don’t like it when applications tell us how we should behave, and believe very strongly that people should be the ones in control. At CurdBee, customizability is at the very core of our design philosophy, and something that we focus on in every project of ours.

7. How do you discern what the right amount of customization is without loosing the integrity of your app?

We do get requests for more features, better customization options so on and so forth from our passionate users and some of them are of real value. But then again we are following a wait and see approach in deciding which features, customization request to roll out as higher customization / flexibility could make CurdBee a complex application for the average user and those who with simple needs. We’ve seen simple, clean applications getting very complex in trying to make them all-in-one

solutions, and this, we feel, destroys the user experience. This is one of the main reasons why we implemented an on-demand architecture, so the user can make the decision regarding which features he or she needs and still keep the application clean, simple and functional.

8. How important is safety in making an application that deals with users crucial information like billing?

Safety has always been a top priority for us at Vesess. From our early days, through the development of CurdBee and the recent release of CurdBee PRO, the integrity of our users’ data is of paramount importance to us. While we do undertake all the usual precautions when it comes to our server side security, we also recently began offering SSL secured billing with CurdBee PRO, a feature that many users will no doubt find attractive. In terms of code, all core components of CurdBee are developed and tested entirely in house, and we are therefore 100% sure of the quality of the application.

9. CurdBee offers PayPal and Google Checkout integration as well as multiple currencies and PDF support. How vital is integration?

Sending a bill to your client online could certainly make life easy for most of the people when they have more important stuff to attend. But what if we can go that extra mile by allowing busy customers to accept payments online? What if we can let them download PDFs directly and send it via email if they like? They will save both time and money which will make a significant difference at the end of the day, isn’t it? Everyone is trying to go global and do business with the world. So, if you can send bills in the currency preferred by your customer, won’t he or she be happy? At Vesess we use at least four currencies when working with clients from different continents and we have experienced this first hand, which convinced us to become one of the first billing apps to allow multiple currencies and make our product a usable one for the majority of people around the world.

10. Do you think the final outcome of making the app outweighed all of the struggle while making it?

Most definitely. It is a truly a joy to open up our stats page every morning and see new sign ups, and sent invoices. As a SME it’s truly a privilege to have the opportunity of helping so many others like us. The development process was long and difficult, but the rush of creating a web application that is used the world over cannot really be explained in words! It really is a wonderful feeling to be of service to others. This is our first attempt at developing an application and it was a great learning for the entire team. Although we had experience creating apps for our clients, we mostly handled the tech side of those but here we had to get the app out and then start working really hard to get the word across to our future users as well. With the PRO version coming into play we have opened a new revenue stream for our product and it’s encouraging to see more and more users going PRO, which in turn confirms that they value our service and are willing to support us to make CurdBee an even better product.

——————

Where Can I get more Curdbee?

Curdbee on the web | Curdbee on Twitter | Vesess Site

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Behind The App: Curdbee – sweet and simple billing

1. Launchy combined with AutoHotKey

I love quicksilver on mac but have yet to find a single comparable app for windows. The best solution I’ve found so far is using Launchy in conjunction with AutoHotKey. If any readers have a better solution please feel free to leave a comment and let me know.

AutoHotKey lets you create custom hotkeys for launching programs and opening files as well as create better keyboard, joystick and mouse macros to handle repetitive tasks. For all of your other application launching needs, as well as a range of other options, there is Launchy. To get the most out of Launchy I highly recommend Take Launchy Beyond Application Launching.

2. Foxit Reader

I have a pretty fast computer and it still takes a minute for Adobe Acrobat to open a .pdf file. For much quicker PDF viewing, I highly recommend Foxit instead. Foxit is small and fast and uses a very small amount of your system resources and even lets you annotate the file you’re reading. Some advantages of Foxit Reader:

• Incredibly small: The download size of Foxit Reader is just a fraction of Acrobat Reader 20 M size.
• Breezing-fast: When you run Foxit Reader, it launches instantly without any delay. You are not forced to view an annoying splash window displaying company logo, author names, etc.
• Annotation tool: Have you ever wished to annotate (or comment on) a PDF document when you are reading it? Foxit Reader allows you to draw graphics, highlight text, type text and make notes on a PDF document and then print out or save the annotated document.
• Text converter: You may convert the whole PDF document into a simple text file.
• High security and privacy: Foxit Reader highly respects the security and privacy of users and will never connect to the Internet without users’ permission. While other PDF readers often silently connect to the Internet in the background. Foxit PDF Reader does not contain any spyware

3. Google Services

I’m talking about a number of the services Google offers here. Mainly Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs. I love having all of this info at my fingertips regardless of where I am or what computer I’m on. I would honestly be completely lost without these outstanding web apps.

Google Calendar is a must to help me keep myself organized. With Google Calendar you can set recurring or one-time appointments and tasks, have different colored tags to help keep different kinds of tasks straight, and import any of your Remember the Milk lists for full integration into your calendar. You can also set up email or text alerts to remind you about upcoming events.

Google Docs is a free, online office suite. I love it because I have access to my docs anywhere and on any computer and it also keeps me from having to have an office suite on my hard drive. I’m not a fan of MS Office due to it’s pricetag and I’m not a fan of Open Office because it’s such a resource hog. I have yet to come across anything that Google Docs can’t handle including opening and exporting a document with pretty much any doc type you could need.

Gmail is simply an amazing email client that allows you to access any of your email accounts, from anywhere with any computer. Zen Habits has a terrific article on on how you can Turn Gmail into your Ultimate Productivity Center.

4. RescueTime

Rescue Time is a productive freelancer’s best friend and a lazy freelancer’s worst enemy. Once installed it keeps track of everything you do on your computer as well as tracking every website you visit if you use Firefox. Getting weekly reports on exactly how you spend every second of your time can be a real eye opener and show you exactly how productive you’re being (or not being in some cases). I’ve also found it to be very helpful when I start getting off track in pointing out how unproductive I’m being giving me a gentle nudge to work more and play less.

5. Toggl

While rescue time is great for letting you know how and where you’re spending your time, you’ll still need a time tracking app that you can edit and control for your projects. For instance, knowing that you spent 20 hours this week in your text editor won’t help you when you need to know how long you worked on individual projects. That’s where Toggl comes in.

Toggl is an online time tracking application that is very quick and easy to set up and allows you to track the time you spend on your projects with just a couple of mouse clicks.

6. Mind42

I usually try to take a couple of hours out of each week just to sit down and brainstorm. Mind mapping is a great way to do this and Mind42 is a wonderful free online mind mapping application. If you don’t know what mind mapping is you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. The next time you’re struggling for ideas, go read the Wikipedia article on mind mapping and give it a try.

Mind42.com is a browser based online mind mapping application. With Mind42.com installing mindmapping tools is no longer needed – for a hassle-free mindmapping experience. Just open the browser and launch the application when needed.

7. Memento

I’m an avid note jotter and Memento is the first app that took over my regular pen & notebook. Note that while Vista isn’t listed as a supported OS, I’ve been using it for months with no problems.

Here are some of Memento’s key features:

• You can choose each individual note’s color and size.
• All notes are automatically saved every minute
• New notes always open on top of other windows
• When you close Memento it saves the current configuration so that when you reopen the program, notes are exactly as they were when you closed it.

8. VirtuaWin

One of the things I really miss when I have to work in windows instead of linux is multiple desktops. They save so much time when you have to have multiple programs open at the same time. I’ve tried a few different applications that are meant to serve this purpose but none have been as consistantly stable as VirtuaWin.

VirtuaWin allows you to have up to 9 different desktops, each of which can be highly customized. The basic app is small and fast without any unnecessary features. However, you can install modules for any added features you might need making this a fairly powerful application.

9. Remember the Milk

I make to-do lists like I jot down notes so I need a great GTD (Getting Things Done) application to keep me sane. I’ve tried many different apps on multiple operating systems and, while I really enjoy some, I have yet to find one as complete as Remember the Milk. And when combined with Google Calendar, you have a scheduling tool that’s not to be underestimated.

Remember the Milk is a must have application for any list lover!

10. Picasa

Even though I use photoshop for major projects, I really like picasa as both an image manager and to do simple tasks such as editing images for my blog. It also comes with Picasa Photo Viewer, a gorgeous and fast image previewer.

The photo viewer is a fast, lightweight application for viewing images on your desktop or through Windows Explorer. Installed with Picasa 3, it lets you to take a quick look at images without having to fully open the Picasa 3 program.

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10 Free Apps to Fuel your Productivity

Unblab

Unblab is a webmail service created with the hope that you will use it as little as possible. You can:

• 1. Finish your email in less time.
• 2. Do something else.

That’s our goal. That’s unblab.

Site | Twitter

Ego

Ego gives you one central—and lovely—location to check web statistics that matter to you. With support for Feedburner, Google Analytics, Mint, Squarespace and Twitter, you can quickly view the number of visits to your website (including daily, hourly and monthly numbers), feed subscription totals and changes, and how many people are following you on Twitter.

Site | Twitter | iTunes

LittleSnapper

LittleSnapper is a screen grab app with an incredibly clean user interface and amazing functionality.  It allows you to take screen shots of entire sites, images snippets of pages or whatever you wish that is on your screen. Then you can tag them, edit them, share them with your co-workers for a project, share your inspiration with your friends or just keep yourself for later in life. This app has many uses and even has a compatible iPhone app.

Site | Twitter

SUBERNOVA

SUBERNOVA is a web based project management tool to help solo designers, writers, bloggers, etc manage their projects, milestones, clients, track time, get reminders for important deadlines, automatically remind their clients of overdue invoices, schedule emails and manage project related links and inspirations all in one intuitive and elegant user interface.

Site | Twitter

Espionage

Unobtrusive, intuitive, and simple to use. Espionage is designed to integrate with Apple’s Finder seamlessly, so that you can protect only the data that you want protected, and without having to resort to any special “vaults”.

Site | Twitter

Delivery Status Touch

Delivery Status touch will let you track packages from UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, TNT, and many more. You can track orders from Amazon, Apple, and others before they even ship. Your full tracking details are just a tap away, and you can also search for your package’s location in Google Maps. Best of all, you can sync tracking numbers with our free Dashboard widget or with any web browser. You can also grab deliveries straight from mobile Safari with just a couple of taps.

Site | Twitter | iTunes

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6 Apps with a Good Web Presence