Digital tools are different than regular ones, especially in one aspect. You don't necessarily even know what's OUT there, to consider as an option. Searching only gets you so far. So, what tools are available for helping you find what tools are available?
First, let's jump back to that searching thing. You can enter whatever particular tool that you know of and append "vs" to it. So, like you can just type in something ilke "Bizplan vs" and sift through the results to see what else is available. Ultimately, through using this technique, you'll probably come across sites that purport to do these kinds of comparison for you. There are ton of such review sites, naturally, because not only can they place ads for revenue while you compare, but they might also have affiliate revenue gatherered from recommending one of these to you. Don't worry too much about that - they are indeed providing a good service to you. Well, worry a little. Some of them go about it in the wrong way, like trying to capture your data for further sales. You don't need more spam filling up your inbox. Here are a few great comparison sites to remember:
GetApp.com - Based in Spain, this site has a clean, modern design and ultimately gets you to a point where you can see your comparisons of Saas offerings, listed side-by-side in a chart. That's sweet. No registration is required, but you can create an account and start adding your own reviews, bookmark apps that you like, or get recommendations based on the type of industry you are interested in.
Slant.co - Any product. Any category. It's like a socially-driven mashup of a question site, and a product review site. It's a bit like an "anything goes" review site for anything, but it works. Registration is NOT required, but you can create an account to remember your favorites, add reviews, and so forth. There's a karma system in place for building a reputation.
AlternativeTo.net - A very reliable source for finding popular OR little-heard-of options for software of varying type, either Saas, downloadable, mobile, plugin, or many other types of digital products. No registration required, but it is available for organizing your activity on the site; lists, likes, comments, and so forth.
ConsumerReports.com - A well-known product review site, this one is basically a for-profit company that puts out reviews of anything and everything. They started as a physical journal and migrated successfully to the web. You can pay for a membership or use the site for one-off searches, for free. Membership will allow you to keep ongoing searches with notifications for updates, that kind of thing.
Amazon reviews - Amazon sells anything, or allows people to sell anything and takes a cut. Y'all know that. And y'all know there are product reviews on there. The problem with all this is that you can't explicitly TRUST these reviews. There are so many ways to artificially inflate or deflate the value of an Amazon product review; some people are paid to go out and review stuff. Some companies send customers free merch for nicer reviews - and some do it legitimately, just sending stuff without asking/demanding a good review, but that kind of action usually DOES influence opinion. So sure, glance at the product on Amazon but savor it with a grain of salt.
Appstore reviews - this is one trick that I don't always even think of... if a service or website has a mobile app, then DEFINITELY go check out the reviews posted about it. These are, like the Amazon reviews, probably easily malleable, AND they can go out of date easily, if the developer updates but the user doesn't change their review. However I have found it's a good place to get a feel of how the user is treated by the company, which is an important sign.
Addendum: There is also https://openbase.io/
I never got around to recreating my website after GoDaddy took away the free account that came with my domain. At some point I'll find a new host. For now, I've dumped the Vehicle Index at: https://app.box.com/s/po0ncmqpdxkjxwnz4qo4y6dgn800b6yp
Ping me if there's any issues :)
This is a poem intended to wake people up and help them realize that fighting begets fighting, and that war is unacceptable. The only solution is to stop fighting, first.
I don't know where the bombs come from.
Or I do, but I don't know why.
Someone, somewhere, decided
that it's okay for me to die.
When I was growing up, there were a very few educational programs, and even then it was hard to justify the dollars spent. Of course, I wasn't the one spending money at that time, either, so what do I know? Only that the educational apps I had access to were pretty much: Type Attack! annnd... well, I'm sure there must have been others. I know there was Mavis Bacon Teaches Typing, but we never had that one. I suppose the Oregon Trail counts as some kind of educational entry, but that's really pushing the limit.
Nowadays, kids are blessed with apps aplenty, and just as watching shows can be done anywhere, at any time, these are mobile and online, or social and offline, or any combination thereof. I'm glad my kids are growing up with such blessings.
I'll start posting new articles about various apps that I love - and that my kids love - for teaching them language, math, reading, and all sorts of skills. My wife and I have children that cover a range of ages, so there's a lot to cover!
This is an Android app that I use daily; Gleeo Time Tracker which fairly obviously is used for tracking time worked on jobs/projects/etc. The interface is at first a little awkward, but is really great once you get used to it. Other users of the app seem to feel the same, saying that it's nearly perfect but could use a few tweakings like the addition of pie charts or fewer taps to get to the reporting. I'm fine with the current status of those particular features, but what I would like to see is buttons that are just slightly larger so that I don't accidentally tap on things I don't intend to. I'm speaking about the buttons at the outer edges of the screens. It's not a big deal, though.
The features are discovered bit by bit as you use it more; quick categorization of the tasks on different projects is great. Custom colors are very nice, although perhaps there could be greater contrast in them. I love the flexible exporting feature and use that a lot. Actually, you could easily create your own pie charts by doing that, come to think of it.
Does any one use other time reporting software that should be noted? I'll take a look if so!
I just tested / established a convenient way for tracking business expenses and keeping receipts digitally. For free. There's a for-pay option for Android which is even easier called ProOnGo, but you'd have to pay $5 per month (or more) for a useable plan on it.
Anyway, this is what's needed:
Sign up for an account at www.xpenser.com - this is free for now and will eventually have pro features for pay.
Install PixelPipe Uploader (not just the Picasa one) on your phone. Then set up a pipe to email r@xpenser.com and make sure the email's coming from you, not PixelPipe. (this is all specified when defining the pipe) If this is all you're going to use Pixelpipe for, then you can set this pipe as default - but I wouldn't, because PixelPipe can be used for sooooo much more.
Finally, when you get a receipt, take a picture of it with your regular phone camera. Pixelpipe will pop up, and you set the title to "{category} {price} {notes}" and send.
Pretty slick.
A good idea, such as freedom of speech, is not made better when codified into legalese. We already have in existence the established right to net neutrality in our First Amendment. When you consider the already-proven, criminal ineptitude of government agencies such as the FDA (see: Monsanto, aspartame, hydrogenation, et al), or ICC*, one should seriously consider the act of giving specified powers of regulation to agencies that quite likely will be influenced by major ISPs, once passed.
I usually have these ready to go first thing in the morning and normally I just print them out and distribute them around the office, but here are my collected / best of / since 2006 alternate voting stickers. NEW this year is the Facebook Vote version! Please reply if you have any suggestions for new stickers :)
This is the second time someone's tried to upload a virus through the system I have (had) going here (previously a combo of DotNetNuke + Blogger), so I'm disabling it and reverting to just Blogger. Not a big loss, but it'd be nice if people out there wouldn't go hunting for innocent sites to hack.
Here's a collection of stuff from the DotNetNuke pages, for posterity:
Thumbnails of my UT99 maps:
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http://www.crivoice.org/lucifer.html
Approach with an open heart, if your belief system relies on a god of evil, that is, Satan.
Read more...
Disney wants $15 per download of any picture. That's insulting, especially considering that it's LESS expensive to buy a 5x7 print from them ($13). Walt wanted the parks to be a place to enjoy a wonderful day with the family, but the corporation has turned it into a place to rake money from its guests.
in reference to: Disney's PhotoPass - Add some Disney magic to your memories (view on Google Sidewiki)
Hello and welcome to winkyboy.com. This is where I write about pretty much whatever I feel like, which MOST often is related to health, games, family, God, technology, and more -- in no particular order.
As this is going to the blog as well, if you don't have Sidewiki installed, go ahead and do it, then come back here to make your own comments through Google's site-commenting system. Yay to Google for implementing this; many others have created systems like it, but Google is the right company to actually do it.
Since you can also selectively comment on words you highlight, I can finally remove the (usually faulty) Linebuzz code I had on there.
We took a walk over the lunch-hour today and stopped in a local toy store. It's a nice store, the Red Giraffe of Woodbury, MN, as they have a lot of wooden toys. But, like most toy stores or sections of a department store, they stock some junk as well.
I was too shocked to pass this one up... a plastic tube of plastic sticks made to look like wood. The worst thing about it is that it's labeled "All Natural" which of course only lends credence to the fact that the word Natural means absolutely nothing at all in any kind of manufacturing or production sense.
I've seen worse toys, but this is just ... an insult to children and parents. To the children for their legacy. Someone in this world thinks so little of them that they would make plastic replicas of STICKS to be played with, bent and thrown away, or just lost. For the parents, this is yet-another cheaply-produced toy comprised of, again, easily-lost pieces that the parents would spend forever cleaning up.
Made in China.
[Oct '09: I noticed some tweets come through about this page... FYI I've moved my latest health musings to my new site, www.psychiclunch.com (Direct link to this article there)]
Let's say I have money and you have... a broken leg. It is kind and fair for me to donate money to you to fix that leg. But is it at all right for you to take the money from me IF I'm just a jerk and don't want to give it? No, because that's stealing. That being said, with the same situation, is it fair for your friends Mack and Jimmy to come take the money from me to fix the broken leg? Also, no. That's still stealing, but it's just The Mob doing it.
At what point does it become acceptable to take money from me to fix your leg if I don't want to give it to you? How many people have to decide that I should, in order for it to be "right"? At what point does it becomes acceptable for one group of people to decide to give another's property to someone else?
As much as you may wish to rationalize healthcare as a concept of everyone needing access to doctors or medicine if they get sick or injured, you cannot overlook the act of taking the money that would pay for these services.
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