Although I originally planned to create my own apps, I am a BIG supporter of leveraging someone else’s work and standing on the shoulder of others. Thinking about it, do you want 2 projects: 1 to create something that could make the task simpler and, and another to actually do what was requested, NO! So on that note, check out some websites/webapps that can make your life easier!

Since Invoice sucks!

Invoice Journal
Fast Simple and easy to use. This site is great for international invoices, because they include the various taxes and currency amount. The site offers a variety of invoice templates and integrates with paypal.

Fresh Books
This service is awesome for the people who may have a bit more then those 10 clients. I would HIGHLY recommend them if you are also looking for a custom solution, but don’t want to start from scratch. They have an awesome API.

Blink Sale
Okay last invoice website, but pretty slick. I love the user interface and user experience with this website. This site is web 2.0 savvy site is just a great way to send those basic invoices in a simple fast and friendly solution.

Tracking Time

toggl
Work on a lot of smaller tasks where you need to keep track before invoicing them. This software works pretty nicely on keeping track of all of those 10+ minute features that add up quick.

Faxing, bringing the 80’s back!

eFax
Yes, Faxes are that 80’s technology that we are still stuck using in today’s world. We can scan in an image and email it, but most of the business world have these legacy devices call fax machines. So rather then invest in a machine that is going to sit there and collect dust (as well as get fax spam!) and possibly another phone line, just sign up for efax. You can send and receive faxes by email, yes you can bring yourself into the 21st century while maintaining your 80’s retro look of faxing.

Notes

Jott
We all have little notes that we write down on paper napkins, index cards, and post its. Rather then have a pocket full of small paper that you can’t read, why not email yourself the idea/concept by placing a call. Jott offers an amazing service that I have been using for some time now that I just love. I have an idea, I would normally find some paper and a pen and write it down and/or try and remember it in some fashion, but with Jott I just place a phone call, listen to the “Who do you want to Jott”, say myself wait for beep and start explaining it. What a great service, and its FREE!

Selling Digital Products

Pay Loadz
Sell that ebook you created, take the pain of charging and money away for a small percentage.
E-Junkie
They offer a simple and free shopping car for those who are selling 1 or 3 products such as (setup/install WordPress). They also have a great pro option for only $5/month!

Meetings

Free Conference
Conference calls are a must in the biz. You have to talk to 3 or 10 people at a time to make a decision, well simplify it! This service is great and I have used it a number of times for small meetings when each person is in a different remote location. I HIGHLY suggest using them for your business and even upgrading the account for some great features like recording. Yes, you can record the conference call so you can go back and make sure they said “these requirements” and don’t try and sneak in features.

Twiddla
Whiteboard collaboration software for FREE! This software is great, no downloads, just amazing on collaboration and creativity. When you are working with a small team in remote areas, this software is a must to communicate various design changes and layout ideas. You can surf the web and draw directly on the website, brilliant!

Newsletters

Breeze
Email campaigns, simple easy and affordable. Flat rate system of $10 + 2cents per recipient. So for emailing 2,500 people is only $60.

Aweber
Simple email newsletters, website signups, follow up auto responders and scalable. If you want to automate your business and take the teachings of the 4 Hour Work Week, sign up for as low as $19/month!

Send Big Files

YouSendIt
Transferring 2GB+ files that would normally require a FTP server and all that technical stuff that you DON’T have time for, then check out you send it. I know gmail limits attachments to 20MB, which is pretty high and great for the PSDs, but when you are transferring that MPEG video of last weekends presentation to possible investors in your startup, you may want something a bit more reliable.

I have my own computer consulting company, Nomad Thinking and tend to use some of the applications listed above. If you have others please post them in the comments.

Learn how to Lower your electricity Bill

Pat from Will Blog for Experience: Patrick posted an article about his $180 solar pack for his Macbook. “This kit weighs about 2 lbs, costs $180, and will power my Macbook for 1.75 hours”. He used eBay to buy some of the solar panels. eBay is great for embedded electronics and random DIY or Make Projects.

I haven’t built a Solar Panel project, yet… but I had an idea for one. While taking a class at UVM someone pointed out if you made 80 square miles (I beleive if someone knows, please comment below) of solar panels in Arizona, it could power all of the United States. I always wanted to build a solar power plant that was COOP. You could buy a section of the solar panel, and get a small check each week. This could be used to offset your current electricity bill. In the Netherlands 30% of Windturbines are COOP, it would just make sense to setup a solar plant in AZ that was COOP.

If you are interested in this idea, please contact me.

During Christmas I was down in Arizona and looked for houses with them, but to my dismay, not many had them. Its like FREE POWER - the upfront cost. But in most states, the power company HAS TO buy back power until net. I know when I finally buy a house, a solar hot water heater is my first project.

Let me know what Solar Panel Projects you want to do or have?

Following up my blog about the iPhone, I wanted to blog about Mophie, who make iPod accessories. The company asked attendee’s for designs from iPod to iPhone. They received about 150 ideas in four hours, from those ideas, they choose 3 that they would market and pitch. Here are they final 3 concepts. They plan on producing these and selling them in the upcoming months.

*Side note* I just bought a new shuffle to listen to podcast,music,whatever on the commute to work. My 4gen iPod was just to big and dying on me. The battery was not lasting as long and the files were getting corrupted. The shuffle is awesome and was easy to pickup. I stopped by the tekserve on 23rd street in NYC on my lunch break. I didn’t have much time to check out the place, but they did have another part of the puzzel I was looking for. I not only bought a shuffle, but I also picked up usb stereo adaptor. This adaptor is great cause I don’t want to carry another cable and “dock”.

Back to the idea to prototype. Since I am a Computer Scientist, I spend a lot of my free time coding. I have many website ideas that I think about during the day and some that keep me up at night. The problem with coding is I spend a lot of time to make a database and a web application connected and wrote similar code a million times.

I posted a while back (has it been that long?) how I started to code with ruby. During the holiday season I got a couple of gifts of Ruby books. I have been reading them and attended my first ruby meetings. I stopped by the nycruby meeting and heard 2 great presentations. Since then I have been thinking of my ideas and learning how ruby on rails can make my idea a prototype in 10mintues.

I plan on spending this weekend as a “codefest”. I have 2 website that I NEED TO BUILD. One of the websites I build in PHP, but its crap code and wanted to see if I could “build it”. (Always build 2, the first is for learning, the second is for shipping) and the second is well, more for a friend. I hope to get 80% of the code done so I can finish it this Tuesday. The nycruby meeting is also hosting a codefest this Tuesday. So I hope to have 2 finish products by next week. (hope!).

Since this post is all about ideas to prototype, I wanted to add my own venture capitalist ideas. I will be offering up $1,000 (hopefully 1 prize every month depends on project) for someone who has an idea AND can either build it or an idea for a web site AND wants to start a company. I know myself I am fueled by money and if someone offered me money to build something I can do in a weekend I would. So let’s see some comments, post some ideas/things you might want to start up. If the idea is amazing, but above the $1000 mark please contact and we can talk.

Lets make this happen!

If you have a windows mobile device, like a MDA, which I have. You can download the images from hanmin and setup the skin. I have not dont this yet, but hope to have time Monday.

I will let you know how this goes and post some screenshots of me and my “iPhone”.

I always just throw these out thinking, there has to be something cool I can do with them. Now there is!

Since I am on the topic of DIY projects, please also checkout some guys building their own hovercrafts (shovelcrafts)!!!