If you're like me, you're always looking for the next new web app. You're always trying to find the next tool that's will save time, help you make money, and make you look smart. There are hundreds upon hundreds of web apps out there, but sometimes it gets sticky trying to separate the sweet from the smelly. Below is a small collection of my favorite web apps; I hope you find them useful.
- Google Apps for Business. Any freelancer or business interested in free collaborative tools should consider using Google's set of business apps. For no cost whatsoever, you can provide web-based email, calendars, document sharing/editing, web/video hosting, and much more to your team. For larger companies with needs that extend beyond what Google Apps Standard Edition offers, you can opt to pay for the Premier Edition.
- Project Bubble. After using Basecamp, Huddle, Assebla, Launchpad, and a variety of other project management apps, I think ProjectBubble is the best choice for freelancers and small to medium businesses. The intuitive interface and array of features make it an excellent choice for keeping up with large numbers of clients, projects, tasks, invoices, and so forth. Plus, it's completely free!
- jQuery UI. The jQuery UI's "Build Your Download" app is like a virtual candy store that lets you pick and choose which goodies you want to include in your next project. jQuery rocks, and lots of developers are already well aware of that fact. It's continually updated, has fantastic documentation, has a wonderful community, and can turn a Plain Jane website into an interactive, user-friendly, cutting edge treasure. What makes jQuery rock even more is their UI, which allows developers to quickly add functionality like drag and drop, resizing, date-picking, and auto-completion. I highly recommend checking out this great app and using jQuery to enhance your next website.
- PayPal. All developers need a simple, high quality means to process monetary transactions like donations and shopping carts. Also, whatever processor a developer chooses needs to offer a comprehensive testing solution. PayPal fits the bill by offering a variety of ways to process transactions, as well as the PayPal Sandbox for soup to nuts testing. Plus, getting clients to sign-off on PayPal is usually a pain-free process since the company is so well-known, reputable, and reasonably priced.
- SEOmoz. This collection of SEO tools is a goldmine! I use their Trifecta tool often to give me a general idea of how popular a web page is. They have a ton of other free tools like LinkScape, TermExtractor, and RankTracker. SEOmoz has an assortment of premium tools which are worth taking a look at, too.
- FineTuna. I stumbled across this gem a few months ago and I've been in love ever since! Whenever I want to digitally sketch out an idea and send it to a few people, I use FineTuna. It's as simple as pie to use and allows for great back and forth collaboration in images.
- Google Maps. There are so many creative ways developers can use Google Maps to really enhance the overall user experience. Google Maps has an API that's relatively simple to use, so all you need to do is think of an innovative idea and run with it!
- YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn. All these social networks have an API that allows developers to integrate functionality into websites. I've used each in at least one project and most were fairly straightforward to implement. I wasn't terribly impressed by LinkedIn's API because it severely limits what developers are able to do, but I was able to make compromises and deliver something that was still pretty cool.
- Flickr. While we're talking about API's, Flickr has another great one. You can use Flickr data in websites to enrich user profiles, show off photo galleries, and much more.
- YouSendIt. When you need to send a large file to a client and don't want to bother with setting up FTP access, YouSendIt is the way to go. There's no telling how much time this app has saved me.