Awesome Online Tools and Services that you should know about in 2009

Well, to start things off for 2009, I decided to share a list of some of the great online/web-based tools that helped me and my business grow in 2008.

Twitter - www.twitter.com

Takes a little getting used to, but Twitter is an amazing social platform that allows you to communicate with others around the world. Especially popular with web/graphic designers, and online marketing types, your Twitter connections can be a powerful way to solve problems and learn new things (not too mention a great place to hang out and chat).

Wufoo - www.wufoo.com

One of my new favorites, Wufoo provides an advanced and powerful online form builder to collect the information you need. Whether you’re building a customer satisfaction survey, a contact form, event registrations, or more. Wufoo has the flexibilty to do it all, including easy integration options for your website.

Mailchimp - www.mailchimp.com

Simple, Powerful, Fun Email Campaigns. What else can be said about this awesome web service that includes cheap, pay as you go email campaigns, thorough reporting, and an extensive api?

Backboard - www.getbackboard.com

Get feedback on documents (Word, Excel), Powerpoint, images (including Photoshop PSD files), webpages and free-form text. Backboard also features multiple versions of a project, email integration - just send an email with the file for review attached, desktop upload and SSL encryption.

Plans ranging from Free for one non-commercial account (unlimited “backboards”) to $49 p/month

Wordpress - www.wordpress.org

An amazing online publishing tool, with features and extensibility to fulfill a wide range of applications. Build a simple Wordpress blog for starters, or for the more advanced, build an entire content management system off of the Wordpress core.

Google - www.google.com

Analytics - www.google.com/analytics - Free website statistics
Webmaster Tools - www.google.com/webmasters - Free webmaster tools for your website
Local - local.google.com - Create a free Google Local listing for your Business
Gmail - mail.google.com - Free web-based email that makes it easy to keep in touch
Apps - www.google.com/apps - Free tools to enhance your business intranet, includes branded calendar, email, documents, chat, and more
Calendar - www.google.com/calendar - Free web-based calendar to help you keep track of tasks and synchronizes with the majority of today’s calendar software

Basecamp - www.basecamphq.com

Basecamp is a web-based tool that lets you manage and track projects (or simply ideas) and quickly create client/project extranets.

Harvest - www.getharvest.com

Harvest, online time tracking and billing software for PC and Mac. Possibly the world’s best new time tracking, invoicing, web-based application, including integration with many of today’s online applications such as Basecamp, Excel, and Quickbooks.

Pandora - www.pandora.com

Pandora radio is the personalized internet radio service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites. Create your own personalized web radio station, and Pandora takes care of the rest.

Ringcentral - www.ringcentral.com

Get a toll free number and hosted phone services, including a virtual auto attendant, hosted voice mail, internet fax features and more.

Dropbox - www.getdropbox.com

Not only does Dropbox provide your own personal online storage and file synchronization service, but you can also provide public or private access to any and all of your hosted files (think client files, photo galleries, etc.). Did I mention that Dropbox works across all platforms (PC, Mac, Linux, and Online) to give you access to your files anytime, anywhere.

So if you haven’t had a chance to try out these amazing new online services, be sure to give them a spin in 2009.

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About Author

Jon

Jon Beilke (that's me) is a freelance designer and photographer that likes to post sporadically on his blog (www.moongrabber.com). He offers Minnesota Web Design, Graphic Design, and Photography Services in Minnesota through his portfolio/business, JB Design and Photo (jbdesignandphoto.com).

Dan Richards

I'm partial to the RSS Scripts at http://www.feedforall.com/scripts-directory.htm they have made content management a snap for me.

James

How about OnStage? Another great collaboration tool.

Jen Harris@tsheets

Just wanted to throw our hat in the ring!
TSheets is also a time tracking system that is an actual time stamp vs. a stop watch, so you can see where in the day you are more efficient at doing a certain kind of project versus another.
Thanks!
Jen Harris
Head of Social Media
TSheets.com

Daniel Knight

I'm a big fan of Gizmo, personally. It's a communication tool that can turn your computer into a phone, complete with unique area code, and much sleeker than other, similar products like Skype. I use it in conjunction with Virtual PBX (a better version of Ringcentral, which you mentioned) for all my telecom needs.

John Salzano

My partner and I started a company together and we both work out of our home. We did not want to spend a lot of money on a phone system. We did some research and we signed up for a virtual pbx service online. Initially we started to use RingCentral which was pretty good but difficult to use. We the switched to www.iTeleCenter.com and we found it a lot more intuitive. We configured the system in less then a half hour including getting our greetings recorded. The virtual pbx system helps us sound more professional and streamlined our communications. .

James@UK Deals

And OnlyWire - a really cool tool for submitting to multiple social bookmarking sites. Takes a while to set up all your accounts though!

<abbr>Jamess last blog post..iRiver Clix2 | MP3 Deals</abbr>

John

Another great tool to check out is Intervals. It does the work of Basecamp and Harvest combined and is ideal for small teams who need a project management tool.

Jon

Thanks for the great suggestions everyone!

@John I am currently trying out Intervals to see if it will do what I need it to, as Harvest isn't quite as well integrated with other software as I would like.

@James You might want to take a look at socialmarker.com as they have a really easy tool to submit to a whole slew of social sites.

Chelle@Pittsburgh Moving Servi

I wouldn't be anywhere without wordpress! I learned about WuFoo recently and very well might start using that one as well! And as much as I hate to admit it, Google has slowly been taking over a lot of things I do online!