Touchstone

Touchstone - Attention Management Engine

What a concept? That's all I can really say about this one for now. Here is a link to an interview Chris Saad from Touchstone did with The 2 Web Crew.

Harvest

Harvest is the timesheet management product from the Ney York City small design and tech studio Iridesco, Inc.. From what I was able to do with the free 30 day trial that allows 10 users and 10 projects provided a simple but solid interface and reports. Ok enough of the PR stuff here's the real deal.

When you sign up your asked for your company name, email address, password, and acceptance of terms and privacy notice no big deal. Then of your sent to your sub-domain site Harvest creates for you from your company name a la mycompanyname.harvestapp.com. When you get there you will see three tabs - Reports, Timesheets, and Manage. You will first want to load your Users names and each one of your Projects into the timesheet management system of course. So from the Manage tab you get sub tabs for Projects, People, Tasks, and Account Details which are self explanatory but in case you need more details.

Projects view, add, and edit projects that are both active and inactive.

People view, add, and edit Employees plus you can add your Contractors too.

Tasks view, add, and edit tasks both Common Tasks such as Admin and Project Management but Other Tasks as well, for example recruiting, marketing, or advertising.

Account Details summarizes your company name which you can change, your plan also you can change, your plan details. It also allows you to toggle Alerts for those who you want to be notified when changes are being made to your account. You can Export Data in .csv (common-seperated values) file format for spreadsheet manipulation. From here you can close your account once your 29 days for free trail are over.

Moving along to the Timesheets tab once your done exploring the Manage tab. This will probably be where you spend most your time when dealing with any timesheet management system. Here you can view what and where your employees, contractors, and yourself are. Plus your able to see how much time they are spending do each task and project. This is how it works fro the Daily sub-tab you select a Project and Task from the drop down lists, enter the time duration you took spending on that particular event or you can leave it blank to start the time tracker automactically. Enter in some additional notes for review and then click Add entry. This is then sent to the Pending Approval for Review. You can also view the Unsubmitted tab to view who has not submitted a timesheet. There are two other tabs for viewing purposes named Weekly and Archive.

Which leads us to the bread and butter called Reports which I personally think is a very influential part of choosing a timesheet. Why you may ask, well its because this is what you hand to your Client and/or store in your filing cabinet. This is were you should be able to view everything from one location. At the Reports tab you can view reports by an assortment of options, by week, month, year to date, last month, last year, or current time frame. In each option you can click to view by total, billiable, non-billiable, employee, and contractor. Just look for your self.

The Review

From what I got in the free 30 day trial I was very pleased with the available options considering I either work alone or with a couple of buddies most of the time. My only problem with Harvest timesheet management system are the reports it generates, they are very simple in that they print out bar graphs of information which you can see in the graphic on top, but thats it. No logo implementation, color scheme chooser to fit with your company brand, no customization at all. Why have generic report print outs when you can just export the .csv file and manipulate the information, why export the file and manipulate it if you can just create your own, so why have the timesheet managment system when you can create and manage your own spreadsheet. Oh yeah its easier and online, man I almost lost it there, but you get what I'm saying right. You can read more about Harvest at The Harvest Gazette. Well anyways as far as my recommendation goes I have to say until the customization factor is added I would pick a different timesheet management system.

technorati tags:timesheet, timetracking, harvest, timemanagement

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Harvest

Simple time tracking software - Harvest

Harvest, I came across this on the Net. I will update you all next week about this application.

technorati tags:harvest, timetracking

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Blog Update

Hey everyone I just wanted to let you know that I plan on combining my blogs into one.

Addictive Search and Standard Society started out as a personal hobby, never intending it to go public but rather to find my writing style and Internet voice. Now that both are starting to pick up some momentum I don't want to get overwhelmed with having to find and manage content for both sites. I am currently re-developing Standard Society from the ground up using pMachines Expression Engine. So keep an eye out for it to hit the Blogosphere with some force later this year.

technorati tags:addictivesearch, standardsociety

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Last.fm

Talk about a make over I have been using Last.fm for about a couple of months now and I love using it to share my music habits with anyone who cares. Before the make over the site was aesthetically simple and very link happy. The player and plug ins were separate downloads and very simple in terms of interface. Now with what they call the "refreshing summer taste" the site has revitalized itself with more usability, more social aspects, and very featureful add ons and mesh ups. The profile pages are now cleaner with each area clearly blocked off, advertisement is clean and off to the right where it's not too obtrusive or distracting, the music aspect is still the main theme of the site which totally rocks, each section of site is clearly shown with tabs. The Charts section lets you view your listening habits by weeks or months by artist, album, or tracks. The Journal section lets you, well you know write a journal. The Groups sections of course shows what groups your into, The Friends section shows your friends which I am sad to say I seem to have none. The Neighbours section which is probably my most favorite feature of Last.fm allows you to see other people who have similar listening habits to yours. The Tags section shows you all the tags you have come up with to mark your music with. Another neat section that I don't remember being there before is the dashboard where recommendations are made to you via the Last.fm community, your friends online, artists, neighbours online, journal entries, and stations.

The Review

I don't think I have to say anymore, Last.fm hits all the notes just right when it comes to building a music community. I totally recommend the Music Community known as Last.fm to any music fan out there. Oh yeah please be my friend at Last.fm.

technorati tags:last.fm, music, musiccommunity

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ArmchairGM

ArmchairGM - Main Page - Sports Wiki, Sports Blog, and Sports Resource

After posting about Fanlete I received an email from Dan Lewis who I believe to be a co-founder of Armchairgm which is a sports version of Digg, sort of. Armchairgm is where sports fans go to write and read about sports. You can read and write a news article about anything sport related, add an opinion to any news article already written, vote and comment on any story. Just like Digg the readers determine which stories are placed on the front page by votes casted on the story. The Wiki side of the site is interesting because it allows the members to fact check and add facts to the websites directory thereby giving the site a validation system for sport readers and writers to verify information against.

The Review

Simply put the site is great and holds outstanding sports information. What makes it even better is that its open to the public and not bound to one persons bias view of sports. This is what any Wiki should be modeled after. I highly recommend this site to all Sports Fans out there.

technorati tags:armchairgm, sports, sportfan, sportstories, sportnews, news, sport, diggsports, wiki

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Fanlete

Fanlete is a place to socialize about your favorite teams and sports. About a week ago I received a mysterious email invitation by Brian Balfour and Mike Schiller, the Founders of Fanlete.com, to participate in Fanlete (Fan + athLete) in private beta. It got me curious and being the addictive search junkie that I am I checked it out. I have to say The social network is a great idea that feeds into the fans obsession of sports. I won't be surprised if Fanlete replaces the current Fantasy Leagues that are out there now. Here is a widget from my profile on Fanlete that lets you show off your sports prowess. I have to warn you though I know nothing about baseball, expect that you stand in front of a pitcher who throws a hard ball about the size of a fist at speeds that reach 100+ mph and all you have is a bat that's what 3 inches thick to protect yourself from it.

The Review

Its simple, sweet and fun to do. I can see why people get wrapped up in sports. There are only a few sport leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, Col Football, Col Basketball) to select from right now, I have suggested they add Golf, Nascar, and Boxing. The site design is really, really simple but gets the job done nicely. Once this site is public I highly recommend this site to any Sports Fan.

bk_keywords: sports

Fanlete

Fanlete - Where Sports Fans Come Together!

Just found this site. Thought I would give you guys a heads up on whats coming up.

technorati tags:sports, fanlete

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Eefoof

eefoof.com - Make It. Post It. Profit.

If you have ever heard of YouTube or Flickr then eefoof will not be that hard to describe. Eefoof was started by Kevin Flynn, Matt Farley, and Alex Annese this year and is still in Beta. The concept is why are authors of Internet content who publish on sites like YouTube and Flickr not getting paid for the time and effort they put into building that community site. Eefoof basically works much the same as the aforementioned sites, you upload your content and publish it to your profile or anonymously. Unlike the other sites eefoof will share its revenue with its members. I know what your going to ask "How much revenue?" right. Well they break it down on the landing page of eefoof.com but let me spare you the time of clicking. Lets say you publish your original HotGirlonBike.swf a Flash file to your profile and during the month Eefoof receives 10,000 visitors to its Flash directory. Out of those 10,000 visits HotGirlonBike.swf is clicked 100 times and Eefoof makes $1000 off the Ads in the Flash directory. Your HotGirlonBike.swf earns a percentage of those revenues depending on your clicks which in this case you earned $10 then eefoof charges an expense fee (which I have yet to find out if its $5 or half of your revenue).

The Review

The name is horrible but oddly enough its memorable. The site is plain but functional and the uploads are easy to do. To get paid your account will need to exceed $25 before they PayPal your funds to you. It maybe just me but I think the real concept of this site was to get bought by someone or to pressure the other services to pick up the idea of giving back to the members. Either way Kevin, Matt, and Alex created a great idea. I highly recommend it those who would like a little something back for helping build the next big thing.

Wufoo

Wufoo · Making forms easy + fast + fun.

The creation of 3 guys, Chris, Ryan and Kevin, who thought they could build a better form builder. So what is Wufoo, well I was just getting to that, its an online application that lets design and style an online form. Whats cool about that is that you don't have to worry about the backend details of setting up scripts or building a database because Wufoo will do it all for you.

Wufoo lets you build:

• Contact Forms
• Mailing Lists
• Surveys
• Job Applications
• Workshop Registrations
• Event Calendars
• Account Managements
• Customer Managements
• Bug Trackers
• Invitations / RSVP
• Online Orders
• Wedding Planners
• Address Books
• Home Finances
• Classifieds
• Personal Journals
• Quizzes / Tests
• Media Collections

Of course there might be other things you can think of using it for.

The Review

Its provides a free version, it works, and its a great idea. Of course I recommend this to anyone who needs a simple form on their webpage. Other versions range from $9-$199 a month depending on number of forms, number of entries alloted, and amount of disk space used.

technorati tags:forms, wufoo

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