Below are the top applications I recommend you download to improve your Small Business. Most are free. Rest assured, I only recommend applications that I personally use. And these are the best of the best. I’ve also written articles on how to get the most our of each download, so just refer to the supplied links for more information.
Feel free to share this page with others. I will add to this page from time to time.
PandoraPersonally, I like working with music. It helps create a positive atmosphere and a conducive work environment. Pandora's a music discovery service. You add a band that you like and Pandora will start playing similar music in the same genre. With each song you can vote to like it or dislike it - with the results adjusting the future music Pandora will feature. It's a great system which helps you discover artists that you had never known. For instance Pandora got me onto the music of Regina Spektor. Now I love her stuff and have bought three of her albums. Pandora is also an app for your smartphone and tablet.
ChromeThis is the website browser I use and recommend. It's fast. It's slick. I've tried Firefox, Opera and (shudder) Internet Explorer. Chrome wins.
Market SamuraiThe folks at SEO tool company Market Samurai have crunched the numbers and found that typically, only a few keywords generate significant online traffic for a website. They have a premium tool which allows businesses to track how their website performs against a given keyword. This allows businesses to become attuned to large ranking fluctuations which could increase or decrease customers. It's a great service. And since it's so valuable, I've also bundled in these Market Samurai reports into all Platinum Hosting plans. So yes, if you take out website hosting with Small Business Planned you'll get emailed weekly reports for three keywords - showing how your website is ranking across Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Crazy EggWe all want customers to visit our website. But what do we know about their behaviour when they hit our pages? Where are they looking? How far down are they scrolling on each page? Are they clicking on stuff that isn't a button? Crazy Egg is a company which meets this challenge head on. They can give you real time reports on these questions and more - allowing you to reconfigure your website to improve its effectiveness. I love it. And because I love it, I've bundled in this Crazy Egg package to all my platinum hosting plans. Yes - take out website hosting with Small Business Planned and you'll get access to reports tracking the effectiveness of three of your website's webpages.
FirefoxPersonally, my standard internet browser is Opera (it’s speed dial and file download options are superior in my view). However when it comes to plugins and accessibility, Firefox is the way to go. Plus, apparently only dumb people use Internet Explorer. Most of the online tips and tricks I give out on SmallBusinessPlanned.com are available only through Firefox. Download Firefox
EvernoteYes, I’ve described this application as ‘note saving’, but it doesn’t do it justice. I can’t give Evernote enough of a thumbs up. It’s one of the first applications I open when I boot up my PC. Evernote allows you to shoot off quick notes and have them archived or combined into neat categories. And the search capability of the program is stunning.
PDF X-ChangeThere was a time a few years ago, that PDF’ing a document was limited to only a few approved applications. These days, anyone can PDF anything. However adding comments and mark-ups to a PDF is a bit more difficult. This straightforward program allows you to do just that. Markup up your PDFs with comments before forwarding them to your designer, solicitor or marketing consultant.
Paint.NETPhotoshop is the standard in slick graphic design software. It’s super powerful and has a library of plugins and brushes/textures and complementary applications to achieve any design task. But this comes at a price. A few hundred bucks. And if you just want a program to do some basic image manipulation, this cost is hard to justify. Paint.NET is an alternative to Photoshop that, for its size packs some punch. It has layers, brushes and pretty much everything else that the armchair graphic designer needs to produce a reasonably professional artwork piece
Color PicColorPic quite simply allows you to identify any colour that you can see on your screen. Simply install the application and hover the eyedropper over the colour you would like to identify, and ColourPic tells you the CMYK, RGB and HECS code. Handy for when you’re trying to colour match
Tweet DeckIf you’re an avid twitter user/responder and you’re not using TweetDeck, you’re making life hard for yourself. TweetDeck provides a dashboard so you can see all your friends tweets (in realtime), all your messages and all the hashtag conversations you are following. This application directly hooks up to your Twitter account, so you don’t need to visit twitter.com again – TweetDeck handles it all. No wonder Twitter bought them for a cool ~$40 million-ish.
DropboxGone are the days when we had one information device (a desktop). These days we have desktops, laptops and smart phones. So access to up to date files becomes a real issue. There’s only so many times you can email and re-email files before you start getting confused about which version is the most up to date. Dropbox solves this problem by creating a virtual folder where you can ‘drop’ any folders you want. The information within these folders can be made visible to anyone you choose (who has Dropbox). They can copy these files to their own computer, or keep them in the magic Dropbox folder and have their updates synchronized. Again, it’s simple to use. And once you start you’ll wonder how you ever did without it. The free Dropbox account gives you 2GB. But you can score an additional 250MB for free.
Sugar Sync
Type: Synchronized file storage
Price: Free (up to 5GB)
Download: Click here
My Review: Click here
Sugar SyncSugarSync is the forgotten cousin to Dropbox. But it’s an intelligent cousin who’s pretty attractive. For a start, you get 5GB for free, which is 2.5 times the free space Dropbox blesses you with. And where Dropbox only allows you to sync one folder, SugarSync allows you to sync many. The pro plans are also cheaper and provide more space. Put simply, SugarSync is superior from a functionality perspective and it has to be to draw a market, because Dropbox is by far the market leader.
Enounce My Speed
Type: Video/audio accelerator
Price: $30-99
Download: Click here
My Review: Click here
Enounce My SpeedOuch, I hear you say. I was getting use to these free applications, why should I shell out for a premium application? I thought the same thing. I ummed… I stalled. About a month went by before I downloaded the trial. And then I was hooked. I watch a fair bit of online video, be it TV episodes, YouTube clips or DVDs and Enounce allows me to speed up the video without an issue. This means I can typically watch and easily comprehend a YouTube clip in half the time. I recommend you download the free trial. This program is a delicious time saver that prods the waffling speakers to get to the point. Thoroughly recommended.
FilezillaIf you manage the files behind your website, then Filezilla is the program for you. Filezilla is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) application that allows you to effortlessly drag and drop files from your computer into your website host. And vice versa. Great for uploading images in bulk or backing up entire folders.
CCleanerThis is a must have for your PC. At the click of a button it will delete all the unnecessary cached files that clog up your hard drive and waste space. By downloading this baby and using it regularly you can keep your PC honed like a fine tuned athlete – performing at the top of its game. And look – it’s free.