PhoneVite - Send you and/or a group of people a message blast via voice mail; you can either do it now; or schedule it for a later time.
• Wake-up calls for you and/or your group
• Reminders for tasks and follow-ups
• Emergency alerts to the team
• Conference call reminders
• Weather cancellations
• Last-minute party/event reminders
• Finding a substitute/volunteer
• Quick motivational message to the team
Acuity Scheduling - easy to use online appointment scheduling
DimDim - free shared desktop web meetings
Yugma - An easy-to-use, affordable shared desktop web collaboration service that works on Windows, Mac and Linux
Dropsend - Easy file transfer; Send large files of up to 1GB; free plan available
Wrike - An integrated online project management solution that helps you manage projects, teams and businesses
SpringNote - online notebook and mini-Wiki
Sky-Click - Setup your Free Click to Call Center
iHound - track devices by alerting you when your USB digital device is connected to another computer
Doodlekit - an online FREE website builder that helps you build a personal or business website.
NanoScan - Scan your PC for viruses, spyware, Trojans, etc. right from your homepage.
Web Album Generator - a software program that creates all the HTML, JPEG thumbnails, and CSS for your online photo albums
Linkrr - a tool that changes your non-clickable multiple links to clickables
Here are 15 sites I found useful in the past few weeks:
Qrimp is smart on-demand software that simplifies the automation of business processes - and make Web Apps in a Snap!
Net Tools is a comprehensive (and free) set of host monitoring, network scanning, security, administration tools and much more, all with a highly intuitive user interface.
The port forwarding tester is a utility used to identify your external IP address and detect open ports on your connection.
blist is the world’s easiest database
ShipGooder - search for rates from FedEx®, UPS®, DHL®, Purolator®, the U.S. Postal Service®, Canada Post® and local carriers.
Spot Merchant - Create an e-commerce business with this professional and easy to use web2.0 store
Tersus is a Visual Programming Platform for creating rich web applications without any coding
Helperoo is an email support system with small in mind.
Rondee - Free scheduled conference calls -really
Google Sites makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information.
OStatic - determined to be the most comprehensive web destination for information and insight on Open Source Software and Services
Wuala - Share files with you friends, privately. All files encrypted. No file size limits. No traffic limits. Free.
Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com’s S3 ™ Storage Service (15 cents/gigabyte)
MyFabrik - Manage all media files in one location
Apatar - Combine your on-premise data sources with the web without coding. Feed data from/to APIs, and mashup building tools.
Jiffle selectively shares your calendar with your contacts 24 x 7, and allows you to insert a link to your calendar into your Outlook e-mails with one click. Your calendar can be shared with unlimited contacts through Outlook if desired. You select who views your calendar. Only invited contacts can gain access, and they will see only “Available” time slots. Available time slots are presented to your contacts in their respective local time zones, and appointments are automatically reconciled by time zone and converted when confirmed by e-mail.
Jiffle also integrates with WebEx Meeting Center and Webex Connect. You can now schedule and host meetings on WebEx in one quick step.
I was surprised recently to realize many of our clients thought we were a bigger company than we are (we have 4 employees and a few 1099). I never purposefully misled anyone in this regard so I was curious where the impression came from…After asking a few of my long-time customers some questions I realized that most of that impression came from the systems and processes we put in place early on.
So - How can you take a 4 person company and make it seem like a much larger corporation? Even better - can it be done for free? (hint: yes.) Leveraging technology can help you not only make you seem bigger to your customers and potential customers, but can streamline your business processes. Maybe you can actually stop working before dinner tonight? 
Here are the four open source and/or free apps I use (and simply couldn’t do without)…
[1] Website
Every company can create a great website even if you less artistic talent then an aardvark (like me). A few good Wordpress templates and creative commons graphics, maybe a photo or two of you own and you’re up. The great thing about Wordpress is that once you customize your template you can post via email, Blackberry, or 3rd party software. You can have different types of users (ie.e permissions) so that many can contribute and you don’t need to rely on one person for all content. Also, with a good Spam protection plug-in (e.g. Akismet) you can have users and clients post messages for an even more informative site. We have tabs on our site for support, marketing, technical information, and client-specific access to documents. It acts as our central portal for anything related to our company for both customers and the general public.
[2] Receptionist
I still can’t believe how good Asterisk PBX is for the price. basically if you purchase a linux server and possibly a interface card or two, sign-up for a VOIP subscription service you can have a $20,000 PBX for about $1000 plus $30/month. It is completely customizable and includes conference calling, voicemail, call forwarding, multiple-IVR, etc. We use a particular incarnation of Asterisk called TRIXBOX. This includes a nice GUI interface (FreePBX) to make it easy to configure, SugarCRM integrated with Asterisk contacts, and a few other items. Basically all you need to do is create a CD from the ISO image, load it in the server and follow the directions. You should have your PBX running in an afternoon. We use the very nice XLite software phone from Counterpath, but you can also buy VOIP phones or uses ATA converters. We have our extensions roll over to our cell phones after 5-6 rings (follow me), we have a separate menu for the support hotline and we get full monthly reports detailing calls received and made for the month. This software really makes everyone think we have some swanky office in downtown instead of my friend’s basement. We also found a female with a great speaking voice on craigslist and paid her $20 to record the few messages we needed for our PBX and mail the WAV files to us. Awesome!
[3] Help Desk
HelpStream (formerly PathWorks) is an online Support and Trouble Ticket application that was started by some Ex-IBM, PeopleSoft, Remedy executives. The best thing about this online application is that it has most of the features you find in a full-featured trouble ticket and support desk application without the setup or maintenance required. If you don’t want branding and don’t mind some unobtrusive ads, you can even use it for free.
Helpstream can be used for customer service, IT help desk, bug tracking, and a wide variety of other case tracking and user self service requirements. It’s a powerful, affordable, easy–to–use solution for fixing technical issues faster. Helpstream customers include organizations of all sizes, in a variety of industries.
I like the FAQ and KnowledgeBase feature that lets my customers search for solutions themselves Before they call me. (Although you need to train/incentivize them to do so I learned.) Once a ticket is submitted I get an email to my corporate distribution list which sends it to all the agents and also sends us SMS messages so we know we have a request. Then based on agreements with our customers on response time - we login and work the issue. I looked at some of the other OpenSource ticketing solutions like OTRS, but found that for the effort - HelpStream was our best bet.
[4] Customer and Partner Collaboration
Knowledge Tree is an open source knowledge-base and document management application. It can be used to collaboratively work on manuscripts, proposals, or marketing materials, etc. I use it to create project specific file cabinets and keep all pertinent files where anyone can access them easily. Examples of documents included: Current project plan; meeting minutes; Visio diagrams; technical guides and brochures; purchase orders, etc. It automatically sends out notifications and has user rights that allow lots of granularity of control. We use this mostly to prevent spending time emailing updates to everyone and remembering who is supposed to get what document. It avoids managing our FTP server (the old way we did it), and it makes us look more professional since we can brand the site. There is a link to this server on our Wordpress Website.
BitNami takes the dreary job of compiling or tweaking installs of open source applications and turns it in to a plug-and-play operation. Bitnami Stacks are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Bitnami Stacks are self-containted and won’t interfere with any software already installed on your system. “All Bitnami Stacks are free to download and use under the terms of the Apache License 2.0.” Some of the pre-packaged applications include: Wordpress, Subversion, Drupal, RedRoller, moodle, Joomla, and KTDMS. I recently used the KnowledgeTree stack for my corporate document system. There was a slight tweak required for Ubuntu-flavor Linux - but got it running in about 15 minutes.
Jumpbox focuses their pre-packaged server application offerings using virtual machines (i.e. “ready-to-run virtual machines”). The virtual machine choices include VMware, Xen, MS Virtual Server, and more. They have a decent list of growing applications already available. Some include: Joomla, Cacti, Wordpress, Alfresco, Drupal, vTiger CRM, MediaWiki, SugarCRM, Mantis, etc.
Here are 12 great project-oriented collaboration sites:
