Find & Manage Apps

Web applications abound, but it can be difficult to find a single place where you can locate, search for, learn about, and acquire Web-based software for your business. AppDirect is designed to offer such a place—and it’s free. AppDirect consists of an online marketplace and an online management portal. In the App Market, users can look for applications based on industry or the function it performs and view detailed information and reviews about each application. Users can also communicate with others using AppDirect to learn more about a product. The Application Manager lets users access their purchased applications and also manage them in one place.

The idea is that this way, you only need to remember one password to access a bevy of applications, and while you’re at it, you might as well have the capability to pay your bills, manage your subscriptions, and give employees access to applications all from the same site.

Real-Time Collaboration

Increasingly, the need to be able to collaborate in real time on projects or ideas with multiple team members is a common part of doing business. Among employees at remote branches, telecommuters, workers on the road, and a crew at the home office, even a simple meeting can become quite complex. Vyew provides an online service wherein multiple parties can meet in a single online location, interact, share content, and upload helpful aids such as documents and video, all in real time. The online “meeting rooms” are saved and always available, so you and your team can leave a meeting and return to it later without losing anything.

The free version of Vyew offers unlimited use for up to 10 people and 20 rooms. The Plus plan (10 individuals, 50 rooms) is $9.95 per month ($6.95 with prepay), and the Professional plan (15 individuals, 150 rooms) is $19.95 per month ($13.95 with prepay). With the paid plans, you can expand to up to 80 additional users, for a fee.

Microsoft Office Web Apps

If you’re a Microsoft Office user and don’t yet use Microsoft’s Office Web Apps, run—don’t walk—to the nearest computer and log in to your Windows Live SkyDrive account. See those familiar little icons just above the main folder area on your page? Those are the free Office Web Apps, online versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Simply put, these essentially allow you to create, view, edit, upload, download, or share the Microsoft Office applications you already use, but you can share them online. The capabilities aren’t quite as comprehensive as the desktop versions, but they still offer plenty of functionality. Your files and data are stored in your SkyDrive account, which gives individual users 25GB of free storage.

Businesses who wish to take advantage of Office Web Apps will need to go through a Volume Licensing program; those who already have a licensing program in place for Microsoft Office 2010 can access them immediately.

Create & Store Notes

Listhings is a simple Web tool that lets you post reminders for yourself, keep to-do lists, or jot down ideas whenever they come to you. Just visit listhings.com, click Add Note in the upper-right corner of the screen, and type your note.

You can edit a note by clicking anywhere on it, and if you click the wrench icon on a given note, you can change its color to differentiate it from other notes on the screen. The board on which you “stick” your notes resembles a corkboard, and the notes look like those iconic sticky notes.

You can try the service free, but with an account (which is also free), you can use multiple “canvasses” to keep groups of notes separate from each other and also access your notes from any computer via a secure password.

Easily Send Large Files

An obvious name? Yes. An obvious function? Yes. Incredibly useful? Also yes. You have to love anything that has just two steps. In the case of LargeDocument .com (www.largedocument.com; in beta at press time), which is a simple online tool that lets you send large files via email, the two steps are “upload” and “share.”

To send a file, simply click the Browse button on the main page, navigate to the file you wish to send, and select a way to share that file when the upload is complete. You can click an icon to quickly share via sites and services including Facebook, Gmail, LinkedIn, and Twitter; send it to an email address using your default email account; or save it to your clipboard. (In the case of the latter, click the tools icon on the far right to view and manage saved files.) You can upload files as large as 2GB (on a 32-bit machine) or 8GB (on a 64-bit machine).

The service is also available as an app that works with Android devices. There is no fee to pay or account to create—simply visit the Web site and away you go.

Spread The Message

Email has never been a static technology; over the years, people have come up with new and innovative ideas to evolve email into what it has become. Tout is a service that offers an interesting take on how to improve email communication. It provides a quick way to send emails using a Web browser bookmarklet, lets you choose from several templates, and offers tracking tools and analytics for the emails you send.

For example, if you’re on a Web page that contains email addresses somewhere, you can click the bookmarklet, and Tout will find those addresses and present them in such a way that you can send an email to any or all of them.

You can then select a template to use, such as one for a blogger or one more suited to a product manager. Once the emails are sent, Tout lets you track them. You can easily see if the recipient has read the email, if he clicked a link in the email, and more. Tout also keeps your emails organized into drafts, those in the queue, sent emails, and archived emails.

With Tout, you can see which of your emails are accomplishing their intended goals with high-level analytics and insights. If you find that a certain template is working, you can mark it for later use; if one isn’t working as well as you hoped, you can tweak the template. There is a free option, or you can get more features with a paid plan.

Author Bio:

This Article is written by Kashif Raza. Find Verizon fios promo code and coupon codes at connectionfly.