Business Hacks

Back when I worked for Faceless Giant Corporation, LLC, I was part of a team that desperately needed a project-management tool. We were all over the place — Excel, Lotus Notes, countless PDFs and Word documents — to the point where the project simply couldn’t be managed efficiently.

Oh, how I wish I could go back in time — and take Zoho Projects 2.0 with me. (I’d also have to convince the IT department to let us use a Web-based tool, which would be impossible — but so is going back in time. A man can dream, can’t he?) Watch this quick video highlighting what’s new in Projects 2.0, then meet me at the next paragraph for some details:

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If you believe Rick, Twitter is an awesome and powerful marketing tool. I think it’s a pointless waste of time. If you are more Rick than Dave, then you might be interested in this Twitter-to-English dictionary.

I was actually kind of jazzed to run across this, because while some of the terms are pretty common, some are, let’s say, less than completely obvious. You might find it handy when you try to learn the ropes on Twitter:

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If you’ve had your eye on the Palm Pre, you probably know that the awkwardly named handset has access to the whole library of classic Palm OS apps thanks to Classic, a Palm OS emulator from Motion Apps. One concern a lot of people have had, though, is whether their particular favorite apps would work in the emulated environment of Classic. We’re now a big step closer to knowing the answer.

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If you ship a lot of packages, you probably use the same courier for expediency’s sake. But if you ship infrequently, it makes sense to shop around for the best rates. ShipGooder makes it a snap to compare shipping costs between various couriers.

All you do is plug in the origin and destination ZIP codes, then specify the number of packages and total weight. In a matter of seconds, ShipGooder shows you the rates for everything from ground shipping to same-day.

The results include only the major couriers (UPS, Fedex, etc.), but you can also go to the Couriers page to find local and regional services. I found this latter option a bit confusing, as rate searches don’t seem to include these little guys. But at least it gives you contact information for the local outfits, which is helpful when you just need to ferry something across town.

ShipGooder is a free service, and it takes just seconds to use. Definitely worth bookmarking if you’re trying to save money on shipping — and these days, who isn’t?

Anyone who gives presentations on a regular basis recognizes the value of a good “air mouse,” which lets you control your slideshows wirelessly as you move around the room.

Instead of buying and bringing extra gear, why not go the app route? Mobile Air Mouse turns your iPhone into an air mouse, perfect for remotely controlling presentations (and your PC).

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I have a lot of balls in the air all the time — a ton of projects I’m working on myself, but I also assign stuff to other writers and rely on an ad hoc collection of handwritten notes, stuff in OneNote, and e-mail to keep track of it all. There has to be a better way — and there is.

I recently discovered Colabolo, an awesome program that lets you keep track of all your tasks and collaborate with anyone you delegate to at the same time.

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We’ve made much ado here in recent months about the cataclysmic financial conditions, and we’re always on the lookout for stuff to help you get your next job.

I was thus quite happy to see that MakeUseOf recently rounded up a slew of Web sites with free resume templates you can download and use with impunity.

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Having trouble sending a large attachment through your company’s size-stingy mail server? Try switching over to your Gmail account. The maximum Gmail attachment size is now an impressive 25MB.

Of course, that’s only half the equation: The recipient’s mail server must support attachments of that size as well (not a problem if he’s a Gmail user, natch).

If your beefy attachment bounces, or you need to share a file larger than 25MB, your best bet is a service like Drop.io or YouSendIt, both of which support files as large as 100MB. After you upload your file, the recipient receives an e-mail containing a download link.

Of course, for really big items, you’ll need a service like File Dropper, which accommodates files as large as 5GB.

Getting back to Gmail, if you have trouble attaching files larger than 10MB, bop into Settings, General, then switch to Basic attachment features in the Attachments section. That should do the trick.

If your appetite was sufficiently whetted by last week’s video peek at Firefox 3.5, get ready to feast: Firefox 3.5 is now available for download.

In case you missed the video, here’s a quick overview of what’s new in this fairly major update:

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Remember the Pepsi Challenge? You’d sip soda out of unmarked containers, only to discover that Pepsi tasted better despite your longtime preference for Coke. Blind Search is a mash-up that is doing for search engines what the Pepsi Challenge did for cola.

Enter a search term at Blind Search, and you’ll be rewarded with three unlabeled columns of results. Vote for the column with the search results you like the best, and the site will then identify the columns. It’s a brilliant idea, and one that can help you find the search engine that really works best for you — even if it’s not the one you have been using for years.

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