FBLook (for FaceBook)

One of the two new products (still in alpha) from Outlook extension developer TechHit. FBLook (Facebook + Outlook) is a simple toolbar add-on that integrates two key factors, (1) changing your “Status” and (2) notifications for friend requests, messages, pokes and more.

OutTwit (for Twitter)

OutTwit (Outlook + Twitter) is a little more robust than FBLook. With OutTwit you can update your Twitter status, receive friend updates, check messages, assign categories to messages, shorten URLs with TinyURL and archive/search your messages.

Next, let’s move onto the the little more robust and advanced Outlook add-ons.

LinkedIn – Outlook Toolbar

The first from LinkedIn is a toolbar, but it heavily integrates with Outlook. The simple and advanced features include; updating your Outlook contacts with LinkedIn profile information, receive notifications of profile changes, one click invites, mini-profiles in the emails, updates for your “network” and more. If you really use LinkedIn and have Outlook this is a must have.

Plaxo – Outlook Add-on

Similar Outlook add-on comes from Plaxo. Plaxo actually has slight integration with LinkedIn and you are easily able to add your LinkedIn friends to Plaxo, so it’s all a matter of which you prefer (or both). With Plaxo’s new Outlook add-on with Pulse, the new “social stream”, which integrates your “Connection’s” streams from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, etc., makes Outlook your ultimate source for following your friends and news. Like LinkedIn’s add-on, it keeps your address book up to date, but Plaxo’s also syncs your calendar, tasks and notes. This could come in handy to synchronize multiple Outlooks or even multiple calendars, like Yahoo or Google.

Xobni

Xobni, which is still in private beta, but has released plenty of more invites, is a social Outlook add-on without a social network behind it. I’ve been using Xobni for several months now and I love the integration and search functions. Any email I click on, Xobni will bring up:

• nr.of emails that were sent and received from the email address (which determines their rank)
• list of all email conversations (better than Gmail)
• a list of all the attachments for the person
• broken down timelines of when I usually send/receive emails to/from that person
• automatically pulls the phone number from an email
• and the best feature is the almost instantaneous search function.

You can sign up now for an invite here.

FreeConference

Finally, I have to schedule conference calls several times a week. FreeConference, is the simplest and quickest way to setup a free conference call. There are paid options, but I’ve never used them. Just recently they updated their offerings with an Outlook add-on that is literally 3 clicks away from within Outlook to setup a conference call. Clicking “Schedule a Conference” brings up a Calendar Appointment with all the details, select your invitees, and hit send. All the information is automatically included with the calendar appointment.

I love Outlook and I love integration, is there something else out there for free I should be using?

There have always been open source and free web applications, but within the past several years with the new Web 2.0 boom, the ability to create rich and powerful apps has increased. Thanks to AJAX, Ruby on Rails and even C++ coding, amongst the many others, developers are out there in hopes of developing free applications to make money without selling directly to their customer. There are 4 ways in which developers are making money from their applications these days.

The first way is to host advertising on the web app. This, because of the potential of over 1,000 daily users can turn a profit of $5k/month has been a popular route. However, the second way involves having a free version and charging a fee for the “professional” version. Thankfully, these days since there are so many free options out there, this is fading or the prices are around $19.99/year. We also have to thank the big powerhouse companies out there, like Google and Microsoft who have been on an acquisition spree. Many developers keep their products free in hopes of being acquired. The final method, which is more common for the open source applications, is donations. Many times, these people are creating superior products in their spare time to make the world a better place. All they ask is to support their efforts with a donation, which I fully support.

So Thank You to MakeUseOf! Thank You to the power house companies on an acquisition spree! Most importantly, Thank You to the developers of all these wonderful and free applications and software!

However, OOOP goes well beyond just the 3,400 graphic clip art gallery and templates… The developers have included over 90 text fonts, OOOWikipedia (an integrated Wikipedia Search Tools), ability to run Visual Basic for Applications from Calc (the OpenOffice alternative to “Excel”), ability to import Office Open XML (Microsoft Office 2007), and option to export (save as) documents to PDF, LaTex and MediWiki. To top it all off, OOOP has been able to integrate importing of Works and WordPerfect documents.

Completely open source, multi-lingual (11 languages in total) and multi-platform (Linux and Windows). You can find the download here. If you want to know more about the OpenOffice, I have previously covered OpenOffice here and Aseem covered it here.

If you don’t know this by now, you should learn this immediately, keep your software up to date. Here are 5 methods to aid this task.

1. UpdateStar (Win)- Still in Beta, but highly functional, downloadable software that scans your computer, including your "Add or Remove Programs" area for all installed software. Not only does UpdateStar analyze all of the installed programs on your windows system, it also displays all available updates for the product. The information regarding the software and the information is very thorough. The only draw backs are that they "recommend" programs (that cost money) that they think "you would be interested in".

2. AppSnap (Win)- Gaining recent popularity with it’s latest update, AppSnap is configurable program that scans your computer for all installed applications. Appsnap then guides you through the software that needs updating (incl. size and version #). You can download and install several updates in just a few clicks. Only criticisms are that the database is not as large.

3. AppUpdate (Mac) – AppUpdate is a free Mac Dashboard Widget that combines Apple’s Software Directory, MacUpdate and Version Tracker. "It will present you with a tidy link list of all the updates found, enabling you to read release-notes and download the the updates quickly and painlessly."

4. Individual Feeds – Many software products, especially open source, will have their own feed/news section to subscribe to. This is always the best way to keep on top of your software without having to download any program to tell you what you need to download. In addition, the feeds usually offer explanations and the reason behind each new release.

5. Sourceforge Feed – Sourceforge feeds are a great way to keep on top of individual software projects/programs, and to learn about new software. Especially Open Source software, my favorite kind.

6. Filehippo Feed – Same as Sourceforge, but it is not limited to just open source software. Filehippo includes open source, freeware, shareware and commercial software. Once again, another great way to learn about other programs and software.

7. Version Tracker (Mac or Win) – Version Tracker tarcks updates for thousands of software products (Note: many programs are shareware (free trial) or commercial). Similarly to abov, you can subscribe to their feed and monitor updates for relevant programs. Version Tracker is very comprehensive, I’ve learned about some great programs through their feed.

Something I missed? Let us know in comments …

Considering that I am in Real Estate I only figured it would be appropriate to share the knowledge that I’ve acquired over the past 4 years. I am in real estate in New York City, so a lot of the tools I use are very specified to New York, however these are the select greats from my vast collection of bookmarks of the real estate tools that are national (United States) and some International.

No Matter what you are looking for in Real Estate, these are the search tools to find them. I would also appreciate it if you had any other free helpful sites or web applications to please let me know in the comments. Enjoy…

Major Real Estate Sites

(1) Trulia

Trulia is by far my favorite pick for a real estate search, not only is it fully stocked with properties, it is also stocked on features that include: Google Map Layout (Satellite/Hybrid Option); Well done Search Results Layout; Property Preview Option in Search Results; Easily sort-able and customizable; Free Membership with abilities for saving, alerts, information; Large Web Community; Comparables on Screen and Similar Properties; Real Estate Guides; Community Information and Statistics; Trulia also provides an API.

(2) Zillow

Zillow is still in Beta (for some reason) and is less attractive than Trulia. However, if offers a lot of similar features including a Community and extensive Real Estate Guides. There are also way too many advertisements which divert your attention from the heart of the matter. Some of their positive features are well developed comparables, Neighborhood pages and what they like to call Zestimates or estimates based on comparable and other relevant information to provide an estimated price. Zillow also provides an API for properties and Zestimates. More on Zillow.

(3) Yahoo Real Estate

Yahoo’s real estate site is almost a mashup of several services, including Zillow’s Zestimates and features from Realtor.com, however, they definitely do not have the vast database of properties comparatively (probably because they charge to list properties). Surprisingly, Yahoo has done a unique job of integrating everything related to real estate including school research, mortgages, credit scores, foreclosure information and a recently updated neighborhood section.

(4) New York Times

I personally hate the New York Times Real Estate section, but New Yorker’s consider it the Bible of real estate properties. I was surprised to see many sales and rentals available in most of the United States. Obviously, the New York Times is a large part of the real estate article database, however, I think their features and options are relatively standard for the real estate industry.

(5) Propsmart

A simplistic map based real estate search engine for not only Sales and Rentals, but also includes commercial real estate. Propsmart not only integrates their properties with Google Maps but they also provide Google Earth feeds for major cities. The only additional feature to note is the ability to rate your properties.

(6) Terabitz

Recently launched real estate portal ingeniously linked several databases and used several APIs to create your own personal real estate dashboard. Highly customizable and drag and drop functionality. It seems there are still some bugs in the system and definitely some additional tweaking needed to the layout, but for now Terabitz is worth trying. It includes sales, rentals, foreclosures, craigslist feeds, for sale by owner listings and more. In addition, it includes functional drag and drop modules for local amenities, statistics and information in addition to a rich financial section.

(7) HotPads

Hotpads offers only Rentals. Simplistic mashup of rental properties. The best part of HotPads is the simple adjustments of your criteria on the map. The worst part is once you find the rental, it gets confusing. Although, to my big surprise, the comparable listings presented in a really well-organized manner. They should take a lesson from that page.

Mass Marketplace Sites with Real Estate Listings

(8) Craigslist

Craigslist, which is now thoroughly international, is by far the best place to get a deal and unfortunately the best place to get swindled. So browse carefully. The features are minimal; however, it is the best place to get a deal since it is for the most part directly from owners since it is a cheap/free place to advertise real estate properties. It is dangerous because it is cheap/free and it is popular, so people like to take advantage. NEVER go alone to any property.

(9) Housing Maps (Craigslist Mashup) – Housing Maps recently added filters for their search, which definitely makes searching a whole lot easier. There are sales and rental options all laid out on a Google Map. Only major cities.

(10) MapsKrieg (Craigslist Mashup) ““ Another Google Maps Craigslist mashup, however compared to Housing Maps, there are only points on a map with no real search features other than the main categories. Rather slow loading times as well.

(11) Google Base

Google Base is unfortunately a Craigslist with a Google Map and very little functionality. However, the database is very large since it is free to list and thankfully, the search functions are decent. Also offers RSS feeds for searches. The worst aspect is definitely the keyword search function, since the details are minimal who knows what to search for”¦ Google Base is still in beta and Google has paid very little attention to it in the past year, so hopefully we can expect changes in the near future.

(12) Oodle

Oodle has grown a lot in the past few years. Their real estate database has also been heavily advertised throughout their sister/brother sites. Their database is large not only because it’s free, but they have several other databases feeding in as well as an API.

(13) Listpic (Oodle Mashup) – Listpic used to be a Craigslist mashup, but there was such a drain on Craigslist’s system that they had to cut them off since really the main focus of Listpic is the photos. So they switched to Oodle. The features are similar to Craigslist/Oodle but is slightly pleasant to look at since the main headings contain photos which are adjustable in size.

(14) Edgio

The smaller Oodle as I like to call it, is pretty pathetic. I especially love the “˜some results provided by eBay’ on the bottom of the results. It seems that they are most proud of their statistics and database, which is pretty impressive”¦ “Access over 100 million listings in 1,417,876 cities and 141 countries and 9,863,736 listings from 1,159 edge-direct feeds and 3,319 listings from 143 Classified Boards”

(15) Backpage

The Backpage is a rather simple version of Craigslist from the Village Voice. The only feature on here that Craigslist does not have is the ability to view the results with full text and information. Pretty clever if you ask me.

(16) Vast

Simple search capabilities and a pleasant layout and detailed, well organized results makes Vast a notable competitor. Their database is also rather large and includes all major US cities and additionally London.

(17) Kijiji

Supposedly the failed attempt from eBay to replicate the massively popular Craigslist phenomenon, although it still has a major presence is many international countries. It’s considered failure because it never quite took off in the United States, however, there are a few listings for several major US cities and even larger outside of the United States.

Real Estate Feed Searches:

(19) Realty Feed Search ““ Search the “feed directory of residential properties, commercial properties and informational topics”. Basically it doesn’t search through feeds but FOR feeds, which can come in handy if you want to keep on top of certain Real Estate Topics”¦

(20) Realty Feeds ““ Same as above, but thousands time better. The look and feel and functionality of Realty Feeds is very well done, as well as being International.

Other Notable Real Estate Tools:

(21) vFlyer ““ “vFlyer is a classified ad creation, management and submission platform that enables online sellers to quickly and easily create attractive classified ads or “˜virtual flyers’ that can be posted on dozens of leading online marketplaces in a few simple clicks.” There are also many more options including 5 free active flyers for the free version. There are also premium options.

(22) Walkscore ““ “Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.”

Most descriptions are taken from the web page, since only an author can describe his tool the best, but I threw in some comments in parentheses. None of the options below are resource lists, they are pure applications or tools. Enjoy and I hope you learn and benefit from the following list…

Complete CSS Coding (Layout, Fonts, Colors, Tweaks)

(1) HTML PHP CSS Website Template Maker – CSS template generator creates a two column layout with both a header and a footer. This PHP / CSS Style Sheet template generator outputs full featured tableless code i.e. tables are NOT used for the template with the column layout.

(2) CSS Toolbox (Desktop ““ Windows) – Free CSS Toolbox includes a number of tools for fast-tracking and enhancing the development of style sheet code, such as an advanced CSS Formatter and CSS Validator.

(3) 1-3 Columned Page Maker – Broken down into sections with all the necessary variables).

(4) CSS Generator – make simple cascading style sheets (everything but columns and layout).

CSS Layouts

(5) Boxed CSS – Boxed CSS is a free website that offers you CSS grids : they are free to be downloaded and modified, without a linkback required.

(6) Blue Print CSS – Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your CSS development time. It gives you a solid CSS foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, and even a stylesheet for printing.

(7) CSS Layout Generator – This generator will create a fluid or fixed width floated column layout, with up to 3 columns and with header and footer. Values can be specified in either pixels, ems or percentages.

(8) Lay-out-a-matic – Simple layout options (few options in my opinion).

(9) YAML Building – A tool for layout development of YAML based CSS Layouts (YAML = Yet Another Muliti-Column Layout).

(10) CSS Grid Calculator – Use the CSS Grid Calculator to quickly visualize page layout and draw grids in a variety of ways.

Style Sheet Editors

(11) CSS Fly – CSSFly is a web 2.0 tool for easy editing websites direct and in real-time in your browser. Simply edit the (X)HTML-code and the external Style-Sheet files : what you code is what you get!

(12) CSS Vista (Desktop/Windows) – CSSVista is a free Windows application for web developers which lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously.

Optimizer and Tweaking and Validators:

(13) CleanCSS – Powerful CSS optimizer and formatter. Basically, it takes your CSS code and makes it cleaner and more concise.

(14) CSS Tidy (Download/Open Source) – CSSTidy is an open source CSS parser and optimizer.

(15) CSS Tweak – Take your CSS and optimize it so that file sizes and download times are reduced. This tool is different from other optimizers as it gives you the option to stop it from altering your CSS code layout.

(16) W3′s CSS Validator – Check Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and (X)HTML documents with style sheets.

Additional Inputs and Options

(17) CSSTYPE – Web safe typography on screen for pixel perfectionists.

(18) List-u-Like CSS Generator – Create cross-browser list-based navigation bars with ease.

(19) Colly’s CSS rollover generator – With this CSS rollover generator, you can create two distinct styles of rollover button, using CSS and just one image.

(20) Rounded Cornr – Generate HTML/CSS code and images for rounded corners.

(21) Spiffy Corners – Offers a simple way to generate the CSS and HTML you need to create anti-aliased corners without using images or javascript.

(22) The Box Office – lets you wrap/float/contour text around freeform images using CSS for usage in (X)HTML pages.

(23) CSS Menu Maker – making professional CSS menus simple, for the average webmaster.

(24) CSS Scrollbar Color Changer – The CSS for the scrollbars that you create is displayed automatically below. Copy it into your HTML page to easily change the scrollbars for your web site.

(25) CSS Sprite Generator – Generate CSS Image Sprites.

That’s pretty much it. Got a favorite CSS tool that’s not in the list? Drop it in comments. Enjoy!

I don’t feel ashamed that I had paid for these programs since they did provide useful services to me until recently. Now I know better. Here are the results (please note I tried several other options before deciding on these applications):

(1) Office Software

Open Office replaced Microsoft Office – Microsoft Office’s replacement was the easy one to find since there is a lot of commotion these days regarding the alternatives. Open Office was a no contest option and with the recent update, I love it.

(2) Graphics and Image Manipulation

GIMP replaced Jasc Paint Shop Pro – Paint Shop Pro was the cheaper alternative to Adobe Photoshop. GIMP has more than fulfilled my needs and there are hundred of free tutorials available. Also make sure to check out GimpShop, a version of Gimp with a Photoshop-like look and functionalities.

(3) PDF

PrimoPDF and PDFedit replaced Adobe Acrobat Pro – The only key functions I ever used Adobe Acrobat Pro for was to save (aka print) files to PDF and to edit, type on or add graphics to the PDFs. With PrimoPDF I can print to PDF and the rest is accomplished with PDFedit.

(4) FTP

Filezilla replaced CuteFTP – I only assumed that the free versions of an FTP client were a bit sketchy. However, FileZilla is not only secure, it’s also widely used and highly featured.

(5) Bookmarks Sync. Tool

Zinkmo replaced Skymarks – Skymarks (IE bookmark synchronizer via the web) stopped working then disappeared and their site is down now only 3 months after I had paid for the program (all the other free ones created errors or did a poor job). Finally Zinkmo does a good job of syncing my Internet Explorer and Firefox bookmarks over the internet.

(6) FeedReader

RSS Bandit replaced NewsGator’s FeedDemon – FeedDemon was awesome, because it synced to NewsGator Online so no matter if I was at home, work or not one of my computers everything would be synced up. RSS Bandit accomplishes the exact same thing.

(7) Weather

Weather Watcher replaced Weather Channel Platinum – When Weather Channel’s desktop weather program failed to work on Vista, I asked support for help. They never solved the issue and I was stuck using an ad supported program at home. Weather Watcher has everything and more.

I hope you learned something and I hope I saved some people money out there, for more Free Tools be sure to check out:

• MakeUseOf Directory: Free WebServices and Mobile Apps
• Ultimate Open Source Always Free Applications

Feed Demon was totally worth the money to me, because you could synchronize your feeds with NewsGator Online, so whether I was at Home, Work, PDA or the Web all my feeds were there with only items I hadn’t read yet.

Well, apparently RSS Bandit now does the exact same thing, with not only an option to sync to NewsGator Online, but also via WebDAV, FTP or a file share.

Why Desktop version as opposed to Web version? Many reasons, which I won’t get into now, but mainly you have significantly more options and features in a desktop version comparatively. The advantage of RSS Bandit to synchronize over the web (via NewsGator or otherwise) allows for full functionality on your computer, but the web abilities when you are away.

RSS Bandit Features:

• Multi-language support
• Newsgroup Support
• Newspaper View Styles
• View and Post Comments to News Items in an RSS feed
• Autodiscover webfeeds
• Feed errors reported in a special folder
• Comments Posted to blogs from RSS Bandit show up in “Sent Items” Special Folder
• Integrated Configurable Web Search Bar
• Rss Item Search
• Monitoring System Event Logs

Check out the Full RSS Bandit Feature List and screenshots.

In the meantime, am I upset I paid for FeedDemon, certainly not, it’s been a great companion of mine for several months, but RSS Bandit is free and open source, so it depends which route you want to go.

1. It’s Scrabble, so that’s awesome
2. Play multiple games at the same time
3. Quick and easy multiple friend Invites
4. Easily view a list of current games and who’s turn it is
5. E-mail and/or Facebook notifications
6. Easily adjust settings
7. View My Stats for all games
8. View Global Stats – see who the “big” competitors are and how they are doing
9. View Completed Games
10. Onboard dictionary to check your options (just in case)

Luckily for us players and soon to be players, they are about to Upgrade their servers and the application, the new features will include:

1. Temporary score – No need to do the math before placing a word.
2. Tiles left – Tile tracking will be a lot easier for all players.
3. Improved interface – You will love it!
4. Dictionaries – We shall be offering more language options.
5. Type tiles option – Will be much faster to place the tiles on to the board.
6. Messaging system – New message notification icon.

So what are you waiting for?

“Word Racer is an exciting, fun, and fast word game where up to eight players compete by creating words from various grids made up of letters. Once a player finds a word, no other players can use that word.”

WordRacer is a fast paced, online multi-player Boggle type game, that is thoroughly addictive and I’d assume great for your brain. Also helps out with your Scrabble game. Always at least 300+ challengers ready, so what are you waiting for?

You may also check out Aibek’s post on Addictive Web Games