No longer. Evite, while improving, isn’t nearly the best at what it does. That title, in my humble opinion, rests squarely in the hands of Anyvite.

Anyvite is a simple, but feature-rich, way to create invitations and bring all your friends together. Anyvite helps you through every step of the event planning, from finding a venue to deciding whether or not your friends can bring friends (and how many). It’s an incredibly detailed application, that you can ignore entirely if all you want to do is send out a simple invitation.

The first thing you do with Anyvite is create your event: give it a name, a location, a date, and some information. You can style your invitation with one of Anyvite’s many themes, or create your own.

Then, start sending out the invitations. You can send the invitations by entering their email addresses, or you can import your address book from your Email or Evite account. You can see who’s RSVP’ed, and even export your guest list to other applications for easier managing. If you want to create an event for anyone and everyone, Anyvite gives you a link to share with people so they can sign up to attend without having to receive an email.

You get to change just about every option of the invite: do you want there to be a “maybe” option? How many attendees are you capping your party at? Want to remind your guests again before the party? You can do all that and more through Anyvite.

If you’re on the receiving end of an invitation, you’ve got tons of options as well. You can receive invitations, updates and reminders by email, text message, or over any Jabber IM (like Google Talk). You can RSVP by texting or IMing “RSVP y” or “RSVP n”, or even text a comment about the event or invitation. There’s even a mobile site ( m.anyvite.com ) that lets you create, manage and view invitations from your cell phone.

There’s a widget that you can embed on your website or blog – a cool feature if you’re hosting or attending relevant events. Your events can also be imported directly into your Google or Outlook calendar, making sure you never forget about that sweet party coming up tonight.

Anyvite, believe it or not, is even useful after your party is over. Anyvite provides you with a code that you put in the tags of a Flickr picture or a YouTube video, and anything with that tag shows up on the event page. It’s like its own scrapbook for your parties.

Anyvite is great because you can create an event in 10 seconds or an hour, depending on how specific and complex you want it to be. It’s incredibly simple to use, and great for planning events. The text-messaging integration also makes it perfect for last-second changes and needs for your party.

Next time you’re planning an event, do yourself and your guests a favor: ditch Evite, and stick with Anyvite for all your planning needs.

How do you use the Web to plan things?

Photo Credit : jemsweb

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Example time:

Let’s say that I want to sign up for PossiblyShadySite.com but don’t want to give out my real email address, potentially passing it to spammers. Instead, I register with the address

For those who prefer to use their own domain, that option is also available. All messages to my custom address will fall into its own folder in your OtherInbox, where you can read, archive, search, and reply to them in a nice Outlook-style layout.

Note to self…see if “PossiblyShadySite.com” is taken. Now where was I?

You can do this with a seemingly-infinite number of sites.

- save your Amazon receipts in amazon@myusernname.otherinbox.com
- filter your eBay auto-searches into eBay@myusernname.otherinbox.com
- use separate email just for signups, say em>signups@myusernname.otherinbox.com
- etc.

Best part about this is that there are no filters to set up; you do not have to go to the OtherInbox site ahead of time to create the address. For instance, right after signing up (got username makeuseof) I sent myself 3 emails to following addresses:

- test1@makeuseof.otherinbox.com
- test2@makeuseof.otherinbox.com
- test3@makeuseof.otherinbox.com

When I logged in to OtherInbox I saw each of those emails in its own Inbox. Sweet.

In the event that you begin to receive unsolicited mail in a particular inbox, you have the option of hitting the big “Block All” button, which disables that address. You’ll never see mail from them again. The option to turn a disabled inbox back on is there if needed.

Checking multiple sites for your mail is a chore, and OtherInbox seems to understand that. Additional options allow you to auto-forward all incoming mail to another address, or (my favorite) read your messages via RSS.

The same options are available for individual inboxes, along with the vice-versa option, importing an RSS feed to an inbox.

OtherInbox can also import messages from any IMAP account, auto-saving and organizing receipts, coupons, etc. I’m told that there is currently no limit to the amount of messages that can be saved in your OtherInbox account.

Being a beta, it can be prone to the occasional hiccups, but I have no real complaints about the service. I believe that once you have been using OtherInbox for just a few days, you will wonder what you did without it.

I’m also happy to announce that the nice folks at OtherInbox have opened up their beta to the first 100 Make Use Of readers to sign up through this link. You may also follow their Twitter account for the chance to score an invite, or simply to send them feedback.

So why not set up an account and then come back here and let us know what you think? Do you see this as the new weapon against email spam?

Make Use Of has written a lot on email spam but here are a couple of posts you might want to check out

- Get a Grip on eMail Spam Before It Gets A Grip On You
- Quickly Create Temporary Email Addresses with Yopmail.

Enjoy!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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While doing my undergraduate studies, sometimes I had to spend hours on creating simple survey forms, hence I know how time consuming and irritating the process can be. Wufoo can help you build good quality online forms, surveys, invitations and etc. It does not end here, service also does a great job at processing and managing forms. You can check out different form examples and have tour though account user interface here and here, respectively. Wufoo provides good all-in-one feature set, letting person not only to create forms but also easily manage and analyze data obtained from it. It is even possible to create complete customer management system.

There are many people who can benefit from this tool considerably. I think it may be especially useful for teachers, students or people involved in a job that requires to carry out regular customer surveys and monitore custumer behaviour. From the wide variety of subscription models available, I assume that the demand for this service exists in many corporate sectors as well. Below I have included excerpt from the Wufoo’s website

Basically, the possibilities are endless, but here’s a short list of things to give you an idea of Wufoo’s versatility:

• Contact Form
• Mailing List
• Survey
• Job Application
• Workshop Registration
• Event Calendar
• Account Management
• Customer Management
• Bug Tracker
• Invitations / RSVP
• Online Orders
• Wedding Planner
• Address Book
• Home Finances
• Classifieds
• Personal Journal
• Quizzes / Tests
• Media Collection

For sign-up you need only email. Service has 5 different pricing options(check here) including free option. Free service option is limited to 3 forms/month, 3 reports/month and 100 entries. This amount should be enough for non-business use. If you need more then that you will need to subscribe to one of the premium accounts priced between $9 to $199/month,depending on the number of forums required.

Another couple of web based companies that offer similar onlne tools are Form Assembly and WyaCracker. If you know any other similar services let me know.

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