Technology

Top ten web applications I use daily

Posted by beyond438 on Apr 7, 2008 in Technology | 4 comments

More and more I’m migrating desktop (offline) work to the Internet or the Cloud. I’m still not there, but I hope to be using only web apps in a few years. Technologies like Google Gears and Adobe’s AIR will make it possible to take your online (Internet-based) applications offline. Micro Persuasion wrote a great (but technical) article on how to create your own PPNC (Portable Personal Nerve Center). TechCrunch has two interesting articles on bridging Desktop and Web Applications — see part 1 and part 2. In these articles the author also refers to site-specific browser products like Mozilla’s Prism, Bubbles and Fluid for the Mac. These products allow one to encapsulate a web application into a self contained desktop application.  Now for my list of most used web applications.The following is a list of the top ten web applications I use on a daily basis:

1. Gmail: I use Apple’s Mail app as my primary email application, however I read all my email into Gmail as a backup and also in case I don’t have my trusty MacBook Pro with me. I use labels and filters to tag each email with the name of the email account.
2. Google Reader: I use Google Reader as my primary RSS feed reader. If I use FireFox on the Mac I can also view blog posts offline using Google Gears.
3. WordPress: My blogging platform. I think it’s the best.
4. Mint.com: I use Mint for my personal finances. After the initial setup it will categorize your transactions while you sleep — cool! Well, actually you still have to do some re-categorization and renaming, however it gets pretty smart after a month or two.
5. Del.icio.us: I use this funny-name-that-I-always-misspell site to save and manage my bookmarks.
6. Zoho: I started with Zoho CRM, and now use Zoho Creator and Zoho Meeting. Zoho Creator is a great app to quickly develop a simple web application for data capture — EXCEL on steroids. Zoho Meeting is a FREE version of Webex.
7. SiteKreator.com: SiteKreator is one of many online website creation tools. I like SiteKreator because of the low monthly fees, professional themes and great support. I hope you’ll agree that my Beyond438 site looks very professional.
8. Google Docs: Google Docs is not going to replace MS Office or Apple’s iWork anytime some, however it’s very useful to quickly create and share documents.
9. GrandCentral: Google acquired GrandCentral in 2007. Your GrandCentral phone number is positioned as your one phone number for life. It also has very powerful voicemail features.
10. DotMac: I use Apple’s .Mac service to host and manage my personal website. Very easy to use and manage your digital life online.

April 9, 2008 update:

See PCWorld’s list of top nine list of online apps.

This is my list. Do you agree? What do you use?

Most influential South African VC – Roelof Botha

Posted by beyond438 on Mar 30, 2008 in Entrepreneurship, South Africa, Technology, Venture Capital | 0 comments

Roelof Frederik Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the most influential VC firms in the world. Sequoia has the highest rating on TheFunded website of 3.9. Here is his bio from the Sequoia website:

Roelof Botha is a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital focusing on services and software investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal (EBAY). Earlier, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. Roelof is a certified actuary (Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries), and has a BS in Actuarial Science, Economics, and Statistics from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.                                     

Botha is the grandson of Pik Botha (not to be confused with PW Botha), South Africa’s former minister of foreign affairs. He was born in South Africa and completed his Actuarial Science degree at the University of Cape Town. Botha also graduated with an MBA from the Stanford Business School in 2000. He received 3 MBA awards including the Henry Ford II award for being the top scholar.

Elon Musk, then CEO of Paypal, hired Botha in 2001 and 7 months before Paypal’s IPO he became its CFO. After Paypal’s acquisition by eBay for a cool $1.5bn he joined Sequoia Capital. According to the Mercury News Botha is one of a few VCs to turn its first deal into a billion dollar deal. That’s exactly what Botha did with Sequoia’s small investment in YouTube in 2006. The following SiliconBeat Q&A with Botha provides insight regarding YouTube before the Google acquisition.Botha is #22 on the 2008 Forbes Midas List, moving up one position from 2007. The Midas List chronicles the top deal makers in the world. He is also listed as one of the PayPal Mafia in a 2007 Fortune article.

 Here is Kara Swisher’s July 2007 interview with Botha at the Sequioa’s offices on Sand Hill Road: 

Botha is involved in the following Sequoia investments:

• Gene Security Network,
• Insider Pages – local business reviews,
• Jawbone – cool bluetooth headset,
• Joost – free online TV,
• Mahalo – handcrafted search (I tried a Roelof Botha search and got this — very cool),
• Meebo – online IM site,
• Searchme.com, – visual search, a la, Apple’s Coverflow,
• ThinkCash, – Short term loans,
• TokBox, – web-based video chat,
• Xceive – Single chip RF-to-baseband transceivers (mmm not I know exactly what they do),
• Xoom, international money transfer service and PayPal competitor, 
• Adbrite – online internet ad market place, 
• Luxim, 
• Green Dot Financial Services, and 
• Zappos.com – online shoe store.

Not a lot is known about Botha’s personal life. He is married and has two sons aged 2 and 5 years old. He likes to play chess. Here is his LinkedIn profile.

Youtube for documents

Posted by beyond438 on Feb 19, 2008 in Blogging, Technology | 0 comments

OM Malik’s post on Scribd’s iPaper prompted me to try this service and so far I am very intrigued by the possibilities. It’s easy to sign up and the viewer works great. Here is NOT an example of an embedded document. I couldn’t get it to work on my blog (It may be an issue with my template…any suggestions why it’s not working?).It works great on my website, Beyond438.com.While doing research for this post I found that Techcrunch has a lot to say about Scribd and similar technologies including: Docstoc, and edocr.Issuu is a Danish company with a VERY cool pdf viewer. This one also messes with my blog layout (I think I have a problem with my blog template). See an example here on my website, Beyond438.com (scroll to the bottom of the page). Seems like Scoble and Webware both got this story before Techcrunch. Funny!Scribd and Issuu are two tools and sources that I’m adding to my Entrepreneurs JIT toolkit.

tumblr – My tumblelog http://beyond438.tumblr.com/

Posted by beyond438 on Jan 9, 2008 in Blogging, Technology | 0 comments

I’m using tumblr.com to blog about interesting web items. These are typically a link with one or two sentences of text. Do you have a tumblelog? How do you use it?

SoCon08 – Web 2008 in 1.5 days

Posted by beyond438 on Jan 3, 2008 in Blogging, Business, Technology | 0 comments

I attended SoCon07 last year and really enjoyed it. SoCon08 will be held at the University of Kennesaw, just North of Atlanta from February 8-9, 2008. You can register here. It’s not free like ’07 — this year it’s $43 for the full 1.5 days (including a Networking Dinner) or $15 for the Saturday. It’s still a great deal vs for example AlwaysOn’s $1875 OnMedia NYC 2008 event.Great place to meet all sorts of people that are part of the Atlanta (South East) tech scene.Are you going?

Free and Low cost cell phone calls – Jajah, Soonr, Jaxtr, Fring, Lypp, MaxRoam

Posted by beyond438 on Dec 24, 2007 in Business, Technology | 0 comments

Skype is not the only game in town anymore for free or cheap local and international calls. I use Skype a lot for making international calls when I’m connected to the Internet with my MacBook Pro. When I only have my Blackberry, I use VIP’s local and toll free access numbers to make international calls. Recently I started using Jajah’s local direct dial. On Christmas day Jajah is offering FREE calls.

Here are a few options for making cheap or free calls from your cell phone:
Jajah: Jajah has been around for about a year and I’ve used it on and off. Their new Jajah Direct service works great. They link an international number to a local US number. You dial a local US number and the phone rings in the foreign country you’re calling. This way you can make cheap international calls from your mobile phone. At the moment they have local numbers for most large US cities, e.g., Chicago, New York and San Francisco. I hope they add Atlanta soon. Jajah is very easy to set up and use. You can also use Jajah Mobile Web to make calls from your mobile phone. BBCalls integrates Jajah functionality directly into your Blackberry’s phone book app.

Soonr: I posted about Soonr before. Soonr brings your Mac or PC desktop to your cellphone. With Soonr Talk you can call your Skype friends from your cellphone. If they are online the call is free, else you pay the SkypeOut rate. I haven’t used this recently, however when I used it, it worked great. It does take some time to set up. If you have a lot of Skype friends and you have a browser enabled cellphone with a data plan then your calls are free, cool! This “SoonR Talk workaround enables VoIP on your iPhone” — post from Engadget.