free resources and tools for small businesses - what do you recommend and why?

Hey Steven,

This may not be exactly what you have in mind, but nobody should ever pay for MS Office. For Windows, you can download OpenOffice, and for Mac you can download NeoOffice.

Both are able to open all MS Office documents (Word, Excel, etc.) and are totally free.

LinkedIn is a great tool. I try to answer some questions and tweak my profile each day. Just by remaining active on the site, I gain new contacts and valuable information daily...And this is all done with my free account through them!

Best of luck with your business endeavors!

Genbook.com offers a free online appointment setting service. You can set up an account and list services that you offer or you can people who work for you and the services that they offer. People can then book appointments for a particular service or a particular person online.

It also gives you the ability to block out specific times that are not available and the times in which you are "closed."

Once someone has booked an appointment, then they get an confirmation email and you get an email or a text message that appointment has been made.

They offered free code so that you can put a button on you website.

Google Apps are free and are also great for sharing documents, spreadsheets, calendars and presentations with other users.

When it comes to text editors for coding Web pages, etc., the absolute best on OSX is TextWrangler. It's made by the same people who make BBEdit. It colours your code to make it very readable.

On Windows I still haven't found anything I like better than Notepad -- not very feature-rich, but it makes up for it in plain old simplicity -- easily the best product Microsoft ever made!

My favourite tool for automating Windows is AutoIt. I still use version 2.64, even though version 3 has been out for years. 2.64 does every thing I need, and is VERY simple to program. I've heard 3 is much more powerful, but just haven't had a chance to use it yet.

If you need to create an installer for Windows, you can't beat InnoSetup. Not as feature-rich as the expensive installers like InstallVise, but it is totally stable and gets the job done. You need to do a bit of trial and error to get it right on the first few times.

Paul Thanks for telling me about Neo Office. I just downloaded it. If I send an document as an attachment will everyone be able to open it? That is one of the problems with AppleWorks. I send a lot of attachments and I don't want there to be any issue. Also will Word documents convert easily and are there any exceptions to that? Literally all of my documents are now in Word. I have been hesitant to buy the 2008 version.

Is there anything I can do in Word that won't work in Neo Office? Thanks for answering these questions if you can. I so appreciate the tips and hopefully other people reading this will benefit as well!! Kaya

Hey Kaya,

Any documents you create in NeoOffice can be saved as Word or Excel documents. So if someone wants to open it in Word or OpenOffice, they can.

If you convert a document from Word to NeoOffice, it maintains all the formatting, tables, headers and footers. I don't use anything more advanced than that in Word, so I'm not sure. I do quite a bit in Excel, and haven't found any shortcomings.

Oops - just thought of another free tool: Zamzar. You can upload a file of many different file types, and have it converted to a different file type. For example, you can upload a pdf and have it converted to a Word file!

GenBook IS really cool. We're going to use it for our housekeeping company.

Another tool I use for project collaboration is Basecamp

We use Macs but hadn't heard of NeoOffice before. I'll have to try it. I've been trying the Mac version of OpenOffice for about a week and find it quirky. Can anybody compare NeoOffice and OpenOffice for Mac?

I highly recommend Skype for telephony. For a very low fee compared to anything else I've seen I can call anywhere in the US and Canada for no additional charge, and the per minute rates for calls to most other countries are very low (SkypeOut). I have a Skype phone number (SkypeIn) so anyone can call me as well. The quality is quite good. Combined with a pre-paid cell phone (I use the cell phone minimally) I've eliminated my land line and can stay in constant touch with clients and colleagues.

Courtney -Basecamp looks interesting. I could see using it on my construction management projects, with its multiple players and heavy file sharing. How felxible and useful have you found it to be?

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-Andrey

Hey Richard,

I didn't even know there was an OpenOffice for the Mac! I believe NeoOffice and OpenOffice are compiled from the same code base, so they are probably similar -- if not the same.

I also use Basecamp, as a reporter with a couple of local magazines. I agree with Courtney. It's great for collaborative projects.

I second the sentiment for Basecamp. I have multiple projects active and it's easy to use and a big help to me organizationally. I'd like to see it evolve a little faster, but it's a great way to 'broadcast' project updates to team members and clients, and to find past messages. Also milestones and 'writeboards' are quite helpful. It's not free, but a great business value.

Sorry to monopolize the thread here. I just remembered a cool trick for Skype. If you have a place where you are storing your contact data, and there are places to store Web URLs for your contacts, store their Skype name with a prefix of callto://

This when you try to launch this "Web site", it should automatically dial their Skype name for you.

Another free (though it may be moving out of beta) project management tool I've played with a little is Wrike.

I noticed Wrike produces Gantt charts. Does Basecamp do that? Gantt charts are pretty complicated things -- have yo used this feature, Bruce, and how well does it work? They're used in construction all the time, so I'm interested to see if this is an effective tool. It's the critical path feature that's essential for construction.

It looks like Wrike cost $5 per user per month now. $4 if you sign up for 1 year. That's $20 per month for me with 4 users. Basecamp is $25 per month but limited to 15 projects. Otherwise it's $49 per month. My projects are small but there are more than 15. I was just saying last week that there is something new almost everyday that is going to cost me about $20 per month. Here I go again.

Many of my projects are recurring (e.g. quarterly tax returns). Does Write allow for automatic regeneration of these projects or do I have to issue a new task?

There's also Google Docs. I use the shared calendar, docs & spreadsheets all the time to collaborate with clients, researchers, etc. It's great stuff.

In addition, there's GrandCentral for a phone number (http://www.grandcentral.com). It's in Beta, so you have to reserve a number, but it's an amazing service.

I'm a big mind-mapper, so I use http://bubbl.us/ for that.

And while you're at it, check out this huge list of online productivity tools. Some of them are free.

http://lifedev.net/big-list-of-online-productivity-tools/

Giveaway of the Day arranges with software publishers to give away a product for 24 hours.

If you sign up, Giveaway of the Day will send an email every day describing the day's free software.

Most of the software "retails" for under $50 but you can download it for free within a 24-hour period. Because it's free, you can't get tech support, upgrade later, or use in a commercial environment.

Some software is related to productivity and some is just for fun. In my experience, I download about one offering a week. Today's download is Folder Marker Home 3.0.

I receive free faxes which are converted into email through K7.net.

The company is a local (Seattle) company and the phone number given to you is in the 206 area code. You can store up to 20 faxes or voice mails on their servers. It's a great way to get faxes while on the road. You have to use it once every 30 days to keep your number.