I’m a small business owner and recently the online world is making things allot easier for me, I can even do my tax returns online now. There has been allot of hype about web 2.0, e.g. blogs, online social networking, online desktops, ajax etc. Some hate the web 2.0 catch phrase or if you’re like me you just accept it for what it is; a new more dynamic web no longer a place where you just look for and collect information but a place where you can store and organize it too.

Here are some of the tools/applications i use all the time.

• del.icio.us : A brilliant online bookmark system and with the recent firefox extension it just got allot better. Its very simply in principle but extremely useful for storing links to your favorite articles, websites, what ever. As an added bonus you can also see what are the most popular links tagged by the community giving you a great insight into whats hip and exciting on the web.

  USE : I use this everyday you can view my del.icio.us links on this blog.

• Wordpress : This doesn’t act as a service in the way that the rest do or at least it doesn’t for me because I’ve installed wordpress on my own server. You can however now use the hosted blog software at http://www.wordpress.com which has all the great features of this installed version. A great piece of expandable blog publishing software and best of all its free.

  USE : I don’t use it as much as I should.

• Bloglines : There are loads of news readers out there and I can’t say I’ve used many of them but bloglines has everything I need to keep up to date on what interests me, be it news, sport or technology.

  USE : I never fail to check in on this each day I’m in work.

• Basecamp : Widely publizied and rightly so, one of the first to make a mark with a SME online business application. Great for project managment and keeping everything relevant to a specific project in one place.

  USE : Not everyday but most

• Blinksale : Online invoicing, great for the small to medium service companies and freelancers.

  USE : Well as often as I need to send them out. (hopefully more and more.. )

• 1time : And last but not least we use 1time to keep track of time for each project and team member. This is our little baby and only in alpha at the moment. I’ll have more on this soon, once we release it (Early 2006).

Others worth mentioning:
YouSendIt - Easy way to send large files
Meebo - Instant messaging in your browser
Digg - News aggregate site

Ones I’m keeping an eye on:
Squidoo- Sort of like wikipedia but with a strong community.
Shopify - A web 2.0 style shopping cart

Did I miss any?

You may notice something special about Squidoo today.

We have quietly — and completely — moved out of the closed beta test… and into a public beta.

That means that anyone can visit Squidoo, find lenses, claim lenses, and build their own. We’re thrilled to open our doors to the public, and to let everyone use the platform that you’ve been helping us test and improve these last few weeks.

But we’re not going to tell anyone yet.

Except you.

So, now’s the time for you to share what you’ve been working on during the secret beta test. Email your lenses to friends. Post a lens to your blog. Tell your mom. And, for a limited time, your friends will be the only people to know that Squidoo is finally live.

Thanks for working with us over the past two months. We can’t wait to see how the general public responds to what you’ve been building!

Ready. Set. Squidoo.

Heath Row
Senior Director of Community Development Squidoo

P.S.: Yes, it’s OK to blog about this.

I’ve been working with squidoo as a beta tester for a little while and it is a very interesting project. Very similar to a wiki but you can claim a certain keyword like domain name. I’ll be writing about “how to create a online store”. the plan is to give loads of information to someone who wants to know what is involved in setting up and running a store online. More to come on this.

So far I’m impressed with how squidoo works. I’d imagine there will be allot of tutorials and guides hosted on it. Advertising is automatically built in and you can donate the money to charity or keep it yourself. I’ll have more details on Squidoo when I get more done on it.

It has allot of buzz mostly because of the connection to Seth Godin. Been very impressed with the way they have done the marketing as well.

Check it out for yourself.

http://www.squidoo.com/

For anyone with a vested business in the analog phone network i think its time to consider a new career. First there was mobile phones, now there is Skpye and VoIP not to mention wireless broadband and even fiber optics.

I thought that was enough to signal a slow death for the traditional phone line. The latest article from Wired.com suggest its even worse for our trained phone technician. Soon you can connect to the web via your power lines. This is by no means a perfect solution by the creators own admission but this could easily speed up the process of pulling out those 56k phone lines forever.