One of my favorite features of the new Google Chrome browser is the Application Shortcuts feature. This feature, in summary, basically allows you to create shortcuts on your destkop to web applications to be opened in your browser. But it’s not just like opening a link in your browser. Google Chrome has created a special window inteface for Applications when you create an application shortcut. This video will show you exactly how to do it.

This is really the only benefit that Adobe Air had. Was the ability to integrate web applications with your desktop. But this feature of Google Chrome makes it even easier to do this. And you can do it with any web application, even your own that you buid. Not to mention the fact that Adobe Air applications are far and few between. With Google Chrome, you can make a Application Shortcut for any of your web applications. CRM’s, ERP’s, Google Docs, Zoho, etc. 

This feature may seem simple, but it could revolutionize the web application industry. It now makes better sense for more and more companies to turn their desktop applications into web applications! Watch out for this!

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Firefox has been for a long time the best browser for me, and for anyone for that matter. Internet Explorer and Safari are only used by me for testing purposes of the websites I create. Otherwise I would get rid of those in a heartbeat.  And Opera was my extra browser. I used it to see it’s browser technology and keep up on what’s going on in the Browser world.  But now that Google has released it’s own browser Chrome, I am now using it as my extra browser rather than Opera. 

Why? There just doesn’t seem to be room for Opera anymore! At least on my computer. Firefox still stands as the #1 browser, but Google’s new Chrome is up and coming strong and honestly because it’s Google i’m sure it will eventually overtake Firefox.

Goodbye Opera. It’s been fun!

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Gregarius is a web-based RSS/RDF/ATOM feed aggregator, designed to run on your web server, allowing you to access your news sources from wherever you want. It has the following technical specs:

• Completely web-based (runs on your web server)

• Simple, password-protected, administration and configuration

• AJAX powered item tagging

• Full-text search

• Committed to web standards: renders XHTML/CSS, supports OPML

• Gregarius is FREE software and is released under the GPL

Why Have Your Own RSS Feed Reader?

There are many reasons why someone might want to have a web-based RSS reader on their server. These could be for personal reasons, or perhaps for a web application that they are wanting to integrate it with. Some examples might be 1)for integrating with a social application that you might be building. 2) To keep what you are reading more PRIVATE rather than open to someone like Google when you use their Google Reader. 3) You want to customize your Feed Reader to your own specific wants/needs.

Your Own Custom RSS Feed Reader

This is an interesting concept. Many of you RSS readers out their probably use Google Reader or BlogLines or another major competitor for web based rss reading. I personally use Google Reader because it is the one I like the most. But what if you could customize your own Reader to your own specific likes. That’s what happens when the code is Open Source and you can manipulate it to your needs. Also, there is fantastic repository of Plugins for Gregarius to choose from.

Some Random Ideas on What You Could Use Gregarius For!

1. RSS Education: you can use Gregarius as a web based private education tool where you can setup rss to students or employees to improve learning on specific subjects.
2. Private RSS: you can setup Gregarius in a secure and private environment on your web server for sharing information internally such as Project Management information, Accounting, Sales, etc. You get the point.
3. Free RSS Service: you can offer free RSS services like Google and BlogLines does. Be a competitor to them. Utilize small ad spaces for everyone who logs in so that you can monetize your free service.
4. Sell People on your Personal RSS Access: this is a pretty far out idea but it’s something that you could start seeing. Basically, someone can pay you to access a web based feed reader build on Gregarius, and that feed reader has already preloaded RSS feeds that are being aggregated. You can sell special stock market tips or how to really learn SEO etc.

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Simple Customer is an open source, lightweight, easy to use and easy to modify contact manager built in PHP and MySQL. The idea of it as it appears to me is to be  a very simple solution for managing contacts, customers, clients or whatever you want to call them.  Due to the lightweight nature of this application, it’s very responsive online and makes it worth using because of how quickly you can add, edit, delete, and add notes to each one of your contacts. Here is a screenshot of this free open source application:

Why Would I Use This?

For many people, a full featured CRM like Sugar or Vtiger is completely unnecessary. Many of us, me included need nothing more than to keep the basic contact information for my customers and notes on that customer. That’s it. Anything more is just way too much than I am willing to work with. I have been looking for a long time a contact manager that is Open Source that is quick and easy to use,, and that doesn’t take so long to use each time a page loads. So if you are looking for a small, simple, open source contact manager built in PHP, and something that you may want to edit for yourself than check out the Simple Customer project.

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There is a way you can sync your Mozilla Thunderbird with your Google Calendar. First what you need is a calendar addon to your Thunderbird email application. There are two major players in this (they are free and open source of course). Mozilla Sunbird and Lighting.

Both of these tools allow you to manage your calendar on your desktop. It’s integrated with Thunderbird so that you can manage your email and calendar in the same location. This is of course the same type of functionality that you get with Microsoft Outlook. Only this is better of course because it is free. But, they only allow you to manage your calendar on your desktop. What happens if you don’t have your computer with you though? What if you are on a trip or on vacation? This is why people love using the free web based calendar from Google. So let’s integrate the two.

Google Calendar Thunderbird Add-on!

This extension simply allows Sunbird and Lightning to read and write events to a Google Calendar. Follow the instructions given on the plugin page to know exactly how to configure the add-on. Here is the link to the extension page where you can download and get instructions for installation.

This article here… http://bfish.xaedalus.net/?p=239 will give you a complete guide to configuring your Thunderbird app to work with any Google Calendar of your choice. This is such a fantastic mashup. Integrating and syncing a desktop calendar with a web based calendar, where both applications constantly talk to each other is priceless. I personally have been looking for something like this for a long time and i’m glad I have come across it. I have already installed this add-on to work with my already running Thunderbird & Lighting. It’s working perfectly for me with not problems at all.

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I am actually a victim of paying for web conferencing services in the past. Stupid ol me! Currently there are 3 major players offering free web conferencing services. I have not actually had the chance to use any of them myself. And i’m looking for some feedback from some of you on which of the 3 services you prefer. Here are each in no particular order:

1. Yugma - the site definitely looks like it was created in India. When you first see the website, it throws you off because the whole web design is just kind of “hacked” together. Get past the bad web design and you get a cool free web conferencing service. They have a desktop application that you have to download and run in order to use their services. Kind of like a Skype application. The free service is only for “Personal” web conferncing. They have a package for 10 users at $9.95 a month. I’m still not sure if that means you can uses up to 9 on the free account or not.

2. Vyew - with the free account you get an unlimited amount of meetings. You get 20 maximum real time participants. You get 5 of what’s called “VyewBooks” which are basically pages where meetings take place. You can hold all types of content. VyewBooks are always-on and always available to users with permission! Vyew definitely appears to be by far the best out of the 3 free tools!

3. dimdim - dimdim is kind of cool because it’s software is actually Open Source. As a user, there is no software to download or install. It’s all done from your Web Browser which is kind of a cool thing. One downfall is that sharing desktop only works with a windows operating system. Support for Mac and Linux are coming soon. The free account gives you up to 20 people in a room.

My Conclusion for Free Web Conferencing

Even though I mentioned them first, Yugma is out of the loop! They don’t really provide anything that the other two don’t. And you have to download a desktop app in order to use their service. Which is really lame. And they only give you to 10 (we think) users in a meeting with the free account. Not worth it.

Vyew on the other hand is very interesting because of their VyewBooks feature. A very cool feature where you can host your content for your meeting online. Very cool! They give you up to 20 users in your meeting on the free account which is more than many of us will ever need.

And then there is dimdim! Since dimdim has licensed it’s software open source then of course it’s going to get some kudos on this blog. It too gives you up to 20 people in a web conference with the free account.

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