As entrepreneurs we sometimes find ourselves living much different lives than the rest of the world. An 80-hour workweek may be followed by an 8-hour week by a 60-hour week. We may find ourselves out grocery shopping at 1 PM when others are busily working. Or, if you are like me, happily working at 3 AM when others are sleeping.
We entrepreneurs play by our own rules because we want to. Sometimes, however, we want to escape it all – to simplify and forget the work for work’s sake trap we may occasionally find ourselves in. Ultimately, isn’t this the true reason we left the 9-5? With the continuous improvements in technology, freeing up time has become much easier to achieve.
Having the ability to work anywhere, anytime and on any computer is an amazing advantage for entrepreneurs. Personally, I do not miss having to head to the office daily, travel to most meetings or spend hours on paperwork.
Well I have put a ton of research into this and have found an extensive list of websites, software & other resources for simplifying your life – hopefully. In order to help a wide range of entrepreneurial styles, I made sure to include both lesser-known resources as well as some of the much more popular options.
Personalized Home Pages
1. iGoogle – You can add almost anything to your home page; weather reports, calendar & to-do list, rss feeds, Gmail, maps, site specific search forms, etc… And it’s linked to your Google account, so your settings follow you from computer to computer!
2. My Yahoo! – Similar to iGoogle
3. Pageflakes – Again another personalized dashboard
4. Netvibes – One more for your choosing!
5. Jimmyr – Aggregation page of a ton of technology, news & entertainment sites
Document Management & OCR
6. Evernote – I love this OCR software. Take a picture, scan, web clip, PDF, even hand written memo and Evernote will convert it to a searchable text document. It works! Better yet, they provide Blackberry & iPhone apps for mobile use. Highly recommended!
7. NetDocuments – An online document management system ideal for small offices. Haven’t tried it yet but will definitely give it a shot at my real estate office.
8. Google Docs – Great alternative to the overpriced (in my opinion) Microsoft Office suite
9. Cometdocs – Converts a wide variety of files – online! No software needed!
10. HTML to PDF – Great option for easily saving or emailing entire web pages. Converts any page into a PDF.
Data Storage & File Back-Up
11. Dropbox – The online backup system I use. A folder is created on the computer and any file saved into that folder is automatically saved online.
12. Mozy – I haven’t used this one but it seems to be the most popular online backup option.
13. Sugarsync – Another popular backup option. They have a mobile solution available which makes this option pretty attractive.
14. Box.net – Excellent solution for group collaboration & sharing of files. And it works with Salesforce CRM!
