Crenk » tool

AnalyzePal: Free Analytics Tool For PayPal

Steven Finch — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:46:04 +0000

AnalyzePal is a free Adobe-AIR application that provides an easy way to measure your PayPal sales, performance & customer tracking.

It doesn’t require any PayPal username-pass or API information as AnalyzePal works in an offline way with the transaction logs that can be downloaded from PayPal.

The application displays a snapshot of your last 3 months activities with charts or you can view the revenue for any given period.

AnalyzePal is also great for browsing past transactions quickly as it works offline.

Besides the free version, it has paid & more-featured versions that can filter data by customers, countries, etc.

Free Multiplatform Tools To Create Your Own iBooks

Steven Finch — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:12:33 +0000

Being an open source format, ePub books are already widely available on the net. But you can also create your own electronic books in ePub format. Here are two free multiplatform tools to create iBooks – a.k.a: ePub books.

eCub: A lightweight ePub publisher to create iBooks available for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris platform. Some of the features are:
- creates unencrypted ePub files from text or XHTML files;
- allows editing of the text or XHTML files with a simple internal editor or designated external editors;
- helps to create a simple cover design image;
- optionally creates title, content and cover pages;
- can be run from the command line as part of a build script;
- can convert the book content to audio files (WAV or MP3).
Sigil: Describes itself as a WYSIWYG ebook editor. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Some of the features are:
- WYSIWYG editing;
- Multiple Views: Book View, Code View and Split View;
- Metadata editor with full support for all possible metadata entries (more than 200) with full descriptions for each;
- Table Of Contents editor;
- Multi-level TOC support;
- Currently imports TXT, HTML and ePub files; more will be added with time;
- Currently exports ePub and SGF (Sigil native format); more will be added with time.

Savings: Best Deal Saving Tool For The Everyday Internet User

Steven Finch — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:25:24 +0000

This morning I came across a great savings site that I thought I would share will all our Crenk readers. Savings.com is a startup that provides some amazing savings across various retailers throughout the world.

On Savings.com users will have access to some of the worlds leading brands and they offer a combination of coupons and just best / reduced deals. If you are after a specific brand or after just a broad range of coupons and cheap deals, then Savings.com is for you.

For example users have access to specific brands on their own individual pages, like Southest promo codes and Travelocity promotion codes. However, if you are after a broad range of travel coupons then Savings.com also has you sorted for that.

Overall im a big fan of what Savings.com is trying to provide the average internet user. The design of the site itself is great and Im a big fan of the fact that they dont have any basic display advertising putting off users, but this could be a great revenue stream for the site in the near future. Some other great features are “you can add tips and great deals and become a Savings.com Deal Expert, earning the respect and admiration of your fellow members. Or contribute to the community by voting and commenting on deals, which also lets the deal experts know you appreciate their savings know-how”.

Savings.com is definitely worth checking out for all Crenk readers.

Headway: Create Your Own Wordpress Theme Design Simply and Cheaply

Steven Finch — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 03:26:17 +0000

Headway is perfect for both developers/designers and the average do-it-yourself-er. Easily rearrange a layout or change a setting in a jiffy. With Headway you can stop worrying about the monotonous tasks or the technical stuff, and just get down to creating great content for your blog. Headway makes designing your blog the easiest thing about blogging.

Using the Headway Visual Editor, you can do anything from a standard blog, to landing pages, to membership sites, to e-commerce sites. For non-technical folks, Headway’s “Easy Hooks” let you insert custom content at will wherever you like on any page without messing with PHP or CSS. For hardcore developers, Headway has heaps of actions and filters (or hooks) to take customization even farther.

Headway has its own built-in search engine optimization (or SEO) settings. Simply having Headway will help your search engine optimization, even if you don’t use any of its manual features. If you do use them (and we’ll show you how), you can enjoy a greater chance of moving up in search rankings.

Quantcast Has Become Our Free Analytics Tool of Choice

Steven Finch — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:39:21 +0000

Quantcast is an analytics tool that has been around for quite a while, yet it seems as though most web developers either havent heard about it or dont use it.

Quantcast works in a very similar way to Google Analytics. The website owner ads some code to their site and then Quantcast brings in the relevant data and then adds it to their platform. However, unlike Google Analytics which is private, Quantcast allows the website own to then either display their analytics publicly or keep them private.

Unlike other online analytics software like Alexa and Compete (which estimate data based on a set of user stats), Quantcast provides exact analytical information and then only if it doesnt have that exact information, then it estimates traffic numbers. Thus, providing a much better indexing of what the world’s most popular websites are.

Here at Crenk we arent afraid to hide our stats like most other website owners, so here is a link to our Quantcast profile.

Share and Annotate Documents With Apollo

Dean Sherwin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:45:54 +0000

As a writer and blogger, I often need to share files with clients and many times just my friends to get feedback on things. It could be a new guide I’ve written or a new design for my blog. A new tool I’ve found makes that a lot easier. It’s called Apollo. It allows you to upload a document and share it with people.

They can then add notes and feedback to the document using the simple ‘note tool’ which involves you just clicking on where you want to add your feedback on the document.

The thing I liked most about Apollo was how you can select exactly where on the document you want to add the note instead of describing it to the other person.

The interface is very easy-to-use and has only the basic tools you need to give or receive feedback. To but it bluntly, there’s no excess fat to get in the way.

To sum up, this is a great web app for freelancers and large companies alike. It streamlines what used to be a very tedious process involving countless e-mails between all those involved.

Check it out here.

Free Pixel Measuring Ruler

Dean Sherwin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:02:03 +0000

One of the most annoying things when designing or modifying a theme for a blog is getting all of the pixels right. Obviously when you’re photo-shopping images and logos etc… it’s breeze because they come with pixel measuring tools. But when you’re trying to make something fit, or just seeing if it will fit into a certain space on a web page you have to go through a long and arduous process involving a lot of trial and error.

The pixel measuring ruler, pictured above, takes care of all that. Its basically a window which looks like a ruler. You can move it around on top of any program to measure the width of something. It also features a small slider which you can move to get the exact measurements. The section we’ve shown here is just over 400 pixels wide but the entire ruler extends to 1,300 pixels.

The ruler and be positioned vertically and horizontally depending on what you’re measuring. It’s a quick program to start up and best of all, it’s free. You can download the pixel measuring ruler here.

Stupid Tool Of The Week: Wand to Kill Swine Flu

Dean Sherwin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:42:56 +0000

If you’ve rode the bus, gone shopping or just been in a public area then the chances are you’ve touched the dreaded H1N1 virus. It was probably just some guy sneezing and then hundreds of people touched the same handrail as him. I guess that’s how it spreads. Then, you went home and turned on the family PC and typed out a blog post or just surfed. Now it’s all over the keyboard and mouse. Oh God! We’re doomed!

Not really, because at the end of the day it’s just like the normal flu and 99% of those infected can’t tell the difference and can simply ride it out in bed for a week or so.

However, a new UV germ killing wand has been released and claims it can massacre any H1N1 germs living on a surface. Well, 98% of them anyway. When it’s held a few inches over countertops and other surfaces it kills pretty much any germ living on there or renders them incapable of multiplying. It costs $70 from Hammacher and Schlemmer. Here’s what they said on the product page:

“Also capable of killing MRSA, mold, and dust mites, the UV-C light penetrates viral and bacterial membranes and destroys their DNA, rendering the microorganisms incapable of reproduction and survival. Unlike liquid disinfectants, UV-C light can sanitize keyboards, upholstered furniture, cell phones, or any delicate surface that harbors germs.”

Some may say this is exploiting the fears of millions – but then they’ll probably buy the thing.

Talon: Free Screen Capture Tool

Steven Finch — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:22:00 +0000

Aviary has just launched Screen Capture Talon that can let you capture any webpage from any browser, by simply putting Aviary.com/ in front of the URL. You can capture a page at different resolutions or to only capture a portion of the page as well.

After capturing the page, you can edit it, add simple markup to it and save it to your desktop.

Compete Launches New Interface for its Properties

Steven Finch — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:03:02 +0000

As we mentioned a few days ago Compete was releasing a new user interface on the 15th of April. The time has come and here is what the new interface looks like.

The interface has had a huge makeover, in which now combines all of Compete’s business elements in a much simplier way. All of Compete’s solutions can be now found in a simple hearder bar, which offers everything from Analytics to Keyword tools. The analytics tools has a much cleaner and easy to user interface, but Compete is still trying to push Pro accounts as much as possible.

Overall the feel of the site is much better than before, and with the cleaner finish the usability of the site increases. I just wish my traffic would increase!

20 Twitter Applications Everyone Should Be Using

Steven Finch — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:47:46 +0000

Twitter is growing all over the world and thousands of people are joining on a daily basis. I thought we would put together a quick list of our top 20 Twitter applications.

Twitter Toolbar – Downloading this free toolbar gives you instant access to Twitter. You can use the toolbar to access online Twitter tools, check your Twitter stats, post your updates and more. Versions are available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Twitoria – This simple application lets you quickly find out which of your followers has not been actively tweeting. Easily sort through your network of followers and purge the inactive users.

Monitter – Get a live streaming view at what Twitter users in your location are saying about you or your small business. Simply insert keywords you would like to search for and the surrounding area you would liked monitored.

Bubble Tweet – This unique application lets you post a short video message that pops up on your Twitter profile in a bubble shaped player. You can personally introduce yourself and/or your business to anyone who visits your profile.

Twitter Gallery – A collection of free backround themes for your Twitter account. You can use the one click installation or manually install them yourself. Lots of nice designs and colors to choose from.

Tweepler – Simplify the way you manage your Twitter followers. Tweepler enables you to easily sort through new followers and accept them or ignore them on one simple screen. They have made accepting followers easier by giving the Tweepler user the followers stats and last 3 tweets in one screen view. This will save you time by eliminating the need to visit each individual follower’s profiles.

Twit This – Allow visitors to your blog or website to easily post Twitter messages about you or your business. Post the TwitThis button to your website or blog pages with the instructions and coding provided on their site.

StockTwits – Follow and join into conversations with traders and investors. An active community of investors are sharing their views on current market conditions and recent news happenings. You can quickly see what others are saying about investments in your portfolio.

HelloTxt – Update your status to several social networking sites in one simple step. You can choose from over 35 social sites to post to including Twitter.

TwitterFox – This Firefox extension is one of my personal favorites. You can post Twitter updates without visiting the Twitter site each time. A small icon is added to the bottom of your Firefox status bar. The icon opens to reveal your friend’s most current updates. You can add your updates from that dialog box, even for multiple Twitter accounts.

Future Tweets – Do you have something to promote on Twitter tomorrow but are afraid of forgetting to do it? With FutureTweets, you can schedule your tweet ahead of time for a specific date and time. Even schedule reoccuring tweets to post daily, monthly, even yearly.

TwitPic – Share your favorite pictures on Twitter. This would be a good way to introduce your new product to your network of followers.

twtQpon – Create exclusive coupons for your business services or products and share them with your Twitter followers.

Tweetburner – This site is designed to help you track your tweets. With Tweetburner you can shorten URLs and track the clicks your tweets accumulate.

Tweetbeep – Just like Google Alerts, Tweetbeep tracks Twitter conversations that mention you, your business or your products and services. Alerts are sent to you via email.

Twitter Counter – Proudly display the number of Twitter followers on your business blog or website. Add the badge to your site and invite customers to follow you on Twitter.

Group Tweet – This app enables all employees within your company to post updates which can be privately viewed only by your group of approved members.

Twitter Safe – This free service protects your years of hard work building your community of followers. This one click backup will restore your network of followers in the event that your list is compromised.

Twitxr – Post product pictures and updates from your mobile phone directly to Twitter.

Track This – This app enables tracking of any UPS, USPS, FedEx or DHL shipment. Updates are sent to your Twitter account direct messages whenever your package changes location.

JumboURL: The Worlds Second Ever URL Extending Service

Steven Finch — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:48:43 +0000

There are so many url shortening websites on the web these days and more and more are popping up every day. Today I was using stumbleupon when I was bored for a couple of minutes and came across a bit of a different take on url shortening. JumboURL is the complete opposite to url shortening, its a url extending service.

JumboURL claims to be the second website of its kind on the net and I’m surprised it wasn’t the first. I’m not entirely too sure what the point is of this service. Why would you be looking to extend you url? Anyways, its an interesting service and decent site to check out.

MySocialButtons: Find Social Networking Buttons and Icons for Your Blog or Site

Steven Finch — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:00:55 +0000

Have you ever spent a lot of time searching around the Internet to find the perfect social media button that can be added to your site? Well stop searching and head over to MySocialButtons. MySocialButtons does what it says on the can and offers free social networking icons and buttons to download. Buttons include TTwitter, Reddit, Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon and come in various different colours, styles and sizes.

TorrentZen: The Live Bittorrent Search Engine

Steven Finch — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:46:13 +0000

Have you ever struggled to find the torrents you are looking for? This means that you have to travel to 10 different sites until you find something that vaguely looks like the right torrent! TorrentZen aims to come to your rescue. TorrentZen is a live bittorrent search engine that brings the results of some of your favourite bittorrent search engines.

TorrentZen works in the same way as other torrent tracks but instead of actually hosting pages with the results, they provide a link to those pages on other search engines. Therefore TorrentZen functions in the same basic way as a meta search engine.

26 New And Awesome Web Apps You Probably Don’t Know About

Keshav Khera — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:25:53 +0000

Ten years ago, who would have thought that most of our work would depend on the internet? The internet allows us to have easy access to our files, anywhere, anytime. We chat face to face with friends, meet clients virtually, process payments in a flash and much more. The internet is huge and you can’t get enough of it. It has no end.

While on the topic of the internet, you can call the current scenario, the Web 2.0 revolution, the next dot com boom. Web apps are torrenting the internet with their numbers and new ones pop-up everyday.

Today, I will talk about the latest additions to the pool, of course; the ones you probably don’t know about.

So, without further ado…

TinyChat

With TinyChat you can create your own chatroom and invite people through one simple link. Chat rooms are disposable and can be created within seconds.

KeepHD

With KeepHD, you can download the high defintion version of youtube videos and also fetch the FLVs and 3GPs for your mobiles.

Prezi

With the help of Prezi you can create maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs, drawings and present in a nonlinear way. Move beyond the slide, it only takes 5 minutes to learn how to use Prezi.

Wix

With Wix, you can create stunning flash websites for free, all from your internet browser! It offers you a simple powerful online platform to make flash websites, MySpace layouts and more. No downloads or programming needed.

Nice Translator

NiceTranslator is a fast, easy to use online translator designed with simplicity and functionality in mind. It is ajax powered, so you get the translations on the fly!

Task Five

A to-do list with a twist. It streamlines tasks in an elegant calendar view

Pizap

Pizap is a fun free photo editor that lets people easily create wacky images with their digital pictures. You get a very easy to use photo editor that lets you add photo effects, custom text or speech bubbles and much more.

whspr!

Need to receive a message by email, but can’t (or don’t want to) give out your email address? whspr! gives you a URL to share instead.

WobZip

WobZip is an online tool which lets you uncompress compressed files online. It supports many formats including the major ones as Zip, RAR, 7Z, Gzip, TAR, ISO etc…

Anyvite

Create an invitation in seconds, add entries from mobile, twitter, email, iCal, gCal or Outlooks. And of course, send them with ease from withing the app.

Fliggo

Fliggo is an out-of-the-box, all-in-one, solution for creating your own video website. It can be a video blog, a YouTube-like community or a private site for your company or family.

Yidio

Yidio combines over 200 million videos and offers one of the largest video search engines on the Web.

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is an online, flash based tool for creating slides and presentations. It brings together a complete package of online slide making with features such as an intuitive interface, themes, flickr integration and much more

Ziddu

Ziddu is a new free file hosting solution with features such as unlimited storage space, fast uploads and downloads, file management, a sharing community a referral program and the ability to earn money with your downloads.

Mufin

Mufin is your music discovery engine, that will let you easily discover new music among millions of tracks. With the sound that you dig!

YouTube Reloaded

YoutubeReloaded creates an embeddable playlist of YouTube videos that can be added to any website. Simply choose a playlist type to create your free youtube playlist.

FriendPaste

FriendPaste is a an online tool where you can paste code snippets of many different languages to share with friends. It sports and intuitive interface with support for syntax highlighting.

Survs

Survs is a collaborative tool that allows you to build, deploy and analyze online surveys. With a great user interface, Survs is currently in private beta, though a single request fetched us an invitation.

SendPhotos

With SendPhotos Mobile, Web and PC you can upload photos, edit them, create photos albums and share them online with whoever you want. Also available for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry.

BackupURL

BackupURL creates instant cached copies of web pages. The content of a web page stays the same while you share the link provided. The cached page can also be used for referencing or even mirroring data. The cached page will always be online (html,css,images) no matter whether the original site is up or down.

RapidStack

Rapidstack is a realtime Rapidshare link searcher. It scans the links before they are displayed as results and only working links are displayed.

CC:Betty

CC Betty organizes your message and its contents – photos, addresses, documents, links – and create a mailspace where everyone can track replies, view and add content. You just CC your messages to her!

Sigpad

Make your emails pop with signatures that reflect your personality and change with every email you send! Create signatures with your twitter status, flickr photos, blog entries, youtube stream and much more, all realtime.

FeedWeaver

Create your own RSS feed by combiningRSS feeds from your favorite websites, and use filters to choose what you want in it!

Twe2

Twe2 is a service which sends you your twitter replies, direct messages and custom searches that you specify free to your mobile as SMS. Available in more than 230 countries.

Markkit

Markkit is a web2.0 text highlighter. Drag’n’Drop the markkit yellow pen into your browser toolbar. Whenever you want to highlight text in a web page, click on the markkit bookmarklet.

So which ones are your favorites? Discuss in the comments, and dont forget to give it a digg

(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.

HHTimesheet: Web Based Time and Expense Tracking Software

Steven Finch — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:00:18 +0000

HHTimesheet is a new web based time and expense tracking software solution. HHTimesheet is aimed to increase your visibility over the health of your projects and facilitate the budget estimation and cost control.

Features of HHTimesheet include tracking time and log expenses, timesheet approval, iphone support, reporting and it all being web based.

HHTimesheet is very simple to use and has a great interface. Currently HHTimesheet is offering a free 30 day trial and then it is only $0.70 per weekly timesheet. Additionally they have an option of contacting them direct and actually purchase the tool as a piece of software and hosting it on your own dedicated server.

Produle: Create Flash Based Applications Online for Free

Steven Finch — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:57:13 +0000

Produle is a software as a service (hosted) solution which allows users to create flash based applications online and then distribute them. Produle has some great features and benefits including no installation, automatic updates, global availability, cross-platform (works under PC, Mac and Linux). Moreover users can design and publish flash apps with no time consuming compilation or uploading, it’s just instant.

Produle can be used for a wide range of projects including widgets, banners, promos, animations, product guides, data apps, presentations, user interfaces for web services and any other possible interactive web content. Since the applications will have no persistent produle branding, they can be fully customized to suit your needs.

Produle is a great tool for new flash developers because of it easy of use. However, options don’t seem to be as interactive as other widget tools in the market at the moment such as Sprout Builder.

Top 5 Multi-Search Tools for Find The Best Torrents

Steven Finch — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:00:12 +0000

Previously here on Crenk we have talked about the top torrent trackers on the web and this time I want to outline the top 5 multi-search torrent tools.

NowTorrents. Searches up to twelve sites at once. I like the file type tabs and health indicator, and they offer a Firefox and IE compatible search plugin.

uSniff. I wrote about uSniff before, and I use it quite often. I don’t really search a lot of different sites, usually just Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, and they’re both supported (along with six others). The interface is clean and responds quickly – the search box throws some people off, though. I don’t understand why, it’s giant, orange, and says “search” on it. They also have a search plugin for IE and Firefox.

ScrapeTorrent. Offers a nice preference page and searches nine sites at once. Piratebay, IsoHunt, Mininova, and Demonoid are included, and they’re my go-to sites anyways. I approve!

Speckly. I hate the way it displays results: gobs and gobs of text, Google style, and all on one page. There aren’t any sorting options, though you can at least view by file type.

Torrentz. Technically it searches multiple sites, but you’ll get a general results page first. Clicking one of the results will take you to a listing of all the individual torrents. I find it an annoying process, and don’t use Torrentz as a result.

Lovely Charts: Best Web Based Tool For Flowcharts and Wireframes

Steven Finch — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:03:05 +0000

Lovely Charts is a slick new web-based tool for creating flowcharts and wireframes. Features you’d expect from a similar desktop app come standard: copy-paste, undo up to 20 steps, and pan/zoom all work the way you’re used to. Objects snap into place, and the basic drawing tools are all there. The only drawback? You can only save one chart at a time until you upgrade to the pro version. Depending on your needs, though, the 18 euro for 6 months might be worth it to you.

The advantages of having a web-based wireframe app are obvious if you’re a designer who works from home and an office. You can access your stuff from anywhere, and let collaborators work on it if need be. Lovely Charts also comes pre-stocked with some network diagram symbols and wireframe templates that could save you a lot of time. You might want to wait to buy until they implement a few more export formats. JPG and PNG are currently supported, with more on the way.

Timecamp: Keep Track of Your Employees Time

Steven Finch — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:23:17 +0000

Are you an employee looking to keep track of your employees time? Are you trying to work out how to best optimise the time of your employees, because they are your largest overhead? Well introducing Timecamp. Timecamp is a new tracking tool that seems to be very similar to Basecamp but for employee tracking. It’s like history book or google analytics, but works with people’s time. Increase team productivity, eliminate “time killers”, get more done and stay focused.

The service seems very straight forward and also seems to be a relatively new startup. Im not so keen on it being so closely based to Basecamp, but it is a simply idea with a simple solution. Currently the have a free pricing for individual users, but also a $8 per month pricing for any other additional users you want to add to the system.

If you have used Timecamp it would be great to hear your feedback.

The Pirate Bay Launches Interactive Torrent Map

Steven Finch — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:39:14 +0000

Torrent giant The Pirate Bay has launched an interactive map showing where people are seeding and leeching torrents around the world, with data for every country giving a percentage of users, and how many connections are going through that country.

It’s a Google Maps mash-up, which is already serving up some fascinating data. “In the near future more statistics will be added, such as the type of BitTorrent clients people use, and the average download and upload speeds per region,” claims TorrentFreak, which reported the news.

Stimator: Real Website Valuation Estimator

Steven Finch — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:32:34 +0000

Stimator is a real-time website value estimator that aims to deliver the most accurate economical value that a website could worth by collecting important data from different sources as well as market places.

There are six major factors involved in the calculation:

Top Level Domain – Stimator take in account the strength of a TLD.
Financial - It uses Yahoo Finance to get all data needed to perform the variations of the financial market.
Real Sells – The service was built to delivery real results (at least the most possible ones). The math used to determinate a website value was study using real website sells such as: Sedo, Sitepoint Marketplace etc.
Web Factors – Stimator collects information from the website itself and from several major sources during the calculation stages before presenting the final estimated result.
Estimation - The calculations are made to give what is called the “economic value”.
Observations - The main mission is to avaliate domains and sub-domains. After each calculation, Stimator presents a report with the main relevant factors that it can extract from the examination. This factors will give the users an idea of how the site is performing.

Using Stimator Crenk is worth $17,351 which is kind of a realistic valuation. Anyone interested in offering me that much for the site?

AIMcrm: Sales Leads Management At Its Best

Steven Finch — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:08:56 +0000

AIMcrm is an on-demand web-based software application to manage the handling of sales leads (essentially lead management). There is also the ability to sell leads (lead aggregation business). AIMcrm provides a highly customisable interface and is one of the most promising sales management software tools on the market today. Other key features within AIMcrm include campaign management , sales force automation, sales team management and CRM reselling.

I know AIMcrm is probably not as good as SalesForce or SugarCRM, but their allround software and interface can really aim to compete with the big boys in years to come. Im not too sure however if they should have gone with a paid model or actually provided the software free as does SugarCRM and ZohoCRM. This way they could just add an advertising script into the software in which could bring them a lot more revenues than just a subscription. Additionally, they might need to do a bit of work on their website and make it a lot more professional and a little less 90’s.

Apart from all that make sure you check out AIMcrm because they do currently provide a great piece of crm software. It might be free but then again it is a lot more affordable than SalesForce.

Crenk Interviews… Zentact

matt — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:00:13 +0000

Following our recent review of Zentact, we spoke to the team behind the service. Read on for insights from Jared Brandt, John Sampson and Eric Marcoullier about their previous work with MyBlogLog, a hint of what’s to come with new service Gnip, and what makes them and their fab social networking tool tick.

What is the Zentact philosophy?
(Jared) We are creating a product that integrates into already existing work flows, helping our users build better relationships. We do this without any BS. (Eric would say the our product will make the baby jesus cry…)

Sharing information with your contacts is something that Mr. Marcoullier seems to be a fan of! What makes Zentact different to other content sharing websites?

(Jared) Social networks are a lot of work for traditionally very little payoff. CRM tools are worse.

(Eric) Zentact aims to flip that on its ear and provide loads of tangible results for little ongoing effort.

(Jared) Typical content sharing websites and apps have focused on the user always remembering whom to share with. We are trying, in effect, to whisper in the user’s ear and suggest whom they can share this with in a meaningful way – we make sure you share what matters. We will be adding more social aspects in the near future as well.

How has the web 2.0 landscape changed since the coneption and subsequent selling of MyBlogLog to now and the work you’re doing with Zentact?

(John) MyBlogLog allowed users to create profiles that traveled with them where they surfed, adding value to both the mybloglog member and website owner. More Web 2.0 apps today are leveraging this concept, be it scripts, widgets, and even in browsers. The value that is created by individual apps and even apps created mashing APIs together is significant.

Some commentators have said that they’d like Facebook integration, in particular to help when tagging – is this something you and the team are looking into?

(Jared) We will be integrating in with Facebook to help with both tagging, tracking last connection and posting to the wall.

Will you be looking to include integration with other social networking services – if so what is the liklihood of this happening before Zentact comes out of Beta?

(Jared) We are in a private beta now and working on launching our public beta. We will likely integrate with other social networking services and other communication platforms before leaving beta. We are also listening to our users – feedback will help lead the way.

What is really exciting you on the web (Zentact aside)?
(Jared) Gnip
(John) Apple app store

I would argue that 2008 has been the year of Twitter and that it will become more mainstream in 2009 – what do you think will be the big social media development in the next 12 months?

(Jared) We think that there will be a big movement towards information – instead of just data. More products will become contextual.

What has been the main challenge for Zentact since you founded the company?

(Jared) Our number one challenge has been to prioritize features since, as a team, we have many features we want to do quickly.

And what has been the achievement that has made you most happy?

(Jared) We have gotten feedback from users ranging for “wow” to “Zentact helped me close a deal”. This feedback is what makes us tick!

What are the next key milestones you’ll be looking to meet?

( Jared) Public beta and our IE version.

What can we expect from Zentact in 2009?

(Jared) A killer product that will seamlessly improve your life.

To try Zentact for yourself, we have a few private invites to test the private beta, which you lucky boys and girls can get here.

Build Better Relationships with Zentact

matt — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:54:49 +0000

Social networking is turning into a bit of a bramble patch. Whilst making loads of new contacts and keeping in touch with old ones, we’ve somehow lost the part of the networking that is the social – the sharing of information. Be it photos, music or words of wisdom, it’s not quite as easy to let those who’d like to, know.

A solution, however, is afoot. Zentact, brought to us by among others, Eric Marcoullier of MyBlogLog fame, aims to collate your contacts into one place and allow you to share bits and pieces as you browse.

After signing up and adding in a few personal details, you can simply import your contacts from Hotmail, LinkedIn, Gmail and Outlook via a CSV address book and after a few seconds, they are on your system.

Next, and I highly recommend this, download the Firefox extension, all will be revealed shortly.

Now, the genius part. Each contact is taggable with their likes and dislikes and when a web page which has tags that match your contacts, if you installed the extension, a smart little box will flash up in the top right hand corner of your screen with the list of contacts who’s interests are relevant to the site. You can then send them a link and be merrily on your way. Remember, social.

Now the one down side to this is that if you have hundreds of contacts, it takes ages to go through them all tagging away. I’d recommend doing it bit by bit, adding tags as you go – this will take longer but does two things:

It lets you see who you will really be sharing with – there’s no point in having 300 contacts if you only ever talk to six of them regularly anyway, which means you can quickly identify those defunct e-mail addresses you’ve not used in years or people who don’t share common interests.

Secondly, it makes the whole process a lot smoother – you may like a tag binge, but frankly I’d rather be spending my time actually looking at what I came to see rather than typing in long lists of keywords, especially ones that are tricky to spell.

Now, it will take a while for you and Zentact to get to know each other, but the more contacts you tag and the more sites sites you send, the better Zentact becomes at recommending what is suitable for whom. This is a great service and especially suitable for anyone who is on a lot of social networks but can’t quite keep up with what is going on with who. Now you can build your relationships easily and stay in touch better.

We are lucky enough to have a handful of guest invites so you can try the private beta version of this site and tell all your friends about, which you can get by clicking here. Incidentally, you can tell your friends about it via Zentact and you can then invite them to join in this most social of networks.