14 Web Apps for Your Portable Office
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Last week we talked near setting upwards your wink bulldoze so that you had a "portable office" of sorts wherever you go. This week we'll take information technology a step farther and await at the web apps you lot tin use: all you'll need to ensure is that the computer you're "borrowing" has a practiced browser installed.
In recent times, people have become less and less fearful of putting their data in the hands of a third party, which was previously the chief obstacle preventing web apps from taking off (as well, of course, connectedness speeds). Though those who claim information technology'south never a good idea to upload your data to a third-party, web-based app are going overboard, you do need to be careful. Information technology's non merely important to always keep a local fill-in of your data; information technology's of import to read the terms of use on any of the post-obit sites before uploading your intellectual holding.
That said, web apps can make you truly mobile. Information technology will no longer matter if you forget to bring your flash drive with you. We've got a listing of the very best that you should know about if you lot want to take a truly "portable" office.
Online Office Suites
Office suites are the nerve centre of the office (funny that) whether it'southward a portable one or the ane tethered to a desk and a floor. At that place are ii especially popular office suites that are web-based, both of which have zillions of zealous fans.
Google Apps offers electronic mail, documents, spreadsheets, notebooks, and more, fastened to your own domain name. There are also personal versions if you don't ain a domain, such equally Gmail and Google Docs.
Zoho is much like Google Apps, though many proponents say it has a far richer feature ready than Google. Features aside, the range of apps is far more diverse – it has offerings for invoicing, databases, project management and fifty-fifty a wiki.
Organization
Information technology goes without proverb that we at Lifehack are obsessed with organizing, then these are some of our favorite web apps–you should get obsessed likewise, since working on the movement tin can mean being disorganized for many workers. Accept a look at these:
Backpack offers projection management capabilities, every bit well as chore management and notation-taking.
Evernote offers a cross-platform desktop and spider web-based app for taking notes, which you tin can tag, share and sync between all of your devices. It can fifty-fifty make the text of an image searchable – groovy for taking a snapshot of the whiteboard at the cease of each meeting.
Remember The Milk is a fantastic task direction web app. It'south got all the power you'll need to make your task direction arrangement work in a spider web-based setting, with a fantastic web log and team behind it making information technology amend all the time. Check out this post if y'all want to improve your Remember The Milk setup.
Business
Managing your invoicing and your money is a painful necessity for not just freelancers and spider web workers, but practically everyone (well, perhaps not invoicing, but money in general). There are some bang-up spider web apps that make these tasks easier.
Blinksale is a fantastic invoicing web app, starting with a free option and scaling up depending on how much you need to use information technology. Highly recommended.
PayPal is a must for whatsoever spider web-worker. I, for ane, get paid by PayPal down to the last cent of my pay as a freelance writer – you but can't get by without a PayPal account these days unless you shun the internet all together. If you don't want to fork out for Blinksale, PayPal's invoicing is pretty good, although it doesn't let you lot apply a discount to the invoice, which is often abrasive as information technology ways (gasp) transmission calculations!
Harvest is a web app for time-tracking, making it easier to calculate your fees and write upward an invoice (with invoicing built in, if you detect it easier to track time and invoice from the same app).
Communication
Basecamp is a web app that endeavors to ameliorate your project communication and collaboration, allowing you to make to-practise lists, share files, rail fourth dimension (as part of a squad, rather than for freelance invoicing purposes), and schedule milestones.
Bivouac is some other one from the makers of Basecamp that we here at Lifehack utilize for collaborative meetings. Imagine the chat rooms that typified the cyberspace in the nineties, repurposed to accommodate business and artistic meetings
Meebo is handy if yous need to chat with clients, colleagues or business partners while out and most on AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk or MSN instant messaging networks and yous don't want to download annihilation. It's a spider web-based client to handle them all.
Diversions
C'mon, anybody needs a diversion once in a while! It'south part of what keeps us productive. There's no betoken trying to exist productive at all if we don't have a little time to unwind in between bursts of difficult work. It is really a proven scientific fact that all work and no play makes for zero productivity in your day, though I am going to whistle innocently for repeating this claim even though I can't seem to re-discover the article where I read this.
Twitter makes for a good diversion since it'southward not intrusive, so yous can have some social fun while not allowing the application to take over in such a distracting way equally instant messaging. It still tin get distracting, but there's an guild of magnitude between Twitter and something that beeps and flashes like MSN or Skype.
I was recently surprised to observe that Shockwave is all the same around–I used it for diversions probably around a decade agone and thought information technology had since disappeared. It hasn't, and currently has some splendid give-and-take games that can both "warm up" my mind when I'thousand having trouble getting in the writing mood, and cool information technology downwardly afterward too many hours spent typing (thanks to Gina-Marie for this 1).
YouTube is a site you already knew about, but when information technology comes to taking a intermission, aught beats a surf around this site. Especially if you want a totally passive break, as both Twitter and Shockwave require a certain level of interaction.
Then there you have information technology: the well-nigh useful web apps for running your office away from the office. I could accept given yous some mega, massive resource list that listed every spider web app in the world, but in that location are enough of those out there only a Google away. This article gives you the essentials that sometimes get lost in bigger lists. Enjoy, and do add your own essentials in the comments!
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/14-web-apps-for-your-portable-office.html
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