New Search Engine

There is a new searche engine on the market that has been created by a group of people that believe that no one company should control our searches in the way that google etc does.... check out the video

FSCONS: YaCy Demo from Michael Christen on Vimeo.

Important Things

I have come to the conclusion that I am not important.

Nothing about me will survive more than a few years, and even the people who remember me will be gone in a short time. The miracle spark that is my consciousness will without ceremony flicker out on some day in near future and then I will just be gone, nothing more. 

But this is OK...

Laughter is still laughter, dancing still dancing, joy still joy. These things are not dimished because they are fleeting, in fact they are actually sweeter. 

So I am going to enjoy the sun on my face and not get stressed by the small things, like computers and microsoft <evil> etc...

Because life is too precious.

Dave

Relenta Social Intergration

Ever wished that your email, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin were all in the same place? Well now you can stop wishing as Relenta has new social intergration that lets you post to all of these different social sites right from your email interface. 

Relenta is one of the many CRM tools availiable these days allowing the managment of contacts, but it is different in that it works as an email client like Outlook combining this with a CRM as well a Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin interface makes for a killer combination. 

You can connect your Relenta account to any number of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, preview and then import some or all of the contacts into Relenta. The Relenta system will match them against the existing contacts to keep your database clean and free of duplicates.

These social network messages then become shared action items in your CRM allowing you to have all of your contact with people in one place, fantastic if you ask us.

If you would like to give it a try for free just click below to go to the Relenta site 

Dave

Relenta, Contact Management and more

Managing a Contact database, even a good one can be a pain. This is because there are always things that need to be intergrated with your database, like email, marketing and tasks.

There are many contact management solutions out there and some are actually quite good. Webware like Highrise is great in the way it integrates your database with tasks and it even does an ok job at including email, at least to some degree. If you are looking for a complete solution however Relenta is the only Contact Management system we have found that really does everything.

Email

Relenta is different from many contact management systems in that it handles email. It is basically an email client on the web which can send and recieve from all of you various email addresses. Is also has plain text and HTML functionality as well as basic email functionality like creating signatures, incoming email filters and even auto-responders. It is not as well featured as something like Outlook or Thunderbird, but it is a competent email client which has not left us wanting as far as functionality is concerned.

Contact Database

Relenta can import and organise your contacts with the best of them, having all of the standard felids as well as tags and groups. Grouping your contacts in Relenta allows you to send emails to groups which is a very nice feature we use all the time, grouping contacts into different client categories is very handy. You can also do all of the other things you would expect like add tasks and custom fields to users as well as a good search capability as well.

Task Management

We would have liked to have seen task management have a more smooth a flow something like Highrise, but you can still do some of the basic task management functions with relative ease. One function that was missing was the ability to set recurring tasks, at the moment Relenta does not do this which we find unusual considering the way that it is orientated towards business use. Related to this it would be nice to be able to set tasks according to group creating a workflow for different groups making it so that just adding a person to a group would assign certain tasks to them. Having said this however, the tasks functionality is still quite usable and certainly functions well enough for our everyday needs.

Email Marketng

One of the ways Relenta stands out from the crowd is through its ability to do email marketing. Using the contact groups described earlier you can set up a series of emails to go out for each group at the intervals of your choosing. This integration between email, contacts and marketing is a huge time saver when compared to using something like Mailchimp with Highrise for example and has helped.  our operation no end.

Conclusion

Relenta allows you to put all of the important aspects of manageing a client base into one place and does the job pretty well. We would love to see some more features and the tasks functionality needs some polishing up but we still think its the best alternative out there.

Give it a try for free here, see what you think.

Dave

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Ubuntu 9.10, is it worth leaving Windows for?

Ubuntu has just released its latest version "karmic koala" and for people who are sick Windows and want to change it is very good news. Ubuntu is an alternative operating system that is free, that's right absolutely without charge and if that wasn't enough it also has significant advantages over Windows. It's not perfect yet however as there are a couple of aspects which need improving before many people will make the switch over.

Being a distribution of Linux means that there are almost no viruses around that will affect it, we have been using Ubuntu for years now and have never seen it infected at all. This means that you don't have to install anti-virus or anti-spyware software and therefore your computer will run a lot quicker even though Ubuntu is approximately the same size as Windows.

Installation of Ubuntu is far easier and much quicker than Windows, the installation process is straightforward and generally does not involve driver installations often a major time consumer when installing Windows. No more inserting disks when trying to install hardware, just plug it in and and it goes.

Ubuntu has packaged with it a version of Openoffice an open source free alternative to Microsoft office that works just as well. Ubuntu also has packaged with it Firefox and our opinion the best browser available at the moment. And if its free software you after them and then Ubuntu has its own software centre where you can download hundreds of free applications easily and safely.

Unfortunately, there are some pieces of software that Ubuntu does not support and for many people this may be a stumbling block. For example Ubuntu does not support Itunes and although there are ways to play and copy music using Ubuntu this incredibly popular interface is not yet available although there is talk that they are working on this. This also goes for Windows live messenger and although the Ubuntu Instant Messenger is every bit as good it is not exactly the same which may put off a lot of people. This lack of compatibility with major software vendors is I believe the greatest disadvantage of Ubuntu and if it were not for this one not so minor hiccup I would quite happily swap my entire operation over to Ubuntu in a second.

Ubuntu is by far the nicest looking, easiest to use and install and the safest operating system that I know of and I believe as software compatibility increases (and it will) the major companies will not be able to stem the tide of people switching over to a free, safe and sexy looking operating system.