Look great, be great

For all the superior quality and sense of authenticity that makes New York City so special, it still succumbs to being a vain and stylized place. What other place breeds an enclave like Williamsburg, with all the grungy hipsters and all the design brilliance that comes with it. In the course of all the groups I follow on Twitter, I've discovered we have a very small "Silicon Alley" downtown. But I think the real value emanating from NY isn't the tech, it's actually the intersection of tech, social and design! It's not enough to be creative and come up with a good idea, it's important to create an experience that is positive and lasts, and look amazing while doing it.

A couple of simple tools I found yesterday that address issues that have always been on the periphery of my mind.

How cool is this: A randomly generating color pallet that supplies complimentary, triadic, etc colors! This was huge when I worked in finance. My boss would flip out if the colors of my charts and graphs looked too crayola or stupid.
 http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp

Another one is a forms builder. Don't get me wrong, I consider Google with a lust unrivaled, but the only thing that keeps people using their forms application is that it's free. There are a ton of better ones out there, namely this one: http://wufoo.com/tour/ - completely integrated image insertion, payments, even user management! Stellar product and perfect for this generation, if I do say so myself!

But the part that made me laugh was their "about" page. You know that tedious bio for every employee in your company that brags about what school you went to but probably hated, what fortune 500 company you were a tiny cog in, all that stuff that is so.. 1990's? Check out this guy's job description. I love it. Why can't I be paid to do the same?? =)

Mike Wong is Wufoo's Go-To Guy, resident smile maker, voice actor, victim of an online fan club, and friend to babies and cats alike. Often accused of having the entire internet in his brain, Mike enjoys injecting bits of RSS-parsed knowledge into any situation. Mike is the buoy of integrity in a sea of cynical sycophants. If you've got a problem, yo, he'll solve it.

Best Free Productivity Applications

I absolutely adore the mobile revolution. We're starting to see people break down tasks and queries into discrete parts and businesses have begun to bring a lot of value to each piece, and somehow.. we get it for FREE. I've used many wonderful standalone apps after owning a Droid and working with the non-profit organization Iridescent. The President is such a smart cookie with a firm grasp of technology and a fiscally responsible spirit that constantly seeks the best tools for the lowest cost in order to keep Iridescent running in peak form at a reasonable expense.


After fighting and losing a fax battle with my gorgeous Samsung Printer, which literally is my most prized possession: Color laser, reasonably priced cartridges through the manufacturer, scanner and fax machine - all in one. Oh.. and get this.. it's WIRELESS and doesn't need to sit attached to your router. So I can print from multiple machines to the living room, and scan something and have it wirelessly appear on my choice of computers in a different room.

But the first time I used the fax, it didn't work. I needed to fax over a prescription so it was pretty important. No amount of struggling with phone lines, resetting, or software updates were helping. And when this happens, I do what I've started to do more frequently, I got my Droid out and searched the Android Marketplace (it's like the iPhone app store for the Android OS) for a solution. And of course I found one!

There's a free fax application called "Mobile Fax" or "Scan2PDF" where you snap a phone picture of whatever you need to fax, you can preview the fax, punch in the number and send it off. Here are the caveats on the free version:

You can only send 1 page a day via your mobile device. They send you an email to confirm that you want to send a fax. But if you have a mobile device it should be linked up to your email so that's just a few taps away. They don't allow cover letters on the free version either.

I did a little more exploring and found out that the website/organization is GotFreeFax.com, and through the actual website, the limits are even more generous (2 pages, cover letter, etc) Also has optional extremely low paid services (10 page faxes for 0.99 cents, etc.) I really enjoyed the fact that you could fax a number of document formats from your computer.

Ha! In your face Samsung! You will not defeat me! But you have definitely been demoted to being my second favorite device!

Another great tool I discovered was the scheduling application: Doodle.com

There are many similar applications, such as the one found embedded in Google Calendar, but what Doodle.com does is lets you survey meeting participants with pre-set times and dates which really speeds up decision making. It's got all the bells and whistles such as adding notes and comments, time zone support, and participant control (so that you can use it to say fill volunteer slots (1 choice only) instead of the usual usage of finding a common meeting time).

Oh, and the best part is - you can integrate it to your Google Calendar, Outlook, and Lotus Notes! =) I love applications that build on each other, rather than trying to compete with an almost identical product.

One of my favorite is Adobe Photoshop's mobile photo editor. The app has its bugs and seems to need more frequent updates, but early on it worked wonderfully. The Droid unfortunately has a pretty bad camera. Or a good camera but bad camera software. The camera doesn't seem to have a working light sensor so indoor and outdoor photos are much lower quality than iPhone and Blackberry's version. What makes them bearable is Photoshop's photo editor, where you can change saturation, exposure, crop and digital zoom with a swipe of your finger. And you can save and repeat to get to ever higher levels of exposure or saturation. Thank goodness for this app because then you can upload reasonable photos on the go, instead of having to return home, edit them at your desk, and then upload or post.

Another winner is Google's Translation App. You can find it on the top right hand corner of this page. Instantly select your language and Google does its best to instantaneously convert the content into your language of choice. Brilliant and globalizing.

More apps and reviews will be added as I discover them!