Spotify Revisited . . . and just got rocked.

UPDATED – Just noticed that it’s a 48 hour deal . . . then, can expand to 30 days.

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Man, I love those moments when something comes along that just . . . well, blows your mind. If you read my previous post about Spotify, you know I was pretty keen on the service. Well, I’m ending month number two of LOVING the steady stream of anything-I-want-at-any-time-for-free music. And, guess what? My mind just got blown even bigger.

Spotify is now open to the public (no longer invitation only) for US users. This is the point where you pause your reading, open a new window, and go sign up . . . seriously, NOW. I’ll wait.

OK, here’s where the next 6 months get really nice . . . then, it’s decision time. From what I hear, free users of Spotify can get the offline sync mode functionality in their smartphone app. So, this means you can get the Spotify app on your phone, log in, then it is seen by Spotify on your computer. You can then sync ANYTHING to your phone for as much space as you have.

Did I mention that this is done WIRELESSLY. And, it’s about the most flawless execution I’ve seen. I literally opened the app on my phone and a “sync playlists to iPhone” popped up on my computer screen. I selected the playlists I wanted to include and it started chugging away – pretty swiftly, I might add.

So, here I am excited all over again – six months should be plenty of time to see if I want to chunk down $9.99/month for all-you-can-eat music.

This is just plain awesome.

http://www.spotify.com

Google Chrome Angry Birds

Well, color me unproductive . . . Google has just released a free version of Angry Birds for their Chrome Browser web store . . . head to http://chrome.angrybirds.com/ to start your addiction today.

Carbonite Backup Service

Chances are, within your lifetime, you will have a hard drive crash or get a virus that corrupts your computer. Case in point: I had some weird attack on my laptop a few months back and it crippled my computer. I thankfully backed up my client files and important information to my external drive (I have this set to do nightly . . . whew), so after a good while of restoring, I was back in action.

I always planned on going the online backup route, but all the free (you know what I’m talking about!) services capped at around 25 gigabytes of storage. I have 100’s of gigabytes to deal with, so I figured I’d just stay with my double nightly backup (one to external, then that backs up to my desktop).

However, Thursday I needed a file that I saved on my machine the wrong way and my external file listing was freaky (didn’t show ANY files). After a reboot, I found the files, but this got me nervous.

So, now I’m trying out http://www.carbonite.com. They allow you to backup an unlimited amount of data  for just over $50 per year . . . I figured it’d be worth it if it worked well. I started the service on Friday. I’m almost half way uploaded at this point, but once the files are backed up, each time you save something, it will upload it to the backup server. Now, that’s just cool.

I can access the backed up files from anywhere a browser is handy. So, now I have the peace of mind that all my important information is away from the house (in case of fire, disaster, etc.).

I’ll post a follow up after a while of use, but I think it’s going to be an obvious business expense issue. If you want to try it, enter the code “tnt” for 2 months free. There are other free versions (and I say go for it if you don’t need the space), but if you have lots of data (I’ll upload all my photos next!), this is almost a no brainer!

Update: It’s August 9th and my 100 GBytes isn’t done yet . . . whew. Otherwise, it runs pretty low key in the background. I can pause for an hour, 4 hours, 8 hours, etc. to get some work done. Nice feature.

WeTransfer.com

So, I’ve been recommending Yousendit.com for a while to transfer large files without using FTP. Enter http://www.wetransfer.com – it’s the most bare bones, easy to use system I’ve seen to date. There’s one thing on the screen and it’s as simple as adding files, then entering 2 emails (to and from) and comments.

They fund the system through advertising, but use large, full screen imagery (quite good looking) to promote the advertisers.

Bonus: You can send up to 2 Gigabytes and keep them available for 2 weeks.

Send a Fax Online

So, I’ve been a fan of efax.com to have a fax number that sends to your email. Now, that’s the receiving end. And, while you get 2 free outgoing faxes, once those are out, you have to sign up for the monthly fee to send more. And, how many of us send lots of faxes (other than you law folks out there)?

So, I had to send a fax today. Rather than heading to someone’s office to bum from them or pay the first month’s fee for efax, I knew someone had to have thought of an a-la-carte option. Enter www.faxzero.com. You can send a free fax (with ads for the receiver) or pay $1.99 for one fax without ads. And, the fax can be up to 15 pages.

The site is dead simple and my fax was sent within 2 minutes . . . gotta love that.

Good, Cheap Emailing List with YMLP

If you’ve been on the web for any amount of time these days, chances are you’ve subscribed to several emailing lists. Fortunately, there are MANY great services to get you set up and emailing clients, fans, etc. quickly and efficiently. And I do mean MANY – Constant Contact would be the heavy hitter, but few know about a company I’ve been using for years now. They’re called YMLP (yourmailinglistprovider.com). I started using them way back when for one reason – dirt cheap – to the tune of $3.75/month cheap to start out.

But, they’ve always managed to keep up with all the other big names in email marketing. They have the tracking services, the automated handling of bogus emails, user managed accounts, etc. But they still have that competitive pricing.

I’m not sure why I haven’t mentioned them before, but here ya go! If you need a good, reliable email list host, give them a try. Since I’m a subscriber, I can give you a code to get 15% off your usage fees . . . for as long as you use the service. Just sharing some savings! You can quit the service at any time too – no long contracts.

Click here to get the discounted rate. Enter the promo code FX141J to get 15% off of your order with YMLP.com.

Endless.com

Ok, here’s a quick one. Alison just found this site out today (I vaguely remember hearing of it). Zappos.com is, of course, a great site for shoes, but Endless.com takes the shipping thing to a whole new level – FREE Next Day Shipping AND FREE Returns. Talk about a no brainer. I don’t see any issues possible, but lets just say she ordered 2 pair to see how she likes ’em – I’ll let you know if we run into any trouble. Happy shopping, everyone.

Postini

So, the email lance@mooresites.com has been mine for quite a while (many years now). Well, needless to say, sitting here on my website, it’s probably seen every spam list on the net. And, I’ve felt that the past few weeks. I dare say at least half of my email was spam at some point. I run spam filters on my server, and it works great for most users, but I think my email is an exception to the rule. So, I searched. I found Cudamail (from Barracuda) and MXLogic, both services that filter your mail before it even gets to you. Well, both of those were a bit costly for just one email, so I was bummed out.

Enter Google to the rescue. Google bought Postini a while back (I vaguely remember hearing it, but didn’t know what it was). Simply put, I now pay $12 per year (yeah, per YEAR) to get some pretty great spam software. I get . . . wait for it . . . maybe 2 spams per day to my inbox (if any). I’ll gladly pay a dollar a month for that kind of service. With one week in, I’ve only had to approve 2 senders who were caught in the filter.

If you’re not familiar with web servers and the like, you might find it a bit challending to set up (you have to have access to your mail server MX records). If you’re Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail or the like, don’t worry, you have the best filters already. For all you POP3 folks, though – give this a try.

Happy, happy day.

www.postini.com

FreshBooks to the rescue

OK, before this year, let’s just say my book keeping was less than stellar. I knew just enought about Excel to put clients into a spreadsheet and dole out billing on my own each month or quarter. Yeah, that was lowsy. I had tried Quickbooks way back when, but just didn’t “get” it . . . then, I ran into Freshbooks. I truly haven’t run into a piece of software (let alone an online provider) that was this intuitive and useful to the average self-employed person.

Setup is a breeze . . . fees are very reasonable . . . and best of all, I don’t lift a finger once I set up my clients. For instance, if I have a yearly client (hosting fee), I simply enter a recurring fee for a date and forget it. Freshbooks handles the late fee notifications and such and I can see when people log in to view their invoices. I can give credits when needed and create custom invoices and estimates. Bottom line, it’s increased my productivity drastically. I can even have Freshbooks mail actual paper billing without thinking about printing and folding – they take care of it all.

So, there ya go. If you’re looking for some good book keeping software or, like me, can’t keep it all together manually, you should check this out. They have a free trial if you’d like. Just click here to get going. I think you’ll really like it.

FeedFlix

Here’s a quick post about a pretty slick website. Do you have Netflix for renting movies? If so, head on over to www.feedflix.com . . . they’ll tell you how much you’re spending per movie. I’m ahead of the game at 18 cents per video – only because my kids watch alot of the Disney streaming stuff on the Roku box via Netflix streaming. Pretty cool just to see what it’s worth to you!