I work with a number of nonprofit organizations and associations. A common theme among them is their reliance on fundraising efforts to gather money for their projects.

While some groups may use a content management platform like Wild Apricot (which includes built-in features to help with donation management) for many groups such tools are unavailable or insufficient.

Minds on Design Lab has taken its experiences working with fundraising groups to develop Giving Impact, a web-based service that allows groups to create and track fundraising campaigns, and then take them viral with social media integration.

Campaigns are created and managed on the Giving Impact web site. A branded and customizable widget is created which can then be placed and integrated with just about any site.

Donation transactions are handled end-to-end by Giving Impact, with payments processed through PayPal. Confirmation screens allow donors to share their contributions via Facebook, spreading the word about the project and encouraging others to also contribute.

Giving Impact is an attractive option for groups who are looking to easily integrate their fundraising projects into their web site. The tools are thoughtfully created, and the tracking functionality allows you to easily stay up to date with the status of your campaign.

Giving Impact plans start at $30 per month with a 5 percent transaction charge, with other plans offering reduced transaction charges for higher monthly fees. I worry that the pricing may be a concern for smaller organizations, fearing that the bulk of their donations will be lost to fees, but hopefully the ease of use and availability of the donation widget will increase donations sufficiently to offset the costs. While the app is in its initial launch phase, the transaction charges are being waved until Jan. 1.

How does your group handle donations? Would Giving Impact help you?

I like dashboards. There is something attractive about a logical and configurable display of information, be it an overview of a project or a listing of computers, that makes me feel like I am in control of the information being presented.

So I was impressed when I got my first look at LogMeIn Central — a web-based dashboard management tool for LogMeIn’s remote control services (which Sam previewed in beta.) It is a snazzy upgrade to my old account pages with lots of configurable widgets and display options. As I started to really dig in to it, though, I realized there was a whole lot more to it than just some cosmetic changes.

LogMeIn Central provides me with a customizable view of all of the machines that are associated with my account (currently approaching 50) and easy access to many setup and configuration options. Central is an interesting product, in that it really only exists to complement and enhance the LogMeIn tools I am already using. The distinction in functionality between Free and Pro2 accounts still exists, Central just works with these services (along with VPN product Hamachi) to make them much more functional.

In my trial I saw some great enhancements in the areas of user management, detailed reporting, audit logging and inventory tracking. All are great features, but there are a few things that I’ve found to be just amazingly useful.

For machines subscribed with Pro2 accounts the alerting feature is a life saver. I can set up notifications to let me know when machines are running low on disk space, if there are changes to the hardware / software or even just oddities in CPU or memory usage. Being able to be proactive and know when issues are brewing before my customers do is fantastic.

New and easier deployment options let me send a link directly to a client or family member; a simple install adds the machine to my account for me. A drawback I always found with using the the service in the past was that I had to either physically be at the machine to do the initial setup, or use another remote tool to gain access so that I could then do the installation.

Another bit of functionality I’ve just recently begun to explore, but am really seeing great potential with, is the Hamachi VPN service. The Central interface makes it dead easy to set up and manage VPNs, including handling access requests, traffic monitoring and other auditing capabilities.

I think the key to understanding the overall usefulness of the Central product is that it makes the communication between you and the machines on your account a two-way discussion. While the Free and Pro services have always done a good job of providing remote access services, the addition of the Central layer allows these computers to provide and aggregate useful information back to you. The reporting and alert options really are intensive and useful.

The remote support / desktop sharing space is crowded. I still love the functionality built in to NTR Support Pro for providing emergency support to new customers, and I’ve been looking at the line of Bomgar products as well. I’m fairly well entrenched with the LogMeIn platform though, particularly with clients who are on ongoing maintenance programs. I’m finding these new features and the ability to group and manage all of these managed machines in one place to be tremendously useful.

If you’ve got just a couple of computers connected to your account, the value might be hard to justify at $299 per year, but if you are using the LogMeIn platform for ongoing support the additional functionality that the LogMeIn Central product adds to your existing investment may very well make sense.

Are you a LogMeIn user? How can Central help you manage your remote connections?

Like many of us, I spend a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache, I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

It seems like there was a lot of news coming out of Google this week — here are some highlights:

I share Simon’s enthusiasm in the new Shared Folders feature for Google Docs. There is a reason this has been the most often-requested feature for Docs and I’m thrilled to see it introduced and implemented extremely well.

While not really a productivity app for most users, quite the opposite actually, Google Building Maker is an insanely addictive way to look at your city and contribute 3D building models to Google Earth. Be careful before you click, you could lose hours here.

The Gmail team is always introducing new features in Labs, some useful, others not so much. The new Lab feature, “Got the wrong Bob?” looks to be one of the more useful ones. It attempts to determine if you’ve added the wrong folks to your distribution list based on your past emailing habits. With the auto-complete option it’s easy to accidentally choose the wrong person, this could be a life-saver to keep from sending things to the wrong people. Another handy new Gmail Labs feature, “Google Docs Preview,” lets you preview the contents of a Google document, spreadsheet or presentation right in your Gmail inbox.

I’ve been meaning to write about the Google Squared search functionality for a while now as I don’t think it’s getting near the attention it deserves. In essence, Squared attempts to present search results data in a more concise format — extracting common information from multiple sources for easy comparison in a tabular format. This week brought some major upgrades in both the amount of data returned and the ability to export it out for further analysis.

Since Google Wave invites began rolling out, Google Voice has seemingly been pushed down a notch as the product folks want access to. But if the demand is still there among your friends and family, you’ll soon be able to share the love by inviting them to Google Voice.

Which bit of Google news was most exciting for you this week?

I first wrote about the Springpad notebook organizer almost a year ago now and was immediately impressed by the offering. Since then, as improvements have come across my desk I’ve always revisited it and found it to be a capable part of any organizational arsenal.

And yet, I still haven’t been using it in my daily work. You see, a couple of years ago I found Backpack from 37signals and was smitten with it. I created Backpack pages for everything: tracking client information, article ideas, concerts I’ve attended, purchasing, research and more. If I started something new, it got a Backpack page.

However, as much as I loved Backpack, there were some gaps. I found the calendar lacking, instead using the Google Calendar. Reminders and To-Do items were much better handled by Toodledo, and the sheer volume of information I was managing with it often got unwieldy.

So when I had a look at the new iteration of Springpad that was released earlier last week, I finally took the plunge. Goodbye, Backpack … Hello, Springpad.

At first glance, the two products might seem very similar, but there is a fundamental difference between them. In Backpack I can create pages that are essentially containers for the items that I am trying to organize. On these pages I can add notes, lists, files, photos etc. I can move items around these pages, even drag and drop them between pages. But the various items I’ve created have no properties or tracking abilities of their own. Each item gathers its context only from the page on which it exists. It’s all about the pages. In a literal analogy, a page is a drawer and the items on it are all of the things you dump in there.

In Springpad anything I can create exists independently of pages. I can add anything to “My Stuff,” which is what it calls the bucket that all items exist in. These can be a note, a list, a task, a contact or business, an event, a restaurant — anything. When I find something I like or want to save, I just add it to “My Stuff.” What’s cool is that each of these items has its own properties, and can be customized further. I can add tags, notes and links to each item. Have a picture you want to add to a note? No problem. Want to add a file to a list? You can do that. So before I even start to organize these items (put them in their drawers), they already have all of the building blocks required to be useful on their own.

This is where apps and groups come in. In Springpad, these are the drawers. Custom groups can be created to associate items together, and various apps exist to help utilize and further organize your stuff. There are apps for GTD, budgeting, task management, date planning, and more. These apps help provide an additional layer of context for the items I’ve gathered, and each item can be assigned to as many groups or apps as I need.

For example, say I find an interesting web service that I think might be worthy of an article for WWD, and perhaps might also be useful for a few of my clients. In Backpack, I would note this web service on a single specific page, and there it would remain until I happened upon it again. But with Springpad, I can quickly capture the information from the web site using the “Spring It!” bookmarklet and place it in my unfiled bucket. This item might contain a snippet of text from the web site, a URL, and some notes for me to remember when I review it later. I tag the item appropriately with “WWD” and some client names. I add it to a “web apps” group and also to the specific client notebooks apps I have set up. The same piece of data is applied to multiple areas. This is like keeping the same screwdriver in both the tool drawer in the basement and and in the junk drawer in the kitchen. I can find it in either place, because it really should exist in both places.

Not only can each item appear in multiple groups or apps, but individual items can also be pulled together from these groups and apps and viewed in aggregate fashion. For example, for each of my current projects, I create an app (the “notebook” works extremely well for this) and then I add events and task items related to that project right to that area. With multiple projects running concurrently it might be difficult to keep track of all of these things, but Springpad will then aggregate these items to my calendar and master task list automatically. This allows me to view my work in overview, or drill down to a project level. I can store my data more contextually, without giving up the ability to pull everything together, or fear losing track of something on an infrequently accessed page.

While there are many apps available in Springpad,  I find myself using the “notebook” app for just about everything. It’s customizable, I can add tabs to help further organize it, and I can add any type of content I want to it. Some of the apps do allow for different presentation styles and I use a couple of them for specific purposes but generally the notebooks work well for just about anything. There are plans to introduce the ability for users to create and distribute their own apps in the future.

While I’ve focused mostly on the functionality that I use for business and other work endeavors, Springpad is equally adept at organizing other areas of life as well. It is getting tremendously popular in the food community as recipe sharing and acquisition is remarkably easy, and a recent partnership with Gary Vaynerchuk is introducing his Wine Library TV content to the system as well. Integration with Yelp allows me to easily add and track my favorite restaurants and the grouping and public sharing capabilities let me put together cool things like this quickie guide to some of my favorite places to eat and things to do in New York City to send to friends who are visiting there.

I’ve been working on migrating my content over to Springpad for a few days now and am still discovering new and interesting ways to put things together. I am finding a few things I miss from Backpack — like dividers and the ability to copy pages — but the benefits really outweigh these minor annoyances.

Registration and use of Springpad is free and works well in all the major current browsers. A mobile app is also available.

I’ve made the switch to Springpad — have you?

Gist, the relationship management service that went to open beta last month, today announces the release of an iPhone application, available through the App Store, that makes getting access to your data easier while on the go.

By its very nature, Gist compiles a sometimes overwhelming amount of information about your contacts so I was a bit skeptical about it being possible to reduce it down for the mobile interface. Gist combats this by really focusing on your most important people: those who you are meeting with next.

The Initial views on the app work on the assumption that you are either on your way to your meeting or taking a few minutes prior to prepare. Gist displays the meeting attendees and provides quick links to zip off an update email or pull up a map. It also provides easy access to the dossiers of your meeting attendees so you can grab some quick info prior to your event.

Beyond that, you do have the same views to your data as on the web app, your dashboard, events, people and companies — all distilled into consumable pieces that fit into the time that you have.

The Gist iPhone app is being released for no charge as part of the open beta program and is available through the Apple iTunes App Store. UPDATE: According to Robert Pease, VP Marketing, Gist, the App will now be launched next week.

How will mobile access to your Gist data help you keep in tune with your contacts?

It’s an exciting time to be a web worker, what with all of the great browser choices we now have available to us. Firefox may be the preferred browser for many of us, but Chrome, Safari and Opera are also compelling options.

Despite these choices, I’ve pretty much been locked into either Firefox or Internet Explorer because of my reliance on the RoboForm password manager, which is only compatible with those browsers. The lack of Google Chrome support has been particularly frustrating to me. I’m impressed with the speed and resource management of Chrome, but without the easy access to my passwords that I’ve grown accustomed to, it hasn’t been an option for serious consideration. But a couple of recent announcments by Siber, the maker of Roboform, are changing that.

If you’re an adventurous soul, you may want to take a look at a public release of a Chromium build with an adapter that makes it compatible with the latest versions of RoboForm. Chromium is the open-source project that is the basis for the Google Chrome browser.

It’s an alpha build, and my browser is too important to me to risk using it for my day-to-day work quite yet — but it’s a terribly exciting development and shows the first real movement I’ve seen towards a port.

A more feasible option for most folks is to use the new RoboForm Bookmarklet which, in conjunction with the RoboForm Online service, provides access to your passwords from alternative browsers or on computers without a RoboForm installation. Drag the bookmarklet up to your toolbar and after logging in to your online account you’ll have access to all of your stored passwords.

The functionality of the bookmarklet is good, but isn’t yet a replacement for the full installed product. I find that the login expires quickly, requiring me to log in to my account frequently throughout the day, even after requesting it to remain active. I also miss the ability to create new logins on the fly, an option not available from within the bookmarklet.

On the plus side, one of the things I’ve always appreciated about RoboForm is the ability to maintain multiple password sets for a site and am glad to see that this feature is retained with bookmarklet access.

Both of these projects are still in their early stages, but really represent big steps toward cross-browser, cross-platform availability of a single password set.

How do you manage your passwords?

The tools that we use to run our businesses and organize our lives are supposed to make thing easier. We choose them because we identify a need — a pain point — and are looking for a solution. In my experiences working with small business, bookkeeping is a common area where most folks are looking for some help.

In my review of bookkeeping and tax prep service Outright back in April, I highlighted not only its ease of use, but also its ability to play nicely and communicate with other apps. As a bookkeeping app is just a part of the chain of tracking income and expenses, these connections to your existing data are critical and keep data entry times to an absolute minimum.

I’m thrilled to hear that the Outright folks are extending this reach, with two major additions to the list of apps that Outright is compatible with being released today. Both should really help the typical small business keep finances and expenses in check.

I would imagine it’s safe to say that the majority of small businesses use a credit card for purchasing supplies and for most of their day-to-day expenses. The convenience, delayed payments and rewards programs make them a favored option. This new partnership with Expensify, which we covered while it was in beta a few weeks back, allows you to now directly import your credit card transactions right into Outright on a nightly basis. It even puts your expenses into the appropriate Schedule C categories.

Also announced today is the ability to directly access your PayPal information from within Outright. Given the number of small businesses that use PayPal for payment processing (both expenses and invoicing), this should make tracking those transactions considerably easier.

The authentication methods differ for these integrations. The Expensify authorization requires you to input your user name and passwords for your bank sites. This information isn’t retained by Outright, while Expensify is a full PCI Compliant application with permissions to only read your data, not to perform any transactions.

The PayPal integration, on the other hand, uses a method similar to the OAuth protocol used by Twitter. When initiating the connection, you are taken to the PayPal site to log in which then passes back an authentication token back to Outright delegating the proper permissions.

I make the distinction because while I believe all necessary precautions are considered and in place for either method, I appreciate how Outright is pushing for easier and more secure data connection processes and using those whenever possible.

These new integrations add to the existing hooks already in place with Freshbooks, Shoeboxed and eBay, providing a wide spectrum of data connections to get the bulk of your data directly into Outright without duplicating your data entry efforts.

Also revamped is the reporting and graphing engine used in Outright. If I have had any criticism of Outright in the past it was that, other than the outstanding Schedule C report it generates, the reporting options have been lacking. It has always been somewhat difficult to view the data in any format other than the defaults. The new graph formats are much more comprehensive, and data filtering options allow for a more customized experience.

New users to the service will be greeted with a nice wizard-like process to get up and running quickly. If you arrive armed with the account information you need, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get your accounts connected and have an almost immediate glimpse into your business financial health. Existing users can access these new connections from their account management screen.

In the big picture view, this is really just an another incremental step for Outright as integration with other apps is at the forefront of their strategy. Outright and the other members of The Small Business Web are doing wonderful things together to make our day-to-day experiences using web software easier and more productive.

Registration and use of Outright is free, although there are plans to offer paid plans in the future.

Do these new hooks into Expensify and PayPal make Outright a more attractive option for you?

Online annotation and research service WebNotes has been a useful tool in my arsenal since I reviewed it last year. Since that time, the company has released a Pro version and has solidified the feature set.

In a move to further differentiate itself in the annotation space, the company has just announced the availability of a new service plan, WebNotes PR, aimed at public relations and marketing firms who need to compile customized reports, market research and daily scans.

WebNotes continues to provide the core features of adding annotation and notes to web sites, as well as its easy organizational tools to keep track of your work. The major functional additions to the new PR plan include media monitoring, and a revamped and customizable reporting engine.

Reporting has always been a tremendously useful feature of WebNotes. The ability to quickly pull together all of your notes and annotations into one convenient document for sharing and distribution is really well done. Rather than cutting and pasting items manually into a document, the WebNotes reporter does this automatically.

The PR reporting engine has been enhanced to allow for more detailed modifications and customizations including templates and branding. If you’re generating daily scans for your clients, you can automate this process and present a nicely formatted report with very little effort. Options let you limit items by date range and in-place editing lets you customize and tweak the results.

But presentation is only a part of the package, it’s the data that is important. That’s where the new media monitoring functionality comes in to play. In addition to the manual items you have always been able to mark up and track, WebNotes PR allows you to integrate keyword searches into your results. Import or enter in your own RSS feeds, like Twitter search results, and WebNotes can do a lot of the research work for you. It can also generate feeds for you from within the app.

While aimed at PR folks, I can see real value in this implementation for anyone who wants to take advantage of the monitoring tools to automate their research efforts.

WebNotes PR is launching with an introductory price of $300 per user per year with a two-week free trial. Along with this announcement, the prior Pro plan has been renamed WebNotes Academic with a $5 / month price for students or $10 / month without the discount. A reduced functionality, although still quite useful, free personal plan is also still available.

The launch of the PR-specific functionality helps to further differentiate WebNotes from other similar social bookmarking and annotation sharing services. By focusing on a core group of well-implemented services that can be focused and customized towards specific niches, WebNotes is keeping its product offering useful and easy to use.

How much time per day do you spend preparing research reports? Can WebNotes help you?

Like many of us, I spend a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache, I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Online identity manager DandyID, which I covered back in July, has added some nice improvements to its privacy options, specifically the option to control which of your identities is visible through your online profile or shared widgets.

Simon shared some great integration news about Outright and Expensify. It’s wonderful to see the Small Business Web initiative really moving forward.

Browser Opera Mini jumps to beta 5 — an impressive looking release for the mobile platform. Tabbed browsing and password management look like standout features.

Social Contact Manager BatchBook now lets you create custom web forms that tie right in to your CRM database.

The folks over at MailChimp just announced a very cool Twitter-themed email template for their email marketing service. Link your MailChimp account to your Twitter account, and you can automatically pull in profile information including colors and backgrounds, follower numbers and recent tweets to use in your campaigns.

One of the more exciting services I’ve had the chance to use over the past year is Gist, a personal relationship manager / news aggregator. In my review from last October, I was impressed with how well it mixes your inbox with the web to compile useful information about your contacts.

As Jennifer reports over on GigaOM, after approximately a year of limited closed beta they’ve decided to open up the gates and make the Gist beta public. The folks at Gist had taken a bit of a different take for their beta. A carefully vetted group of participants were given access over an extended period of time, along with direct access to support and incredibly responsive feedback channels. As a result, Gist has improved substantially since our last look and is a highly recommended tool to add to your business arsenal.

In a nutshell, Gist leverages your inbox to determine the importance of people in your network, and then scours the web to gather information about those people. Pulling data from news sites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more, Gist automatically creates a personal dossier using this information.

With the proliferation of news sources and the volume of data now available, it’s impossible to keep up and attempt to do this type of research manually. In a survey prepared by Gist, it was determined that 60 percent of respondents spend less than 10 minutes before an important meeting searching for information abut the participants.

By making research easy and doing the heavy lifting for you, those who have limited time can gain more useful information in the time they do have, while those who like to do extensive research can cut that time considerably.

I’ve always liked the fact that Gist doesn’t require you to abandon the communication tools that you are already using. The full web interface pulls data in from external sources and while that offers the most comprehensive views of your data, useful integration with Outlook and Salesforce (announced today) make Gist data available while you are working in your familiar tools.

The integration of Gist with CRM tools is a terribly exciting development. In the Gist survey, only 15 percent of folks said that they looked to their CRM before a meeting for information on participants. Clearly, the bulk of existing tools are lacking in providing useful, timely and relevant information. The shift to Social CRM shift acknowledges the importance of what is happening on the social web. The movement of CRM to be more social, and to recognize that conversations are happening outside of traditional channels is a trend that we’ve been talking about for a while, and one I’m happy to see catching on.

Tools like Salesforce and Batchbook already recognize the value of the social web and are on the leading edge of allowing varying degrees of social media integration right from within their interfaces. Gist’s Salesforce integration is slick and I look forward to more services offering Gist hooks, as the tool is really the most comprehensive that I’ve seen. Even just a quick glance at recent Twitter updates can be a great conversation starter, and with Gist I can see that information while I’m looking up a phone number.

With a nice thoughtful feature set, useful interface and a developing network of integration with other tools, I find Gist to be a radically useful tool. It occasionally overloads me with data but given the alternative, that’s a problem I’m willing to deal with.

Sign up for your spot in the Gist public beta starting today.

How do you keep up to date with your business contacts?

In a recent post, Meryl discussed careers in remote tech support and customer service. In my business, providing remote support is a very important part of my service offering. I’ve spent a lot of time researching the tools and services available to help me accomplish this most effectively.

The folks over at NTRglobal have just released what seems to be the perfect solution. NTRsupport Pro is designed for individuals just like me who need to be able to offer remote services like training and tech support from anywhere, without headaches.

Unlike the full NTRsupport Ultimate product I reviewed earlier this year, Support Pro is slimmed down and optimized for the solo support professional. I was impressed with the Ultimate product then, but ultimately it proved to be too much for a small shop. This product cuts out the stuff I don’t need and focuses on usability and portability. The features that are excluded are the ones that cater to the larger teams, or enterprise installations. For the independent IT Pro or trainer, all the good stuff I liked in the actual support session is still present.

Support sessions can be created on the fly or scheduled in advance. Connection details can be sent to the end user via email or they can be given an access code to enter in to a support web site. I’ve done a couple of sessions and have had no issues with end user trouble or confusion — it’s a straightforward process, which requires no registration or installation.

No installation is required for me, either. The connection program is a small executable that I can keep on a thumb drive and run from any PC. It gives me access to the full range of support tools and any “Stay Connected” computers I’ve added to my account.

Like most remote desktop tools, a top menu bar gives me access to what I need. Adjustments to color and display size can improve latency and viewability, and built-in chat and file transfer features make communicating with the remote user easy. It also offers clipboard synchronization and remote printing options.

I particularly love that I can reboot and reconnect automatically in either regular or safe mode. I can also request a report from a remote machine which will provide me detailed information on hardware, software, networking, running processes and security; very handy for diagnostic purposes.

For regular clients or those who purchase ongoing support plans, it is possible to “Stay Connected” to those machines. This does require an installation but it allows me to add those frequently-accessed machines to my dashboard, so I can get access to them without remote user intervention. A single click and it connects and logs in automatically.

For users who need support frequently, a direct link can be sent to them for their desktop giving them one-click access to request a support session.

NTRsupport Pro doesn’t come with the marketplace and other services offered by CrossLoop, which I still use and recommend, but the ease of use and lack of registration and installation requirements makes it a great addition to your toolbox.

The Support Program seems to be Windows-only for now but the client supports Windows, Mac and Linux machines. Pricing is quite affordable for this type of solution with a one year pre-paid contract available for $588, or $49/month. A free 7-day trial is also available.

There are many similar services available but the combination of features and functionality provided, at this price point, makes NTRsupport Pro a strong contender and something well worth investigating.

What tools do you use for remote support?

Sometimes I find myself guilty of making the assumption that all web workers are like I am, and that my needs and requirements are typical of everyone. As someone who reviews web services and applications, I find I need to step back and try to look at things with a different perspective.

I’ve found that to be particularly true during my evaluation of ZooLoo , a new service offering a complete online environment for your web-based activities, including a personal dashboard, social networking, a site builder and more.

ZooLoo is one of the most comprehensive and ambitious services I’ve seen in a long while. Integrating both public and private areas, ZooLoo tries to do a lot. I have to admit that at first glance it confused me. Its huge array of features — including portal pages, media sharing, site building, blogging and more — was a bit overwhelming.

I also thought about the individual options I am already using for some of this functionality, an iGoogle page, Flickr, a custom blog etc.. I’m used to choosing individual tools and services that best fit my needs and the suite of tools offered by ZooLoo challenged that practice. But as I dug in and began to play around with the integrated tools, I imagined how useful it would be for those who use the web in different ways than I do.

My ZooLoo — The Private Area

Your dashboard is the main entry point to your private “My ZooLoo” area. With the idea that ZooLoo is your single point of entry for all things web related, it does a good job of integrating with your email, social networks and news sites. Like most portal pages there are widgets available to integrate email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The “zLife” area brings calendaring, an address book and to-do list functionality to your ZooLoo. While these tools are competent, they are basic, and as a power user I found them to lack some of the features I require and appreciate from the standalone counterparts I use. The ability to have everything in one place is appealing though, and if your needs are modest, it is nicely done. I’d like to see some better integration options here, such as iCal imports.

As more and more of your friends begin to use ZooLoo, the “zSocial” area lets you track what your friends are doing online and offers easy communication with them.

Other sections for shopping and entertainment let you create and manage wishlists and access streaming audio and video selections from Last.fm, YouTube, ESPN and various news and media outlets.

My Site — The Public Side

As all of this content sits on your own domain (included in the cost of the paid Plus membership), you can customize the public side of your ZooLoo site, too. The free ZooLoo account gives you the ability to create three custom pages, in addition to a profile, graffiti wall, blog and photo and video pages. The graffiti wall is a storing house for a clipping service, with a bookmarklet that quickly captures links and other information.

I found the page creation and customization options to be easy to use. A simple multi-page site can be created pretty quickly and the zCreator app allows for some serious tweaking to themes and other presentation options.

One of the things I really appreciated most about ZooLoo is that the privacy controls are excellent. Each page is private by default until you explicitly choose to share it, and the sharing options available are thorough. You can assign different visibility options to each individual page and the interface to manage it is really intuitive. A big thumbs up for making privacy a key feature and for implementing it so well.

Overall I really like ZooLoo. For a new service it is exceptionally well developed and offers quite a strong base for future development. Power users might find some of the features lacking but there are quite a few compelling options here for just about anyone. It’s not necessary to use everything, so picking and choosing the items that work for you is a good way to get started.

ZooLoo is ad-supported with a combination of Google AdSense and affiliate links. This is fine for the free service but the display of these ads on the public sites for paid Plus accounts doesn’t sit well with me. A ZooLoo site could otherwise serve as a basic small business site or blog but the appearance of ads is a deal-breaker for my recommending it for that purpose. I really hope ZooLoo reconsiders this.

The Plus ZooLoo account includes a new domain name registration and unlimited custom pages for $29.99. If you’re comfortable with digging in to your domain tools it is also possible to point a pre-existing domain to your ZooLoo account.

Learn more, compare plans, or sign up for a free account.

Have you tried ZooLoo? What did you think of the everything-under-the-sun approach?

The other day, some friends and I were discussing the various productivity tools and services that we rely on to manage our lives and our businesses. The usual question came up, “What application or service do you really rely on the most?”

To answer this question, I wanted to move beyond the standard CRM and invoicing tools which are critical to the day-to-day functioning of my business, and share something that might not be so obvious. The first thing that popped into my mind was file sharing and syncing app Dropbox, and even after more discussion and heated conversation, nothing could change my answer. The benefit of synchronized files and access from any PC is obvious, but as I’ve been using the service it has really become a critical part of my daily process.

Dropbox is a file sharing application that is amazingly simple to use. The installation creates a Dropbox folder on your computer — drop in a file and it miraculously appears on all of your shared computers. Individual folders can also be shared with other users. Here are some ways that I use Dropbox for maximum productivity.

Password Synchronization: With the sheer volume of user accounts I manage, a good password management system is critical. I’ve come to rely on RoboForm for this purpose, and Dropbox makes it dead simple to keep all of my account information and passwords in sync. Just move your RoboForm profile to a Dropbox folder, point all your computers to it and voila — easily log in to any of your sites from any of your computers, and never forget a password again.

Simple Network Sharing: For some of my home or small business clients, particularly those using laptops away from their offices, Dropbox is often a better solution for file sharing than setting up a shared network folder. The built-in versioning functionality is really handy and the ability to access files when away from the home or office is much appreciated. When the client returns to the office or checks in from a coffee shop, any changes to the files they are working on are automatically pushed back to the other users on their network.

File Distribution: I’ve set up shared Dropbox folders for a number of my clients and find it a great way to distribute reports and other information to them. The “push” of the information to them removes the need for them to seek out or retrieve the data that they need. It also makes it really easy for them to share files back to me, without needing to worry about email limits and such. Because there are no new interfaces to learn, it also has a very shallow learning curve. This makes adoption for the less tech-savvy much easier.

The fact that Dropbox is so easy to use and so flexible makes it a great addition to my services toolbox. Dropbox is free for up to 2GB of storage with monthly plans available, up to $19.99 for 100GB.

How are you enhancing your productivity with Dropbox? I would love to hear about your creative uses for the service in the comments.

In a great post from a couple of weeks ago, Charles wrote about some options for managing many online identities. As we branch out and use more and more services on the social web, sites like DandyID, GizaPage and Retaggr, which can help us to keep things organized and assemble together all of the parts that make up our online brand, are only going to become more popular.

Charles liked the wide array of services you could claim with DandyID, along with its handy Facebook integration. I’ve been a user of DandyID for a while now, so I wanted to dig a bit deeper into what it has to offer and what differentiates it from the other providers in this space that I’ve looked at.

The thing I find most intriguing about DandyID is that it’s much more than just a list of services. It’s part of a grander scheme to facilitate a single point of entry for information that can be used all across the social web. DandyID has a well-developed API (Application Programming Interface) that enables other applications to communicate directly with your DandyID profile. So while on the surface it appears simple, there is a huge opportunity for integration between services here.

Imagine a profile that is entered in one place and then used  automatically across all of your services. Make a change in one place, and it updates all of your linked profiles automatically. Add a new service to DandyID, and a site like FriendFeed could automatically get notified to add a new item to your profile feed. The geek in me is tremendously excited about the possibilities of this; I’d love to see more sites enable this DandyID functionality.

The API has already been used to power the SNUM — Social Network User Mapper, a nifty Firefox add-on that will tell you what networks a person belongs to as you encounter them on the web. A Ubiquity command is also available.

DandyID lets you verify your identity with some services to confirm that you are actually who you say you are. Using the authentication functionality built into Twitter, Facebook, Brightkite, Flickr, MySpace and YouTube, you can confirm that the external accounts you are linking to are indeed yours. There is nothing to stop people from claiming an ID, but the verification is a nice level of extra assurance.

With an upgrade to the Pro service ($4.99 month) you gain access to some useful statistics, such as how often people are clicking through to your various profiles and which sites are driving traffic through to your ID.

Another powerful statistic allows you to see which services are being used by (and therefore are most relevant to) your contacts. This is useful because it allows you to focus your social media efforts to more efficiently engage with your contacts on the services that they are using.

These analytic tools are useful, but I’d like to have it easier to access — a daily summary email or RSS notification would be great.

Overall, I am tremendously impressed with the DandyID service. I’m also excited by the opportunities that more widespread adoption of it could bring.

How do you bring all your Social Web IDs together and manage them?

Here at WebWorkerDaily we’ve written a lot about Twitter and its increasing usefulness for productivity, business and networking. As it grows in popularity, there have been a multitude of businesses that have been formed around the service. One such service is Idea Anglers, a community for entrepreneurs looking for help in shaping their business ideas.

It’s been a real pleasure to watch Idea Anglers take form right before my very eyes. Founders Neal Rohrbach and Bradford Shimp met in a weekly Twitter chat and began exchanging occasional tweets in the weeks that followed. An off-handed comment by Bradford about being an “Idea Wrangler” led Neal on a domain search, and thus the business was born.

According to Rohrbach, Idea Anglers “is an online collaborative community for small biz or individuals, where we turn ideas into successful businesses.” Using a combination of a library of exclusive content and access to a network of hand-picked guides and fellow members to lead the way, Idea Anglers is a service for anyone who has an idea for a business, but could use some guidance to get things going. It’s a place for collaboration and networking. Other benefits will include access to webinars, e-books, discounted services and other collaboration features.

Even though the site was born and developed on Twitter and using social media tools, the scope of expertise and information available through the service will be much broader. With guides specializing in marketing, copywriting and other forms of communication, the idea is to cover all the areas that might be a barrier to bringing your idea to fruition.

The site is still in pre-launch phase, but an initial group of guides has been published. There’s also a Depth Finder Questionnaire, giving you the chance to help shape what will be available when the site goes live.

No pricing information is available for the subscription-based service, but the intention is to make some of the individual content available on a per-item cost basis as well.

Has social media helped to shape your business?

Online organizer and notepad tool springpad is one of those apps that has impressed me from the start. I love the ready-made springpads and the ability to clip items in to my notebooks as I move about the web, but the recent introduction of mobile access makes the service eminently more useful. The ability to view and modify my data from any web-enabled device makes those shopping and other lists available without the need to print them out before my trip.

Once you have your account set up, visit my.springpadit.com to view the pages from your mobile device. The mobile site isn’t as feature-rich as the main site but it’s quite usable for quick access to your springpads while on the go.

I did receive error messages about lack of support for Opera Mobile, which I hope they will address soon. The minimalist pages I was directed to using that browser pale in comparison to the full mobile app that displays with Pocket IE on my Windows Mobile.

With an eye to being a “whole life” organizer, springpad has always been more than just a productivity app. The addition of mobile access goes a long way to making it much more ubiquitous, and thus much more useful.

How do you use your mobile springpads?