LogMeIn, a supplier of useful remote control, file-sharing and backup apps that we’ve written about many times previously, this week quietly rolled out a beta of LogMeIn Express, a simple, on-demand service for sharing your screen with up to 100 other people.

To get started, just go to the LogMeIn Express site, and click the “Share” button. You’ll need to download and run a small application (unfortunately, the helper application appears to be Windows-only at the moment). Once the client app is up and running, a small window appears at the top of your screen. It contains a unique 12-digit code that you can send to everyone with which you want to share your screen. Helpfully there’s a “copy to clipboard” button to make it even easier to share the code with others over IM or email. (Note: the first time I tried using the app, it seemed to have trouble acquiring a session code — restarting the app fixed that).

The LogMeIn Express control panel window in the screenshot above shows the window in its expanded state — after a short delay it rolls up to an unobtrusive bar, so it won’t get in the way.

The viewers (the people that you’d like to share your screen with) then just need to go to the LogMeIn Express site and type in the session code that you’ve sent them (unfortunately, it doesn’t seem possible to paste the code in the box, which means that they’ll have to type it out by hand). There’s no need for them to download anything — it all runs in the browser via Flash. Here’s a screenshot of my Windows laptop, shared with my MacBook:

The presenter and the viewers can communicate via a built-in chat window. The shared screen is clear on the viewer’s browser, but — as with all screen sharing services — there is a little lag and the screens don’t keep completely in sync, especially if lots of stuff is happening. However, as long as you keep movements fairly controlled, the lag isn’t very noticeable.

In addition, the presenter can enable a useful “remote control” mode, whereby the viewers can take control of the mouse pointer on the presenter’s screen (I tested this and it works pretty well), and can also send files to the viewers via the app.

As the downloadable client application is currently Windows-only and I mainly use a Mac, it’s not suitable for me at the moment — I think I’ll stick with Skype for my simple screen sharing needs. However, if you’re looking for a simple and fast way to share your Windows screen, it’s worth checking out.

What do you use when you need to share your screen with other people?

Knowing just how much time you’re spending on particular projects can be important, especially if you charge by the hour. There are plenty of easy-to-use time tracking tools out there, with a lot more features and options than a spreadsheet and a timer. Newcomer Yast has a built-in option that makes it particularly useful for web workers: the ability to share time tracking information with others.

Where many time tracking tools expect you to export reports and then break out information about specific projects or clients, Yast lets you share your tracking information on a project-by-project basis. That simple difference is actually quite important: I can track the time I spend on one client’s project and send off that information, without showing the amount of time I’ve spent on my own projects and without having to do any copying, pasting or deleting of information. All I need to do is share that project with my client.

Beyond the ability to share information, Yast has a simple interface that allows you to switch between projects just by clicking. It is a web-based application, which may make it less useful for some users, but the interface is very visual. You can quickly tell what project you’re currently tracking, along with other details, just by glancing at it. The timer itself is organized along a timeline that gives perspective about how much time you’re really devoting to a project. You can zoom in and out on the timeline to see information at different scales. You can also label specific types of projects with different colors, drag and drop them into different folders and keep everything organized.

Exporting reports on your time use is a matter of selecting the period that you want to look at and choosing a format. Yast offers Excel, PDF and CSV exports, as well as an online preview. You can also generate reports based on specific projects, or all the projects in a folder. The reports don’t really offer much analysis of how you’re spending time, but since you can pull them into Excel, you can probably run any analysis or comparison that you really want to, although you can get a general idea of where your time is going by taking a broad look at the timeline.

Yast is free to use, requiring only a very simple sign up — just provide an email address and a password and you can start tracking time. The site has been in beta for about a month, which is long enough for the team behind Yast to have already rolled out both performance upgrades and new features, like the addition of exporting to Excel and CSV files. The creators are still creating new features, and are currently working on synchronizing Yast with Google Calendar.

Have you tried Yast for time tracking? How did it work out for you?

Like over 300,000 other Mac users who downloaded the MacHeist nanoBundle (as covered by Simon), I received WriteRoom as part of the package’s bevy of software. This lightweight word processor promises distraction-free writing. Having read about it and the productivity concepts underlying it in the past (here’s an old WWD post from Leo about distraction-free writing tools, for example), I was interested in giving it a spin to see if it could help me.

In a word, I found WriteRoom distracting. Here’s why:

Green Text on a Black Background. Perhaps it’s because I wear bifocals, but I find the green text on a black background to be very distracting (it hurt my eyes!) — and don’t get me started on my flashbacks of Matthew Broderick in 1983’s action thriller,  “War Games.” While some usability and productivity pundits do sing the praises of an all-black screen, the strain the screen contrast put on my eyes was a distraction unto itself.

No Visualization. Whether I’m writing my next post for WebWorkerDaily, an article, or a technical document for a client, I need to be able to visualize the final product as I’m writing. Like many writers, I like to see how my writing looks both on the screen and on paper in order to spare myself surprises at deadline time. Writing in WriteRoom doesn’t let me do that because it’s not WYSIWYG, and it doesn’t give me access to print preview or similar tools . As a technical writer, I’m probably not the right customer for WriteRoom. However, my work as a technical writer plays a heavy influence on my composition process, even when it comes to articles and blog posts.

However, while I didn’t find a productivity boost with WriteRoom, it doesn’t mean you won’t find one. As I often advise other writers, you have to find the composition process, workflow and right mix of tools that works for you and your projects.

WriteRoom is available with a free trial ($24.95 to purchase) from Hog Bay Software and — despite my experience — I recommend you giving it a try if you think it may help you with your writing.

Do you write with WriteRoom? Share your experience below.

There’s one thing I can count on having on me at all times, and that’s my iPhone. It stands to reason, then, that in a pinch, my Apple wonder device is what I turn to in order to keep track of stray ideas and thoughts that might otherwise go unrecorded, lost forever to the ether. Imagine where we’d be if the Snuggie inventor hadn’t been able to record that gem.

Idea Organizer is an app for the iPhone that I recently discovered that makes logging those ideas incredibly easy. There are other ways to do what it does, some via built-in tools offered by Apple itself, but no other solution brings all the features and functionality together in the same place.

Idea Organizer combines an audio recorder, a text notebook and an image capture tool to help make sure that you can not only keep track of any ideas that pop into your head, but also the ones you get from the world around you. You can create an idea using any type of media mentioned, and then add other types of content later to provide context.

The other reason I prefer this app to any other is that it keeps thing simple and has an intelligently designed user interface. The app opens directly to a screen that presents you with a button that gives you access to your most recent idea, and three big buttons that allow you create a new idea based on text input, photo or audio. Idea Organizer’s developers were clearly thinking about the fleeting nature of good ideas when they designed the app.

Finally, you can email any ideas to yourself at any time, for easier editing on an actual computer. You can also batch email all your ideas at once, which is a terrific convenience feature.

For $1.99, Idea Organizer (iTunes link) is great bargain for a very handy little app. Sure, you can approximate its function for free, but in many more steps and with a lot more hassle.

How do you make sure you don’t lose track of great ideas you have while out of the office?

It’s WebWorkerDaily’s fault that I’ve bought an iPod touch (s aapl). (That’s my excuse, anyway.) As I looked at potential subjects to write about, I kept seeing cool apps, and I need to be able to test them, right?

But why not buy an iPhone, or a Palm Pre, which I’d had my eye on for several months? The Pre seems to be a good phone, but it doesn’t yet have the apps that the iPhone does. And the monthly fees for Pre service are considerably higher than what I’m paying now. The iPhone’s monthly fees are even higher, and many folks I’ve talked to don’t find it to be a very good phone.

So, keeping my current phone and buying an iPod touch seemed like a good compromise. I can get good Wi-Fi coverage in most areas where I live, so I’ll be able to go online, even without the phone function.

Many of my WWD colleagues already have iPhones. Aliza has recently written about good apps for web workers. Dawn’s shared her favorites, too. But with the holidays coming up, here are some of my ideas for apps to put on that brand-new iPhone or iPod touch:

Communication

• eBuddy. A multi-service instant message client for MSN/Windows Live, AIM, Yahoo, Gtalk, ICQ, Facebook Chat and MySpace Chat. Supports multiple accounts on the same service. Versions for web, Android and other platforms also available. Free.
• Facebook. A well-designed way for Facebook users to keep up with their friends while on the road. The app has had its issues, but they are apparently fixed now. Free.
• Gist. Scott and I have both found Gist useful, and the Gist iPhone app does a pretty good job of presenting a lot of information in a small space. Free.
• LinkedIn. This app keeps LinkedIn users, er, “linked in” from their iPhones and iPod touches. The latest upgrade adds some nice features, including an inbox for LinkedIn messages. Free.
• Nimbuzz. You can use this app to make inexpensive international calls over Wi-Fi. The app also includes a chat function, but it’s pretty rudimentary compared to eBuddy. Free app; rates for calls vary.
• RingCentral. If you’re a RingCentral user, you can use this app to manage your phone messages and more. Free for RingCentral users.
• Tweetie. There are lots of Twitter apps, but so far, I like Tweetie the best. It has a clean interface, and supports multiple Twitter accounts. Thanks for the tip, Darrell! $2.99.
• Waveboard. Mobile access to Google Wave. Will hopes for better access soon; I imagine that this app will become more sophisticated as Wave does. $0.99.

File and Idea Management

• Dropbox. This app is another reason to love Dropbox, which many of us at WWD do. As one would expect from Dropbox, it just works. Free.
• Evernote. My colleagues at WWD like Evernote, too, and I’ve finally seen the light. It’s a great replacement for PhatNotes, which I used to use with various Palm products. (The Palm versions are apparently no longer available.) Free.

News

• Reeder. A very nice and elegant RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader. $0.99.

Just about every news source also has its own iPhone/iPod touch app these days. So far, I’ve been impressed with the ones from NPR and from some news outlets that have used the PodCurry platform.

Password Management

• 1Password. Manage and sync passwords. I’ve been playing with the brand-new version 3, and it’s good enough that I’ve moved from SplashID after many years. Use Dropbox with 1Password to make your password data available on multiple machines. $7.99.
• LastPass. Manage and sync passwords across multiple machines. The Firefox add-on for this service was included in WWD’s Add-Ons Collection. Apps for iPhones and other mobile devices available with premium membership, $12/year.

I’ve barely begun finding fun stuff, but I think I’m off to a good start with the Google Earth app, and TriPeaks Lite. I’m sure that I’ll find more, but I really need to get back to work now. Happy holidays!

What iPhone or iPod touch apps would you recommend for new users?

I came to instant messaging (IM) late by many web worker’s standards. Spending time on some locked-down client sites meant that IM was never part my communications toolbox. However, when I started working with ISP and telecom clients, everybody wanted my IM details. At the time, I settled on Trillian because it supported multiple IM protocols, so I didn’t have to keep switching clients to communicate with clients and project team members.

Now that I am getting to grips with my new iPhone 3Gs, I have been looking for an IM client for it. The good news is that Trillian for the iPhone is now available ($3.99 from the iTunes App Store) — and it’s good enough for me to come back to Trillian, at least on my iPhone.

Account Setup

If you aren’t a Trillian user (or drifted away to other clients, like I did), you’ll have to sign up for a Trillian Astra account after you install Trillian on your iPhone. This is a Trillian-specific account. Then setting up your individual IM accounts is easily done by tapping on “Manage Connections.” Cerulean Studios, the team behind Trillian, provides a very intuitive interface for the application, which makes the setup quite easy even if you are brand new to the iPhone or iPod touch.

Application Features

Trillian for the iPhone includes all of the features and management tools you’d expect in an IM application. It supports AIM, GTalk, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, and MySpaceIM.

If you are like me and find IM to be a productivity distraction and like to manage your online presence judiciously, Trillian for the iPhone’s management features won’t disappoint you. I found the centralized status message controls very usable and convenient. Of course, you aren’t going to have a wide selection of status messages in this mobile application, but you probably aren’t going to need them anyway.

Instant messaging on the go for me is probably not going to be like text messaging — I’m not going to have the app open all the time, unlike a desktop client. I can imagine that IM on the iPhone is going to be useful for me when I might be on a client site and want to make myself accessible to friends and clients online for short IM chats. Another situation would be times like being out to lunch or when I am visiting family and need to be online to answer a client question.

When I was considering retiring my old BlackBerry and making the leap to the iPhone 3Gs, the virtual keyboard was a concern. However, I’ve found text messaging and now IM to be no problem — and I am a big guy by many people’s standards.

Using Trillian on the iPhone has been like coming back to where I started. In fact, I may even check out the Mac (now in beta) and PC clients to see what I’ve been missing.

Do you have an IM client on your iPhone? Which one do you use?

Google last week took the wraps off its brand-new lightweight operating system, Chrome OS. Optimized to work with web apps, it makes the browser the center of the computing experience.

Over on GigaOM Pro (subscription required), Ed Gubbins is pondering whether the new OS could usher in a new era of super-cheap netbooks:

“Google is in a unique position to set the price at whatever point will lure consumers to its new model. After all, the company makes money almost anytime someone uses the web. So when it offers free Wi-Fi in dozens of airports over the holidays to promote its Chrome browser, as it’s doing this year, it’s not just eating that cost as a marketing expense; it’s monetizing most of those eyeballs through ad revenue. Similar math could justify netbooks at prices drastically cheaper than today’s, especially if Google leverages the closer relationship it would have with these netbook users.”

I’m not sure I’d be too happy about giving up some of my privacy for slightly cheaper hardware, but I suspect that’s not true of the general population. As long as the OS is usable and does everything that they want it to, my feeling is that most people will look for the lower-cost option.

Also on GigaOM Pro is a new report from James Kendrick, “Google Chrome OS: What to Expect,” which takes a look at what we might see from Chrome when it’s launched next year. Particularly interesting is his observation that Chrome “will pull the user into the Google cloud firmly, and while Google will point out that users can access the entire web, the OS will be optimized for use with Google’s web services.” That’s fine if you’re primarily using Google’s services — as many web workers already are  — though I’m not sure I’d be all that happy about putting all of my eggs (apps, browser, OS, data — everything!) in one Google-shaped basket. He also notes that “Hardware vendors are going to jump on the Chrome OS bandwagon in numbers, as they have long wanted an alternative to Windows. The open-source nature of Chrome will further that movement, as vendors will be able to customize the Google computer to fit their business objectives.” This means that even if you’re not keen on Chrome OS, it’s going to be pretty hard to ignore if you’re in the market for a netbook next year.

Chrome OS is an interesting experiment, especially for web workers who already spend a good deal of time working with web apps. It’s likely that the change that we’ve seen over the last few years — applications and functionality moving from the desktop to the web — will continue, meaning that in the future, the browser will completely dominate the computing experience. If that’s the case, whether Chrome OS is successful or not (and with Google’s monetary clout, it will at least have a very good chance), making the browser into the operating system is the next logical step.

What do you think of Chrome OS? Would cheaper hardware be worth sacrificing a little privacy for?

Invoicing application WorkingPoint is continuing to add to its offerings. Since we first reviewed the web-based application, the team behind it has been busy. The focus of the new features is simplifying tax season for small business — and as we’re all starting to think about what we need to do to close the books on 2009, these new features will come in handy.

Traditionally, there’s a lot of paperwork that goes along with ending the year and getting ready to complete your income tax return. You might have to bring together information from several different applications, trying to make a mess of information make sense. WorkingPoint’s new features are meant to make use of all the work you’ve done over the course of the year to minimize the effort you have to do in getting ready to either hand your paperwork over to a tax preparer or to do your tax return yourself. While those features are still being rolled out, they should be in place by the end of the year.

If you’re already using WorkingPoint to manage invoices and expenses, you’ll be able to print out tax reports that directly map your business expenses to the IRS Form 1040 Schedule C (the form used to deduct business expenses), as well as calculate your estimated income taxes and print out 1099 forms for any independent contractors you’ve worked with over the course of the year. Other new features WorkingPoint plans on adding include integration with PayPal, banks and other e-commerce tools. The application also plans to add a payroll service gateway. It is important to note that the new features are only available with a premium account.

As a part of the improvements that WorkingPoint is rolling out, the application’s creators have added a second user to free accounts at no additional charge. While this may not seem immediately useful for some web workers — especially freelancers or anyone else working on their own — I’ve already found a good use for it. By giving my CPA access to my invoices and other business information, I can speed up the process of getting my taxes done as well as help my CPA to provide me with relevant advice about growing my business in 2010. With access to my account, he’s able to print off his own copies of tax reports, without any hassle of mailing them in. And since I don’t have to give out my own password for my account, my business’ data is a little safer.

The new developments at WorkingPoint serve to set this application apart from the other online invoicing tools, simply because few options provide easy ways to take all the business data you collect over the course of a year and turn it into an income tax return. WorkingPoint can save a lot of time when it comes to coordinating income, expenses and the various forms that go along with doing your taxes. If you use a tax preparer, you’ll find that you can get a faster turn around and if you do your taxes yourself, you’ll eliminate at least some of the stress.

If you’ve tried WorkingPoint, let us know how it worked out for you below.

A flowchart can be crucial for explaining certain tasks or ideas. SlickPlan’s goal is to make sure that you can put together a flowchart quickly, no matter where you are. The web-based application also enables you to put together site maps and interact with your existing designs. It was created with web designers in mind, but anyone can quickly learn to use SlickPlan’s flowcharts.

SlickPlan doesn’t really differentiate between creating a web site plan or a flowchart, which can be a little confusing at first. But once you realize that it uses the same tool for both, you can quickly start adding items to a chart. The tool is fairly simple: You click the “Add a New Page” to add a bubble (whether it represents a page on a web site or an item on your chart) and select the page or item under which it will be located.” You also have a side bar listing each element and allowing you to move, edit or delete individual pieces. There aren’t a lot of fancy bells and whistles — but you won’t miss them. Instead, SlickPlan does one thing particularly well, allowing you to create a chart in no time flat. Even better, any project you put together with SlickPlan is clean and attractive enough to send out to clients comfortably.

Once you’ve got a chart or site map put together, SlickPlan offers you a few different options on what you can do with it. Most importantly, you can save it and work on it later. You can also save multiple versions of a project. By opening up individual projects, you can access an HTML embed code that allows you to add your chart to other sites, export your project as a PDF and send a link to anyone you need to look at your chart. You can save an unlimited number of projects to your SlickPlan account at this point.

There are a few places where SlickPlan could use a little bit of polish. The application itself is easy enough to use, but the way certain buttons are labeled can make it seem like you can only create site plans, rather than use it for flowcharts and other options — uses that are specifically mentioned on the application’s web site. The application was developed by Atomic Interactive, a web development studio. SlickPlan was not created for a client, however; instead, it’s more of an internal tool meant to eliminate the frustration of trying to build site maps in Illustrator or InDesign. The resulting application makes knocking out a fast chart easy.

You may find that SlickPlan is not quite so useful if you want to add notes about individual elements or need to make more elaborate charts. In such scenarios, you may want to consider a more robust tool. Otherwise, it’s a useful tool at the right price. SlickPlan’s developers intend to keep it free, as well, relying on ads and donations to cover the site’s costs.

What tools do you use to create flowcharts?

280 Slides is a free presentation web app that’s a bit like having a a version of PowerPoint right inside your browser. It makes it super-easy to create and share presentations online. You can also import and export PowerPoint files from within the app. It’s powerful and simple to use, and as it’s based on the Cappuccino web framework, it doesn’t require any browser plug-ins to work.

I am very impressed with it, and have made a quick screencast showing how it works:

If you need to create a presentation, it’s well worth giving 280 Slides a try.

Have you tried using 280 Slides to create a presentation?

For some teams, the iterative design process has gotten out of control. Instead of focusing on how to make a product or service better, the process has turned into an approval monster. ZURB hopes to change that with Notable, a web-based app that allows teams to give direct feedback to each other. “Notable was created to solve the feedback problem in companies,” says Dmitry Dragilev, ZURB’s marketing lead. Dragilev says the company created this application to fight the philosophy of getting approval and a move toward helping teams make something better.

The tool allows everyone to provide feedback and stay in the loop with a design’s progress, as well as archiving the design’s history. You can control who can see and leave feedback on each captured design. For example, a project manager could share one page with the copywriter, another with the whole team and yet another with the developers. The feedback occurs multiple ways, instead of one-way.

For example, let’s say I open a Notable account for the meryl.net web site. I work with a designer and a blog app expert; we’re all web workers living in different states. I capture different pages on my web site to highlight the current problems and identify ways to improve them, as the screenshot below shows.

While I could use my screenshot application to get a snaphot of the page to make comments on, Notable works faster. With a screenshot app, I’d capture the web page. Then, I would use the application’s drawing tools to add call outs. Notable takes care of everything for you. All I have to do is click and enter notes.  This video shows the process of capturing and annotating a site.

Notable offers a Firefox plugin for capturing any web page, which is especially helpful for those pages stuck behind logins. I grabbed Facebook pages and other password-protected pages with the plugin. You can also capture pages from a URL from within Notable, use a special URL formula to capture a web page (for example, www.notableapp.com/www.webworkerdaily.com would capture the home page of this site), download the iPhone app, or upload an image.

I can send my notes for one page to the designer and notes from another page to the blog expert. Or I can send it to both. Notable gives you control on what feedback and notes you share with others, and you can remove someone from the discussion after the fact. The designer and blog expert can capture their own pages to add notes or leave comments on my notes.

In this case, I have a workspace called “meryl.net” for the meryl.net redesign project. I can organize the pages into three sets: one for the business section of the site, one for games and one for the pages about deafness, as the next image shows.

Notable sends email notifications whenever someone adds notes and shares them. You can control who receives the notification to be able view the specific page and leave feedback. Permissions are also available on a per-set basis.

You can also see different views of each page. You not only view the design, but also you can see and post annotations on the code (the underlying HTML code of the page), the copy (just the page’s copy, without any distracting visual elements) and search engine optimization (which lets you see the page’s structure for SEO purposes).

Currently, Notable works with Firefox and Safari. However, I could leave comments and view notes in Google Chrome — just not capture pages. One of the biggest benefits is that it cuts down on emails and confusion. The only emails you receive are notifications of new notes or updates, rather than a bunch of emails from different people on a project and trying to keep track of it all. Best of all, Notable is fun to use. While it works great for teams not working under one roof, but it’s suitable for those that do because the work is centralized and visible in one place.

Check out the use of Notable on the CNN and MSN home pages. A free plan is available that handles up to three users, 3 GB storage, one private workspace and the iPhone app. However, the free plan doesn’t come with enhanced security or private URLs. Other plans range from $24 per month up to $119 per month, based on number of users, storage size and other features. You can try any paid plan for 30 days with no obligation.

Have you tried Notable? What do you think of it?

I’ve long been looking for a Windows-based Twitter client that can delight me as much as its native Mac counterparts. Too many clients for Windows depend on Adobe AIR, something which isn’t an ideal arrangement, in my opinion. TweetDeck and Seesmic are both powerful tools, but why can’t someone make a Windows-native app that works just as well?

Seesmic apparently saw the wisdom in that idea, because it recently revealed a new Windows-only Twitter client that doesn’t require AIR to run. I jumped at the chance to take the software, which is currently only available as a preview edition, for a test run.

Feature-rich

Seesmic for Windows has just about every bell and whistle I could ask for in a professional Twitter client, but without a lot of the unnecessary frills that I feel get thrown in with something like TweetDeck. It seems closer to Tweetie for Mac, which is still my favorite client, independent of platform concerns.

You can use multiple accounts, and customize your columns in the main window however you like. By default, your Home feed will display tweets from all the accounts you have registered with Seesmic, which is a great thing for people who use different Twitter accounts to organize the people they follow, like groups. For those who don’t, Seesmic includes support for Twitter lists, so that you can organize those you follow that way instead.

My personal favorite feature of Seesmic is how the compose window uses your first-entered account by default. That means regardless of what post I reply to, and in what stream I find it, the reply originates from my main account. This is ideal for me because it’s my primary publishing identity, while the others are mostly for monitoring.

Searches can be initiated at any time using a field intuitively placed at the top right-hand corner of the Seesmic window, but I couldn’t find any way to find trending topics. While I don’t generally have cause to check the trends, not having the ability to do so does rankle a bit.

Good-looking and Functional

This is the best-looking Twitter app I’ve seen on Windows, and possibly one of the best-looking Windows apps I’ve seen, period. Especially using a dark-tinted Windows 7 glass visual theme, it just looks designed to fit its surroundings, which is more than I can say for any AIR application.

The tabbed sidebar and light-colored stream backgrounds make it a very usable interface, in addition to helping with aesthetic effect. I would appreciate an option to turn on color-coding for @ mentions or conversations between two people you follow, but with columns designed for the purpose, I guess the Seesmic team figures that isn’t necessary.

Advanced controls for each tweet can be brought up by hovering over a user’s portrait, or by right-clicking on any individual post, so you have options in terms of replying or retweeting. You can also create user lists on the fly from anyone in your stream, or add people to existing lists, which makes it very easy to create functional groups quickly. You can even drag a user’s profile pic to the group of your choice to add them to it.

If there was a feature I’m missing most with Seesmic, it’s the ability to follow/unfollow people from within the client. It’s something I use regularly with my iPhone Twitter clients, and something I enjoy being able to do at a moment’s notice without visiting the web-based interface for Twitter.com.

Client of Choice for Windows

I won’t mince words: Seesmic’s dedicated Windows app has become my go-to software for using Twitter on a PC, even though bugs are present in the preview version. It’s just that good, and it’s not Adobe AIR. In fact, it might be reason enough for me to spend a little less time in OS X, and a little more time working in Windows 7. I’ll stress the might in that last statement, though. If you want a copy, for now you have to sign up for the Seesmic newsletter at Seesmic.com, but turnaround time for a download link seems to be less than a day for most.

Have you tried Seesmic for Windows? Let us know what you think of it below.

To coincide with the release of the desktop Office 2010 beta, Microsoft is finally embracing the web office with today’s release of Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps beta, a web version of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that augments or even replaces the desktop version of Microsoft Office.

With Google and Zoho adding new features and winning customers from the venerable Microsoft Office suite, putting Office on the web is a move that is long overdue. It has the potential to offer users a better way to collaborate with their employers, clients and project teams.

Office Web Apps for Businesses and Consumers

It is important to understand how Microsoft is rolling out Office 2010 Web Apps, since it is actually serving two masters with this launch.

• Office Web Apps for Businesses. This version of Office Web Apps is accessible via the SharePoint 2010 beta. It is feature complete with no expectations of major changes between the beta and Office 2010 RTM version next year. Businesses will get this version as part of the SharePoint licensing.
• Office Web Apps for Consumers. The consumer version of Office Web Apps runs on SkyDrive, with the Microsoft Office team following the Windows Live services model and development schedule. There will be no beta for the consumer version until Office 2010 goes production in the first half of 2010. The Excel Web App and PowerPoint Web App on Windows Live are feature complete.   The Word Web App and OneNote Web Apps won’t be feature complete until the Office 2010 launch in the first half of next year. Consumers will be access this version through their Windows Live account.

While the application features of both versions are the same, the back ends differ. As the business version runs on SharePoint 2010 beta, organizations will have more control over compliance and security. The consumer version doesn’t have such controls.

I was disappointed to find out that you’ll have to wait until it goes online in the first half of next year on Windows Live, unless you have an employer or client running SharePoint 2010. I was fortunate enough to get early access to an instance of Office Web Apps running in a SharePoint 2010 beta environment.

OneNote Web App. My first stop was the OneNote Web App. I was eager to see it after having a positive experience with the OneNote 2010 Technical Preview. The OneNote Web App will be familiar if you’ve used the desktop app with notebooks, sections and pages. The integration of a “History” tab, where you can browse previous versions of a notebook and a list of users who’ve accessed it is a nice touch, and a necessity for project teams who want to collaborate via OneNote 2010 and the OneNote Web App.

Word Web App. The Word Web App includes a base set of formatting tools, including table support. This level of features is probably fine for 80 percent of users. Power users who need the full set of formatting and other tools will still need the functionality provided by the desktop suite.

PowerPoint Web App. Online presentations are a hot commodity this year, with lots of choices available, including SlideRocket and Zoho Show. The PowerPoint Web App comes complete with base-level features including text editing and slide management tools. As I generally like my presentation tools a bit more feature-rich, I think that the PowerPoint Web App will fill a role for more novice users and content reviewers, rather than being suitable for those users tasked to put together a full-blown PowerPoint presentation.

Excel Web App. . The Excel Web App includes a base set of formatting and computational tools, which I see as fine for more general users, but, again, power users who need features like Pivot Tables will need the functionality provided by the desktop suite.

Microsoft Office in a Web World

While my dive into the Office Web Apps beta was largely positive, I still only see Office Web Apps as a complementary offering to the desktop Office suite — it isn’t a complete replacement.

I am sitting back and reserving judgment as to how (or whether) Microsoft can adjust to the iterative development and release cycle popular with other web applications. The release cycles of Google Docs, Zoho Business, and Acrobat.com have delivered features into the hands of users at a pace that desktop applications could never hope to touch.

Have you tried out the Office Web Apps beta? Tell us about your experience below.

Xobni, a very useful Microsoft Oulook plug-in that we’ve covered with praise previously, has just released a new update that now reveals more information about your contacts, including acquiring valuable data from their Salesforce account. This has been a much-demanded feature that is available for all Xobni users for free at this time. Ultimately, there will be a small fee for this feature but the return on investment for those organizations that use Outlook and Salesforce will make the decision a no-brainer.

The other new feature that most people might have missed in a previous update (I know I did) is the ability to access each contact’s Twitter account information. This was also a very popular request from Xobni’s userbase who’ve previously been able to access their contacts’ Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Adding Twitter and SalesForce connectivity to your address book makes a great deal of sense.

Here’s an example of what the Xobni panel displays next to your email message. Not only will you see the usual information such as phone numbers, email addresses and threaded email conversations, but now you can actually view that contact’s Twitter stream (once you connect the right Twitter account, based on the email address used). Notice how you can actually send a tweet right from Xobni as well as unfollow the contact and view their Twitter profile for even more information.

Personally, I love this hot trend of infusing intelligence into our otherwise under-utilized address books. Services such as Xobni, Gist and the one that started it all, Plaxo, are providing tremendous value by allowing us to get more from our contacts. It’s baffling to me that Google has not done much with contacts in Gmail. Things will become even more interesting when (not if) Google finally adds social networking power to its address book.

Do you use Xobni?

WorkSnug is a neat augmented reality iPhone app that enables you to find great places to work nearby, from cafes to coworking spaces, complete with reviews. Here’s a short video showing how it works:

After a few weeks of waiting, WorkSnug has been approved by Apple and is available for free download from the iTunes App Store. The app initially covers London, with coverage for San Francisco, New York, Berlin and Madrid to come.

Has WorkSnug helped you find a great place to work?

PC performance optimization apps normally make me nervous, because they can mess with the registry and end up removing something I actually need. But my Windows desktop computer has been driving me insane recently, especially with its sluggish startup, so I decided to give TuneUp Utilities 2010 a shot.

The interface is well-organized and keeps things simple so the user can fix one set of problems at a time. Its five key functions are maintenance, performance, problem fixing, customization and something called “turbo mode.”

Maintain system: Maintenance addresses registry problems, removes orphaned shortcuts and unneeded files and moves data on the hard disk for optimal performance and defragmenting. Maintenance functions can run automatically or manually.

Increase performance: Analyzes system performance, Internet settings and visual effect settings for unused programs, identifies functions slowing down performance, and optimizes hardware and other settings.

Fix problems: Repairs frequent Windows problems and display errors, restores needed deleted files, reviews the hard drive for errors and improves running programs.

Customize Windows: Windows customizations can contribute to slow performance. This function helps customize Windows to your liking, while ensuring optimal performance.

Turbo mode: This new feature in the latest release lets you configure the software so that when you need the computer to perform fast, you can quickly switch to Turbo mode, based on your customized options.

I knew I had some applications being loaded on startup that didn’t need to be there. But to go through them one-by-one would have been very time consuming. TuneUp Utilities simplifies this by listing all the startup programs by the program names — something you don’t get in Window’s System Configuration Utility’s startup list — and whether they’re necessary, optional or unnecessary.

Those identified as unnecessary are redundant startup applications, like iTunesHelper and Adobe Acrobat Quick Launch. Every startup program contains a description to help you judge whether to keep it or remove it from startup. I made the changes and it sped up my computer’s startup without any errors.

My newish computer had issues shortly after I received it, and TuneUp Utilities can only do so much in repairing performance. It performs best with computers that have had software installed and removed many times, something I haven’t done much of with my computer yet. In spite of this, I ran a performance benchmarking application before and after running TuneUp Utilities and it showed improvement.

I give TuneUp Utilities 2010 kudos for its simplicity and providing enough information so users can make informed decisions whether to make changes. It only recommended a couple of changes that I didn’t accept while I let it fix the rest. My computer has had no new problems after running the application for several weeks. We always must use caution when running performance applications like this, but TuneUp Utilities gives you what you need to make sound decisions. A full version of the app retails for $49.95, while an upgrade from earlier versions for $29.95, and a 30-day trial download is available.

Have you tried TuneUp Utilities? Did it speed up your computer?