My recent trip to the US to see the Xbox Kinetic being launched really drove home the power of working in the cloud.
For those who have not come across the term, the ‘Cloud’ is the collection of on-line tools that can be accessed from anywhere simply through a browser. A great example is Gmail.
BubbleCow, and my writing life, is set up to allow me to work and write from anywhere I can get on-line.
Here’s a list of the applications we use at BubbleCow (and I use to write):
- Gmail: I route all my personal mail plus BubbleCow (gary@bubblecow.co.uk and info@bubblecow.co.uk) mail through gmail. This allows me to pick up mail anywhere I can get online, including my phone.
- Google Docs: We use this for key BubbleCow internal documents, but I also use it to write. I find it very useful for creating outlines and plans, though I still tend to write in Word. An alternative would be Zoho.
- Highrise: We use this 37Signals applications to help keep track of clients. To be honest it is not an ideal solution to the problem but I find it easy to use and have no yet found a better free application.
- Clearbooks: This is our accounting and invoicing application that allows us to send email invoices and keep track of payments. Very useful, since it also allows us to do our basic accounting and taxation.
- Hootsuite: I recently switched to this from the ever buggy Tweetdeck. The beauty is that the application is on-line and allows easy access to tweets. My advice would be to start using private groups in your Twitter account. This allows you to painlessly switch between applications without losing track of your more important followers.
I use many other on-line services but I would consider these the essentials to keep life and business going whilst on the move.
What on-line tools couldn’t you live without?
