The World of Open Source pt. 2
Last post we covered some pretty awesome open source programs. Programs that are free to download, use, and modify (if you are a fellow programmer). This time around, we cover 5 more awesome applications that you should start using right away. Programs (and websites) that will benefit you and your clients.
Freshbooks
I don’t think I have ever been this impressed with any website, ever. Talk about the absolute best way to tell your clients just how much you think the project will cost (estimates), tracking the amount of work you do, turning those estimates into itemized invoices, and receiving payment in one of about 15 different ways. AWESOME! And SUPER easy to use. Get started today an blow your clients away with your organizational skills. They will thank you for it and come running back (if the work you do looks as great as your resumes will, that is).
Outright
This service automatically imports your paid invoices from Freshbooks and keeps track of your expenses, profits, estimated taxes, and can export to ANY financial or tax software. Did I mention this was FREE!? This site is one of those sites that will help you stay organized and help you keep your books in order, be that for your business or for personal use (I use it for both!).
In my mind there is no better company in the world than Google, I could devote a whole blog post to how awesome their company and all their services are (hey, that’s not that bad of an idea!). This has to be my favorite service of theirs (not including the search engine, GMail, or their advertisement services). This is your space online to store all of your documents. That may sound boring, but it’s awesome! The service is free (once again) and you can store, edit, view, and share ANY kind of document: PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, real text format, and plain text. Check it out! It’s really handy for helping clients with scripts or showing them your rate card, or any of another billion uses you can think of!
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Launchy
Do you ever get tired of meandering through menus or digging through your dock to try to find that program? Well, no more. Launchy is a lightweight program that runs in the background and is activated by ALT+Space. When you activate it, you can launch any program on your computer just by typing in the name. How cool is that? This program saves me tons of time, I’m sure it will for you too!
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Audacity
I’ve saved the best for last, especially for a blog about voice overs. Audacity is one of the best audio editors on the market, free or not. I use it when I’m not running windows (on Mac or Linux) and I love it! It has all the functionality of most audio editors and gives you some awesome capabilities when it comes to filters, importing, and exporting of audio. If I were to have a figurative voice over toolbelt, audacity would be on it. Try it out, what have you got to lose? It’s free!
Well, that’s not all the open source software in existence, but it’s definitely a recap of my favorites.
How do you go about obtaining the software that I mentioned? There’s a couple of ways. On some of the listings, I provided a link in the title of the software. Click on that, and away you go. If there is no link in the title of the software, just google it and make sure you download it from one of the top few links (to make sure you don’t infect yourself with a virus or anything.)
Happy Open Sourcing!
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