Nowadays there are many tools available on the Net ranging from IM to cloud computing that certainly lowers the barrier for entrepreneurs like us. Today, I am going to list out the tools that helps me to run my company:
Set up virtual office
- Skype – Save you from long distance bill
- FREE. If you pay a rate, it will let you connect to phone line.
- When I am tired of typing, it will switch to this.
- If you like face to face conversion, I would use iChat on Mac. All you need is an AOL account.
- Yugma – Web conferencing
- FREE up to 20 attendees.
- It has Skype integration.
- Free conferencing
- FREE
- In case you don’t have internet access or your laptop is not next to you. This is a good tool because it gives you a dedicated line to dail in. However, the number is not TOLL-FREE.
- Why 712 area code? Check this out
- Google tools – all FREE
- Google doc (shareable)
- Google calendar (it can sync with my iCal on Mac now. If you use Outlook, you need to install a plugin to do the calendar sync). Follow this guide to set it up.
- Google email (have gmail to host your mail server – yourname@yourcompany.com)
- MediaWiki – good wiki tool for information sharing
- Posterous – create your company blog via email
- iPhone
- Not FREE
- I use it for sync email, calendar and access Web.
- VNC – Remote desktop tool
- FREE
- For Mac, download OSXVine Server from here.
- If you are using DSL that assigns you IP address dynamically, it is quite a headache to keep track of it. You can obtain a domain name from DynDNS to abstract you from the IP address.
- By default, VNC server will be listened on port 5900. If you want to do remote desktop outside your subnet, make sure your DSL router open a port for that and forward the request to your machine.
- Here is a web-based VNC viewer. With that, you can do remote desktop anywhere. Just key in your dynDNS domain and you are done.
- If you want to make this access security, you can password protected your box via configure the VNS Server.
- Here is a great article for that.
- There are people who uses LogMeIn service that provides more remote secure featuers. However, it is NOT FREE. To me, VNC Server is good enough solution.
Build your virtual dev team
- Tracs – combine wiki, ticket system, project planning in one
- FREE
- A bit complicated to set it up in web hosting company
- It integrates with Subversion as well
- Bugzilla is pretty good for issue tracking as well
- Dreamhost for web hosting
- Below $10 per month
- I currently use it for hosting my own blog and subversion repository.
- No java support yet.
- For VPS solution, this one is cheap and my buddy said it is great.
- VirtualBox – have several operating system runs on your laptop. Very appealing!
- FREE
- I set up Ubundu on my Mac. Full screen, share folders, share mouse. I love it.
- With this, I can ensure all developers are working on the same environment. Furthermore, I can have dev, qa and production using the same environment.
- Omnigraffle – design graphical tool on Mac
- NOT FREE but cheap
- Free stencils available on here.
- Amazon AWS
- Way low cost comparing to hire your own team to make sure your system 24×7
- Cloud computing allows you scale on demand.
- Processing power via EC2
- Storage via S3
- CDN via CloudFront
- Messaging via Amazon SQS
