From Source: TechRadar

OK, so the Android Market is more akin to Lidl or Asda than the iPhone's enormous, indulgent Selfridges-at-Christmas time approach, but the open source nature of Google's OS means there's plenty of innovation to be found on its budget shelves.
And best of all, most of the good stuff on Android is free, thanks to the work of developers who do it for love alone. These 20 free Android apps should be any Android owner's Day One installs...

Listropolis' Take:

I love my Nexus One. If, like me, you're making the switch to Android from an iPhone, this list will come in VERY handy.

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From Source: freelancefolder

How do you make sure that you get all of your work done on time?
As freelancers, we wear many different hats. In addition to performing our freelancing specialty for the client, we’re also the sales staff, the manager, the support team, and the accountant all rolled into one person.
For many freelancers the project planning tasks that go along with freelancing may seem kind of overwhelming (especially if they’ve never done any project planning). Other freelancers may find that they need to provide the same kind of project plans to their clients that would have been required of them in the corporate world.
Either way, project planning can be a lot of extra work for a freelancer. The project planning task is difficult to handle without good tools to work with.
In this post, I list some project management tools that are either freeware or open source.

Listropolis' Take:

I was a little surprised none of the 37signals apps made it into the list, but if you're looking for a project management solution on the cheap, this is a great list.

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As a small business owner, I rely heavily on the internet to help me with my daily routine. The amount of apps and tools available are staggering, but after a little trial and error, you can narrow everything down to a handful of apps that you use on a daily basis. This is a list of the tools I use everyday. They may not be the best tools for the job, but they work for me.

I'll start by giving you a little insight into my day. I own 5 businesses, and run a few websites. This isn't a pitch for my companies...merely a way to show you what I do, so you might be able to apply what I use to what YOU do.

My largest business is Lake Nona Pools. We clean and service pools in the Orlando area. I'm also the broker for a real estate company, co-owner of a photography company, and dabble in social media and web design. Add in roughly 10 other sites (including this one) that I run, and you'll see why the right tools are essential for my sanity.

Following are the tools I use, in no specific order:

There is NO chance I'd survive without OmniFocus. I loosely use David Allen's GTD rules, and OmniFocus has everything I need to keep me on track. I also have an iPhone, and the iPhone app is one of the best GTD apps in the app store. It's nice being alerted to tasks when you're close to the location they need to be done. This app is the glue that holds everything together for me.

I can't tell you how many start pages I've had in the past...there are just too many. I tried Netvibes 3 times before coming back to it for good. It's a very powerful tool if used correctly. I have different tabs setup for each of my companies, so I can open up my browser, click on the appropriate tab, and I have almost everything I need in front of me. Most of my tabs have a contact manager (I'll get to that next) at the bottom, and the upper portion is filled with small notes I need, or my bookmarks tagged for that company. I can go to my Lake Nona Pools tab and see all of my clients, any actions I need to do for those clients, my delicious bookmarks tagged with LNP (forums, etc), a link to craigslist to post marketing, a craigslist template I use that I can just copy & paste, and my gmail all sitting nicely in one place. I can't get everything done through Netvibes, but it's pretty damn close.

Man oh man do I love me some Highrise. 37signals has always been one of my favorite companies. I'm addicted to their design concepts, and their user experience in their apps is unmatched. Highrise is a contact management system. They offer a free account for under 250 clients, and so far, I haven't hit that number. Could be because I have a different highrise account for each company, but I love these guys and have paid for some of their other services. If you keep track of your clients, this is a must. You can log phone calls, send emails (that automatically save a copy with your client), set up reminders, tag clients, and just about anything else you'd expect from a CMS. I use the vCard export feature constantly, and track all calls through Highrise. I have an affiliate link, but in the interest of keeping this post about the products, and not about me capitalizing off it, I have used the regular link above.

Another life saver. I have to send out recurring invoices for my pool clients, and my web design clients, and Freshbooks crushes the competition! For a startup, these guys have completely impressed me, especially with the frequent improvements made to the service. I talk to a lot of the other people in my industry, and most of them dread sending invoices. I tell them about Freshbooks, and they are blown away by the simplicity. My typical experience is as follows: I add a new client to Highrise (mentioned above), I export the vCard, and use the "Import vCard" feature in Freshbooks. It pulls all of the info over easily. I then setup a recurring profile for the new client, and have it set to send all invoices on the 20th of each month. I have chosen to allow my clients to pay online via PayPal (which they LOVE), and when a paypent is made through PayPal, it is automatically posted as paid in Freshbooks. If I receive a check, it's a 3 click process to enter the payment. Clients can log in to their account and see their payment history and outstanding invoices (which they also love), and I can track expenses and estimates. There's also an accountant login with more reports than my accountant has ever needed. There's also a "Report Card" feature that tells you how you're doing against other Freshbooks users in your field. Very solid app!

Say what you want about the big G, but you can't beat gMail. With 7gigs of storage space, you never have to delete emails, and with Google's trusted search, it's never a chore trying to find one you've archived. I've been using gMail since the beginning, so I have a pretty detailed setup, but using filters and folders, I have a way to track emails for each company all in one place.

Google Voice is still in private beta, but it's worth signing up to receive an invite. I was lucky enough to sign up when it was Grand Central, and now that it's been updated to gVoice, I'm in love with it more than ever. Easily the best feature for me, from a business standpoint, is being able to have it ring my phone as the gVoice number (as opposed to the client's number). When my phone rings through my gVoice line, I know to answer it, "Lake Nona Pools." It's a nice touch that gives our company a slight edge over our competition - for free! I have it setup for the real estate company also, and it works flawlessly. The voicemail transcripts need some work, but I can usually get the idea. There are a few iphone apps available that are also worth looking into.

I promise this is the last of the Google Services (although I use adsense and analytics...but usually not daily). Google Reader is a feed reader. I'm not going to get into what a feed reader is, or which is the best, but I want to explain how I use it. I have gReader setup with feed categories for each company. I'm able to see what's going on in my fields as well as look for stories to write about on my blogs. I usually spend about 30 minutes catching up on my feeds every morning.

This is probably more about using Twitter on a daily basis, but if you do use Twitter, I recommend Tweetie for iPhone or Mac (actually, both). I'm pretty sure I've tried every twitter app made, and I'm still hooked on Tweetie. As an entrepreneur, you want to make sure you're using Twitter properly, or it won't matter what app you're using. My daily use is simple. I have 5 main twitter accounts. I have set one of them up to post from a custom RSS feed. That one is simple...there's very little interaction, but my followers love the content, and the sites I pull the content from love the traffic. I also have one for my pool company. I use this one to answer pool questions people ask me. The thing is, and the part MOST people overlook on twitter, I use search more than anything else. I have searches running for keywords related to pools. If someone mentions they need a new pool filter, you better believe I'll get the tweet, and I'll be there to offer them a filter. Spammy? Nope - not in my opinion. If someone mentions they just had a baby, they should have companies tweeting back asking them if they need a larger home, if they need new insurance, baby products, etc. I thing Twitter will get to this, but it seems like it's taking time for people to utilize it this way. Tweetie makes it dead simple to see when a new search result comes up - if you look at the shot above, you'll see the little blue dots - they represent new mentions, DMs, and searches.

Yeah, I know...everybody's on Facebook already. So why mention it here? Because it's an amazing tool for entrepreneurs. With over 250 millions users, there are plenty of your future clients on there. So how do you use it outside of reconnecting with high school friends? Pages. I have set up Facebook Pages for each of my businesses, and I actively post content related to that company. I see far too many people setup a Facebook account and try to use it to represent their business - especially in real estate. Problem is, it comes off very poorly. If you are a real person on facebook, people will be interested in what you have to say, and when you set up a page and ask them to becaome a fan, there's a good chance they will. Once they are fans of the page, they'll expect a different type of content. I make it a point to post at least one thing loosely related to each company daily. As an example, I posted a video of a guy jumping into a frozen lake on my pool company page. There were multiple comments made, and I received one new client from it. Use the tools to your advantage, but do a little research first. People want entertainment...not constant sales pitches.

I know...I know - it's not an app. I'm not a certified fanboy, but I do see how important my iPhone has become in my daily routine. Yes, there are other phones out there that do a few things better, but for an entrepreneur, the iPhone is a rock-solid staple in my daily grind. Most of the apps and tools I've mentioned above have apps for the iPhone. This is important because you don't want to be trapped behind your desk all day. There is a whole set of apps I use daily on my iPhone not included in this list, but that's for another post. Being able to keep track of my day with OmniFocus, follow my twitter searches, make calls FROM my gVoice number, check in on my facebook friends, find addresses to my new clients, read my gReader feeds, and listen to streaming music in between, makes my iPhone the perfect companion for surviving my crazy workday.

That rounds out my not-so-perfect-but-good-enough-for-me list of apps every entrepreneur should be using daily. I use other apps, but these are the most-often, and most-critical of the bunch. What apps do you use regularly? What apps can you NOT live without? Tell us in the comments.

It hit me today that a site with nothing but lists, should include iTunes lists. Nothing too fancy - just the top 10 whatever I feel like from iTunes. I'll try to do these regularly, mixed with the other lists, but it should make for an easy way to stay on top of what's popular.

Cube is a singleplayer and multiplayer first person shooter that provides satisfying and fast oldskool gameplay. This opensource game is built on an entirely new and very unconventional engine. Cube is a landscape-style engine that pretends to be an indoor FPS engine, which combines very high precision dynamic occlusion culling with a form of geometric mipmapping on the whole world for dynamic LOD for configurable fps & graphic detail. Most of the engine design is targeted at reaching feature richness through simplicity of structure and brute force, rather than finely tuned complexity. 
 This iphone port is provided by fernLightning is a technology demo that supports all of the functionality of the desktop version including multiplayer, in-game editing, cooperative editing, demo recording, etc (though some of these are impractical on the iphone) - please visit the official Cube homepage http://www.cubeengine.com/ for more information. Furthermore we encourage people to check out the newest version of Cube - Cube 2: Sauerbraten - a far more powerful and modern version. fernLighting thanks Wouter van Oortmerssen of dot3labs for his permission to release this port.

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From Hacking Startups:

Most Facebook apps are giggly.  But serious apps exist even today when they cannot spread.

A comment on my earlier post 75% of Facebook users are giggly and poke; 25% are serious and import bookmarks asks if there are, indeed, any serious Facebook apps.  Here are some of the serious apps that I have installed:

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From Lifehack.org:

The iPhone has been out for more than a week and the hubbub has started dying off and the realities are starting to set in. Not to try and put more fuel on the fire of hype, but I always think the point when the Reality Distortion Field effect starts wearing off* is the best time to look at the technology objectively as well as the application options available to you.

I mean, when an application that tests how long you can push a button gets web-wide coverage, you know there’s some kind of reality distortion going on.

So, I’ve compiled a list of apps from the iTunes App Store that I’ve found useful and good for productivity that you might be interested in trying out. That is, if you hadn’t already done so during the week’s excessive hype. Or if you’re not busy playing Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart.

To find any of these apps and install them, fire up iTunes and run them through the iTunes Store search box. And if you’re favorite productivity application isn’t listed here, it could be because I haven’t tried it or didn’t like it—but then, just as likely, it might just be because of the bone-headed decision to restrict some apps by country.

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From AudioJungle:

Like most of us when we’re in the studio, it’s hard to get me to work with anything other than the industry standards; Pro Tools, Reason, Logic (which sort of falls into that category), and so on. But given the rising prices of just about everything under the sun, not to mention the chronic emptiness of the musician’s wallet, it’s worth taking a look at the alternatives out there that can be had for free.

The price is not the only great thing about free, cross-platform apps. They don’t require you to stick a damn dongle in your computer and use up a precious USB slot. And knowing that you can get on almost any computer in the world, download an app and work on your project is always reassuring.

I’m not saying that these apps can replace Pro Tools or Reason as the apps of choice, but they are totally free. It’s hard to complain about that! The main thing is that they will let you get the job done. If I could just find a free DAW that opens Pro Tools sessions…

Traverso

Traverso is a lightweight but powerful DAW that works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Professionals who’ve tried this software comment that despite some strange interface decisions (such as having to hold shift and click to move the playhead), it’s a viable option for those looking for a free alternative.

Traverso uses, on average, one quarter of the processing power and memory that other DAWs use. This is great if you have an older machine and want to get your demos done at home and only have to fork out for a studio when you’re ready for the real production.

Take a look at Traverso.

See the Rest of the List

MacHeist is at it again. They've just released their new bundle chock-full of great Mac shareware for $49! This isn't a sponsored post... I just use many of these apps, and wish I knew this bundle was coming out. I easily spent the $49 on just a few of the apps listed.

To introduce you to mac shareware, they've put together a bundle of some of the best software offerings from the Mac community, and discounted the whole package to an insane amount. Online sales of the MacHeist Retail Bundle will only be for a limited time.

Here is a list of the apps included in this bundle:

Awaken

Awaken is a digital alarm clock that wakes you up by playing the iTunes playlist of your choice or choose from a selection of built in alarm sounds. Alarms can be created to alert you on a weekly basis at a set time, or at any specific date and time. You can also fall asleep to your favorite music using the sleep timer.

I was starting to sleep through my alarm, so I purchased this app, and have loved it ever since.

Cha-Ching

Cha-Ching is a fun and easy to use money manager, with a slick interface that uses advanced functionality built into OS X. I have been using this for about 6 months, and find it very easy to use. Continue Reading

From the Site:

I’ve compiled a list of my top 100 Mac apps for your perusal, since so many people have been asking for it. Thanks to Taylor Olson and Jason for helping me put all the icons and links in place! These apps are certainly Tiger compatible, and most of ‘em work inside Leopard (though the VNC utilities are now unnecessary). I did my best to avoid overly popular titles, but couldn’t avoid it in some cases.

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From the Site:

With the new iPhone SDK, it's just a matter of time before we see a wave of new applications. We expect a lot of popular web 2.0 apps to offer an iPhone version. Native Twitter, Facebook and Flickr clients for iPhone will run faster than their in-browser versions and will take advantage of the impressive Apple UI libraries. But there is an entirely new breed of applications also coming to iPhone. These apps simply would not be possible without a device like iPhone.

The major theme of this new wave of apps will be blending of the physical and digital worlds, using iPhone as the bridge. In this post we take a look at what's coming.

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