Category: Reviews

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Outright manages your business taxes for FREE!

Managing taxes could be a pain in the neck. And, no matter how much you want to run away from it, sooner or later, it WILL chase you down. It gets worse when you’re self employed or running your own business, and have no time in-hand to get into tedious tasks.

Someone told me about Outright and how it saved him all the trouble! So, I thought of sharing this information with you in my post today…

Outright is a FREE, user-friendly, online book-keeping service, which helps in tracking your income and expenses for accurate tax calculations. This site helps in keeping small businesses away from the hassles of managing all of their business deductions – starting from handling receipts, to maintaining all kinds of spreadsheets, creating invoices, and so on!

Rightly said, all of this and more just means “spending too much time and effort on the least enjoyable part of running one’s own business.”

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Outright features:

  • Tracks sales and business expenses
  • Gets your business records organized for taxes
  • Remembers to pay your estimated taxes on time
  • Keeps a check on how your business is doing
  • Keeps your data safe and secure

How does it work?

It’s easy to use and is broadly divided into 4 sections: Income, Expenses, Taxes and Reports.

  • Sign up and create an account with Outright to avail the service
  • Follow the instructions to synchronize your invoices for the payments received
  • Similarly, enter all possible business expenses made
  • Once you have the necessary values entered, just sit back and relax. Everything else will be taken care of!

How safe is it to share confidential data on Outright?

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Very safe! Here’s why:

  • The information entered by you is encrypted, before it is sent out to their servers.
  • The site is password protected (again stored in an encrypted format no one can read)
  • Data is continuously backed-up in case the service ever goes down.
  • And anytime you want your data back, you could simply ‘export’ all your reports and transactions, leaving nothing behind.

Have more questions in mind? Visit Outright’s FAQ section or take a tour!

(Source: outright)

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Burn your boredom on Bored.com!

I was borrrrred out of my skull this morning, so I took Google’s help to pull me out of my misery. Guess what it found me – bored.com! I’d say, an unusual website for a drilling day… but it worked like magic.

Bored.com is a fun website if you are looking for some time pass and you have nothing better to do. This site has stuff that will keep you occupied for hours!

Things you could do… Give it a shot!

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Play games

Some are fun, while some quite silly! You have many categories to choose from – Escape, Racing, Puzzle skills, Shooter, Casino, Arcade/Retro, and Action/Adventure. They even have multi player games.

Watch videos

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You could choose from a wide range of video categories too, like – Funny, Pranks, Commercials, Animals, Extreme, and TV/News. You could even watch Music videos here. Keep a watch on their “Recent videos” and “Top videos” section.

Make some money, honey!

I haven’t tried these myself yet, but it’s very difficult to say no to something as enticing as this. To know more, click here!

Laugh out loud

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Click here for more hilarious stuff from their humor section!

Quiz yourself

Keep those Grey cells churning! Here’s more!

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Sway to the music

… Adding to the rhythm, here’s more!

Have fun

And the list goes on… check it out!

Go ahead… burn your boredom!

Warning: Don’t overdo it! Ironically, even this can get boring after some time!

Link: bored

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WhereisDoc: An all-in-one search engine!

I came across this incredibly useful website which I would like to share with you – whereisDoc. I feel this is a real one stop solution for all those people who are searching for documents on the internet. The site is very well organized.

The best part is the entire site is weel structured. It has a Google customized search query box and various categories of file formats in which the result is expected.

All you have to do is – specify your search query, select your category and voila… Docs at your finger tips!

I tried some sample searches. The output was quite good and I think it will be very useful especially for college guys like me who would like to get some ready reckons for their projects and presentations at the last moment.

Anyway, do let me know if you found this site interesting or have some better ones.

Link: whereisdoc

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Free Financial News Aggregator by Skygrid

If you want to analyze the financial health of a public listed company, then do not go around googling for recent news articles. Instead, visit Skygrid, where you can find all the news bytes that you want to read, neatly aggregated in one single window.

What more, you even can get indicators about the importance and overall sentiments of the news byte.

Skygrid provides:

  1. Real-time aggregation of the financial news
  2. Presents it in a neatly designed flash user interface
  3. Allows the user to personalize their view, based on stocks, portfolio or sectors they follow
  4. Allows the user to filter news by its source type (news sites, blogs, press releases, etc.)
  5. Allow the users to filter historical news over a time line.

The only thing that might stop you from saying “Great!” is that it currently is working only for public listed companies. The private companies still have time before they mark their presence on Skygrid.

Link: Skygrid

(Image Credits: Techcrunch)

(Source: Techcrunch)

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Cheap calls to the US and Canada with Magicjack

Telephone costs are becoming cheap these days, thanks to the modern day technologies which rule the world. Though there are numerous VoIP services like Skype, Yahoo,Voxox, etc., many people still have a hang for the traditional telephone. Some of these may offer excellent services but old people may have some difficulty in using them.

There is a solution… Magicjack!

What is Magicjack?

Magicjack is a VoIP service provided by YMAX Corporation. Magic jack is available across the US and Canada and can be bought from any retail store or can be purchased online from www.magicjack.com. You can also opt for a free trial for 30 days before purchasing.
Magicjack consists of a Magicjack USB. This can be connected to any USB port in a computer having a broadband internet connection. The other end of the Magicjack can be connected to  any ordinary telephone using the standard telephone wire  (RJ 11, I guess…). Every Magicjack has an unique telephone number which can be personalized.

How will it be useful for old people?

If some one is working in the US and their parents are in India, Magicjack is a boon for them. Their son or daughter in the US can procure a Magicjack, do the first time initial configuration and send them over to India. Their parents in India, can use Magicjack, and keep in touch with their loved ones. The best part of Magicjack is that once you have it with you, you can call any number in the US/Canada, for absolutely free! In fact, there is no restriction to the number of calls.

The initial investment is around $40 and after that, the yearly  payment is $20. I think this is a worth investment as you get unlimited calls for a pretty cheap price. To get a hands on experience, I procured a Magicjack through one of my relatives and connected it to my comp. Initially, it takes a bit of time for downloading the Magicjack user interface. After that, I tried placing the call from here in India to my friend in the US. The voice clarity was amazing… far far far… better than what I expected,with a clean and simple user interface and I think this is a real good investment. It is a boon for all those people who want to keep in touch with their loved ones.

Note: This is not an advertisement campaign for Magicjack. It is my personal review of the product and your own experience results may vary.

Link: Magicjack

(Image Credits: phonedog)

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Create your digital identity with Sprout!

I was just casually surfing the web, looking around for some new stuff online and I came across SPROUT.

So, what is Sprout?

Sprout is a site which allows the user to develop complex multimedia content. Sprout is very simple to use and uses the drag and drop mechanism. Sprouts can be either informational, educational or even used for creating multimedia visiting cards. You can embed your sprout with pics, videos animations, flash etc. They are like mini banners which can be put in your blog or in your social website like Orkut or Facebook, making your page look totally trend… and it just happens in 3 steps…

BUILD—->>>> PUBLISH —->>>> MANAGE

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Point your browser to www.sproutbuilder.com . There is no signup required and we can start right away…

The available menus are easy to use. One can click the assets button to insert some pics or videos or some flash stuff. I fiddled around and created my own sprout within a matter of few minutes.

After creating your sprout, you can preview your sprout and if you are satisfied, click on the Publish button.

There are two options available now, either one can use the free sprout or use a premium one. The only difference between them is that in the free sprout, along with your sprout, there will be tiny official sprout logo. When you opt for free sprout you require to fill in a small form and the procedure is quite simple. After that, we can publish the sprout in any of the social websites or in your personal site. I tried posting one in my Orkut account and indeed it worked!!!

I think this is an incredibly useful site for all those people who want to personalize their digital identity. So what are you waiting for? Dive into the world of SPROUTS and create your own digital entity.

Link: Sprout

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Convert your files into other Formats: Online and for Free!

It’s quite a hassle to convert files into different formats, as very often, you don’t have too many options to choose from, and are left helpless, not knowing what to do and where to find what you are looking for. How about I tell you that now it’s possible to do over 50 file conversions online, for FREE!

CometDocs is an all-in-one, user-friendly, file and data conversion tool that allows over 50 different conversions. The good news is that you don’t have to install anything on your computer… It’s available online.

How does it work?

  1. Select the file you wish to convert into a different format
  2. Choose the type from the options given (for example: from PDF to Excel)
  3. Enter your email address in the space provided
  4. Click on the button “Send”. Within no time, you will receive your conversion output via email.
  5. Download the file and bingo, the job’s done!
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No hassles, no complications! It’s downright easy!

Make the job even simpler!

CometDocs allows you to convert 3 pages at a time if you haven’t registered with them. With just a one time ‘sign up’ for an account with them, you can do away with all limitations.

  1. You will not be asked to enter your email address every time you want to use this tool.
  2. You will receive faster document conversions.
  3. You will also be able to retrieve them directly from the file manager and store the files there for use at a later stage.

It’s unique features:

  1. On the fly OCR conversion capabilities
  2. Over 50 different conversion options
  3. Proprietary XPS and PDF conversion abilities that retains formatting, images and text in the selected output format.

Interested in getting a list of CometDocs Conversion types? Visit the FAQ section on CometDocs.com to learn more.

Link: CometDocs

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Firefox plugin to measure height and width: MeasureIt

Measure It is a Firefox plugin which will help you to measure the height and width of any element of a page. This tool is very useful for bloggers and web developers to see the exact dimension of any element or block on a web page.

Bloggers can take help of this tool to set the alignment of their web pages.

The addon is easy to install and use. Download the addon from the link at the end of the post, install and restart your Firefox browser.

On the bottom left you will see the ruler sign, click on it to enable it and start measuring any element of a webpage.

Download : Measure It Firefox plugin

Also read : How to minimize Firefox to System tray

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Looking for a Free Online Photo Editor?

Have you ever been to picnik.com? It happens to be one of my favorite online photo editing sites. It’s well organized and very easy to use, and performs many of the tasks that most of us would expect a good photo editor to do.

When you are short on time and can’t afford to sit and spend hours editing your photo albums before sharing them with your friends, picnik.com comes well in handy and gives you quick, yet fine results. And moreover, it’s fun to use!

Its features:

Of course, it is not as high-end as Photoshop, but you can perform most common tasks like-

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  1. Auto-Fix the image in just a click
  2. Fine tune results with Picnik’s advanced options
  3. Rotate, Crop and Resize
  4. Change the exposure
  5. Modify colors by changing the warmth, saturation, and the white balance.
  6. Sharpen more
  7. Correct red-eye
  8. Add special effects, from artsy to fun
  9. Add jazzy text fonts to the image using their type tool
  10. Add various shapes in the form of stickers and frames to liven up the image
  11. Perform unlimited Undo’s, and more…

Striking stuff…

Picnik allows you to upload images not only from your computer, but also from:

  1. Facebook, Flickr, My Space, Photobuckt, Picasa, Web Albums, and more.
  2. You could even upload a picture from your Web Cam.
  3. It works on Mac, Windows, and Linux!

So, will it cost me?

Unless you don’t want to upgrade to its Premium version, Picnik is absolutely FREE!
The Premium Upgrade would cost you $24.95 a year, which is approximately 2 bucks a month.

Altogether, this site is quite impressive. Not just for fun alone, this photo editing tool will also give you excellent results in no time at all. See for yourself.

Link: picnik

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Free eBook Searches Made Easy By “eBookee”

I came across another free ebook search engine I wanted to share with you. In an earlier post, I had written about a PDF Search Engine, but that did not seem very efficient or helpful. I tried using it for some time, however, the results very never too accurate.

eBookee is a lot more effective. It has an easy to use download library, that gives you tons of free eBooks and download links.

Features of eBookee:

  1. The best part eBookee is that it is well organized and allows you to run a search under various different categories like arts, music, design, law, politics, economics, encyclopedias, novels, and so many more.
  2. You could even download magazines and newspapers for free. I think that’s pretty cool.
  3. Apart from that, you could also share your eBooks with others here.
  4. You also have the option to request for an eBook, in case you can’t find something online.
  5. This site also has a section called ‘Latest Added eBooks’ where you could check what’s new and keep abreast of the latest eBooks that are being added to the library.

You never know, something might just suit your fancy while skimming through the list.

Try it out and let us know if this is something that helped you in your online eBook searches. I found it to be very useful.

Link: ebookee