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.”
ADVERTISEMENT
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?
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
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!
ADVERTISEMENT
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
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
If you are not using the menu bar frequently and you feel that the menu bar is occupying more space in your browser, then you can shrink it with this add-on. It will help to replace the standard menu bar in Firefox with a single popup icon in the menu bar. Customization on menu to be collapsed can also be made simple with its option.
For some web pages, we still have to use internet explore so we have to change the browser to continue with it, but now it very easy with IE tab in Firefox. Single click will change the Firefox tab into IE tab and you can continue browsing with it without any disturbance.
No more tiring HTML formats for saving web page! With this add-on, web pages can be saved in PDF format. This add-on can be also used as PDF management tool in Firefox. Sometimes opening PDF files in low bandwidth makes Firefox crash but this add-on will provide the pop up option to save or open, using which the PDF file can be downloaded.
This add-on pop up displays the tab content on doing a mouse-over, which enables us to see what’s inside the page. So, no need to switch between tabs until pages are completely downloaded. Pop up size of the tab is customizable.
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.
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:
Real-time aggregation of the financial news
Presents it in a neatly designed flash user interface
Allows the user to personalize their view, based on stocks, portfolio or sectors they follow
Allows the user to filter news by its source type (news sites, blogs, press releases, etc.)
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.
Ubuntu 9.04 hits the streets overnight… but the official Ubuntu CD ordering site is temporarily down due to high interest following the Ubuntu 9.04 . Hopefully, the server recovers soon. After all, every one is eagerly awaiting to have a feel of it.
Meanwhile, the latest CNet News claims that Ubuntu 9.04 is in fact better than the acclaimed Windows 7 and Mac OS X in terms of it’s latest looks… hmmm… nothing can be decided without personal experiments… Let’s wait and watch, and anyways… kudos to Ubuntu for it’s excellent efforts to keep Linux lively and rocking!
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.
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.
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
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
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?
Select the file you wish to convert into a different format
Choose the type from the options given (for example: from PDF to Excel)
Enter your email address in the space provided
Click on the button “Send”. Within no time, you will receive your conversion output via email.
Download the file and bingo, the job’s done!
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
You will not be asked to enter your email address every time you want to use this tool.
You will receive faster document conversions.
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:
On the fly OCR conversion capabilities
Over 50 different conversion options
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.
Hello… This is my first post on Devils Workshop. I was thinking for quite some time on what topic to write, just when there came a bolt from the blue… PROXIES…!!!
Many of us must have heard of it or, could be having an overview of it already, so let’s dive deeper into the vast ocean of proxies…
To put in lay man’s words, a proxy is a server or you can better call it as a gateway with which we can access Internet in large organizations or institutions. It is some thing like this:
A proxy can be considered as an entity which serves client requests on behalf of a original web server. A proxy usually provides some kind of caching.
Let us walk through an example:
ADVERTISEMENT
Say, you are surfing the Internet in your college and you are accessing the Internet through a Proxy, and you have entered www.devilsworkshop.rsites.dev6.rt.gw in your browser…
First, your browser establishes a TCP connection with your Proxy and it requests the webpage – www.devilsworkshop.rsites.dev6.rt.gw.
Your Proxy, first checks whether it has a copy of the webpage stored locally. If it has, it services your request by sending the webpage to you.
If not, your proxy in turn establishes a connection with the original web server (your ISP) and obtains the webpage, keeps a copy of the webpage locally and also sends you the requested page.
So, what is the big deal in having a proxy?
ADVERTISEMENT
The advantage comes when, another person say your friend, requests for the same page, the proxy will serve him quicker because, it is having the webpage stored locally. So, a proxy can substantially reduce the Internet traffic it accelerates the client’s web requests. But we know that the contents of the web pages usually changes pretty fast and using a proxy may result in having old pages with outdated content.
How does a proxy deal with this?
Let us continue with the previous example… when a browser requests for the page http://www.devilsworkshop.rsites.dev6.rt.gw/projects/ , the following happens…
The browser sends the request to the Web Proxy. The proxy in turn (assuming that it does not have a cached copy of the page locally) sends a request to the original web server. The request message usually will be of this format:
GET /projects/
ADVERTISEMENT
Host: www.devilsworkshop.rsites.dev6.rt.gw
The web server sends the requested page to the proxy. It will usually be of this format:
HTTP/1.1 OK
Date:Wed, 22 April 2009 09:45:33 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)
ADVERTISEMENT
Last Modified: Tues, 21 April 2009 10:53:48 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
( data… data……. data…… )
The proxy forwards the requested page to the client and also stores a copy of the page locally. The most important field in the response message stated above is the Last Modified field. The Proxy, periodically sends a conditional GET to update it’s local copy of the page. It will send a conditional GET request which will be of this format:
GET /projects/
ADVERTISEMENT
Host: www.devilsworkshop.rsites.dev6.rt.gw
If-modified-since: Tues, 21 April 2009 10:53:48 GMT
The If-Modified-since will be same as the Last modified field in the response message from the web server. The proxy is instructing the server to send the requested page if it had been modified since the specified date. If the object has mot been modified, the web server sends a message to the proxy:
HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified
Date: Wed, 22 April 2009 13:23:52 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)
So, the proxy, by this method keeps the copies of the page up to date. A proxy, apart from this, also serves to authenticate the users from accessing the network resources, filtering the content and requests, intercepting user requests etc.
I just shared what little knowledge I had on proxies… Please feel free to comment on this article. After all, the ocean of knowledge is endless…
