3 posts tagged “article”

When you visit a local business, you usually have a good idea of the quality of service they provide. You likely could provide a short review of that business by simply speaking to a friend. That of course is nothing new. Although today, there are many more ways to have your opinion read by others. If you are uncertain about the quality of a business, and would like some feedback from other people that have used that business before, or if you know a business well and would like to give your opinion, then using the following sites is a nice way to share amongst others.

Yelp, a winner in our 2006 Social Networking Awards, is a great site to find many user opinions and reviews on local businesses in the United States. Bolstering a large user-base and an easy to use website, chances are Yelp will have something of interest to you.

Angie's List is a site useful to anyone looking to use a business offering home service contracting. It allows you to search any home contract service in the United States and get real user opinions and experiences of their offered services.

PlanetFeedback allows you to create a complaint, compliment, question, or suggestion for a company of your choosing. Other people can then read your feedback and can add their own comments. You can also do the same for other posts on the site as well. It is quite fun to read the complaints, and at other times, it is just horrifying.

Google Business Reviews is a service you have likely passed up many times before. At any time while using Google Maps, the sidebar will show local businesses around the specified location. You can also specify what businesses you are searching for directly by utilizing the "Find Businesses" tab. You can then gain access to user reviews.

Zipingo seems to be lagging behind most of the competitor's sites in terms of social functionality. What it does offer is solid, yet there are still much improvements to be made for Zipingo before it has a chance of competing with other services like it.

InsiderPages, while not having any reviews in my small little town here in Virginia, does offer similar functionality to Yelp and others. It appears to take on a more direct approach to reviewing businesses in the United States, and not much else. It's worth a try. (Read our review)

Using welovelocal is a much more enjoyable experience as it provides many options to connect to your friends and see what they are writing. Unfortunately, this service is limited to London users only, but is going to expand to include the entire United Kingdom soon. It has many features that I believe most of the options on this list could use to improve their sites.

Another business review service specific to the United Kingdom is Touch Local. It allows almost all functionality of it's competitors. The site has over 2 million users, and will surely be growing steadily.

MojoPages allows users to share their thoughts on businesses in three categories which are value, service, and quality. A nice feature is that they allow you to upload a video review of any service. MojoPages also includes basic social functionality.

TrustedPlaces focuses mainly on United Kingdom users, but is going to be expanding to other countries. The site offers many social capabilities. TrustedPlaces allows people to share places with other users and also share opinions on those places with others.

Using these sites is an excellent way to find out information about businesses in your local area. As well as places you might be visiting in the near future. If you visit many businesses, why not help out these services by posting your opinions and help spreading the word for good businesses, and keeping people away from the bad ones!

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Being productive is a difficult task for many of us. Sure you could be planning out your days with that old calendar hanging up on your wall, but you have neglected it. That rare person you found, you could have written the phone number in an address book, but instead you wrote it down on a sticky note and have lost it since then. You even could have planned out your most recent project using some nice graphs and diagrams to make the workload easier in the end, but you went in to the project not knowing what to do and you wasted time trying to figure it all out. These and thousands of other scenarios have been presented to all of us and we know that you could have handled it much better than you did.

We here at Mashable feel your pain, and it would be our honor to help break you of your unproductive ways. It is time to get you pointed in the right direction. We have gathered up quite a few services that will help you to become a more productive, organized, and efficient self, all the while not forcing you to bog down your computer with unwanted applications. It does not matter if you are a student or an astronaut, as all of these services could benefit you. The following are all on-line services, and in most cases, all you need is a browser with an Internet connection to be on with your day productive the Mashable way!

Word Processing Services

Word processing provides you with ways to manage and write documents for an untold amount of work, and today is vital for many people around the globe for obvious reasons.
Google Docs - A way to create your documents and share them too.
Zoho Writer - Serious competition to Google Docs. There are some options present that Google Docs lacks and of course vice-versa.
ThinkFree - Think Microsoft Office, except this is the on-line equivalent.
Buzzword - A recently discovered service that is still in private beta. It has many offerings and a slick interface to boot!

Web Portals

You have the potential to be productive the moment you turn on your computer and fire up that web browser. You can have all the information that you want and need accessible to you immediately by using one of the following services.

Netvibes - It has been compared to every other web portal service available, and many agree that it is on top in the web portals war.
Pageflakes - Pageflakes could be considered the brother-in-law to Netvibes and both have very similar offerings in customization and content.
iGoogle - If you have a Google account, then the iGoogle comes part of the package deal, and since many of us have Google as are home page anyways, why not give iGoogle a trial?
My Yahoo - The offerings are somewhat more customizable than iGoogle, but essentially the same concept different provider.

Calendar Services

Lets say you have your parent's anniversary, family reunion, project deadline, and finally taking the family pet to the vet all coming up this week. Having all these things on a calendar is undoubtedly the way to go for keeping track of these events. Unless you prefer writing it on your hand...

Google Calendar - I personally use Google Calendar on a daily basis. It is just that freaking awesome!
Yahoo! Calendar - Yahoo gives us a pretty good calendar application for organizing your life
30 Boxes - Much more simplistic in offerings compared to the competition. Has a lightning fast interface that is really easy to navigate makes this a good contender.
Kiko - A very nice Calendar application with a drag & drop interface that I appreciate very much.

Contact Management Services

Your cell phone and e-mail program are both likely your often your primary source for keeping information about your contacts. This is fine. You must ask yourself though, what happens if your cell phone is lost, or your e-mail account is closed? You are pretty much screwed! Time to rethink the way we do contact management.

Plaxo - One of the most known services which allows you to keep track of contacts. Other services that can tap into your Plaxo account and utilize your contacts with your permission.
Tabber - is was created with linking together friends from many social sites and services, but it still serves very well as an address book and contact management application.
Highrise - A premium option to manage your contacts. If you are more serious about keeping your contacts and have hundreds of them, this could be a cost efficient solution depending on your needs.
HyperOffice - Another premium service to offer you control of managing your contacts. This is for more serious contact management.

News Readers

Why bother with the daily newspaper when you can receive all your information through the way of the Internet. These news readers will help you stay on top of current events with nothing but a browser and a connection.

Google Reader - If you would like a straight and simple news reader, then Google Reader might be worth your time to check out.
Bloglines - A competitor to Google Reader, and offers most of the same services, just a matter of personal taste as to your selection.
Netvibes - Netvibes, as well as being a web portal, serves the another critical purpose of being a news reader for any page that provides you with an RSS/ATOM feed.
Pageflakes - Like Netvibes, provides the same similar services to you and can be used as a news reader.

Communication Services

Stickam - If live video conversations are your thing, then Stickam provides you an excellent opportunity to mingle with friends, coworkers, or just random people if you so desire.
Google 411 - This service from Google is likely something you have never tried before, but once you do, you might use it for a long time coming. The 411 replacement. (US Only)
Meebo - If you prefer to communicate with friends and colleagues through IM, then Meebo is the site for you to do it all in one easy to use program.
Gmail - The king of e-mail? Maybe it is, maybe it is not. That is all up to speculation. For many people, it is their primary email address now. We Mashable writers use Gmail so you know it's good!

Charting & Diagrams Services

Ever heard of brainstorming? Of course you have! Well, the following applications follow the same line of thought, but now you can throw your ideas in charts and diagrams often referred to as "mind maps" to plan any future project that you may attempt. I personally use these types of applications very often.

Flowchart.com - The title says it all really. Flowcharts allows you to create charts and diagrams in a nice drag & drop interface. (In private beta)
MindMeister - Offering both a free and premium version, MindMeister focuses on collaboration in an easy to use "mind mapping"environment.
Mind42 - Yet another "mind mapping" web app that allows you to collaborate with others. This one is completely free.
Gliffy - Likely the most technical and detailed option on this list. It has many more options available than the others.

Mapping Services

If you need to find out where you are going, and how to get there, these tools can help prevent (or at least reduce) the amount of times you get lost on those long road trips.

Google Maps - Recently has taken over as one of the best mapping tools out there. Not only does it have streets, but you can pretty much get an insane amount of data displayed on Google Maps through other services. like StreetAdvisor.
Yahoo Maps - Google obviously has driven Yahoo to improve their mapping services, and it shows here.
Mapquest - A very reliable source for getting you from point A to point B.

File Storage Services

Box.net - A very nice solution to uploading and backing up your files, as well as sharing them. You can sign up for free and get a gig of space, or you can have additional storage with the premium options.
MediaMax - Another powerful and useful service to regularly back-up all your important data.

We here at Mashable hope that you will use these tools to your advantage and make quick work of the things that made you unproductive in the past. Got more ways to be productive? Leave us some feedback in the comments section! Class dismissed!