Great Free Applications for Your Business

Being a small business owner, with a nearly non-existent IT budget I have found it necessary to cut costs when and where ever possible. Our main problem was the need to be able to share data and schedules without the expense of running Microsoft Exchange. After much surfing I found the following sites are ones that we currently use to help in our collaboration efforts. These are my top three when it comes to cost, functionality, support and ongoing development.

Online Storage - Box.Net (Free)
Nothing but quality here, I used this site primarily for document and file storage. You can get 1GB for free or purchase more space at very reasonable rates. When you purchase space as we do you are able to set up additional user accounts and specify which directory each use has access to. This company provides great support and has developed a very user friendly interface. They also have a desktop application that can be installed or you can map a drive to their application.

Browser Start or Home Page - NetVibes.com (Free)
I used to use Yahoo and Google for this but since discovering this site I been totally converted. The big plus here is the amount of content you can plug-in to their application. The development is much like the Mozilla project in that users create plug-ins which range from RSS feeds, ICal, POP Email, and of course Box.net. The structure is much like Yahoo! In that you can have multiple tabs to categorize you content. A nice feature is that they support an IFrame tag that you can have an external web page being displayed, such as a public ICal calendar or bulletin board.

Online Calendar - Airset.com (Free)
I have been looking for something like this for awhile now. This application is along the lines of Microsoft Outlook with out the email client, though you can send email from it. It has of course the online calendars, as well as lists or notes, and contacts. They also have a desktop sync application that you can sync your online calendar and contacts with Microsoft Outlook. The other great feature here is that the overall structure of the application is based on groups, in other words you can have multiple groups each with their own calendars, contacts and lists (Work, Family, etc.)

The other feature that they are big on is the ability to sync with your PDA or Cell Phone. This functionality is not free and only works with certain providers and phones, but they are testing new phones and I don't think it will be long before this list will be getting expanded.

The only thing missing from this is online file storage which I understand on the development board for the future.

I am still amazed that considering the quality of Netvibes and Airset that they are free, these products are premium applications. At present neither of these sites plan on charging for their basic features as outlined. As I have said these are sites that I have found useful and I hope you find them interesting should you decide to check them out.