Louis' Really Useful Finds

I spend a lot of time on the Internet - some would say too much time. Occasionally I find something that I find seriously useful and want to share with my friends, family and contacts. So this a place to post only the very best and most useful things I find on the Web. Enjoy!

Moo.com - Start here for your printing needs

Moo is a great printing service - period! You go to their website and order your prints. You may select images and/or templates from their gallery or upload your own images. You get your prints sent to you in the post. Useful. I ordered a set of 100 mini cards for just £9.99 recently to promote a small business that I was testing. The cards arrived very quickly and they are lovely.

http://www.moo.com/
 

MOO.com | We love to print via kwout

Move Informant - bookmark this for when you next move house

I moved house recently so I know how stressful house moving can get. There are just so many things you have to keep track of. If you live in the U.K. Move Informant gives you one less thing to worry about. Several actually.

Basically, you fill out one form, selecting your gas, electricity, phone, broadband etc providers and Move Informant sends them each an email notifying them that you are moving house and requesting that they contact you. Sure beats having to dig out contact details for 10 different service providers and repeat the same thing over an over.

There are a few other services like Move Informant I think but thing about it is it’s free and does not require sign-up. The image below describes how MI works.

http://www.moveinformant.co.uk/index.php

Moving House With Less Stress - Move Informant via kwout

Stumble Upon - Channel Surf the Internet

If I recall the story right, Stumble Upon was built by a couple of straight out of college friends. Shortly after they got acquired for a rumoured sum of 75 million dollars. Not bad for your first gig out of college eh!

So what is SU? Well you download a toolbar for your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox etc) and you optionally tell SU what your interests are, e.g. business, gaming, videos etc. Each time you click on a button in the toolbar, SU loads a site that other people have submitted and rated. It tries to do this to match your taste, so it is good to tell it what you like.

You also get a couple of buttons to rate a site up or down. You can also use the rate-up (“I Like”) button to submit a site to SU.

Why is it useful? Well, in some ways SU can be an alternative to search and is useful for researching topics of interest. Unlike search, you are getting sites that actual people have recommended and rated highly. As you can probably imagine, SU is therefore useful for promoting websites.

Last but not least, SU is good for entertainment. If you are bored, you can just keep clicking to see what it recommends - just like flicking through the channels on your TV. Oh and what a great name Stumble Upon is by the way - very catch since many people use the phrase everyday anyway.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Welcome to StumbleUpon via kwout

ChipIn - the easy way to collect money

Have you ever tried to collect money from friends or family, say to buy a gift for a friend you all have in common, or as repayment for payments you made on their behalf? It can often be awkward or at best an inconvenience.

Enter ChipIn - the easy way to collect money. You tell ChipIn how much you want to raise, why you want it and when you need it by. If you have a website (or I guess a profile on a social networking site like Facebook) ChipIn gives you a widget like the one below to place there. If you don’t have one, ChipIn will give you a unique web address for your widget.

You can then send the link for your ChipIn widget to your friends or family members so that they can make easy payments towards your stated goal. Useful!

http://www.chipin.com/overview

ChipIn via kwout

iKordo - Intelligent Meeting Planner

If you have ever had to organise a meeting for more than four people then chances are you know how problematic it can be.  Enter ikordo “an intelligent, free service that works for you to organise your meetings, leaving you free to do more important things”.

Basically, you tell iKordo which dates/times you can do and who else needs to be in the meeting. It then contacts these people and gets them to also state their availability. Then iKordo works its magic to determine a suitable time for everyone, taking into account any preferences people have stated. Useful! So now yo can fire that expensive, back-talking personal assistant. 

Remember The Milk - never forget anything again, ever!

There are many task management services with reminder services on the Web but in my opinion none as as good as Remember The Milk (RTM). The people who developed it just get it. They understand what a service like this should be like and have implemented it flawlessly.

With RTM you can add and manage tasks in many ways whether you are on your computer or on your mobile. The same goes for reminders, you can choose to receive them by email, SMS, instant messaging whatever. It’s just very very, well, useful. And if you use Firefox (alternative browser to Internet Explorer) and/or Gmail, RTM is very well integrated with the two.

TripIt - You've got to try this for your next trip

TripIt is well worthy of my first proper post - it is simply amazing and free too. You know how when you book one or more flights for a trip and make hotel bookings etc, you receive confirmation via email? Sometimes you get several different email messages and then you have to make sure you print them all and take them with you right?

Yeah well, whether you get one or several, just forward the email to TripIt and it will auto-generate a superbly formatted and combined itinerary for you, complete with maps, recommended places of interest etc. You can then access that itinerary from anywhere including from your mobile - so no need to print those emails anymore. And did I mention it’s free? Like I said, Amazing!

http://www.tripit.com/

TripIt | Organize your travel via kwout

Really Useful Things

I spend a lot of time surfing the web, probably too much time.  I am deeply immersed in the blogosphere and follow the Web 2.0 scene quite closely. If these words mean nothing to you then great, this site is for you.

You see, as I journey through this ‘alien’ world, I often come across many interesting things. Occasionally I come across some really great and useful things that even my non-techie friends and family members would find useful. Now whilst I would like to share all the interesting things I find with everyone, I think if I did, you would all get very quickly overwhelmed by it all. So I have decided to share only the great stuff - the really useful tools and tips that I find. And that my friends is the point of this site. Enjoy!