When the message comes back, you have the option to keep the message unread and even flag it for follow-up. That way, when the message comes back as the original receipt date, you’ll be sure not to miss it.

(I still wish there was an option to have the message come back to the top of your inbox but, unfortunately, you get into a tricky gray area when it comes to the ethical dilemma of modifying the original message.)

I’ve become absurdly-addicted to the 14-day trial I downloaded earlier this month and I’m sad to see the trial end. Still, the add-in is only $29.95 and that’s a pretty small price to pay for what could be a very effective tool for maintaining your always-ridiculous and always-overflowing inbox.

That’s Boomerang for Outlook in a nutshell.

Well, back in August (2010), Baydin launched a port of the Boomerang functionality for Gmail – via an extension/add-on for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, respectively. (Although, I did notice it’s not currently compatible with the most recent Firefox 4 beta. Sad, but true. – 2/22/2011) In my opinion, it’s even more powerful and intuitive than it’s Outlook-based big brother. (Kinda like how Gmail is more intuitive and powerful than Outlook. Go figure.)

Indeed, right within a message, you can utilize the Boomerang drop-down menu to have that message come back to you at a later date for follow-up. Alternatively, while composing a message, you can tell Boomerang to bounce that message back to you as an automatic reminder (again, in whatever kind of timeframe you wish) OR have the message come back to you if the message has no follow-up. That’s right, if someone doesn’t reply to you, Boomerang will remind you about it. Freaking awesome.

Boomerang for Gmail is in a free beta now but if you’re eager to reward the awesomeness that’s baking in the kitchen of Baydin HQ, you can donate a small chunk of change to ensure that development of the Gmail plugin is continued. I highly recommend it.

Have you tried Boomerang? What do you think? What are some of your favorite Outlook/Gmail-based productivity tools?

As many of you are already aware, sub-tasks can be a lifesaver when it comes to project management.

Unfortunately, ToodleDo – in this author’s humble opinion – has a terrible interface. The colors just plain don’t work together well and navigation is the complete opposite of intuitive – especially for a site that’s supposed to help you with GTD.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though… and that light goes by the name of "Stylish." Stylish is an extension for Google Chrome (and add-on for Firefox) that "lets you easily manage user styles. Add, delete, enable, disable, and organize with a few clicks of a mouse, no code to edit, no obscure configuration to find. Stylish’s companion website, userstyles.org, hosts tens of thousands of user styles made by other Stylish users that you can try."

In other words, Stylish lets you easily change the look of some of the world’s fugliest websites.

Among these "user styles" is one by the name of "ToodleDo – MacOSX." Below is a screenshot but, in essence, this style will simplify the overall ToodleDo interface and help you find what you need faster. This isn’t the only option though… just do a search for "toodledo" on the userstyles.org site and you’ll find plenty of options.

While you’re at it, find some alternative styles for Gmail, FoxNews, CNN, Craigslist and more.

Well, I’m inclined to say that price would be the biggest difference. That’s right, SquareSpace will cost you $8/mo after its two-week trial whereas you’ll never have to open that wallet (or purse) after two weeks of hosting your site on WordPress.com.

I’ll more-than-willingly admit that I’m one of WordPress’ most fervent proponents. That said, SquareSpace is… well, it’s just plain slick. 

Now, both the free version of WordPress and the $8/mo SquareSpace plan offer any introductory blogger exactly what they need:

• site stats,
• a plethora of designs from which to choose (and subsequently customize),
• comment spam prevention,
• easy WYSIWYG post authoring capabilities,
• support for multiple authors/editors/users,
• import/export options,
• social integration (hey it’s all the rage these days),
• ability to post from your phone, email, etc.,
• RSS,
• very good built-in search functionality,
• and much, much (much) more.

So, what about the differences? Well, like I said, one of the main differences comes down to CHC. (That’s “cold hard cash” for those of you that aren’t as completely obsessed with abbreviations as I am.)

Right off the bat, for what any beginnier – or even intermediate – blogger needs, you’re shelling out $8/mo to SquareSpace when you could be paying nothing at all with WordPress. Even with the SS plan, you won’t have access to a custom domain name. So, at this point, you’re either going to be hosting your blog on something.wordpress.com or something.squarespace.com.

Custom domain names are extra with both providers.

From then on, it’s still all about cost differences. 

SQUARESPACE ADVANCED OPTIONS

SquareSpace offers FIVE different monthly plans ranging from that $8/mo plan all the way up to a $50/mo plan. Besides for the ability to have a custom domain name with the latter four plans, the main things for which you’ll be paying with each of the plans include the ability to handle more incoming traffic, handle more members, more editors and more storage space. 

A few other interesting features that start to pop up with the $20/mo and $30/mo plans include:

• DropBox modules,
• form builders,
• FAQ builders,
• email template control,
• SSL and a few others.

WORDPRESS ADVANCED OPTIONS (a.k.a., “Premium Features”)

WordPress offers a different perspective when it comes to advanced functionality – in the form of yearly add-ons. For instance, for $15/year you can have your own domain name. For “VideoPress” (an excellent video/podcast publishing option), tack on about $60/year. For additional storage space, count on at least $20/year, unlimited users: $30/year, the option to go ad-free (or have your own ads): another $30/year.

Yikes… those look like some scary costs. Well, yeah, but if you add ‘em up and calculuate them, instead, as monthly fees, you’ll find that $15 + $60 + $20 + $30 + $30 = $155 per year. So, if you were to divide that by 12 months, you’d be looking at a whopping $12.92 per month.

That’s not so bad in comparison to SquareSpace’s “Advanced” or “Business” plans at $20 and $30 per month, respectively.

Then again, SS throws in a couple of unique features like those FAQ & form builders… and even that DropBox module – features that are nowhere to be found on WordPress.com.

One other thing in SquareSpace’s corner: beautification. Seriously, SS has, in my humble opinion, much better templates/themes than the ones offered by my beloved WordPress. Just take a peek at the release of SquareSpace’s Social Widgets to get a feel for the crisp, clean look of the interface in which you’ll be working.

(The comparison of WordPress to SquareSpace makes me think of the the comparison of Mac vs. Windows. One looks nice and doesn’t give you many hassles but the other one just plain gets the job done at the end of the day. I’ll let you decipher which is which.)

THE CONCLUSION

In the arena of hosted blogs, I’m going to ever-so-carefully wrap things up by stating the following: if you don’t mind shelling the amount of money per month equivalent to that of 2.5 fast food meals, I might sign up for SquareSpace’s 2nd plan (the “Pro” plan at $14/mo.) and be on my merry way. 

Odds are, for most bloggers, you’ll appreciate the expansive flexibility and it’ll be a long way before you have to worry about “yearly add-ons” or upgrading.

If, however, you just want to hop on that thing we call the Information Superhighway and blog ’till your heart’s content, all without sacrificing this month’s groceries (or this month’s Starbucks Venti Soy Lattes), please, by all means, sign up on WordPress.com today. Don’t even hesitate. 

It’s ridiculously flexible and despite what I’ve said about SquareSpace being “slick,” the WordPress interface has been in development for over seven years now and certainly feels like it. It’s fine-tuned, to say the absolute least.

THE THIRD AND INFINITELY BETTER OPTION

“What? A third option? You didn’t tell me you were gonna have a third option! I’m outta here, man!”

Hey, guess what. WordPress has something else you might be interested in. It’s a “self-hosted,” open-source version that you can install on your own space out there on the Interwebz. A version in which you have complete control over ads, design, accessibility, search engine optimization, statistics, backups, images/videos/pictures and just about anything else you could possibly want from your blog. 

If you do happen to find a certain type of functionality missing from your version of WordPress, just check out the Extend section of WordPress.org for thousands of themes and plugins – all free.

Speaking of free, what exactly does this magical version of WordPress cost? 

Nada.

That’s right, you can download every wonderful element of WordPress in a ridiculously easy-to-install .zip file (at http://wordpress.org) for the low cost of zero dollars and zero cents. Then, just find a host on which to install it. 

As a freelance web designer, I manage each and every one of my clients’ WordPress sites throughMediaTemple (which I HIGHLY recommend) but you can find plenty of other companies that offer hosting and 1-click installations of WordPress sites. Even GoDaddy does a pretty good job at WP hosting.

Overall, the self-hosted version of WordPress is, by far, the best option out there if you plan on taking your participation in the blogosphere seriously.

Let your fellow readers know what you think is the better service. Post in the comments below.

There are a great number of sophisticated VOIP solutions out there. You can go the Microsoft route and implement a “unified communications” suite like Microsoft Office Communications Server. Similarly, you can go with a richly-complex Windows Server-based solution like ShoreTel. If you’re a true rogue, you can alternatively go the open-source route and opt for a Linux-based phone system like Asterisk.

Of course, there’s always an online solution that’ll save you from investing in either hardware or software. (For the most part, at least.) Enter Zaplee. Zaplee integrates with your existing Skype account(s) to provide you with an easy way to manage departments, extensions, greetings, forwarding, complex routing, etc.

Getting everything setup, at least according to the site, is a pretty straight-forward, 4 or 5-step process: download the software, setup the extensions, setup departments, record greetings and then, well, go live. Check out the Zaplee feature tour to get an overview of how the system looks and works.

As a side note, there are two flavors of Zaplee: the $5-a-month (for unlimited users) solution that you can manage from your desktop, alongside the Skype software. The other option, Zaplee On-Demand, at $10-a-month (also for unlimited users) is entirely Web-based.

Overall, it’s a pretty impressive, quick and easy way to get a phone system setup in your office. Sure, you might very well outgrow it eventually and you might decide that you’re better off with one of the aforementioned paths I mentioned above (OCS/ShoreTel/Asterisk) but, then again, Zaplee might just do everything you need… and at a ridiculously-low price.

What say you? What voice system have you decided upon/deployed for your office?

Well, it turns out that add-on synchronization isn’t isn’t here yet and keeps getting bumped from the official Weave roadmap. So, our plans for a completely synchronized Firefox experience among our PCs were somewhat dashed… until now.

(Still, Weave will synchronize just about everything else: browsing history, passwords, bookmarks, open tabs, etc. For those of you not wearing tin-foil hats, I highly recommend you check it out.)

Like I said, my hopes for that Holy Grail of browser synchronization, add-on sync, were unfilfilled until I discovered an entirely separate Firefox add-on designed to fulfill that purpose: Siphon.

Siphon’s purpose as of right now is to fill that missing link and ensure that your favorite browser add-ons are available on whatever computer you’re on: at home, at work, on-the-go, etc.

Simply install Siphon through the Firefox add-ons interface (go to Tools > Add-Ons and search for Siphon) and create an account through siphon-fx.com. Then, specify what add-ons you want to synchronize. Once you’re done, set Siphon up on your other computers running Firefox and let the beautiful act of synchronization occur.

The developer of Siphon, Ian Halpern, has big plans and doesn’t intend on stopping at add-on synchronization. Future features of Siphon include the following:

• Support for syncing themes and enabled/disabled properties
• Automatic Add-on download and install
• Configurable user specified server support
• Easier Add-on management
• Different user profiles
• Support for syncing extension settings
• Support for other mozilla applications

So, g’head and give Siphon a try… and then let us know what you think in the comments. If you like it, make use of the Mozilla Add-Ons “Contribute” function and donate a whopping $3 USD to assist with further development of what could potentially be a VERY useful add-on.

If it has happened, save yourself some trouble in the future by installing the Lazarus add-on for your browser. (Lazarus for Mozilla Firefox | Lazarus for Google Chrome – sorry IE users)

Lazarus works on ordinary web forms, WYSIWYG editors, and even AJAXified comment boxes, and will save you from pretty much any given server, browser, or connection problems that might otherwise cause you to lose your work, or that really pithy blog comment you struggled on for over an hour.

Lazarus now comes with 2048-bit RSA and 256-bit AES hybrid encryption, so your form history is more private and secure than ever! Lazarus also includes search functionality so you can recover text even if you can no longer find the original form you entered it into.

Firefox users can also check out Textarea Cache for similar functionality.

I’ve found many MySQL backup solutions but none of them seem to be perfect in my eyes. (Hey, what is perfect these days?)

DESKTOP APPS

There’s Backup Watcher for MySQL but a) it costs $$ and b) you have to “activate” the software in order to use it. For someone like myself – who is constantly reformatting the various machines on which I work – that’s far too annoying given that you have to wait for a new activation code from the company. Of course, if you’re just gonna set this up on a server or desktop that you touch maybe once every three years – it may very well be worth it. Setting up automated backups is fool-proof and the interface isn’t too archaic. Plus, support usually responds within one business day – even if they aren’t that fluent in the English language.

One benefit to the above app is that it runs on Windows. For me, at least, that makes administration much easier. Another such app is Auto Backup for MySQL. (I’ll try and download and install this to post a review here soon.) This one also costs money (still less than $100) but the fact that it appears to be continually updated – it’s now Windows 7 and Server 2008 compatible – puts my mind at ease.

For more advanced MySQL DB management, you might also look at Navicat for MySQL – an all-in-one mgmt app that not only enables scheduled database backups but also provides you with options to interact with the data itself as well as the overall structure of the database. Pricing is much better than I remember. You can probably stay close to the price-range of the apps mentioned above and wind up with many more features at the same time. Plus, the interface is quite a bit more polished than the other apps.

WEB-BASED SCRIPTS

A more universal option (for those on different platforms beyond Windows) is a self-install script like Backup2Mail… which costs absolutely nothing. (The song “Born Free” from the last episode of the first season of Dexter is now running through my mind.)

Scripts like this one reside on your server, alongside your MySQL install, and regularly emails you backups of your database(s). The company recommends that you use a secure email environment given the risk involved in sending potentially-confidential data through email.

AutoMySQLBackup is a free script that’s been around for a while. Much like Backup2Mail, this script enables scheduled backups via the web but, with this one, you can not only send backups by email but also dump them to a directory on your web server. That way, if you’ve got the available space, you never need worry about the size of your DB backups.

What backup solution are you using/do you recommend? Let other readers know in the comments below.

Online invoicing systems, while not always compliant with an accounting system (if you use one), can provide you with access to invoice review/creation from wherever there’s a computer as well as an easy-to-use interface that’s far better than any of the aforementioned methods.

There are four different invoicing systems I wanted to briefly cover so you can quickly get an idea for which one is best for you.

First up is Blinksale. Blinksale is actually the invoicing system I started off with when a slew of Web 2.0 invoicing apps first emerged. Sign up for a free account and you’ve automatically got an easy-to-remember location at which you can manage your invoices: yourname.blinksale.com. With the free account, an unlimited number of employees can send 3 invoices a month. I know… that seems 100% backward but it’s worked for me until now. (Step it up a notch to the $12 plan and the same number of employees can send out up to 50 invoices per month.) In fact, the free plan has you covered with all of Blinksale’s features with the exception of SSL encryption and the ability to send invoices as PDFs.

Blinksale offers almost everything you’d come to expect from an online invoicing suite including the ability to create draft invoices, send invoices by email or export those invoices to PDF (the two premium plans allow you to send the PDFs directly from your site), mark collected invoices as paid, etc.

As of May 2009, BlinkSale’s pricing structure and overall feature listing is as follows:

(click for full-size version)

Next up is FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the big dog of this group, no doubt. They offer pretty much everything you’d need coming from Blinksale in addition to tight integration with a number of different payment authorization companies including 2CheckOut, PayPal, Authorize.net, etc. Plus, while Blinksale only grants participants of their free plan the ability to send a measly 3 invoices per month, FreshBooks allows you to send unlimited invoices… but also throws in the following 2 conditions: only 1 employee can access/send invoices and you can only manage 3 clients.

That’s only on the free plan, of course. If you’re willing to shell out some dough every month, those numbers increase. As of May 2009, FreshBooks’ pricing structure and extensive feature listing is as follows:

(click for full-size version)

Now we come to the entry with the sweetest name (hey, that counts): Ronin. RoninApp.com probably offers the most flexibility in terms of pricing options. They, of course, have a free plan (quite similar to FreshBooks’ free plan – only you can manage just 2 clients instead of 3) as well as four other plans starting at $6/mo. The $6/mo plan, dubbed “Solo,” allows you to create an unlimited number of invoices, recurring invoices and open projects for 15 different clients. Of the three systems mentioned thus far, this is probably the best-priced option for freelancers with just a few clients under his/her belt. Of course, you’ll have to jump up two plans to get integration with a payment auth service… which, in this case, is PayPal Express.

As of May 2009, Ronin’s pricing structure and overall feature listing is as follows:

(click for full-size version)

Alright, the last one in the showcase today is the one with the weirdest name: CurdBee. Of all the apps we’ve explored, CurdBee is probably the most friendly to penny-pinching (those who are forced to bee and those who choose to bee – delicious pun very much intended) freelancers. CurdBee, unlike the others we’ve covered, offers just two plans: a “standard” (or “free”) plan and a “pro” plan priced at a very pleasant $5 per month. Both the free plan and the pro plan enable you to create an unlimited number of invoices for an unlimited number of clients – which is something we’ve yet to see anywhere else with a no-cost plan.

Like all of the others we’ve covered, CurdBee offers a great and intuitive interface with a great set of customization options available on either plan. As of May 2009, CurdBee’s pricing structure and overall feature listing is as follows:

(click for full-size version)

In addition, CurdBee allows you to extend your plan even further using $5/mo “modules.” For instance, a freelancer or small business offering monthly, quarterly or yearly web hosting services can purchase a “recurring billing” module at an additional $5/mo. This module, according to the site, “allows you to specify the amount, frequency, duration, and payment method of your recurrent invoice, letting you forget about it.” In addition, you could purchase a 2CheckOut module for an additional $5/mo to supplement that recurring billing feature. That is, of course, if the built-in integration with PayPal Payments and Google Checkout doesn’t suit your fancy. (The latter two merchants are enabled on BOTH the free and pro plans… yet another way that CurdBee stands apart from the pack.)

I’ve personally always been a big fan of the add-on/module structure of paid sites (it’s the same reason I prefer Firefox as my primary browser) which is yet another reason this particular company rose the ranks to become my favorite online invoicing system. So, for those of you just getting started with online invoicing, I definitely recommend CurdBee.

Indeed, the world of online invoicing systems is vast and we couldn’t cover all of them in-depth so we just picked the four that impressed us the most. Here are some others that you’ll want to check out if you plan on signing up for an account in the near future: SimplyInvoices, Tick, Harvest and SimplyBill.

Know of some others we should have covered? Let us and your fellow readers know about it/them in the comments.

For some time now, Gmail users have had the ability to “fetch” incoming mail from existing Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail, etc. accounts but this marks the first time that you can actually migrate your entire inbox to Gmail with just one click.

From Google’s announcement:

“It’s much easier to make the transition now that you can bring along all your old email and contacts. You can even have your messages forwarded from your old account for 30 days, giving you time to take Gmail for a test drive while you make up your mind.”

Again, the new option isn’t quite available to all users yet so go easy on that F5 key if you don’t happen to see it immediately.

Seriously, between this announcement and all of the unique and clever features that are coming out of Gmail Labs nowadays, it seems as though competitors like Microsoft’s Hotmail and AOL Mail won’t ever be able to catch up.

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