Have no fear, you can quickly create a new or updated presentation online with 280Slides. There are a number of different online PowerPoint alternatives out there (Google even has their own utilitie within Google Docs) but I found 280Slides to be remarkably clean, lightweight and easy-to-use… and it has, in my opinion, the perfect amount of features to not leave you wanting more.

Of course, you have the basics like importing existing presentations, creating/re-arranging/deleting slides, the ability to add text/shapes/images/videos and, as you would expect, the option to save your final product to either your online account or to a downloadable file – with which you can burn to a disc or toss on a flash drive.

Those are the basics but 280Slides takes you beyond the essentials in some areas. For instance, when adding images or videos, one can not only upload, and subsequently embed, files from their own desktop but can search for online content as well.

Upon completion, you can share your final product via SlideShare, e-mail it directly from the site or grab a link with which you can embed on your own blog/site. If, instead, you just want to download the finished piece, you can select from four different file types: Office 2007 (.pptx), Office 97-2004 (.ppt), Open Document (.odp) and PDF.

280Slides – The App
280Slides – The Official Blog

Up until a few years ago, pretty much the only way to have a user-input form on your site was to either code one yourself or download a PHP- or ASP-based form from a site like HotScripts. The whole process was all very code-oriented and entirely unintuitive.

Then, out of the ashes, arose a slew of sites including Wufoo, JotForm, FormAssembly and many others; all designed to make the process of creating forms of all kinds a brilliantly simple, drag-and-drop one.

Of the three aforementioned sites, Wufoo is, by far, my favorite and has proven itself to be both reliable and cutting-edge.

There are two things, however, that might prevent the average individual or freelancer from using a site like Wufoo on a regular basis. First off, the monthly fee can be a bit hefty if you want a decent amount of control over how your form looks and how you retrieve your data. Second, even if you do want to wholly take over the forms you create on the site (in terms of data-retrieval or aesthetics), the process can be a bit daunting even for premium subscribers.

Enter MachForm from Appnitro. For all intents and purposes, MachForm is pretty much a Wufoo clone that sits on your own Web site giving you complete control over where your data resides and how well it integrates into your existing design. In addition, there’s no monthly fee with MachForm. You pay $39 for a site license and with that fee comes free minor upgrades for a year and full support via email.

Like I said, it’s pretty much a Wufoo clone and, therefore, makes creating forms to embed on your site a beautifully simplistic process. Check out some of the screenshots and a demo on the official site: http://www.appnitro.com/machform.

What you’re given is a TinyURL-esque link (e.g., http://sharetabs.com/jq – this can be customized) to share with friends, family or readers. Upon clicking the link, the recipient will be taken to a special page on ShareTabs’ site featuring all of the URLs originally included in the list… all open within a tabbed page. Check out the image below for an example:

That same page, as you can see in the screenshot above, has a link that enables you to copy the URLs to your clipboard.

There are a few instances in which this site would be uniquely useful. For instance, a blog owner (such as yours truly) might be able to point his/her readers to a dozen or more different sites regarding a single subject. Or, perhaps, you can just quickly wrap up a browsing session on your work computer and send yourself a quick URL by email to save all of those sites you had pulled up.

[via Go2Web20.net]

Based on the number of projects you want to manage, there are a few different account types from which to choose: manage 2 projects for free, 5 projects for ~$14/mo, 10 projects for ~$28/mo and a few more. Once you’ve made your selection, you’ll be issued your own subdomain on the site (yourname.planzone.com) on which you can begin managing your projects.

Now, there are several sites out there that can help you manage your projects including Basecamp and activecollab, among others. However, one reason that PlanZone seems to stand out, at least in my eyes, is the visual way in which you can manage those projects.

For instance, the scheduling page for one of your projects has an interactive calendar outlining the time-span of your goal with the list of goal tasks over to the left. From the same page, you can create new project activities and adjust the timeline for each existing project activity.

Of course, all of the basic features you’d expect to find with a project management online app are there to be found: the ability to create groups, contributors, tasks and a wiki in which to put text, images and links relating to your projects.

If the site sounds interesting, check out some of the following pages on the official site for more information: pricing information, product details and the company’s blog.

Blendables, a company that provides tools and components for both designers and developers, recently launched “Desklighter” into its labs program. The program essentially creates a portable application from an online Silverlight app.

There are a number of reasons one might want to do so. Perhaps you’ve discovered a Silverlight game or other such app that you’d want to slap on a USB drive for future use. Or, perhaps, you want to share your own Silverlight creation with a client or a friend. Without requiring them to deal with multiple files or with an Internet connection, you can hand them one file and they’d be able to easily explore your creation in all its glory.

If I’ve raised more questions than I’ve answered, check out the official page for Desklighter for some Q&A.

Related Post: “Get Started in Web Development with a Single Installation Package from Microsoft”

Taglocity, for those of you that don’t know, is a simple add-in designed to allow for “tagging” of emails, tasks, appointments, etc. in an effort to make organization of those items in Microsoft’s infamous email client a little easier. 

I’m personally a big fan so I was a bit troubled when I received a message this morning stating that my beta software had expired.  After downloading the most up-to-date version from taglocity.com, I was presented with a few big changes.  The two biggest changes in the new release are the “Taglocity Task Pane” and “Conversation View.” 

The first big change, the task pane, is where the Xobni reference comes into play.  The task pane, much like in Xobni, is displayed to the right of the message you’re reading and is an area where you can view snapshot information in regards to the individual who sent you the message.  (e.g., recently exchanged messages, files exchanged with the sender, number of emails to/from, etc.)  Those of you who currently use Xobni know exactly what I’m talking about.  In fact, here’s a visual comparison of the two:

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

To clarify,  I’m not saying that Taglocity has blatantly ripped Xobni off or anything because I think the new task pane fits perfectly into the features that they’ve been building up over the last few versions: groups/networking.

The other new feature, conversation view, is exactly what you might expect.  Clicking the conversation view button on the Taglocity toolbar brings up a quick window that neatly displays all of the messages related to the same subject.  It seems to work perfectly and is a great replacement to Outlook’s “Find Related Messages” which inevitably takes a while to pull up.  (Xobni also has this feature but it’s a little too slow for me.)

If you’ve yet to give Taglocity a try, you can sign up for the beta at Taglocity.com but I’d personally recommend reading about what all the software has to offer prior to doing so.  It’s designed to do more than just “tag” messages – although, admittedly, that’s primarily what I use it for – so far.  Also, a recent post on Taglocity’s blog also gives some great insight on what the company desires to achieve with its flagship product: “Saving Email – A Brief History.”

devunity, a TechCrunch50 finalist, will soon be providing a safe-haven for all of those unsung, true geek heroes: coders. 

How exactly? By providing “the first social development platform” granting you and your fellow nerdlings a place to “develop applications together online – using popular languages like php, python, perl, asp, js, etc.” 

That’s right – there’ll be no-one to take your lunch money or stuff you in a locker over at devunity.

If you just spilled Diet Mountain Dew (or, dare I say, regular Dew) all over your keyboard because you just couldn’t contain your excitement, I highly suggest you sign up for the alpha-test going on now.

Yeah, you heard me: alpha test.  Meaning, of course, that the site isn’t available for mass consumption quite yet.  Sorry for the tease.  We signed up about a week ago and have yet to receive an invitation so we can’t say for certain how long you’d have to wait to get in on all the nerdtastic fun.  Sign up now:

P.S. – is it blatantly obvious that my worldview is derived entirely from Conan O’ Brien and The Simpsons?

(They also just happen to be the first nominee for our Better Tech for Living campaign – which officially launches this Wednesday, October 1st.  Check back with us then for more information.)

The aforementioned “real-world missions” can be followed online as well as by 3.5” x 2.5” (physical) cards and can include things like:

• invite someone for coffee
• thank someone
• make someone smile
• give someone a book
• buy someone a compact fluorescent light bulb

For instance, I received 13 missions on 24 cards (check out the images at the end of this post) in my “Akoha Mystery Starter Kit.” Those mission cards are tagged with a unique number allowing me to track them online. 

Now, let’s say I take one of the missions, “invite someone for drinks” and complete it.  At that point, I can not only mark the mission as complete in my online profile (in exchange for some “karma points”) but also give the card to the individual I invited out for drinks.  They, in turn, can track that card (along with its unique mission ID) and complete the mission themselves…and so on, and so forth.

Given the above examples, if your first reaction was something to the effect of “sounds like a game for hippies” then your reaction was remarkably similar to my own first reaction.  However, the concept has grown on me over the past couple of hours – ever since I received the starter kit.  I don’t foresee myself investing a lot of time in this “game” but I do think it could potentially be a pretty unique “hobby” and I sincerely hope it succeeds.

For me, there’s something unique and engaging about dealing with physical cards in addition to the online aspect and I think it was astute of the Akoha team to implement that type of element into the game.

Do I feel just a tad bit more lame now that Austin Hill, Akoha co-founder, has dubbed his new venture as “games for the Oprah crowd?” Yes.  Yes I do.  Will that stop me from engaging with the Akoha community? Absolutely not.  Again, I think it’ll be a unique hobby to keep up with and I think the most difficult element to the game overall will be explaining the concept to the friends/family members/individuals onto whom I pass these cards and subsequently convincing them to sign up for their own profile.

If you’ve read this much into the concept of the game, you may now be asking yourself: “what happens when I run out of cards?”  (Just humor me, okay?) Well, according to their site:

“Initially, decks of Akoha mission cards can be ordered through the Akoha store. In the future, you’ll be able to customize and order your own Akoha mission decks featuring only the missions you want to play, made just for you, delivered to your home. Special themed decks of Akoha mission cards will also be available in retail locations around the world; for instance, green mission cards to spread environmental acts of kindness.”

If you’ve already joined the Akoha community, you can check out my own profile or, if you’ve yet to get started, read just a little bit more about the company and about the project or request to be invited to the beta.

“Better Tech for Living: Akoha – a Social Reality Game” Image Gallery:
(click on ‘em for larger versions)

Passpack, the online username and password manager, just announced the 6th version of their initial beta release.

Passpack stands above its competition by offering *multiple* levels of security including a master password and packing key (which can both be multiple words or entire sentences for additional security) in addition to a verification phrase and automatic session time-outs.

For each entry you create (see figure 1 below), you have multiple options for details including: username, password, URL, notes, tags and associated email address.

Figure 1: New account entry

When you’ve added your existing accounts via the online application’s import feature or via manual creation, finding the entry from the main entries listing (see figure 2 below) couldn’t be easier.  The "find-as-you-type" search box offers extremely fast discovery of your account information.

Once you’ve found the account you’re looking for, click on it and then click on the "scrambled" password field.  Voila!  Your password is automatically copied to the clipboard.

Figure 2: PassPack master entries listing

You also have the option of creating an auto-login bookmarklet.  Clicking on said bookmarklet while at a site for which you have credentials stored in PassPack will automatically log you in to that site.

At the moment, I’m currently unable to save any modifications in the Beta 6 release so you may want to stick with the Beta 5 release for now.  (The 6th release was just presented to users today, May 31,  so it’s most likely just a temporary problem.)  That said, I’ve been using Passpack for about a half-year now and I honestly would be lost without it.  I’m comforted by the application’s multiple levels of security…and the level of convenience of having all of my account information in one place is priceless.  Previously, I used the portable version of the KeePass password manager stored on a flash drive.  (I’m loving the fact that I no longer have to constantly keep track of that tiny drive anymore.)

Once the beta period is complete, free accounts will be limited to 400 (this could change) account entries.  From what I can tell, the company plans to monetize the service by offering advanced accounts capable of handling MORE than 400 accounts.  (Hey, apparently I’ll need one.)

If you’re interested in learning more about the service (and the company behind it), I strongly encourage you to check out their official blog: http://passpack.wordpress.com.  There are numerous articles on the blog providing details on features offered by the service and there’s also some great discussions on security.

One last thing, Passpack offers you an option to carry your data elsewhere by providing an export option alongside the import option you’ll most likely be using when creating your initial account at Passpack.com.

If you’re unfamiliar with Taglocity, the software essentially allows you to add "tags" to your E-mails, tasks and calendar items from within Microsoft’s antiquated Outlook product.  To do this, the software takes advantage of Outlook’s "categories" feature and, for each new "tag" you create with Taglocity, a "category" of the same name will be created behind-the-scenes and added to your Outlook personal files folder (.PST) 

I’m guessing the object of enhancing already existing Outlook functionality is to provide you with the option of retaining the methods of organization you’ve established with Taglocity if you no longer wish to use the product anymore.  It makes sense to me…data portability always makes sense to me.

(What never did make sense to me was why Microsoft never made "categories" a more prevalent feature in Outlook to begin with.  It really is a great way to add organization to Outlook.  Regardless, Taglocity helps to enhance and bring focus to this semi-powerful existing feature.)

Whether you’re browsing your inbox or composing a new E-mail/task/appointment, you’re presented with intuitive options via the Taglocity toolbar for adding tags to help you easily find E-mails at a later date:

The average Fans of Tech reader already realizes the benefit of tags over folders but there might be a few of you out there still asking  yourself: "why tags?"  Here’s the answer: after you’re finished reading an E-mail, one would normally file that message in a single folder in a vein attempt to keep your inbox "organized."  The problem is that, after a while, you’ll most likely have multiple folders that pretty much serve a similar purpose.  That leaves you with multiple places to search in order to find the item for which you’re looking.  With tags (or "labels" if you’re a Gmail user), you can assign multiple keywords to the item in question thus improving the likelihood that you’ll find this item whenever you go looking for it.  And, since Taglocity is essentially a plug-in for Outlook, you can do BOTH!  File and tag!

The free product even takes tagging a step further by incorporating two very useful features: Bundles and AutoSuggest.  The latter, as you might guess, makes the tagging process even faster by "suggesting" similar tag matches as you type…start typing a few characters and if the tag suggestion is the tag you want to apply, just hit "enter."  The other feature, Bundles, allows you to assign many tags at once by assigning a bundle tag name.  You might equate this feature to "Distribution Groups" in Outlook where you can send an E-mail to ONE distribution group in Outlook and that message is automatically sent to the many different members you’ve assigned to that DG. 

Taglocity & the Entperise

From what I can tell, Terazen will monetize Taglocity by selling enterprise versions of the product which makes perfect sense to me as it would fit very well into the enterprise atmosphere.  One reason I say that has to do with yet another brilliant feature of the product: "groups."  Here’s what the site has to say about groups:

"Groups are a way of sharing tags and email messages. You can publish common information to our Taglocity groups (with Tags on the message, of course!) which then means other people in the group will be able to search and see. Think of how many CC: email chains you can get rid of!"

I have first-hand experience with the aforementioned E-mail chain problem and I can genuinely see a need for this product in an enterprise setting…especially for non-profits. (*Shudder* So much E-mail.  *Shudder*)

Searching

Now, let’s say you’ve had Taglocity installed for a few months and you want to go find one of the E-mails you’ve tagged.  Use the toolbar (see above) and enter your search query on the far-right.  You’ll be taken to the Taglocity search window (and quickly, I might add.)

You’re presented with your results and a quick way to modify those results using the tag cloud at the bottom and side of the window. I don’t necessarily anticipate using this feature more than the built-in search of Outlook 2007 (as I can typically remember the exact contents of the item I’m looking for) but, for generic searches, this could still prove to be pretty handy.

Of course, all these settings (tags, searching, etc.) can be tweaked using the utility’s configuration window:

Overall, I think the product fills a void (and then some) that Microsoft should have filled a long time ago.  A long time ago.  Install this (in addition to that other useful Outlook tool, xobni) and you’ll actually find yourself becoming…gasp…productive.

Despite my rambling, there are a few areas of Taglocity I didn’t even cover so head on over to their site and check out the product…and then sign up for an account.  This new release is a dramatic improvement over v1.1 and should actually have enough weight behind it to take it into the mainstream.