Free Website Tools
Free Website Tools

Have a most vexing design problem and are running out of ideas and time? Put your brain into learning mode and run through a myriad of creativity and innovation techniques described at myoted.com. Look at dozens of techniques like reverse brainstorming (love this one!), using crazy ideas without censoring yourself, analogies and the cherry split.

If you’re already in the ‘tearing your hair out’ phase of your project – and we’ve all been there – try this all time favorite: “If you need to ‘see,’ look at something else” meaning you take a break from your current project and literally walk away and put your brain into a completely different environment. For example, if you’ve been stuck working at a desk, get out and ride a roller coaster, walk through a museum (modern art or classic) or strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. The idea is to get unstuck and open up your brain for new impressions, the food of creativity!

Get 50 free customized e-mail accounts (yourname@your-business.com), including calendar features and online collaboration tools with Google Services. You can create and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and create secure web pages for intranets and team projects/wikis without the need to know code or html. Since all services are offered online and there is no software to download, they will work on any computer, PC, Mac, Linux.

You need your own domain in order to get started. If you don’t have one yet, you can also buy your own domain to work with all your services through this site. (Domains are $10 per year.) A great feature is that you get private domain registration at no extra cost! You also get full DNS control and domain management and it comes automatically configured to work with Google services.

phpGroupWare is a free/open source web based messaging, collaboration and enterprise management platform. Features included are contacts management, email, shared calendar, web content and document management and sharing, project management and issues tracking. phpGroupWare comes with over 50 applications that can be mixed and matched according to your needs.

phpGroupWare is flexible and scalable. It is suitable for small groups of people and large organizations. phpGroupWare supports over 20 languages.

If you’re a professional, run a small business or you’re simply looking for free accounting software, you might want to give GnuCash a try.

GnuCash is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Download GnuCash here.

The interface is simple, but the software offers everything you’d expect from financial accounting software, like the ability to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. The site itself has in-depth tutorials and also glossaries for software and financial terms.

Features include:

* QIF/OFX/HBCI Import, Transaction Matching
* Reports, Graphs
* Scheduled Transactions
* Financial Calculations

* Double-Entry Accounting
* Stock/Bond/Mutual Fund Accounts
* Small-Business Accounting
* Customers, Vendors, Jobs,
Invoices, A/P, A/R

If you’d like to be able to type fast and be more productive as a result, try TypingWeb, a free online typing tutor and keyboarding tutorial for typists of all skill levels. Learn to type or improve your typing skills with their free comprehensive keyboarding lessons. The site offers lots of tips to improve your typing skills and also has games to make the process more fun!

If you’re simply trying to record a brainstorm session of yours, or you’re creating a presentation for your next project, you may want to give Mapul a try. The presets are intuitive and let you get right to work. You can also customize colors, font, size and more. Basic editing tools are available within the map or within the toolbar at the top. Requires installation of Silverlight (Mac or PC).

Get hassled about backing up your server, updating your site, finishing your budget, whatever. Simply add your message at Hassleme and you’ll get nagged via email at semi-unpredictable intervals. Simple system, yet incredibly effective.

This service worked seamlessly for URLs and files from the harddrive – check it out at Zamzar. It will convert image, doc, music, video and other files.

Easy to use online html to PDF converter at html-pdf-converter.com.

Video chat with up to six people at the same time at Oovoo. Create free account to use free video calling services. Guarantees privacy, i.e. no monitoring or filtering.