I’ve compiled a list of the nine most useful applications (both off-line and on-line) which are used almost every day at Hayden Digital. The list is in no particular order (although subconsciously I think I’ve put the ones I enjoy using the most nearer the top) and is of course my own opinion. If you’ve think I’ve missed any, or disagree with my choices, fell free to head to the comments and let me know.
Xero
After spending several years using various accounting systems from a simple Excel spreadsheet and invoices created in Word, to the likes of QuickBooks and Sage, discovering Xero was revolutionary.
Not only is their web site beautiful and easy to use, it actually makes doing the accounts enjoyable. It handles VAT, invoicing and integrates with our bank account to automatically pull in bank transactions on a daily basis (no more importing statements manually!). We’ve even set up user access for our accountants, who can login and view all our financial information to provide, without the need to post paperwork back and fourth.
www.xero.com – £19 per month
Drop Box
With drop box all out client files, company accounts and resources are kept in sync between all our computers. So we can access the latest version weather we are at the office, working from home, on the move or with a client via their incredible web interface. Even without and internet connection files are still accessible – they simply sync up next time you connect to the net.
What’s more – Drop Box maintains a history of your files – so if you flatten a PSD and then accidentally save over the original, you can login to the web interface and restore the original. It also keeps all deleted files, like a giant on-line ‘recycle bin’.
www.dropbox.com – $99 per year
Google Apps
Google offer a full range of office applications for free.
- Google Mail has revolutionised the way we use email by providing an incredibly powerful and near instant search, as well as conversation view.
- Google Docs allows us to work collaboratively on documents, spreadsheets and presentations with both our supplies and our clients. They also provide a quick way to view almost any attachment we receive via email.
- Google Calendar makes it easy to schedule appointments and deadlines, and hard to forget them. Email and SMS reminders can be set to send out reminders of meetings to make sure we leave, and arrive, on time. It’s also handy for remembering Birthdays!
www.google.com/apps/ – Free
Google Analytics
In terms of statitistics reporting and website usage analytics, you really can’t beat Google Analytics. It does everything from simple site usage reporting, to e-commerce conversion analysis and can even ‘intelligently’ alert you to any potential problems or traffic spikes.
www.google.com/analytics/ – Free
Adobe Creative Suite
We use Photoshop and Illustrator on a daily basis for creating websites, graphics, printed design and manipulating photographs for clients. While it’s a little on the expensive side, and by far the most expensive piece of software on this list, it’s well worth the initial outlay and reduced price upgrades are available when new versions are released.
The software is incredibly stable on both Mac and PC – we’re currently using the ‘Design Standard’ edition which comes with PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign and a few other tools.
www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/ – from £1500
Eclipse PDT with RSE
The Eclipse Project provides one of the best PHP IDEs I have ever worked with, and best of all it’s open source and free for commercial use. The development community behind the project is huge and as well as the PHP Development Tools (PDT) module is the Remote Systems Explorer (RSE) which allows you to work on remote file systems, via a number of protocols including FTP.
Being able to edit a file on a remote server has saved hours of time, which would usually have been spent uploading and downloading files via an FTP client, so small changes can be carried out within seconds.
It of course has all the features one would expect from an IDE including code folding, code completion, debugging and much more. My only issue with Eclipse is that It can be temperamental on 64-buit editions of Windows Vista and 7 – This does not appear to be an issue on the Macs.
www.eclipse.org – Free
Firefox with Firebug
Firefox, as well as being an excellent browser, provides and extensive array of add-ons and plug-ins to help developers. Firebug provides a range of tools which are invaluable when building standards compliant web sites, especially when developing AJAX applications as they allow you to view data transfers between the browser and web server in real time.
It also allows live editing of html and css to quickly track down and fix CSS and layout bugs. For tracking down those IE bugs a ‘Lite’ version of Firebug is available which will run on other browsers.
www.getfirefox.com – Free
getfirebug.com – Free
WordPress
WordPress is an immensely popular blogging platform, and in fact powers the Hayden Digital blog. Development and integration is simple and the code structure is intuitive for the most part.
It’s well refined right through from the sleek installer to automatic upgrades and plug-in management, and is of course open source and free for commercial use.
www.wordperss.org – Free
Spotify Premium
While most people probably wouldn’t associate an application such as Spotify with productivity, personally I find music helps me concentrate while working, and Spotify provides access to a massive music library from the latest chart music to you’re favourite 80s classics. It’s well worth paying the £9.99 fee for the advert removal and higher bit-rate audio streams.
www.spotify.com – £9.99 per month
Aside from the software above, the biggest gain to productivity I’ve found comes from the use of multiple monitors. Almost all modern computers come with two display connectors, and LCD screens are becoming cheaper all the time, so there is no excuse not to!
Google recently made all Gmail accounts default to ‘always use HTTPS’ - meaning that all web mail sessions are now forced to use https for both logging in and while viewing and composing emails. While this is great for security and a welcome change, the Gmail Notifier application for windows by default uses plain old HTTP to check for new messages. Once HTTPS is enabled it can no longer connect.
