from Directory
Welcome, this directory has grown and been updated over the years. Some categories are regrettably old, some listings are out of business, some are recent. Want more? Check out our good friend Robin Good's Tools.
LinkedIn Tricks
Google
Tired of waiting a few minutes for each LinkedIn search? Do a blazing fast search on Google in a few seconds. Use the phrase "site:linkedin.com" in your search to return only results from LinkedIn. Now this doesn't always work. Some people make public only a limited part of their profile, or none at all. But it's a good place to start. Search example -
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:linkedin.com+"marc+freedman"
LinkedIn software
Lead Generation
RIP
LinkedinContactManager (thanks while it lasted, Arnnei!), LinkedInaBoxe.
Other networking-related sites and services
Address scrapers
LinkedIn provides no way to extract contacts such as new connections. An address scraper is useful for this and other applications. Just point it at a block of text, a web page, or file or folder on your hard drive and it returns a list of sorted unique email or web addresses. I use and recommend Data Extractor.
Sending email yourself
If you use your regular computer email like Outlook, you typically rely on the email service provided by your Internet access service provider. ISPs today have a severe limit on SMTP (outgoing mail) use. They restrict the amount of email you can send in a single message (using BCC) or over an hour and other periods of time. If you're sending hundreds of messages you must break up and queue your email. If you have thousands of messages that is impractical.
One solution is a specialty email service provider that gives you an SMTP account that enables far higher mail volume. I use and recommend http://fastmail.us .
Business Email Software
See our directory and tips on using group email software on your own PC. It's a good approach if you have a lot of lists and frequently do list merging, cleaning, importing, etc. Such software often includes its own email server so it can directly transfer mail to recipient ISPs. This avoid your ISP SMTP server and its mail limits.
Server
Business Email Services
Another option are web-based email services that provide convenience, automatic list maintenance and message sending, and high availability servers. They can get through corporate and ISP spam filters you might not from your PC. There are a few hundred such services.
DallasBlue uses iContact.
- Aweber
- Benchmark Email
- Contant Contact
- EasySendy
- Email Brain
- Email Contact
- Hey Emma
- iContact. A DallasBlue sponsor
- Mad Mimi. Less expensive than others
- Mailchimp
- Mailgun. Excellent solution if you create your own emails. Just send your email via email to their list address. They personalize and blast it out to your list. 10,000 free emails per month!
- SwiftPage
- TinyLetter. A simple and FREE solution oriented to personal lists.
- Vertical Response
SMTP
- Fastmail. Personal and commercial email service also supports up to 4,000 SMTP messages.
- Mailgun.
- Mailjet. 6,000/month, 200/day free
- Mandrill
- Ongage. $39 for up to 200K/mo
- SendGrid
Email Validation
Prices shown - if possible - for 10K emails (monthly or one-time)
- Proofy.io - $30
- InkThemes $20/ MailGet $20 / Pabbly - $25. Appear to all operated by FormGet and run similarly. Looks like a high quality service but accepts email column only. So unless you're just sending one-off mass mailings, you'll likely have to reconstruct your records with other fields like name. There is no credit for a partial order. You pay a flat fee for a number of addresses whether you use them all or not at the time of order.
More expensive
Be aware
- Deliverbility - $10. Low quality service. But customer support is not responsive and service is flaky (may not accept uploads and doesn't provide a service message)
Articles
Open source and Group software
Include alternatives to paying for Microsoft Office
- LibreOffice. Top open source (free) software with text editor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database. Is a fork from OpenOffice, which has been bought by Oracle and neglected.
- Group Office. Open source software that includes collaboration for groups and small businesses.
- Thunderbird. Excellent open source email app from Mozilla. My favorite had been Eudora but development there was stopped. Thunderbird too is slowing down as more people go direct to the Web, such as Gmail, and such services provide an offline version.
- More at MyLinkPro.
Meetings & Events
Registration
A few typical and new or interesting sites. Many have no charge for free events. free4free means there is no charge to list and provide tickets for free events.
- EventBrite, The leader with lots of features. You pay for it. They charge $1 + 2.5% for processing + 3% for credit card fee per ticket. free4free
- Meetup. Now provides their ticketing.
- PayPal. The least expensive option. Functional if all you need is credit card processing, basic shopping cart, buyer comments, and transaction export. But little or no support for typical features like an event page, invitations, etc.
- WannaDo. Just 3% for credit card processing. No added fees like EventBrite. Paid monthly. free4free
Media
Video conferencing
- Webrooms.net. HD video & audio, chat, screen sharing, whiteboards and more. Free for up to 8 people.
Screen video recording
For demos and showing bugs to developers
Images
Image Search
- Pixelmob.co. Searches four top creative free image libraries online.
Streaming
- StreamElements.com. Improve fan engagement in your live video events with themes and overlays, and monetization with tips, contests
and awards. Everything you need to make live video streaming a professional activity.
Marketing
PR
Press releases used to be a standard part of the marketing toolset pre-Internet. But they've declined, particularly with a renewed focus on lead generation over branding.
They're known to be a great way to get noticed by, yes, the press. But it's typically a poor investment as the media is already deluged by a torrent of releases, many poorly written or clear company puff pieces. The key value today can come from SEO. Backlinks from releases distributed to hundreds of sites can help companies with little SEO equity and increase leads.
Some service providers have capitalized on this by killing the press angle and specializing strictly on super-distribution for a large fee. However Google is increasingly wary of such forced search engine rankings.
Do-It-Yourself press release posting sites for small businesses typically cost $100-$500 per release, with packages based on the media and extent of distribution
- PRWeb.
- EIN. Get your first release free. This low-cost site starts at $60/release.
Misc
- Ubersuggest. FREE. Put in a keyword, get a list of more keyword ideas and content ideas. Put in a domain, get traffic stats, see what pages are the most popular for any domain, and see what keywords drive traffic to those page.
- SEMRush. Top All-in-one Marketing Toolkit. Many and deep features for competitor, keyword, PPC, site audit, brand monitoring, and social media tracking and posting. Incluydes research, analysis, and recommendations.
Other Software
Clip management
Write stationery for standard LinkedIn communications, such as sending invitations, sending introductions, forwarding introductions, etc., just look you would for business letters. You can store your stationery in a MS Word or similar file. I recommend using a clip manager and in particular ClipMate, where you can manage your clips, and point and paste to use. ClipMate has many cool features, such as PowerPaste (automatic clip pasting), screen capture, and direct clip editing.
Expense reports
Cool features can include automatic scanning from your phone and direct access to your credit, debit, and checking accounts to pull in expensible transactions.
Project & Time Management PM
See PM
To Do list and Task Managers
See ToDo
PDF Converters
CutePDF, PDF995, PriomPDF, PDF Creator. Recommendations from Craig Wiggins, Steven Tylock, and Marcel Ekkel.
Calendars for your web site
An article and a few links at Techsoup, also here
Password/Form filler
Cnet has a good roundup here. Roboform has a great product. I use LastPass.
Windows update management
Windows automatic update is fine for most people. But Microsoft has been known to automatically install bad patches and spyware in the guise of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). A few options are below.
Secunia Software Inspector. http://secunia.com/software_inspector/ . Service is available as both Web and software flavors.
- Detects insecure versions of applications installed
- Verifies that all Microsoft patches are applied
- Assists you in updating your system and applications
NetChk Protect. Note - this used to be free but is now is not. I've used Shavlik NetChk Protect. On the plus side, it also updates others apps. On the minus, it's complex, intended for enterprises, not easy to use, and so only for real techies. NetChk Protect: simple single user directions - download.
Email Encoders
Encrypt email addresses through Javascript code in your web pages. Your browser executes the code to display it correctly. But bots and search engines can't see them.
- Hivelogic Enkoder. Full-featured with link text, link title text, and email subject fields. Can also be used to disguise any web text or links.
- Iconico email protector. A simpler version of Hivelogic's.
- reCAPTCHA MailHide. Google has a nifty approach. Enter your email address and they generate HTML code that displays a CAPTCHA that forces the user to enter the displayed test to gain access. It doesn't obscure your email. But it does force a visitor to prove he's human-ish and so stops bots and search engines.
- Use Javascript. A simple (but not the most robust) technique that uses JS to break up your address.
Web service integration
These site allow to synch or initiate transaction between web services. For example, when you receive a payment in PayPal, add the payor to Google contacts.
Organizers - Mind Maps and Outliners
Got lots of thoughts? Outliners improve on Microsoft Word outlining, while Mind Maps add a visual display to that.
Mind Maps
Hive Five: Five Best Mind Mapping Applications
Mind Mapping Software Review
Which is the best mindmapping software?
Outliners
5 free tools to organize your thoughts
Includes startup and entrepreneur resources, such as landing pages, forms, quick web sites, shortlinks, mockups, crowdsourcing, building teams, backoffice, funding, and much more.
Our sister site at BlueEntrepreneurs.com has sections that include:
Admin
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- Startup Jobs
- Legal Documents (resources, recommendations)
- Human Resources
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Finance
- Capital
- Crowdfunding
- Be an Angel
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Product/Web
- Analytics
- Customer
- Design (logos, boxes, graphics, web design)
- Ecommerce (stores)
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- Registration
- Shortlinks
- Sites
- Support
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