Map your time with SlimTimer

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Yep, one more Web 2.0 apps which allows you to map the time you spend on different projects/tasks. SlimTimer is an online service which allows us to track the time we spend on different projects and tasks. SlimTimer which is a free service allows us to share a project/task with others (they can be co-workers, managers) and allows them to tag and comment on the tasks. To start tracking your time, you can just click on the bookmarklet and click on the task you want to track or use the other desktop based option. SlimTimer also allows us to run reports by users, tasks and dates. I would love to see a reporting functionality where we can even run reports by tags ( I see a feature but it didn't work for me). One can either download this report as a .csv file or print the report.
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So why would one use SlimTimer? I can think of the following reasons: - 1. To track the time one uses on different projects 2. To check how productive they are 3. To check the ratio of work done/time spent 4. For invoicing purposes 5. To collectively check as a group as to how much time one project/task took 6. I am sure more reasons can be added here .. Overall, I like this tool especially when we there are so many distractions surrounding us these days. This tool will not only track our time but might also help us to focus on the current task that we are working on. I am going to give it one week acid test and see if I am still using it by the end of one week from today.

Make unlimited international calls for $1/week with Rebtel

Techcrunch links me to Rebtel.
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Wow, what an idea. Brilliant! I remember some company doing something similar for voicemail some years ago and I even gave it a try. Rebtel is a company that allows you to make international calls for the price of peanuts or even cheaper then that! Now you can be in constant touch with you friends, relative, business associates, employers etc. for a price of a local call and $1 USD/week. If you make a lot of international calls at a specific number, then here are the steps:- 1) Sign up for Rebtel 2) Charge your account for as low as $5 3) Create local numbers. What this means is for a given international phone no. that you want to call you will be given a local phone number which you use to make a call. This seems like a phone no. mapping system 4) Now to start making international calls, just dial out the local phone number and you will be connected within seconds. This is when their two separate products called "REBout" and "REBin" comes into play. Check Rebtel's manual for more details. If you friend lives in a country where Rebtel services are available, then your phone calls becomes really cheap but if it is not in a country where Rebtel offers its services yet, then it is a normal international call but much more cheaper then the standard international rates and in some cases even cheaper then what Skype and Yahoo has to offer. In the countries where Rebtel is offered, this service might just change the way people make international phone calls. As for the quality of service, I tried making calls to India (where Rebtel services are not offered) and it wasn't bad. I tried calling using my mobile. Rebtel guys, you got to get services running in India!! I can tel you there is a huge market there :). As mentioned on Rebtel website, the service might sound a bit confusing initially,but it is not once you get started using the service. You don't have the have access to Rebtel website all the time, you can create local numbers for international phone numbers as you go through your mobile as well. I have few concerns which I will investigate as I trial out more of this service, but hopefully somebody will have the same concerns as might blog about it before I do ;). So if you are spending a lot of money on international phone calls like I do, give it a try, highly recommended. On the side note, it might have been a good idea to get people to register on the Rebtel website and let them have a single international phone number where they could try out this service for may be one or two days for free! But none the less, users can always register and if they are not happy with the service within first 30 days, they will get a refund back upto $10 USD. If for any reason you simply wish to terminate your Rebtel account, just enter your passcode below. We will refund your initial charge up to $10 USD if you cancel within 30 days from your registration for the service. EDIT:- ah, in rush I missed the calculations. The international call rates for India and other countries are not cheaper than what Skype is offering (This matters if you are using REBout). In fact it is expensive and then you got to factor the charge for the local call as well.

HubPages starts their beta testing

When I checked in this morning, I saw an email from Paul Edmondson, founder of HubPages. The email said that HubPages is open to closed beta testing. I rushed in a created my account and my first HUB (this is what they call it for individual pages, like Squidoo calls them Lenses). Below is a picture of my first HubPage.
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I will play with it more before I put down my site review and I am sure Paul and team are working on to make it more better then it is as we speak. If somebody is seriously interested in trying this service out, put a comment here with your email address and I will forward you the invitation that I have.

Take screenshots with WinSnap

Jake Ludington's links me to WinSnap- a free utility for taking screenshots and image capturing. WinSnap is free for personal and educational use. It supports caputre mode of Full Screen,Application, Window, Client Area, Popup-Menu and Region. As Jake mentions, it will be a great idea to have some sort of editing functionality into the software so we then don't have to rely on other editing software. The one feature that I will like to see is editing of sizes on a individual image basis. But a good alternative as a free tool to SnagIT which is not free and one of my favorite tools for image capturing.

Diigo makes a public launch

Social bookmarking and annotation site Diigo goes Public today (24th July, 2006). I have used it for a long time now and here are links to my previous thoughts on Diigo. The best features for me are annotation, sticky notes and 'highlight and forward' feature. You can either make your bookmarks public or have them private or a combination of both. Unless, more then 100000 members sign up for Diigo, it won't be a cool social bookmarking site, but for the number of tools that Diigo Toolbar and Diigo site offers, it might be worth checking out if you are into bookmarking, taking notes and making a lot of annotations. Talking of annotations, with Diigo you will be able to make a lot of annotations on the same page, compared to bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us where one can only annotate one single line/paragraph for a given URL. By the sounds of it, Diigo developer seems to be a small team, but they have created a good feature rich site. I also like the new feature of blogging directly using either Diigo toolbar or Diigo website. Give it a try, as from within the toolbar you will still be able to bookmark to your favorite sites along with bookmarking on Diigo.

Beaware of harmful ork0t.com

Chirag, a friend of mine email me the following on 11th June and I thought I should let my readers know about this just in case. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Be careful... Open this site and check how beautifully they have replicated the orkut home page. But DO NOT GIVE YOUR username and password. This is a "carbon-copy" of orkut which is used by hackers to hack orkut accounts. Please make sure that you are not giving away your orkut username info to some hacker by logging on such a phishing attempt. http:// ork0t.com/ (intentionally separated) The above is fake site which can be used to hack orkut accounts. It will store your passwords. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I see Amit Agrawal has pointed out about this site too. Scary thing is this fake site even picks up the username and password that my browser normally remembers for my Orkut account. Be Careful out there, this is where IE 7's phishing tool can help out.