One of the things that it can do (unless you turn it off) is to give you little pop-up messages telling you what it is up to. On a Mac this is done via the Growl notification system which I then have pushed to my iPhone. Today I received a notification from Zumodrive that it had updated six files in the last “40 years 3 months 24 days 9 hours 37 minutes”.

There are a couple of impressive things about this: 1. that it can remember that far back, long before the invention of PCs and 2. that they even bothered to code for it!

However, I somewhat suspect that this is nothing more than an amusing bug.

Google Chrome

A lot of my life is spent in a browser and this year I changed over from Firefox to using Google’s Chrome. Why? Because it is fast. In fact it is the faster browser I have used and speed is important to me. I don’t want to be spending time waiting for a page to render before I can get on with my job.

The other thing that I like about Chrome is the independence of the tabs. If there is a crash in one it does not bring down the whole browser – another neat feature.

Google Mail/Calendar/Reader

In Google’s browser I run a number of Google’s services. Mail, Calendar and Reader are the three that I use the most and have them permanently open. In fact I have two Mail tabs, one for my personal emails and the other for my work emails, for which I use Google Apps. I have to admit that I struggled at first getting used to Google Mail having come over from Microsoft Outlook but I really appreciate the ability to access my mail anywhere and there have been some neat extension that have made it a really great service.

Remember the Milk

I am a very task oriented person and previously used the tasks section within Microsoft Outlook. RTM has been a great way for me to be able to manage my working life and ensuring that the things that need to get done, actually do get done. Again I appreciate the ability to be able to get at my tasks no matter where I am be it via browser or on the dedicated iPhone application.

Evernote

Hand in hand with Remember the Milk goes Evernote, the note taking application. Previously I used Microsoft OneNote but the ability to clip notes from Windows, Mac, iPhone and web is a killer for me. And, once again, the ability to access these notes anywhere is invaluable. My only gripe is that I wish there was some integration between RTM and Evernote.

iPhone

The first thing on the list that is not a browser based application and that is my iPhone 3GS.  I have worked my way through four iPhones this year though faults and upgrades but my current one has never left my side since I picked it up in the summer. The call handling is rubbish and those people who complain about at&t should note that the problems are the same on O2 in the UK. That said it is no longer just a phone. Mine is a complete, pocketable, computer allowing me to work on-the-go. In fact I am able to access all the applications mentioned here from my iPhone and so can be productive anywhere.

The other aspect of the iPhone that I like is the photo and video capability. Already the iPhone has replaced my Flip as the primary quick and dirty video device and the photos it produces are perfectly acceptable for most uses. It’s all about having to carry only one device.

Unfuddle

Another web-based application, Unfuddle, is a ticketing system for, in my case, managing software development projects. I like it so much that I wrote an iPhone web-based interface to it that I (and anyone else) can use to access my projects anywhere. The great thing about Unfuddle is, being based in the cloud, it can be easily accessed by all our disparate team members in several locations in the UK and India.

Zumodrive/Dropbox

Cloud based storage services Dropbox and my personal favourite Zumodrive have been a real boon this year. Zumodrive I particularly like as it looks and feels just like any other storage on whatever device I choose to access it from. I wrote about it earlier this year. Dropbox is similar but the files get also held on your machine as well as in the cloud. This has the advantage of being available when you are not connected to the internet (how often is that these days?). We use this extensively for file sharing with offshore developers.

Windows Live Writer

Late 2009 I moved from a Windows desktop to a MacBook Pro and found that I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about the two seemed pretty evenly matched to me. However, there was one area where Windows has Mac beaten hands down – and the is in the off-line blogging application space. Nothing, but nothing, can beat Windows Live Writer for shear functionality and ease of use and believe me I have looked. In the end I had to resort to a virtualised version of Windows XP to allow me to continue to use WLR and I haven’t regretted it once.

Skype

This year Skype has come into its own for me in both a personal and a professional capacity. I use it extensively to talk to other team members in the UK and India keeping our call costs down and also ensuring that we have been able to chat whenever is necessary which means that problems get fixed sooner. On a personal level it has meant that I have been able to keep in touch with our best friends who have moved to Australia for a couple of years. We also used it to keep in touch with family and friends while we were away on holiday a couple of times this year.

Zoho CRM

The last one on the list is Zoho CRM, yet another web based service which really does show how things are these days. Zoho have a large number of services, some of which compete with Google’s offerings but the only one I use on a regular basis is their CRM offering. I use it extensively for managing and recording my customers interactions. Of all the ones on the list this is the one that is probably the most precarious – while it is a good service it still doesn’t cover all that I want it to do. For example I cannot seem to integrate it easily with my Google Mail account which means that I have to go to two places to track correspondence. Therefore, I do wonder whether it will still be there next year.

Honourable Mentions

There are some items that haven’t made it to the list that are also worth mentioning the first of which is my Netbook. This has travelled with me extensively this year making it to four continents and has allowed me to blog and communicate for everywhere I have been. The problem is that it has all but been superseded by a more recent purchase in the form of my Macbook Pro. I have no doubt that it is going to be on the list next year.

The two other services that I should mention are Twitter and Facbook both of which I have used regularly but they didn’t make the list simply because I don’t consider them to be essential. They could both shut down tomorrow and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. That said without Facebook I wouldn’t have got back in touch with quite so many of my friends from university but I guess that we would have found other ways. I wonder if either of them may become more essential to me over the next 12 months.

Finally, what do I think are the things that are likely to make the list in 2010? Well I have already mentioned the Apple MacBook Pro and I will almost certainly be adding the Sony Reader too. As for software and services I have just started to tinker with Google Wave and it will be interesting to see how that progresses.

So that is my list – what tech could you not do without in 2009?

This is obviously just a personal selection. Over the years I have tried out numerous applications that rival the one that finally made this list. In the end it is just personal preference as much as anything else. You may prefer something else but these are the ones that made me put my hand in my pocket and purchase a subscription

So in the same order that they were listed in the previous article they are:

Carbonite

I have talked about Carbonite on the site a number of times previously and not always in a positive light (here and here). However, they were reviews of the remote access part of the service and not the core offering of cloud backups and here Carbonite excels. This is really a set and forget service whereby you identify which directories you want to backup to the cloud and it just gets on with it. So I am secure in the knowledge that all my music, pictures and important documents are backed-up should disaster ever strike.

£34/year

Remember the Milk

I am a task setter and for years had lists of tasks in the back of my moleskine notebook. Now I have completely moved over to Remember the Milk for this and I love some much about it. Whether I am in my gmail account, on my iPhone or on their website my tasks are always close at hand. Also you can set such a great level of detail against each task should you wish to and of course share them with others. A great time saver.

£15/year

Evernote

Like Remember the Milk, Evernote has had a huge impact on both my working and personal life. While I still take a lot of written notes I am increasingly doing so in Evernote. Similar to Microsoft’s OneNote but with the advantage of being multi-platform so again I am able to access my notes on my desktop, via a browser and on my iPhone. The searching is simple and effective and means that I always have my notes close at hand. It is superb at clipping from the net with the browser plug in meaning storing information for later review is a breeze.

£28/year

Flickr

Having my own website means that I could, in theory, host my pictures on my own webspace but there is a limit to the amount of available space I have and I need to FTP the pictures to the site and then link to them from my blog. Flickr suffers from none of these drawbacks. I am able to upload pictures from pretty much anywhere to my Flickr account and have them immediately available to anyone who might be interested. With the latest changes I am now also able to link the pictures to my Twitter about.

£15/year

Zumodrive

I looked at so many different online storage options before settling on Zumodrive and in the end it was an easy choice – it simply works. The fact that it looks and feels just like another drive in Windows makes it the perfect solution. I just save a file to me z: drive and it is synced to the cloud. I can then access it from the web, another desktop or my iPhone (are you detecting a theme here?).

£22/year for 10gb (charged monthly)

Unfuddle

Unfuddle is the odd one out of the bunch here are it is the only one that I use exclusively for work. The service is designed for development teams and particularly those that are geographically spread. As such it includes source control (subversion and Git), ticket creation, milestones, time tracking and a wiki-like. It has made working with outsourced development teams, as I do, a doddle.

£66/year (10 person team)

Skype

Is there anyone who doesn’t know about Skype? It is the poster child of the new age of internet applications brining voice over IP to the masses. I use it regularly to keep in touch with my best friends who have gone to live in Australia (hopefully only for 18 months…). You can get away with not having to pay for Skype if you only make Skype-to-Skype calls. If you want to call “real” phones then a subscription is required.

£18/year

ScanR

Finally a lesser known service perhaps. I go to quite a few networking events and collect numerous business cards and found entering all the details to be pretty tedious – scanR solves that problem. You take a picture of the card, upload it to the scanR site and it magically converts it into something you can import into Outlook, gmail or other mail reader. It also works with documents and whiteboards but I only use it for the business cards and while it is not perfect it is much better than having to retype!

£15/year.

Oh and to say you having to add it all up it comes to £213!

[image : SMercury98]

The applications below are all ones that I use on a regular basis, used for free first before paying for a premium service of some sort. All the following applications make use of the Internet in some form or another.  They are not all cloud apps in the traditional sense with some being hybrids with local clients and remote storage.

Some of these don’t have desktop equivalents and so you cannot make the comparison but Evernote does in the form of Microsoft’s OneNote. I was a happy OneNote user when it was provided for me by the companies that I worked for, usually as part of the full Office package. When I became self-employed I still wanted similar functionality but not the up-front cost. As it happens OneNote can be purchased stand-alone and is currently showing as £72 on Amazon. Evernote’s premium offering is $45 (about £27) per year. So at that rate after about two and a half years OneNote would have paid for itself.

As ever it is not as simple as that. Evernote offers a number of things that OneNote does not. You can access your notes not just on your desktop but also on the web and on a number of mobile devices – not just those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. Also as part of the Evernote subscription I am entitled to all updates which I would not be with OneNote.

You can see from the cost comparison above that the recurring revenue model is a good one for businesses over the longer term. If you want to continue to use the software you have to continue to pay and over the years I will no doubt end up paying for more than I would have done had I purchased the software outright.

As I said most of these services offer a free option to allow you to try the software before making the move to the paid premium version. This is a crucial deciding factor on my trialling a service these days. I almost expect to be able to try before I buy and with so many competing services those that do not offer a trial option of some sort are rejected.

So has this changed my buying habits? Yes, without a doubt. I haven’t totalled up the annual amount I am spending on all the services I am now subscribed to but I know instinctively that it is much more than I was spending on one-off purchases of software. Equally I also feel that I am getting much better value for money that I did previously. The rate of change of software is so great that regular updates with significant functionality improvements is the norm these days and this is all built into the price.

I will just list the services I subscribe to here and review them all in a later post.

• Carbonite
• Remember the Milk
• Evernote
• Flickr
• Zumodrive
• Unfuddle
• Skype
• ScanR

Do you subscribe to any of these services? Do you think that the freemium model is a good one? Let us know.

[image : SMercury98]