I really do hate voice mail. Someone calls you while you’re on the phone or bathroom (hint, don’t answer the phone while in the bathroom, it’s disgusting) and they leave a voice mail. Now I have to call my voice mail and listen to a way too long recording and then they don’t leave their phone number.

It’s enough to make me not want to check voice mail and just call the number back and ask what they wanted. It’s quicker.

Well, now I’m liking voice mail again because of Google Voice. Google Voice can take over your mobile phone voice mail system which is an increadible good thing because it will transcribe the voice mail and send it to you via email and/or text message to your phone. I love being productive and this GTD (Getting Things Done) productivity tip has saved me a lot of time.

This has been helpful when people just leave me a message informing of status and don’t need a return call. I can see it on my email and delete the message 5 seconds later. This saves a lot of time and it’s so convientant.

I love voice mail now and don’t mind if people go to voice mail and leave a message anymore. It saves me a ton of time.

Google Voice is free. You can get a Google Voice phone number and/or just have it take over your mobile phone voice mail system. Check it out.

Open source used to be term only very technical people understood.  Now it is becoming more mainstream.  I’m working on a real estate website right now and their existing website is all custom, something I wouldn’t do.  Everything about it is custom proprietary software.  One advantage of this is you can custom tailor it for exactly what you want it work like.  However, a big disadvantage of it is you are at the mercy of developer.  If you want to add new functionality to your website you have to go to the same developer.  Hence, the web applications are more expensive.  I would have started them with a membership website based on open source software.

Open source is much different.  The source code for the program is available.  Now it isn’t necessarily free.  That depends on the license.  Many are familiar with WordPress (which is a fantastic content management system that allows you to add your own content to your own website).  The software is free and you get the source code so you can modify it if you need to.  Some open source software have licenses that cost money, but most are free. Proprietary software has to be very very good in order to keep market share or use very aggressive licensing like Microsoft has done. And open source software has a huge advantage in that a lot more people can work together on it than a commercial company could ever afford.  This leads to fixes being made available immediately.  I can’t remember the number of times that a commercial application tooks months and sometimes years for a bug to be fixed.  Not with open source, I’ve seen bug fixes the same day that it error was found.

The most popular web server software Apache that runs a majority of websites is open source and free.  Microsoft Internet Information Services is not free and has frequent questions about security problems.  If Apache has a security issue it is fixed and released immediately.

In some cases you shouldn’t use proprietary software at all.  For instance, encryption.  If you can’t confirm that the encryption software doesn’t have any backdoor passwords built into it then you have no idea if it is really secure.  Only use open source encryption software.  I highly recommend TrueCrypt.  It’s free, open source and works on Windows, Mac and Linux.

And lately hosted applications have been getting very popular and provide a great revenue model for companies.  A hosted application, also known as Internet-based application, web-based application, online application and Application Service Providers (ASPs) are software applications where the software resides on servers that are accessed through the Internet instead of the more traditional software that is installed on either a local server or on individual PCs. For instance, I use Freshbooks to do my companies invoicing.  I tried out open source solutions where I would have to host it on my own website and the functionality and especially the user interface of many options were just very very poor.  I knew my client wouldn’t have a clue how to use it and it would just create a big headache for me answering all their questions or worse losing the client because of a horrible system.  So when I found Freshbooks I was thrilled.  They had a free plan for a certain number of clients.  I started with that and quick upgraded to a paid plan when I got more clients.  By then it was more than paying for itself.  Freshbooks makes it free for small companies to start and they make money on clients by providing the invoicing as a service. Hosted applications work if information or documents need to be shared and there isn’t an open source solution.  Keep in mind the benefits of hosted applications.  Reduced costs as your technical person doesn’t have to update the software and low or no maintenance.  And the access is key.  If you have workers and clients all over the place then a hosted application is very helpful as everyone can access it easily from their favorite web browser.

So, what software should you pick when you need a solution filled?  I try to go open source as much as possible, but only if the community behind the software is active.  Sometime the open source option is just too immature to be viable.  If there is a commerical proprietary version or hosted version I get that instead.  It’s on a case by case basis and I try them all out and then go with what I believe is best.  For me invoicing is very important so I went with Freshbooks (hosted).  WordPress (OpenSource) has the best community and a ton of fantastic plugins. Here are some of my favorite open source applications.

• TrueCrypt – the best and I believe only option for disk encryption
• OpenOffice – free Office suite of programs that competes against Microsoft Office
• Firefox – the best web browser because of the sheer amount of plugin support.

And some of my favorite hosted applications:

• Google Applications – with Gmail, Documents, and Google Reader this is my most used hosted applications
• HighRise – CRM Customer Relationship Management that tracks my clients and who we need to follow up with, etc.
• Aweber – the best autoresponder out there.  I use to use commerical software on my own servers but Aweber is so much better.
• TimeBridge - setting appointments with people around the world.  Big time savers.  Just added webinar feature.

Some of my relatives spend $1500 on cable tv a year.  I watch more DVDs than cable tv so spending that much seems crazy.  But, I understand that it’s nice to watch a nice show or movie at times.  I do it also.  I rarely turn on cable tv so much so that I have no idea what’s on and the digital guide isn’t really helpful.  Even with the name of the show or movie and a one sentence description I don’t know if I’ll really like it.

So, I started over time to get my entertainment on the Internet.  It has come to the point that I may get rid of the basic cable tv I have right now and just have the Internet access.  I wanted to share with you the resources I use to get almost everything (legally) that you probably already watch on cable tv or even regular tv.

Music/Podcasts

For music I’m a big iTunes/iPod fan.  With podcasts I can get a ton of great (and not so great) content for free.

A podcast is a series of audio or video digital files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable players and personal computers.

I love podcasts because you can time shift when you listen/watch them.  When a new podcast from my favorite Space Music podcast comes out it shows up in iTunes and I listen to it.  I can even synch it to my iPod and take it with me.  I’ve been listening to a 1950’s radio program called X minus 1 a great science fiction radio program also.  Great fun.

To stream music over the internet much like listening to radio I also use iTunes but I highly recommend Pandora as it allows you to customize your stations.  Although the built-in stations in Pandora are excellent.  I used Pandora over the holidays to stream holiday music while we were wrapping presents and enjoying the spirit of giving.  We especially liked the Jazz Holidays and Pop Holidays stations as we got enough of the regular Holiday music in the stores.

Side note, you can purchase digital MP3 files from Amazon.com usually for a $1 less than iTunes and they import directly into your iTunes.

University Courses

iTunes also has iTunesU where you can download audio from various university subjects.  Some of them from very well know Universities like University of Cambridge, Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Yale, etc.  They have audios/videos on language, business, physics, spirtuality, etc.  Some great free courses.  Check out my past blog post iTunes Online Training.

TV Shows and Movies

For tv shows and movies I’ve been enjoying Hulu which is a legal website that puts in 4 little 30 second commercials in a tv program.  You can get the same content on iTunes but it’ll cost you nearly $3 an episode.  A few weeks ago I wanted to relax and watch some science fiction but didn’t have anything.  So I went to Hulu and looked at their science fiction channel and found a show named Fringe.  I’ve watched the first five episodes and can watch the rest anytime I want and with the new query functionality you can keep a list of videos (shows, movies and clips) you want to watch.  Many shows are doing this now.  One of my girlfriend’s daughters loves the Simpsons so last night I told her that Hula has the last four episodes of the current season up all the time.  She promptly watched as many as she could before going to bed.

You can also buy and download tv shows and movies using iTunes.  Plus you can rent movies.  Purchasing tv shows doesn’t make sense to me since I am only going to watch it once and it takes up a ton of space on your hard drive.  I can understand renting a movie because at $4 it’s very close to the price of a traditional video rental store.  If you rent a lot of DVD’s I would suggest NetFlix.com as it’ll cost less for you and they have a download rental option that I hear is very good.

Up on the big screen

You can also use a media center to get your online content up on your big screen tv.  There are many options for having a media center as it is basically a computer with high end video.

• Apple TV redefines what your TV can do.  Rent HD movies. Buy HD TV shows. Listen to your iTunes music. Watch podcasts. Even show off your photos.  Anything on iTunes you can listen or watch on your big screen.
• Another alternative to Apple TV is MythTV.  MythTV is a free Linux application which turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or Home Theater Personal Computer. It can be considered as a free and open source alternative to Tivo or Windows Media Center.
• Windows Media Center is the Microsoft version.

I haven’t made the move to a media center yet but I’m looking into it.

With the time shifting and the much better ability to search for content I like getting my entertainment more from the Internet than from cable tv.

Image via CrunchBase

My favorite to do manager Remember The Milk now has a Gmail gadget which allows you to manage your tasks in Gmail.

• Review your upcoming tasks for the week
• Add new tasks and edit existing ones
• Easily complete and postpone tasks
• Review your overdue tasks
• Optionally show tasks with no due date
• Display tasks from a particular list or Smart List
• With the “quick add” feature, you can easily add tasks and optionally include a due date and/or tag

Remember The Milk – Services / Remember The Milk for Gmail / Gadget.