But put it on the iPhone and suddenly the mundane and forgettable act of tracking time is fun and accessible and begging for me to use it. Kudos to any cool Web application who ups their cool – and usability – factor by making it work on my iPhone.

Another useful Web application is Zapproved. Anyone who has gone back and forth and back and forth approving something knows how tedious it can be, even via email. I recently had a client who was looking for a way to facilitate the approval process without the headache. I sent them to Backboard which I reviewed in a previous post. I still think that Backboard is elegant for anything visual that needs to be approved, but when it comes to approving a concept or other type of proposal, Zapproved could do the trick quickly and simply.

If you need approval from multiple people on any of your work, start a proposal, enter the email addresses of the approves (Zapproved will remember those addresses for later use), give your proposal a title, enter the deadline for feedback, and give your proposal or project a name. You can set the proposal’s priority, add a description and even attach files.

Attaching files is the part where I think Backboard still wins, allowing you to upload the graphic or text file needing approval so it is easily viewed rather than downloaded. But Zapproved is about simplicity. Approvers receive an email where they can Approve, Deny or Comment on the proposal. As the person issuing the proposal, you can access all the activity on any outstanding proposal in your Message Center. You can also comment on it, cancel it if someone rejects it or close it out as completed. Zapproved archives your proposals for future reference.

The next app I want to mention is GatherGrid, but first, I have to remind you all that I’m a huge fan of doodle.ch, the super simple way to schedule a meeting or call involving multiple people. It is no frills and really gets the job done.

But in steps GatherGrid, another free app for scheduling. The interface actually brings the date and time grid that doodle displays after everyone has entered their times to the home page so all you have to do is check off the time blocks that work for you, create the event, and invite your participants. They receive an email, click on a link to get to the grid, click the time blocks where they are available, and you have the combined input on a single grid to pick the most suitable date and time.

What are your latest favorite apps or widgets, and how are they helping you with your work?

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Ever Improving Evernote

I blogged about Evernote back in April while they were still in private beta. Mike Gunderloy has also covered them several times. Judi Sohn has also mentioned them a few times including recently.

The latest from Evernote seems to be some tweaking to add more finesse to the application’s versions on the Web, via Mobile Web and on the iPhone such as:

• Rich text editing including bullets, colors, and styles on their Web version.
• A new web clipper Firefox and Flock extension for Windows, Mac and Linux.
• The ability to change the title of a note during web clipping
• The ability to edit text notes on Evernote Mobile Web and soon on iPhone.

I like the way Evernote uses social media communications to stay in touch with customers including FriendFeed and via a Facebook fan page.

Joint Contact Gets Even More Twittery

In my constant quest for the ideal project management tool for Web work, I took a look at Joint Contact last month, especially taken with their ideas around using Twitter as part of project management. The latest version of Joint Contact includes the ability to send automated Tweets (through a Twitter account with protected updates) when users add documents, images or tasks. Team members who are comfortable with Twitter can be in the loop via their favorite Twitter tool or platform including desktop with Twitterific or Twhirl and via SMS.

Again, to use Twitter as an integrated part of the Joint Contact project management process, the company is emphasizing that the Twitter profiles created must be protected to keep the project messages secure. Regardless of how it plays out, this is an interesting example of a business application for Twitter and for the use of SMS communications for project management. (Joint Contact on Twitter)

Backboard Gets More Secure

Last month, I also posted about Backboard, the handy and elegant feedback application. Since then, the company has enhanced security, providing an access key for extra security when sharing your Backboard with a large group. You can also restrict access to your Backboard to a group confirmed with their own password-protected accounts.

Backboard Groups let’s you share multiple Backboards with the same team and the Address Book Import let’s you easily add your contacts from your Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, LinkedIn and Outlook. Another helpful feature is supporting multiple versions of the same document so you can change your file and get feedback on the new version.

Backboard is one of those Web apps that I really loved in demo but haven’t used it in my Web work to date, but I can definitely see using it in the near future.

Retaggr Enhances Profile Cards

I played around with the Retaggr profile card back in June and thought it was a nice, compact way of displaying one’s credentials. The latest from Retaggr includes:

• The ability to add professional affiliations.
• The ability to include your card in your sig file.
• A feature where you can compare your card with others.
• Host custom widgets in your card.
• Add any profile link into your card even if not a Retaggr partner.

I’m going to use Retaggr soon, really I am. I have an account but have yet to be able to embed it into my blog. So many apps and widgets, so little time. (Retaggr on Twitter)

Zemanta Odds and Ends

Just got an email from the folks at Zemanta. I blogged about them twice – here and here. While I don’t usually find Zemanta helpful blogging at WWD, I am finding that I use it for other pro-blogging gigs and even more often for my personal blogs.

Zemanta’s latest:

• They now support Windows LiveWriter.
• They are suggesting content from CrunchBase.
• They’ve expanded their Amazon books integration to include book covers.

Zemanta does help me enhance blogs in a pinch so I’d put this under the “useful app, using it” category.

You can also find Zemanta on Twitter.

BTW, I really like being able to follow my favorite companies and apps on Twitter.

Are you using any of the apps mentioned here? If so, how are you using them?

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Through Bookgoo, you can upload a document (pdf, html, doc, xls, jpg, gif) or URL and opt to make it either private or public. At first, I was envisioning another Scribd. Then I thought it sounded a bit like Backboard, a feedback site I recently reviewed here. But that is where the functionality diverges from both of those sites into a nifty annotating tool for marking up documents in a way that makes Google Docs look a little plain vanilla and some of the online whiteboard apps available seem a bit old school.

Bookgoo actually makes marking up a document fun. Upload your document, invite others to view it and provide their input, and then watch the annotating begin.

On Bookgoo, you get your dashboard view of your document activity on you “Goo Gate” where you can: 1) Add notes to the document by highlighting particular text and typing in related notes; 2) Draw on the document; or 3) Change the pen color when you draw.

The annotations you make lay over the document, but do not change it. Even when you highlight text by clicking and holding your cursor then dragging it over text, the text is not actually modified but the highlighted words contain the related comments.

Because Bookgoo doesn’t change the document, the tool works well for commenting on and pointing to changes that should be made. Then someone can download the original document from the site – without the annotations – and implement the modifications from viewing the modifications online.

Other things you can do with your Bookgoo include:

1. Subscribing to a document RSS feed. Get notified each time someone modifies your document.

2. Emailing documents to a friend. You can allow others to access the modified document directly from the document page. This feature, however, brought up the question of privacy for me. Currently, Bookgoo does not offer different levels of privacy features and even their “private” mode is not very private and definitely not secure. Of course, if you have very sensitive documents, uploading them to the Internet at all is a risk.

3. Adding a document to your MyGoo page. If you upload a document, it is automatically archived on and accessible from your MyGoo page. However, if you are invited to annotate someone else’s document, you can also add that to MyGoo for easy access.

4. Sharing a document with a group. You can create groups and must do this first before adding a document to the group.

5. Adding the document to your social networks and other sites. The presence of an AddThis button brought me back to my questions about privacy. At this time, even if you opt to make your document private, once you share that URL with others, they have the ability to share your document broadly. The company calls their privacy option “pseudo privacy” for this very reason. Therefore you need to trust those to whom you give access or keep really private documents in much more secure environments.

Some of the downsides or limitations of Bookgoo:

1. Lack of more robust privacy features. Bookgoo plans to release role-based permissions soon.

2. Inability to use word documents newer than Microsoft Word 2003. Support for newer docs is pending.

3. Difficulty sifting through larger documents for annotations. Another upcoming feature will be “page inspection” for large, multi-page documents so you can inspect 10 pages at a time to locate annotations deep within a document.

4. Still somewhat buggy. While doing the first demo with the company, I uncovered several bugs that rendered some of the key features inoperable. The Bookgoo tech team rectified those problems so that everything seemed to work well during the second demo. But you may end up finding a few more bugs here and there.

The folks at Bookgoo don’t anticipate ever charging for any level of their application and see their business model as more a software licensing venture as well as experimenting with Ad Sense. They simply want to offer Bookgoo free to the general online community.

Gotta love their spirit!

How do you annotate documents collaboratively online?

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