WWD Coffee Break – Concierges, Tools & Time

ScreenshotConcierges for Everyone – We’ve discussed before the rationale for outsourcing your chores: get the nonpaying work off your plate so you can concentrate on your own core competencies and passions, make more money and have a better life. If you find yourself spending too much time on random tasks but aren’t quite ready to hire a full-time virtual assistant yet, Red Butler has an answer for you: metered concierge services.

Starting at $36.95 per month for 15 requests (and working up to a couple-oriented plan at $165.95 per month for 100 requests), you can subscribe and then call, email, web message, or text with your requests. They can schedule your appointments, make reservations, get stock quotes, hunt for tours, suggest plumbers…according to their web site, pretty much anything you’d ask your assistant to do for you.

Another Open Source Resource – Open Source Living provides a central location to find some of the best free & open source software out there, without wading through thousands upon thousands of specialized projects. If you’ve been running open source software for a while you might not find much new here, but if you’re just weaning yourself from proprietary tools it’s worth a look.

Simple Time-Tracking – As we’ve discussed before, there are a lot of different ways to track your billable time. If your needs are simple, take a look at this new simple timer from Vertabase. Since it’s written atop Adobe AIR, it runs on either Windows or Mac, and gives you the ability to start or stop a clock, associate time with projects, and export an XML file with your overall tracked time.

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