Yes, that’s right, my constant complaining and moaning about the only thing wrong with Freshbooks has finally paid off. Freshbooks have just announced they support integration with Google Checkout!

I have just logged into my control panel and enabled it (easy to do, they provide idiot-proof instructions) and that’s about it. From now on all invoices that go out will include the Google Checkout link alongside the Paypal (spit!) link.

I am impressed that I single handedly managed to get them to do this, with no help from anyone, they must think really highly of me! Just kidding, there has been a bit of a push on their forums for some time, and in the grand scheme of things it really didn’t take them that long to implement.

Great work guys, your work is really appreciated!

Well I finally did it. After a few weeks of messing around with the free account, I finally signed up for the basic paid package from Freshbooks. There are several reasons for this, which I will get to in a minute, but I wanted to write a concise review of this product, along with comparing it with it’s competitors, so here goes.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of the features I would like to let you know about the reasons I stood up and took notice of Freshbooks, aside from the very extensive feature set.

Excellent Pre-sales

When I first setup my free account I did a test. I integrated it into the 2Checkout account I have not used in a long time, since a lot of people prefer PayPal. I have since changed my domain name, and so updated my 2Checkout account to reflect this. The problem was, in order for the integration to work I had to provide the Freshbooks url instead, meaning that I couldn’t sell from my site as well. After going round in circles for ages with 2Checkout, eventually one of the Freshbooks team contacted them on my behalf and ironed the situation out! At this point I wasn’t even a paying Freshbooks customer. Now THAT’s service!

Later in the week I was experimenting a little more, and I found that the 2checkout page that takes payment wasn’t as neat as it could be. Mainly this is due to their interface not being the best. Anyway, I posted on the forums and within an hour or so one of the Freshbooks team asked me for a screenshot. I uploaded one and he went and asked the developers. He then came back to me and said they can and will do something to improve this. Again, great service considering I had yet to sign up!

Ok… enough of that, onto the review!

First Impressions

The initial impression of Freshbooks is just how polished it is. The interface is simple and intuitive enough to be called slick, and everything everything is exactly where I would expect it to be. At first it looks almost too simple, but after a bit of playing about you see it is actually very feature rich.

Look and feel

I took the time to customise the look and feel. This consisted of uploading a logo and giving it 3 colours for the menu (the bar, the active tab, and the other tabs). Once I had done this and saved it, the interface was transformed. Even the login screen embraced the new look!

The whole process took just a minute or two. This sounds like a small thing, but I have worked with several other systems that make this sort of thing either impossible or surprisingly difficult.

Ease of use

I can’t fault the system for ease of use. They have done a fine job of selecting the features people want, and implementing them in such a way they are a joy to use. From adding clients, to invoicing is seamless. One of the great selling points for me is being able to provide an estimate, and later take the estimate and turn it into an invoice.

Feature rich

I could go on about this all day, so rather than do that I will simply list some of the features I like most:

• Recurring Invoices
• Estimates
• Automated payment reminders
• Comprehensive reports
• Outputting of data
• Online Payment (PayPal, 2checkout, Authorise.net.. and more!)
• Custom branding
• They even deliver snail mail, if you like
• Time tracking (they even have an OSX desktop widget!)

This product is really quite rich in features, and looking on the forums they are very focused on keeping the features people want and not filling it with crap that just a few people ask for. That said, there is one thing that is in the pipeline that I do very much like the idea of, and that is Google Checkout integration – some people don’t like PayPal, and Google checkout takes less % off the seller. This to me would be a great addition!

Cost

I was going to leave this til last, but it is quite important so I will talk about it now. The basic paid package is $14.95 and includes up to 25 clients and unlimited invoices. This is not bad, and for $10 more you can add another 250 clients… enough for most people, I’m sure you’ll agree. This price point is actually fairly similar to the competition, and of course the free account is great for deciding if you want to sign up for a paid account or not (the free one gives you up to 3 clients).

Comparison

The main competitor in my opinion is Blinksale. Blinksale is an invoicing system but not much else. On the face of it, it does exactly as it says on the tin, and it does it well. It has online payments (PayPal only) and email invoices.

Where the two differ mainly is Blinksale is invoice centric and Freshbooks is client centric. Allow me to explain.

If I am selling we hosting, for example. I will have a silver account. A customer signs up and in blinksale I open up the silver account and add the customer. This sets them on recurring billing and off they go. Simple!

Simple, that is until they come back the next month and say they want another account… ok, back into silver account, try to select the client… can’t… not there… WHAT? This is the crux of the problem for Blinksale, it completely misses my business model.

Freshbooks deals with it in a different way. I set up the products as items and for a new sign-up I select new recurring invoice… select the client, select the product, and away we go… same result, but a whole lot more flexible.

Where Blinksale is different though is they allow unlimited clients on the free account, but a limited number of invoices per month (3). In theory you could remain free longer on Blinksale, providing your billing is spread out throughout the year. That said, $14 is hardly breaking the bank.

Final thoughts

I don’t want this to sound like a party political broadcast for the Freshbooks party (maybe too late?) but my first impressions of this product are great. It is feature rich, easy to use, and has an enthusiastic, professional team working behind the scenes.

I will post in a month or two when it has bedded in. I’m sure there will be niggles along the way, no system is perfect, but for now I am happy.

Signup for a FREE account and try it for yourself

I just dug up the following about the delay to the 2.7 release of Wordpress:

WordPress Development Team on delay of WordPress 2.7 release-

“Speaking of the final release, it will not be available on November 10th as originally scheduled.  We are two weeks behind schedule at the moment.  We need a little more time to finish the visual design, do a round of user testing against that finished design, and do a proper round of public beta testing. Our plan is to keep working as if Nov. 10 is still the release date.  However, instead of releasing the final 2.7 on the 10th, we will make a release candidate available instead.  The release candidate is intended to be a high-quality, almost-finished release that we are comfortable recommending for broad use.  After Nov. 10, the focus will be on fixing high impact bugs turned up by those of you testing the release candidate. I suspect 2.7 will be ready for final release by the end of November.  A specific date will be set as we progress through the public beta cycle and get a feel for how solid the release is.”

The buzz in the blogosphere (oh no, I can’t believe I just said “blogosphere”!) is that Wordpress 2.7 is due out. This looks to be a really worthwhile update, and brings to the table some much sought after features such as threaded comments, sticky posts and a completely re-vamped menu system.

Word on the street (what street exactly, I don’t know!) is that 2.7 was due out November 10th 2008…. well that has come and gone (in the UK, at least) and no sign of it. I am not too bothered… I am sure it is coming soon, and I would rather have a stable release than a rushed one, but I feel like a kid at Christmas….!

I will be sure to do a full write-up when it finally arrives, but for now I am off to bed! I am going to leave a mince pie and a carrot by the fireplace tonight, in case the Wordpress development team come’a'visitin!

I have just seen the details of the new Macbook range and I must say I want one more than ever!

Last year, after a trip to New York with my Dad, and a visit to the Apple Store, I took the plunge and went for a 15″ Macbook Pro. I must say it’s the best (computer related) thing I have ever done. I love the OSX environment and love the way the machine boots in the same timescale it did when I first got it. It is light years ahead of Windows in my opinion.

The only regret I have is not spending that little bit extra (on top of the already high price) and going for the hi-resolution 17″ version. When I am doing my design work I find the 1440 x 900 screen on the 15″ (although very good quality) a bit restrictive.

It looks like the 17″ range this time round has standardised on the hi-resolution 1920 x 1200 screen. I saw this resolution in the Apple Store and I must say it is fantastic!

Once of the aspects I love about the Macbook Pro range is their durability. I am VERY hard on my laptops, you should see the state of my old Dell, or even worse take a look at my work PC. They are generally dead on their feet after 12 months! My Macbook has survived quite a lot of abuse over the past year and it still looks (and works) like new!

The cost has always been a prohibitive aspect with Apple products, especially the Macbooks, but for a product I use every day of my life I really feel I should treat myself.

So… Food…who needs that? Drink…nah, what’s wrong with water?… I have a Macbook Pro to save up for!

Links to new macbook pro’s:

MacBook Pro 15″ 2.53GHz/4GB/320GB/GeForce 9600M GT/SuperDrive

MacBook 13.3″ 2.0GHz/2GB/160GB/GeForce 9400M/SuperDrive

MacBook Pro 17-inch — 2.5GHz/4GB/320GB/GeForce 8600MGT/SuperDrive

A week ago I decided that I was going to try every piece of technology I came across on the Internet. Not become an expert in it, but at least try it out and report my findings. Today I decided to install Entrecard, a viral marketing “widget”.

First of all let me say there is a LOT of disagreement about Entrecard, it’s value to your website, general misuse, and the concept of “drop and run”. Before I go into these I will explain a bit about what it is.

Entrecard is a system whereby you create a 125×125 pixel advert for your site and “drop” it on other sites that have the Entrecard widget. If the owner of the site likes your advert they will approve it, and usually in turn will visit your site and may “drop” a card on you. This process is repeated over and over until you have approved lots of adverts. These adverts are displayed on your Entrecard widget on your website and a queued up and shown in turn.

The Good

The good thing about Entrecard is people do end up visiting sites they would not have usually visited.

Because the owner has to approve the banner you can assume the advert is at lease vaguely relevant. This is not always the case but more oftem than not it is.

You will get an increase in visitors to your site once you start to use Entrecard, and if you use it according to the guidelines (a lot of dropping) then you should gain a good amount of visitors. The value of these is debatable, and will be discussed further down.

The Bad

Here’s where it starts to get messy. There is a lot of negativity thrown at Entrecard and there are various reasons why.

Firstly, 99% of people who visit your site from an Entrecard link will be Entrecard advertisers. They will load your page, drop their card, and they will be gone within 5 seconds. They will probably not even glance at your posts. The problem with this is twofold. Firstly it takes up needless bandwidth and secondly if you have monetized your site, a visit without any clicks will hit your earnings.

Website success is often judged on visitors per day. Using Entrecard will undoubtedly increase the traffic on your site, but if these people never read the posts and never comment then your statistics are skewed. In my mind the success of a website needs to be judged by genuine visitors per day (not Entrecard) and subscribers to news feeds/newsletters.

The Ugly

More importantly than the above points is the fact that it is seen by many as amateurish and people who otherwise would take your message seriously will see you at attention seeking and unprofessional. For this reason I am unsure if I will keep it on this site.

So, what do you think?

I have only just added the feature to my site, so at present I am unsure how it will work out. From what I have heard you need to put in a lot of effort dropping cards here there and everywhere. I am unwilling to do that.

The reason I am unwilling is I am not going to drop a card on someone if I am not genuinely interested in participating on their site. I think it is rude and defeats the object of networks in general. I know a few people with Entrecards and I will drop on them, but I will also read their posts and comment on them.

For this reason I am unsure if Entrecard will work for me. I will give it a little while to bed in, see how it affects the stats, and will post an update once I have some findings to report.

I downloaded Google Chrome at 8pm this evening and eagerly fired up my PC (I use a Mac usually). After running the installer Chrome went through the process of importing my browse history, bookmarks and passwords.

My first impression was good. The browser looks clean, tidy and is a nice change. I fired up a couple of web sites and I must say it is faster than Internet Explorer or Firefox. Very impressed!

On the negative side, I have no idea why they hide the “Home” button (you can enable it from the options menu) and I really don’t understand how they handle bookmarks. I have always seen nothing wrong with a “bookmarks” menu along the top. I don’t like how IE handles bookmarks and I like Chrome’s method even less. It seems you have to drag them to a bar and there is no neat heirarchical method of accessing them. If you have hundreds of bookmarks like I do, this is not a nice interface to use.

I created a few tabs and dragged a few off the browser. I seemed to “lose” a few of them into the ether, the rest of the time they split off nicely. I need to look into this a little more and see if I can find out what happened. We need to keep in mind this is a Beta product, I suppose.

All in all I think there are positives to take from this. It is impressively fast and looks nice. I am still unsure about the “frequently visited sites” default home page, I think I will be back to iGoogle in a day or so, but I appluad them at least trying it out.

If they would just put an old fashioned menu in place instead of “tool” buttons a la Internet Explorer I would be happier, but I guess I need to get used to it. it will also be interesting to see what comes along in the way of plugins for this.

I will post again ina few days, when I have had chance to use it more… I won’t be using it 100% of the time, as they don’t have a Mac version out yet. It will be a good opportunity to compare and contrast.

As I said previously, Chrome can be downloaded HERE.

Google announced this week that it intends to make its (Beta) entry into the browser market today (the official launch is 11am PDT, so likely to be this evening). It certainly kept that well under wraps!

Their product, I must say, looks rather slick and functional, like most of the Google product family. There are a few “under the hood” differences to the other browsers on the market which, at the very least makes this release quite interesting.

The first major difference is the ring-fencing of the individual tabs. Instead of having a central browser window and tabs within it, each tab is given it’s own process. This should benefit the user on several levels.

Firstly, if one tab crashes the rest of the browser should be ok, and secondly the other browsers have suffered from memory leakage, where over time the browser takes up more system memory even though tabs have been closed. This “should” avoid that happening.

The interest I have with it is how “standard” it is in terms of rendering. The last thing we need is another browser with quirks! If it conforms to standards then it can only be good for the community.

I am also interested in how quickly it will be taken up by consumers. Google is a massive brand name for lauhching a product like this, and is a trusted name to the general public (unlike Firefox, who lots of people had never heard of when it was launched).

So, I eagerly await this evening, to download and test out one of the most exciting (to me) product launches of 2008.

In the mean time, take a look at the Official Google Chome Comic. It explains it all very well.

5:30pm, still no download… I guess it will appear later, apparently HERE (currently redirecting to google home page)

I have installed IE8 and given it the once over. Surprisingly (for me) my initial thoughts are quite positive.

Once I had battled through the install process and IE had confirmed I didn’t have any nasty gremlins lurking on my machine I eventually got presented with the typical “you need to reboot now” screen. Quite why Microsoft products seem incapable of installing something without a reboot is beyond me, but reboot I did.

I loaded IE8 and up came a barrage of screens trying to take over everything I used and rebrand it Microsoft…. it wanted Live.com to be my default search provider, IE to be my default browser, live maps to be default for location based things, and Encarta to be my default reference… all a bit much I think, but I guess that’s a different issue.

Being from a web design background I am fully aware of the compatibility issues between IE and well, everything else! As some of you may know, one of the major issues revolves around white space, especially in the vertical plane. I loaded up a few sites side by side in IE and Firefox and they looked surprisingly similar. I then pressed the “compatibility mode” button, new to IE8 and low and behold, in popped the dreaded IE white space. Another press and it was back to normal. Wow, are Microsoft actually getting there with this product? I don’t wish to tempt fate but I must say I am slightly impressed. Whether they succeed in their quest for CSS 2.1 compliance is another matter, but they certainly seem to be off to a good start.

I can’t say I ever see myself using a Microsoft browser as my default choice, but I applaud any effort to prevent us designers from having to design around the quirks of Internet Explorer.

I would be interested to hear what others have to say about this new release, good and bad.

Usually such news would give me a shiver down my spine. However, I heard a rumor that IE8 is going for full CSS 2.1 compliance. This is a very interesting concept and one that I am unsure whether to believe. It would be fantastic if we no longer had to design for separate browsers, but I think that day is quite a long way off.

An interesting feature seems to be the compatibility button, which you press to view sites designed for older browsers. I wonder if this means Microsoft have finally concluded that their previous IE versions have been shocking and this is their attempt to design on a clean slate. This would certainly be a welcome feature for the design community as a whole, but will probably result in some older sites not designed to standards only being viewable using compatibility mode. Worth it, in my opinion.

I will get it installed soon and give it a whirl. It will have to be a LOT better than the previous beta if it is to be useable. I still can’t imagine giving up Firefox though, but as always, I have an open mind.