Happy New Year!

If you’re like me (and most of the country), you’re probably making promises to yourself that this year you’ll eat less, move more and work more effectively.

Yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard it (and done it) all before. But I just discovered a tool that may help! Experts say it takes 21 days to make or break a habit, and 21habit is a simple tool to help you through it.

You set up a goal to do (or not do) something every day, and every day for 3 weeks you’ll get an email or check in at the website to report on your progress.

A free plan has no real ramifications, but sign up in Committed Mode, and you invest $21 toward your challenge. Every day you succeed, you get a buck back. If you fail (or don’t check in for three days), you lose a buck. Your money will be donated to a list of 21habit charities.

I’m committing to start getting in shape for my marathon (read the very important reason I’m doing it here), so I’ll report back to you in 21 days on my progress!

21habit

This morning I was using StumbleUpon to discover new tools, and I happened upon PhotoFunia. What fun it is! The site has a bunch of backgrounds onto which you can impose your own pictures, making it seem like people are looking at your portrait in a gallery or passing you on a billboard. 

It’s free, of course, and very, very easy to use. This video shows how I created a fun graphic in less than 50 seconds.

Click here to view the embedded video.

PhotoFunia

Click here to view the embedded video.

Get the book! Upgrade to Free: The Best Free and Low-Cost Online Tools and Apps is just ten bucks on Amazon.com!

Here’s an easy, fast way to share a file. Just upload a file, and within seconds you have a link to the online version to share with colleagues. Seconds, I tell you. I just uploaded the latest version of the Quick Reference Guide… feel free to download and share!

Square is a tiny little card reader that slips into the audio port of your Android phone, iPhone or iPad. You set up a free account, get a free reader and can start swiping cards immediately. The system is linked to your bank account, and the money transfers in the next day. They charge no setup or maintenance fees, and take just 2.75% out of every transaction. They’ll even help you calculate and keep track of sales tax.

I’ve been practicing with the reader by charging the price of my book on my husband’s credit card. He doesn’t know it yet, but he is going to have plenty of copies to give away for Christmas.

See the full review here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Minutes.io lets you quickly and easily take live notes of a meeting then distribute them to a group of people with a click of a button.

I love that they don’t make you register for the site even though you have access to the archive.

Oh, and I also love that it’s completely free.

Watch my full review here: YouTube – Minutes.io.

One of my dear friends has cancer and is going through very painful and challenging radiation and chemo. I wanted to raise a little money to help her family, and I discovered ChipIn, a simple little widget that allows you to ask your network to… well… ChipIn!

ChipIn doesn’t charge you anything for the service, but the money is routed through PayPal (you need a free account), and they take out 2.9% plus $.30 per transaction.

ChipIn is great for raising money for friends like Rebecca, but it would also work if you’re asking staffers to pitch in for a Christmas party or the like. It’s  important to note that ChipIn donations are not necessarily tax deductible, unless, I guess, they’ve been set up by the charity.

Wanna see how it works? ChipIn a couple of bucks for Rebecca to find out!

ChipIn.

Enter to win now!

We’re giving away three Advance Reader Copies of Upgrade to Free on Wednesday. Enter to win now!

PS — Did you know Upgrade to Free is available for pre-order at a great price? Love those bargains!

Hi-LARIOUS! I can’t tell you how many times I run around the house looking for my cell phone. Frequently I pick up my husband’s phone and give myself a ring.

This clever, funny, easy tool solves that problem in a flash. Just go to www.icantfindmyphone.com and enter your number. Ring ring! The call comes within seconds, and a friendly robot woman says, “Looks like you found your phone!”

Love it.

I Can’t Find My Phone

We’re giving away 10 copies of the book on Goodreads, complete with a cupcake magnet and other goodies!

Enter to win the chance to be one of the first reviewers: bit.ly/U2Fgoodreadsgive

My husband and I often lose our battle to keep the dining room table clean because of the dozens and dozens of business cards that pile up. We know we need to put them somewhere, but they have no real home and they end up cluttering up our living areas.

Sure, you can buy an iPhone app that scans the card, but you have to double check everything, and it ends up being a pain. And there are several card-scanning businesses out there that will input your business cards, but it’ll cost you $10 and up a month.

But the other day I discovered an amazing free tool that will bring order back to our home. Like other iPhone card management apps, CardMunch lets you take a picture of the card. But the difference is that the picture is transmitted to an actual person who checks the data and sends accurate contact information back to your phone.

It’s free thanks to LinkedIn, who bought the service and did away with the pricing. Thus, it has a one-button system to allow you to request a LinkedIn connection, plus other features let you send emails, download your entire contact list and integrate your contacts with your iPhone address book.

CardMunch

I attend a lot of conferences, and inevitably I end up talking to an interesting person who says, “Here, let me give you my card…. oh dear! I seem to have left them in my….”

Contxts solves this problem in an instant. In about 2 minutes, you can set up an account for a virtual business card. Then all you need to do is give your new friend a code to text to 50500, and she instantly has your information. Or you can get her mobile number and send your card to her. It’s easy!

Try it out! Text “AskBethZ” (without the quotations) to 50500 and be one of the first to discover my super secret new home for these tools!

contxts – mobile sms business cards.

With Adobe Reader’s new release, you can now add comments and share PDFs much easier (thank goodness!), so you might not need PDFescape as much as you used to, but they’ve included more features that I love.

Here’s a quick overview of PDFescape…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a quick little graphic tool to create a custom candy heart without the calories. Simply enter your text and choose a color for your candy heart. Use it to add flair to your emails today… or maybe just to send your favorite cutie an online Valentine.

Candy Heart Generator

On the plane to a speaking gig the other day, I discovered a blurb about Soluto, a clever little program that harnesses the collective geekdom of the PC world to help you solve your computer problems.

Download the application, and it monitors your computer hiccups, hangups, crashes and glitches. It links your data with data from other users to see their irritations as well as the things they do to fix them. Then it can help you apply their solutions to your problems.

All for free. Way cool.

Soluto – Anti-Frustration Software.

In the meantime, enjoy the webinar recording. I covered five great (and free!) graphics tools: Picnik, GIMP, FotoFlexer, Aviary and SignGenerator.org.

The goal of these webinars is to cover a handful of tools in 30 minutes or less. Next month’s topic coming soon!

Drum roll, please! The OFFICIAL name of the upcoming book is:

Upgrade to Free

The Guide to the Best Free (and Low-Cost) Tools and Apps

The jacket design is next, and we have three finalists. More updates coming soon!

For the commitment phobic, finding a time to meet with others just doesn’t get any easier. Just visit Doodle.com and click on “Schedule event.” Without having to register or give any personal information, you can quickly set up an event or meeting with alternative times. Then just send the link to members of your team, and each person (again, without registering), can indicate availability.

Here’s a little video about how to set it up:

Doodle’s best features are free, though you can sign up for a premium account with more features for less than $30 a year. Doodle also integrates with lots of other scheduling tools such as Google Calendar and now has an iPhone app.

Doodle: easy scheduling.

One of the most popular categories of free and low-cost online tools is online document collaboration. TypeWith.me is one of the easiest, fastest solutions to share documents with colleagues. You simply visit their URL, click to create a new document, and you’re on a new site that you can share right away.

You can upload your own Word, text or HTML document to work on, or you can start with a blank document. When you invite collaborators, each reviewer has his own colors. I like that you can export straight to PDF or keep it in the original format. Another cool feature allows you to watch a quick movie of all the changes that were made and by whom.

TypeWith.me doesn’t require any type of registration, and it’s free, free, free.

NEW! The Cheapskate Freelancer is going multimedia. Watch this 61-second video for more details about TypeWith.me, and favorite the new Cheapskate Freelancer YouTube Channel for more videos (coming soon!):

TypeWith.me: Live Text Document Collaboration!

Because of horrible, malicious virus writers who spend their days trying to figure out clever ways to take over our computers, our bank accounts and the universe, we are warned again and again to never click on anything that we don’t recognize. I used to tell students in my computer courses, “Even if your grandmother sends you a link, be suspicious. Make sure you know where you’re going before you click.”

This is great advice, or it was until a couple of years ago, when Twitter’s 140-character limits meant that we would be 11 characters over just by pasting a link such as http://www.cheapskatefreelancer.com/2010/03/pdfescape-the-pdf-editor-ive-been-dreaming-ofe-online-pdf-reader-editor-form-filler-form-designer-solution/.

With Twitter and other services, brevity was imperative. So they started creating URL shortening services that let you convert a long URL into a teeny, tiny one.

Now back to the security issue. If your grandmother sends you a long link like the one above, you’d probably trust it. But what if the link she sends is http://z.pe/56lG? You may think your grandmother has become a hacker and try to block her.

Some people have an inherent (and justified) fear of shortened URLs since you can’t see what you’re clicking on. But I have good news. A 2010 study by Zscaler Inc., a company that sells security services, looked for malicious content in 1.3 million shortened links taken from Twitter over two weeks. Just 773 of those links – 0.06 percent – were malicious. The rest were just grandmothers and regular users like you and me sharing information and resources with others.

Here are just a few URL shorteners that I use:

• A.gd (http://a.gd): Cool options like password protection, link tagging and expiration dates, plus traffic tracking.
• Bit.ly (http://bit.ly): Twitter’s built-in shortener.
• BudURL (http://budurl.com): It’s a long link, but BudURL offers all kinds of tracking information to help with your marketing.
• Is.gd (http://is.gd): I love this little guy. It has no bells or whistles, but it stands for “is good.” That makes me happy.
• Threely (http://3.ly): Lets your viewers preview the link before they click (so you can verify your grandmother is still a good person), and allows custom URLs, such as http://3.ly/Cheapskate (goes to www.cheapskatefreelancer.com, of course).
• TinyURL (http://tinyurl.com): The first service I discovered that would shrink a long link into a short one. They’re still around, but now the URL seems impossibly long.
• Unhid (www.unhid.co.cc/): This site will convert a shortened URL to its actual link so you can take a peek before clicking.

(PS — this post is a preview excerpt from the Cheapskate Freelancer book, available in October!)

A running buddy of mine who, like me, raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through Team in Training and wanted to make a collage of pictures from our last running season. I’m going to send her to Photovisi, a cool site that makes collages in a flash.

Without registering, you can choose a template, upload photos, then save your collage and download. I bet putting together a great collage of our pictures from the season would take her about 15 minutes. Way cool.

Photovisi is 100 percent free. Way cool as well.

Photovisi – Collage photo effects.

PS — want to see some of my (slightly humiliating) running pictures from Team in Training seasons? You need to click here. Oh, and if you’ve ever saved money from a tool on this blog, I’d appreciate a small contribution! Or a big contribution!

Do you spend too much time at your computer, sometimes working at first light and again at midnight? The harsh glare of a computer screen may make your eyes tired and mess up your brain’s view of day and night.

F.lux is a tiny little download that helps change the glow of your computer based on the time of day. Just install the executable, put in your time zone and let F.lux do its thing. It will help your screen mimic the light in the room you’re in, thus relieving your tired eyes. My fabulous assistant, Claire, loves it.

F.lux: control your screen brightness settings automatically.

Want more ergonomic aid? Check out this tool that takes you through a 15-minute ergonomic questionnaire.

If you’re like me, a character with an accent mark or that “n” with the little hook at the end is a show stopper when I’m typing. I have to first remember where to look for the special characters key, and then I have to spend 5 minutes trying to get it right. And if it’s a foreign character? Fuhgettaboutit.

TypeIt.org helps you quickly type phonetic symbols to cut and paste into emails, documents and more.

Now if I could only remember which way the accent goes in voila.

See other font helpers here, such as Identifont, which helps you identify a mystery font.

TypeIt: IPA phonetic symbols and online keyboard

When it comes to free and low-cost photo editing software and webware, Picnik is my sentimental favorite, and GIMP is the industry standard. But somewhere along the way I stumbled across FotoFlexer, and I may be in love.

FotoFlexer has the ease of Picnik and some of the advanced features of GIMP. FotoFlexer lets you add special effects, plus it can create layers, merge photos, erase ex-boyfriends from family photos, etc.  The best thing is that the interface (while not as cool as Picnik’s) is certainly much easier to understand than GIMP’s. That makes it easy for word people like me to edit and create graphics to be proud of.

Just this morning I was working on a client’s blog and transformed this…

Into this avatar…

I was able to take out the unneeded text and close up the square… without the need of a cupcake to handle the stress. It took about 5 minutes. Makes me feel like a pro.

FotoFlexer – The worlds most advanced online photo editor.

Most of us surf the web solo, navigating between things we’re supposed to be researching and things we shouldn’t be doing at work (like I just shopped for bubble wrap for a gift for my 3-year-old nephew — that’s what he loves most about my gifts!).

Twiddla made it into my book as a great way to collaborate on your web surfing. My running buddy Andy wrote me about it last night, and I realized I needed to write it up for Cheapskate Freelancer.

You can literally be on the same home pages and mark up the content as a team. As Andy says, “You can also browse to a site and make fun of it by drawing mustaches and stuff on it. And it’s free!”

Looking for more collaboration tools? Check out the Collaboration Category.

Twiddla – Painless Team Collaboration for the Web.