photo credit: kalandrakas

I came across a great article in a magazine that lists a number of free websites that let you do anything you may need to do on your computer without having to install or buy any software packages. Most of you will probably be familiar with some of the sites on the list, but there are some gems that that aren’t so well known, so I thought I’d share with you all. Here they are for your perusal:

Office Tools:

• Google Docs: Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Presentations
• Zoho: Wide range of office applications
• Lovely Charts: From flow charts to family trees, create any chart you like
• PDF to Word: Convert PDFs into documents you can edit and change

Multimedia Tools

• Screen Toaster: Record what’s going on your desktop and turn it into a video
• Animoto: Turn your photos into an awesome slideshow
• Aviary: An online image editor that supports sophisticated features like layers and effects
• Motionbox: A video sharing website that lets you edit your clips

Communication

• Meebo: Let’s you sign into multiple IM accounts through this website, including MSN, Facebook, Yahoo and others
• Google Mail: One of the best email websites on the planet

Security and Safety

• Bitdefender Online Scanner: Online Virus Scanner
• Passpack: A secure website that lets you store passwords for different websites

Storage and Files

• Zamzar: Online file converter. I’ve used this in the past and it’s works just perfectly
• YouSendIt: Ever needed to send a file that’s too big for email. This site lets you do just that
• Humyo: An secure online backup site that gives you 10Gb for free

Miscellaneous

• Remember the Milk: Great to-do list website with a variety of ways to get reminders
• Floorplanner: Create and share interactive floor plans
• Logmein Free: Get remote access to any computer you use. Personally recommended
• Google Maps Distance Calculator: Ever wondered about the distance between two points. Now you can find out exactly how far apart they are

There are loads of other websites out there, but these are some to try if you haven’t been there before.

Here are the screenshots:

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to persuade our project sponsor that we need a Wii for “testing purposes”. Better luck next time …

If you were unable to make it, here’s a copy of the presentation material we used.

• Business Aspects: iom-online-services-bcs-november.ppt
• Technical Aspects: iom-online-services-bcs-november-technical.ppt

If you want to learn a bit more about the Isle of Man Government Online Services project, here’s a short video about the shared service approach we are taking:

We have built an infrastructure to deliver these services, however, in order to access real-time data on back-end systems we need to enable communication from the Government’s website all the way to the relevant back-end system. And this has made us extremely unpopular with some of the security team.

So, where are the security bods coming from? Well, one of their fundamental principles is that there is a security perimeter around the organisation and NOTHING should be able to traverse this unless it is initiated from inside the organisation. It’s a valid principle, however following this principle to the letter would mean we could not provide any online services without staging data outside the internal network. Doing this would have had impossible for us, not only because of the volume of data we were talking about, and but primarily because we’re not simply providing access to data, but actually integrating the citizen into a business process that’s running on Government systems.

So were the security team an obstacle for us? I wouldn’t say so, though I might say they were a challenge to accommodate. The beauty of the relationship though was that they questioned us every step of the way and in because of this we produced a more robust, elegant and secure solution. Exposing core systems to the Internet is not something that should be taken lightly and the security team made sure we didn’t take the easy way out. So thank you guys, together we’ve built a better solution for everyone.

The first service we have launched is for local farmers to register cattle deaths and births and to enquire on their movements. This is a small scale launch which allows us to test the usability, functionality and scaling features of the technology we are using. Our next releases will involve tax and VAT functionality for businesses, which will no doubt elevate the requirements and profile of what we’re doing. Read all about it: Isle of Man Government delivers first of many Online Services – Isle of Man Government -