More discoveries

This looks rather fun and frolicsome.  I especially like the skulls.

http://bgpatterns.com/

Gotta give this one a try

http://www.spiderscribe.net/plans.php

https://www.google.com/doubleclick/studio/swiffy/

Apps I wanna try

Now I'm getting the hang of what's available, I'm starting to see a load of apps I like the look of. So I've decided to use this post to capture the apps I want to try.  I can use this as my reference point moving forward (and even link to any posts later on that are related!).

• Infographics courtesy of Visual.ly
• BusyFlow (currently being tested by moi)
• If This Then That (currently under trial by moi, also) https://ifttt.com/
• https://www.primadesk.com/ Primadesk to pull together all my different cloud storage - I've got DropBox, SkyDrive, Box.net and GDrive. I've probably got a few more kicking around and it would be ace to be able to pull them all together and access them from one app.
• Guess I ought to try SugarSync https://www.sugarsync.com/ as it's another cloud storage solution.
• Swydo is being trialled by me at the moment. http://www.swydo.com/ It's an app to help with SEO and PPC marketing results tracking.
• My sister and I are considering going into selling unique digital goods and I want to give AmberCart a try, as it appears to have a zero-risk starting point. That is, for 0-50 dollars, there's no charge and a sliding scale after that.  Sounds like a no-brainer in terms of kicking off a micro-business in ecommerce. http://www.ambercart.com/. Will also consider http://sellboxhq.com/ that links with DropBox.
• Trello is under test https://trello.com/
• MojoHelpdesk - tried it 2.5 years ago, but think it's worth a revisit. http://www.mojohelpdesk.com/
• Bringing all this cloud into one silo? Loks Like CloudWork has it covered. https://cloudwork.com/plans
• Not that I'm much of a coder, but could be useful https://codeanywhere.net/pricing-and-plans
• JumpChart for planning websites. https://www.jumpchart.com/
• Mockflow for designing wireframes collaboratively. http://www.mockflow.com/
• Aviary http://www.aviary.com/
• http://aremysitesup.com/
• http://sescout.com/
• http://openid.net/
• http://www.wufoo.com/
• https://kuler.adobe.com/#themes/rating?time=30
• http://goldenratiocalculator.com/
• http://compareninja.com/

So why am I interested in bringing all this cloud together?  I need to find an entry-level suite of apps that can run a rapidly growing business - one that I can scale to the number of staff I have on board at the time.  I want to keep away from desktop apps in favour of keeping everything integrated in the cloud.

Although I'm favouring free apps at this time, it's because I want to get them working together and once we have the need for higher-level plans, this can be built into the business model and price plan.

 I could go on adding to this list, but I've started getting lazy with the links and app titles, so I'm going to leave it for now and come back when I'm re-inspired, or when I have something new to say on one of the above - or maybe some other - apps.

Boxcar App for iPhone

So, since I've been using the uptime monitor mentioned in my previous post, I've received no notifications of downtime.  That would align nicely with my Google Analytics information, so I'm happy.  The thing is, my notifications arrive to my work inbox and it's possible that the downtime may happen out of working hours.

So, I didn't want to link up my mobile number and receive text notifications, but I did still want to be alerted if my site went offline.

There's an app available for iPhone called Boxcar, which UptimeRobot uses.  Time to give it a try, methinks.

Now, I've never really got on with iTunes - the syncing process just makes no sense to me. Seems like a load of effort and I sometimes end up re-installing all the apps I don't want back onto my iPhone.

But, seeing as my WiFi is broken at the moment, plugging in to my laptop and installing using iTunes seems to be my only option. Meh.

So now I've signed up for a Boxcar account. It's now installed on my iPhone, I've set up my connection to my UptimeRobot account, set up the notification type, allowed Boxcar to show push notifications and granted Boxcar access from within UptimeRobot.

Nifty.  Once it's been running a while, I'll update the blog with what I think.  For now, let's just see if it works.  Of course, that means I have to wait for the site to go down, which is not a good thing and it's not something I want.

Hmmm - wonder what other sites I could test it on - ones that don't matter if I take 'em down for a while. <Haz a Kraftee>.

Website Uptime Monitor

OK, so I've just ended up in the unenviable position of realising that my main site was down.

In the past, I've used BasicState as it was a great free tool to keep an eye on the site, but since I had someone else adminning the website, that kind of fell by the wayside.

Well, today we changed much of the architecture of our Magento website and this evening I discovered that the site had been down for 20 mins - just because I went to look at it.

I realised that we could have lost business and it brought home to me how important an uptime monitor is.  So I got onto Google and the top article was from Mashable - listing the top 10 uptime monitors.  Given that the article was 2 years old, I wasn't hopeful that it would still be available, let alone free.  But to my delight it was and is.

Next I checked out for reviews and found an article which contained an interview of the guy that designed and built the system.  I liked what I read, so I signed up.  What tool is it?

Uptime Robot



The blurb on Uptime Robot looks almost too good to be true.

• It says that it will monitor my websites every five minutes.
• It also says that I can have up to 50 websites.
• What's more - I can choose to be notified by SMS text message, Twitter, RSS or email.
• And they've got an Apple App for push notifications to an iPhone or iPad.
• But what astounds me is that the 5 min monitor is free.

This - I NEED to see.

So, I've set up a monitor for our main website and just set it up to drop notifications to me by email  I need to investigate the Apple App. If the system works well, then I don't mind parting with cash to buy an App that makes sure our bread-and-butter is still working.