Once in a while we do a round up of some of the coolest, most useful software on the web. This is software that really has the potential to improve lives, to understand your data in new and intuitive ways, or just makes doing you job a heck of a lot easier.

37 Signals

37 Signals is a company, not a product, but just about every web app they produce is uber-cool. Web 2.0 apps like Basecamp and Backpack offer a fresh, clean, logical approach to project management are intuitive and actually fun to use.

Camtasia Studio Screen Recorder

As video becomes more and more important on the web adding videos to your consumer content becomes more critical. You don’t need to come up with clever skits and hire actors, there is just as much need for online tutorials as well. Camtasia Studio Screen Recorder is a fantastic product that lots of people who have tried many different programs swear by. They offer a 30 day free trial if you want to check it out before you buy.

Total Recall Learning Educational Software

According to Total Recall Learning, 80% of learned material is forgotten. Their proprietary learning software program has proven to reduce this amount significantly. In a study conducted among math students at Alliant University, students in the experimental group achieved a score improvement of 15.9% on average, whereas those in the control group attained an increase of only 8.5% on average.

According to the total recall site, the software works by;

“deliver[ing] training systematically in small, absorbable bits of information. A highly sophisticated software algorithm performs staggered, time-delayed repetitions to precisely pinpoint forgotten material.”

Hope this round up provides you with some great ideas about ways to use software to improve your life. Enjoy!

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The reason just about everyone in the world is enamored by Google is because of their innovative web apps that make life a whole lot easier. Google is constantly cooking up something new and innovative in their top-secret labs. Take a look at some of their latest that you may not have heard about.

Google Timelines

Google Timelines is part of their Experimental Search project. By adding view:timeline to any search, you can now get a visual about the dates most commonly referenced in connection with your search term. Perhaps it’s not something that everyone needs, but I would venture to guess that the people who do will be sold on using Google.

Local Voice Search

Wow! With local voice search, you can call 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) and speak the name of the listing or category you’re looking for, then get connected to the business for free or have the results sent by SMS to your cell.

Google Notebook

Keep a little virtual notebook of things you find on the web without leaving your browser. Take a tour of Google Notebook »

You can find lots more of Google’s awesome web apps at their Google Labs page.

All of this success begs the question… what kind of web apps could you create to make your website more sticky? What would make the lives of your customers easier? There are literally hundreds of great ideas waiting to be developed.

If you’re in a niche industry, you’re the perfect person to come up with a great idea that your target audience or peers need. Maybe you’ve already got an idea. If so, look us up. Chances are, it’s a lot simpler and more affordable to create than you might imagine…

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A press release published by the OPEN from American Express talks about a recent study that says 81% of small business owners are satisfied with the amount of leisure time they get.  Are you one of them?  These stats seem a little off-base – unless I just happen to know only the 19% of other small business owners that are constantly juggling work-related activities. 

Forget about becoming more productive in your business so that you can grow your business for a second… shouldn’t we also be striving for more enjoyment from our lives?  That’s one of the reasons why you went into business for yourself, isn’t it?

Take a moment and think about all of the repetitive things that you do each day that are taking way to much time.  If you’re doing the same task over and over, there is almost certainly a way to automate it and free up a good chunk of your time.  What are you doing that’s wasting your precious leisure time?

Even if you don’t know how you would automate it, there is probably a way with custom software.  Developers can look at a problem from an entirely different angle and often see quick solutions that the person doing the task hasn’t considered.  I don’t mean to make a sales pitch here, but isn’t freeing up some of your valuable time worth considering building a custom software app? 

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Most of our readers are small to mid-sized business owners that have to make tough choices about doing things themselves or hiring a professional. You probably want to save the hiring of a professional for complicated tasks like software development or specialists like attorneys and accountants.

For all the stuff in between, Sclipo is a cool new video tutorial site that we found where you can watch and upload all kinds of different “how to” videos for free. In addition to learning how to create video email, watermark your photos, or create different Photoshop effects, you can also go outside of the computers/business category and learn how to do all kinds of miscellaneous things like how to open a beer bottle with paper or moonwalk.

What do you want to learn today?

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According to a recent survey by the Business Software Alliance, 35% of all software installed on computers is pirated software. The theft, they say, amounts to $40 billion in global losses.

It seems that the more expensive software is, the more likely people are to steal it. Although they say only 35% of software is stolen, they also state that for every $2 worth of software purchased, $1 worth of software is stolen.

Do people want to steal software, or are they backed into a corner by the high cost? The exorbitant prices of critical business software like Microsoft office is beyond the budgets of many people in wealthy countries, let alone those in countries where poverty is rampant and business owners are doing whatever they can to stay on top.

This isn’t to say that stealing software is acceptable – it’s not. But is there another way to create quality software without charging people more than they can afford?

Many companies are moving to the SaaS (Software as a Service) model of profiting from software. With SaaS, software isn’t sent via CD or downloaded, it’s accessed online and users pay a monthly subscription. This cuts down on piracy drastically.

It also cuts down on up-front costs for users and can increases profits for vendors. Using software as a service, customers quite often pay more that they would have for software over time in monthly fees than if they would have purchased it up front. But because monthly subscription costs are more manageable, subscribers can easily make the payment.

As we’ve mentioned before, SalesForce.com has been one of the most successful SaaS companies. At first, the idea seemed ridiculous and foreign to many, but now it’s become apparent just how forward-thinking SalesForce was from the get-go.

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