 May 2000
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 Free Web Based Applications for your Web Site By Rick Johnson 
We've heard the news. Soon, we won't buy or download software, we'll just access applications directly off the Web. Well, there are more and more useful applications available on the web everyday. They're called ASPs (Applications Service Provider) and they range from small utilities to quite complex business solutions. Some are free and others charge for their service. I wanted to find a few useful ASPs that would be of interest to web builders. Most of these have a free advertising based version. They all run almost entirely off the web without any software downloads. They all offer interesting ways to improve your website with minimal effort and little or no cost. BITLOCKER http://www.bitlocker.com Bitlocker.com offers a way to create an online database that is actually a stand alone web page. You can include it on your web site or email the URL to someone to access. The service is free if you don't mind a banner ad at the top of the page. If you want to subscribe to the professional version, it will cost you $100 per year to get rid of the ads. For simple database applications though, it's a quick and easy way to offer a data base online without the hassles of more complex scripting and server side setup. The service offers simple, ready to go forms and templates that make creating a simple database a snap. There's even several "Shared Bitlockers" which are ready to go databases with existing information to either use or help get you started. Some of the templates and databases are for business, collectibles, education, Government data, home life, sports and technology. A simple way to use the database on a web site would be just to put it in it's own popup window or in a frame set. A very nice service at the right price! FLASHBASE http://forms.flashbase.com Flashbase is another web based database that offers an excellent service which is also free for the banner advertising version. Even with it's basic free version, Flashbase offers impressive features that surpass Bitblocker. The tradeoff is that the pay version costs about three times as much… 24.95 per month. The pay version offers key benefits such as SSL (Secure socket layer), a must if sensitive information such as credit card numbers, is being transferred. We were quickly able to create a rather sophisticated product registration form from a wide assortment of templates and sample databases. As we stepped through the sample choices we were pleasantly surprised at the number of choices. First we picked a category…
Personal Forms - Automate your life! Education Forms - Forms to organize faculty and student life. Registration Forms - Use Flashbase to create registrations forms for conferences, clubs, businesses and other things. Surveys - Flashbase is perfect for collecting and managing data, or coordinating other research activities. RSVPs
Conference Realtor Sports Alumni Reunion
Brand Awareness Survey - Form to collect customer feedback on brand awareness. Concept Test - Use this form to test a new product or service idea. Advertising Reach - Use this form to test the effectiveness of your advertising. Golf Industry Survey - Survey used to attain marketing data for a potential new business in the golf industry. Phone Messages No more lost messages! Use this form to track phone calls in the office. Of the two databases, both do a good job, but Flashbase has a better array of features. Bitlocker does a good job at providing a basic database and it's paid service is much cheaper. Update Your Own BLOG www.blogger.com Almost every web site built needs to updated … usually sooner than later. You can have your web developer do it or your site can have a way for a non-technical person to easily type in new content. There are several options available. Creating a page and uploading it to the site is not that hard for a non-programmer, but it may take a little training. Some people just don't want to be bothered. Another way is to build a browser based form where anyone can just open a web page, type in some text, press submit, and the live website is changed. Such an application usually involves building a tool in ASP, CGI, or perhaps using a database. Although not too hard for an experienced programmer, the task can be somewhat complex for the novice web builder. You could just create your own BLOG. Named from "Web Log" , A BLOG is a self-updateable web page that you can set up, for free. Visit www.blogger.com and signup with a name and password. Once signed up you can start to build your own Blog. Start by selecting public or private. If your Blog is public, it may get listed on blogger.com for others to see. The site is quite fun, and it's interesting to see what others have done with their Blogs. You can select a number of other options about how your Blog will appear, but little or no effort is required to create a basic page. Anyone can do it! The program builds a complete HTML page for you and you can even go in and modify the code if you're so inclined. You will need a web server to host your Blog, although Blogger says they may provide hosting in the future. (You probably have web space provided with your Internet Service.) After setting up a Blog, you will need to know your web server FTP info…. username, password, and web directory. To update your Blog, you simply go to blogger.com, log in with your name and password, and type a message in the box. Press "Publish" and your page is updated, adding the new message to your previous ones. Blogs are a lot like guest books. The possibilities to customize your Blog are endless. The site offers some additional features such as message archiving and an email announcement service to invite your friends to visit your new Blog. A bookmarketlet utility turns a bookmark into a popup box to update your Blog. The service is free and they do request, but not insist, that you give them a button or link back to blogger.com. Unfortunately, the site does seem to have some reliability problems and may be down from time to time. Also check out Blogger's sister site, www.prra.com, an online project manager. Xdrive: Your free Disk Drive On the Web. www.xdrive.com Do you ever need to bring work home from the office, but the file is too big for a floppy? Or maybe you're working on a project with someone that's in another building or in another state. Xdrive is a very handy way to transfer files over the net. Just signup and you'll get 35MB of password protected hard drive space on the web. You can buy more space if you need it. Upload and download files with any web browser, or download Xdrive's software to get a handy utility that maps Xdrive as a Windows drive letter. That way you can access xdrive from any Windows program. Like any FTP site, transfer speed is dependent on your Internet connection, but the software is quite reliable and can transfer multiple files and sub directories. Once you start using it, you won't be without it. Web Stats www.hitbox.com Ever wonder who visits your site? Where do they come from. How long do they stay? What pages do they select the most? Hitbox.com is another free, advertising based service that keeps track of web site traffic. The stats are really amazing, better then some software based packages. Here's how it works. Just sign up, and they'll send you some code by email. You then cut and paste the code into your home page HTML. They even send a second block of code for all the other pages. They'll even pay you to sign up! When you fill out the form, you will pick the type of banner ad you want. Choose a smaller box, or if you decide on a regular banner size, you'll get paid for every click through! Check out their other services too, a site search, code checker, image reducer, and meta tag utility. Give Away the Store Everybody selling on the web now days, and there are a few online services that make it easy for you to sell whatever it is you want to sell. Services such as Yahoo, http://store.yahoo.com/ offer an easy solution to e-commerce on the web. Yahoo's store charges $100 a month for 50 items and $300 for up to 1000 items, not bad when you add up the costs of doing it yourself. A credit card Merchant account is required for credit card transactions. How about a FREE store. Vstore, www.vstore.com offers a complete online store, complete with products. You can set it up as part of your website. They provide the store, products and hosting; you provide the traffic through your site. They pay you a commission from 2-25% on everything you sell. They handle the credit card transaction, so there's no need to process payments. It sounds like a good idea, but you might want to check out if the average commission is closer to 25% or 2%. You'll Need a Logo www.cooltext.com 
CoolText.com: Online Graphics Generator is a free graphics creation application available of course, on the Web. Granted, these types of online icon makers are often only good for creating cheesy bullets and buttons of the type that made up web pages in the early days of the Internet. Cooltext will never replace PhotoShop, but it is an interesting, well done online utility. Perhaps with a little artistic taste simple buttons and bullets could be made that would be suitable for a web page. Then again, it's just fun to mess around and see what your name might look like in flaming letters! Rick Johnson is a Web Developer with Risdall Linnihan Advertising, in New Brighton, MN. He can be reached at rick@risdall.com. iBiz |