• http://www.marketcircle.com/billings/
• http://clickablebliss.com/profittrain/
• http://stuntsoftware.com/onthejob/
• http://www.kedisoft.com/invoice/
• http://www.grandtotal.biz/GrandTotal/
• http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibiz/index.php
• http://involer.com/
• http://bloop.it/invoices-pro/

Feel free to try, but I’m more into web-based solutions for that kind of tasks.

Here is a first selection of online invoicing systems:

• https://www.zoho.com/invoice/
• https://www.zoho.com/books/
• http://www.freshbooks.com/
• http://curdbee.com/
• http://www.getharvest.com/
• http://lessaccounting.com/
• http://www.roninapp.com/
• http://www.invoicera.com/
• http://www.getballpark.com/
• http://www.blinksale.com/
• http://www.clearbooks.co.uk/
• http://www.simplyinvoices.com/
• http://outright.com/
• http://waveaccounting.com/
• https://indinero.com/

As I said zoho and freshbooks are the most know Invoicing as a Service – IaaS providers. And the new zoho books provides unlimited invoice with a full accounting solution.
Curdbee is cost effective solution that offers the right essential features.
GetHarvest and Ronin provides project, time tracking, team management related features, which can be an important factor for you.

Last but not least, you should always look for a way to export (and import) your data in order to avoid customer lock-in. Off course the price can maybe help you, but most offers are below 25$ /month…

I must confess I’m a bit lost with all these solutions, so I’m open to any feedback.

• Use the search bar:
  this redirect you to your favorite search engine results pages for the keywords entered.
• Use the address bar:
  this also redirecte you to the results pages UNLESS the first result is good enough. If you type in “firefox” or “wiki belgium”, the first result of the search engine is probably what you’re looking for. So why lost time in the results page and click again on the obvious first result?

And for the people willing to know how this works, it is pretty simple. Firefox use this setting “keyword.url” (in the about:config) as the url to query for keyword input. In my configuration, it’s “http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=”. This is the usual google search url at the exception of the param “gfns=1″ which is the “good enough” redirection.

It’s kinda like the “I’m feeling lucky button” but you redirected to the first result only if there is pretty good chance that’s what you’re looking for (above some threshold I guess). And if your query was unclear, for eg “eric rodriguez” (I’ll bet you’ll never find me , then you are redirected to the usual results page to make your choice.

Pretty useful and neat feature, isn’t it? IMHO, it’s the fastest way to seach & surf (so far). Let’s try it and like me, you’ll get addicted to this good enough redirection

1. Focus on Content
   A main characteristic of Twitter is the 140 characters limitation. So be sure to be concise & precise. You can say a lot even with 140 characters! And the best way to grow your followers community is to provide clean and clear ideas.
2. Be polite
   This may seem obvious but there are already some abuse reported. So think twice when you tweet, because your short text will be publicly broadcast and read before you’ve got time to fall back. You’ll find a Twitter Etiquette here or here (if you need guidance;)
3. Do not give away your password
   Last item in the obvious series, do not give your password to third parties. If you don’t know why, just ask yourself if you would like to give your phone and the PIN code to strangers. So now you’re warned, don’t cry for identity theft or messages you didn’t write yourself.
4. Control your tweet speed
   This advice can be harder to follow. When you tweet, you’re not only sending a message to 1 or 2 friends but to a whole community. As each one tends to follow more than 2 friends, It can quickly become annoying when you’ve got a black sheep twittering every move each 5 seconds. If you don’t want to loose followers or friends, keep your tweet speed to a decent level. This way everyone can still communicate instead of hearing some white noise.
5. Use @, RT and #
   There are 3 basics twitter syntax you can rely on:
   
   • @ is the common identifier for people. You’ll use it a lot in directed (yet public) conversation.
   • RT is to use when you forward a message you like and want to share with your own community.
   • The # sign is used when you want to specify an event or subject. By using #, you ease the search or filter use to people only interested in a topic.
6. Choose with caution who you follow
   At first, you will be tempted to add as many friends you can, like you do on Facebook. But the thing is Twitter is no Facebook: someone you follow will “send messages to you”. Imagine you follow 100 persons tweeting 5 times a day, it will be so messy you’ll begin to taste some “I’m getting too much spam” feeling.
7. Get an anti-spam
   You may think I’m silly, but I think security software actors could someday provide a Twitter-AntiSpam. If you think this is a joke, you probably don’t know yet: “viraltweets” or “twitter le truc du jour“. So be cautious when you receive strange tweets, sometimes it is no good to click on every link. And if you get caught by some script retwitting this spam, at least clean you account and delete this unwanted message.
8. Less is More: use shortening tools
   Due to the 140 characters limitation, you may find these shortening tools rather useful:
   • To compress urls in a few bytes: bit.ly, tinyurl.com, snipurl.com (sn.im), is.gd , tr.im,….
   • To share pictures: twitpic.com
   • To compress text: 140it.com, tweetshrink.com, twonvert.com
   • To share source code:  snipt.org

   You can also refer to this article about best practices to short-tweet.

9. Avoid pyramidal traps
   If you still think the more followers you have, the best you are… you will probably get trapped in such pyramidal scheme like TweeterGetter. This website propose some “viral” approach to get followers. But the truth is you give your Twitter account to a stranger that will automatically build a pyramid of accounts. Viral marketing should not be confused with basic chain-letter scheme.
10. Monitor and engage your followers
    Building a large and faithful community, do not hesitate to engage your new followers by thanking and trying to know them. This way you’ll build a win-win relation with people interested in what you have to say or share with.
11. Don’t forget your profile
    Once you’ve got your brand new account, take some time to fill your profile details. It can be bad and at least new followers will have some information about you and your main interests. They may even go to your website, so there is no reason to not share such details. Moreover you can also personalize your Twitter page, so visitors will appreciate a appreciable welcome note.
12. Use adequate tools
    There are a lot of Twitter related tools. Thanks to Xavier from Tweetag, you can print this handful cheat sheet card. This toolbox gather the main Twitter tools you may need. If you need more tools, you can refer to the Twitter apps db.
    My favorite ones are:  StockTwits, TweetDeck, TweetWheel and MicroPlaza (if you’re lucky enough to have a beta invite). There are a lot of others but you’ll find easily other tools lists.
13. Split personal and professional accounts
    It is considered as a good practice to have both a personal and a professional email account. And it’s the same for Twitter! If you really are using a twitter account for business needs, you may prefer to split your personal and professional tweets. I know that social media are all about the person engaging a community, but I’m not sure the “Safe at home at 6h12 in the morning after 2 vodka and 1/2 whisky bottle” tweet will enjoy your professional followers

I hope you enjoyed this best practices and feel free to propose more… See you soon on Twitter @Wavyx.

Let’s say I’m almost convinced that this could be useful, or maybe more… like necessary. But I’m still incomfortable with the whole UML thing to build up your project without you. Obvious questions are:

• Am I really a good UML designer?
• Is this solution easily maintable?
• Are there all my favourite libraries included in the default cartridge? (Or should “/me-LAZY” write and share a cartridge with the community?)
• Will I get to do all my projects in less than 1 week if I start to use MDA tools?
• And last, am I still needed in the development process at all?!

So I try to find some MDA tools to prove myself there is a large adoption of this approach, here I share a couple of web links, but feel free to comment them:

• Objecteering
• Borland Together
• StarUML
• Compuware OptimalJ
• Microtool ObjectiF
• Sparx Systems – Enterprise Architect
• Taylor MDA (but this one is from Sébastien)
• Manyeta Codagen Architect (and this one is a bit obscure…)

A last link is the MagicDraw website, since MagicDraw seems to be a tool appearing in most of the MDA websites.

So it seems this MDA buzz is likely to have some fans. I should still investigate further but first I have to face UML instead of my shiny little lines of code… and I’m still unsure I could give this away to some technologic stranger who seems to code with some painting tools ! And eventually, if MDA is really worthy (as it seems to be), what is the exact connection or retations with BPM…

Edit: Even IBM was already annoucing MDA in February 2004 ! I should get less sleep

As I never heard this buzz word before, I tried to find some information. Here are a couple of links:

• Intalio – one of the guest company of the radio talk
• IT|Redux – a blog about BPM 2.0 and Office 2.0
• Wikipedia pages: BPM, Entrepise 2.0, BPEL, BPMN
• enterprise2conf.com – what is Enterprise 2.0

I don’t know why all has to be some 2.0 version…maybe to get attention. I only hope we will not end it the same way we did last time with the dot-com bubble back in 2001.

Anyway, this Enterprise 2.0 is still unclear in my head, so I’d appreciate any comments…