Released awhile ago, SnapPages is a flash powered interface that allows you to share your hobbies/interests, organize schedules, and socialize with friends. They have three applications currently, including: Friend’s Manager, Calendar Manager, and Photo Manager. Each one of these applications has their own specific uses and functions nicely.

The first, and probably most in depth section is the Friend’s Manager. This area allows you to talk with friends in the form of “Gabs”. You can assign Gabs to your friends and enable whether or not you wish to allow them to invite others to the Gab. It’s more or less of a simple flash messaging system. There’s also a “Email Alerts” option which will automatically inform you by email if: you get a new friend request, someone accepts your friend invitation, you’re included in a Gab, or if someone replies to an existing Gab. You get your usual User Profile to edit; name, birthday, picture, hobbies, location, etc. Additionally, they have added a section called “Exchange” which categorizes all types of hobbies and interests: Auto, Finance, Books, Games, Jobs and many others. In these categories, you can create mini threads so that you can share all your favorites interests with your friends. A five star rating system has been implemented so that you and your friends can vote on what things are cool, and what things are not. You can sort them by name, date, friend or rating, as well as add “Opinions”, which are just comments on your Exchange items. If you want to, they’ve also added a print feature for the User Opinions. It reminded me of Delicious Library, a simple application for Mac users to categorize their interests in their own libraries.

SnapPages also includes a Photo Manager application allowing you to organize your screen shots and miscellaneous pictures. To start, you can create an “Album” to import your photos and other pictures. Each album can be set to public, private, secure, or friend-only. Secure requires for you to input a password to access it, the others have permission according to their name. You can add tags to the photos to help organize them for later use. While in your albums area, you can enlarge your photos by using the slider found in the upper right corner. They have included a mild photo editing section in the Photo Manager where you can rotate, crop, and/or adjust brightness. They have a few others setting to revise the lighting and other effects, but there isn’t many option currently right now. If you’re looking for some more in-depth online flash photo editing, head over to Picnik. You able to share your photo galleries with friends by selecting the particular album that you want to share and adding recipients along with an optional message. Lastly, there’s the download feature that simply let’s you download any of the photos you have in any of your albums.

The last section of SnapPages is the Calendar Manager. Each calendar that you create acts identical to the Photo Manager’s Albums in regards to their property settings: private, public, secure, and friends-only. You can color coordinate new calendars when you create them as well as changing their format from the normal month calendar, to a weekly or daily calendar format. You can add events to your calendars which will require you to specify a time, a place, and any further details you need for the events. They also give you the option to input a URL to an online map if you find it necessary for the event. You also can define whether your event is a repeating affair. If so, you can input the time span it repeats: day, week, month, or year. You can also add notifications to each event, which sends you a reminder prior to the actual event. They also give you the ability to add tasks to your calendars and set exact due dates for each project. Like I mentioned, they have the Share option just like the Photo Manager if you desire to collaborate or share certain calendars with friends. They’ve included a nice RSS feature which allows you to subscribe to your friend’s calendars and see their past and upcoming events. Overall, the Calendar Manager is a nice simple way of helping to keep yourself on track for things you need to get done. It’s not nearly as in-depth as something like Google’s Calendar, however for the average person, it’ll suffice just fine.

To be honest, I liked SnapPages. Though it didn’t bring anything incredibly new to the table, it laid out all the old stuff neatly and thoroughly. Since it was created in Flash, the animation helped give it a nice touch of fluency. Give it a try, it was fun to play around in it. They plan on continuously adding new features to SnapPages, so we can only hope for the best.

If you’re a fan of 37signal’s Basecamp, you’ll probably like Cashboard, a new application designed to help service-oriented businesses manage estimates, invoices, timesheets and payments. It’s like a combination of SlimTimer for time tracking and Blinksale for invoicing mixed with some basic accounting. It also complements project management systems well. You could, for example, start off in Cashboard by sending a project estimate to a potential client. Then, once the project has been given the go, plan the project and communicate as you normally would in your project management application. While you work, track time, send out invoices, and keep an eye on company payments with Cashboard. And to make things even easier, Cashboard integrates Basecamp so you can sync projects, contacts, and tasks between both applications.

Cashboard has four main areas: Estimates, Projects, Timesheets, and Accounting. Let’s start things off in the estimates area. This is where you go when you need to send an estimate to a potential client for a project. Cashboard allows you to list each task for a project estimate, set with a hourly rate or flat fee, and send the estimate to your potential client. What’s also nice is the ability to add a best and worst case estimate for each task so the client has an idea of possible overhead. Cashboard then allows you to either have your client login to Cashboard’s client area and accept the agreement or let you print out the estimate and send it to your client.

(Note: figures in the screenshots are just test numbers)

The projects area is the main area of Cashboard and is where you will spend most of your time. Like the Estimates page, you can add and remove tasks and reorder as needed. You and your employees can also log time for a specific task in the task overview. Cashboard also made it very easy for you to keep on top of costs as you add time to tasks. A row will appear stating the billable hours and amount compared to the original estimates or planned hours, which is very helpful for service-oriented businesses. It’s also important to note that when you create your company, you fill in a default hourly rate, but the hourly rate for each employee can be changed on a per project basis in the details area of a project. Cashboard will spot the difference and show your clients the totals based on the company hourly rate while you can view totals based on the company rate and employee rate.

You and your employees can also log their time in the Timesheets area. I’ve tested many time tracking products and I must say Cashboard has done a pretty good job with it. What I like is that it doesn’t force you to track your time a certain way. You can submit time on a daily basis adding the hours you worked for the day manually or using their stopwatch counter. Or you can go into the weekly tab and fill in the amount of hours you worked each day of the week at the end of the week. You can also submit as you go in the “All-time” tab. Whichever way works best for your team, you can do. The only problem I have with the Timesheets page is that the stopwatch counter cuts off when you close the window (maybe adding a simple session when the counter starts would solve this).

The project page also allows you to create invoices from your company’s logged time. Just click, “Create Invoice,” and it will automatically grab the amount of hours each employee has worked and fill in the information for the invoice. You can also add your own items to the invoice manually so anything that wasn’t in the original task list can get invoiced. Cashboard also lets you change the invoice id, sales tax, date range, and add a small note to your invoice. When your invoice is good and ready, send it to your client with Cashboard, which will give your client a login to review it, or print it out to mail to your client. Once you receive the payment from your client, head to the invoice, click “Add Payment” and fill in the amount the client paid up. To close an invoice, just mark the invoice as “paid in full” when adding a payment.

Ok. You’ve created estimates, projects, and invoices. Now you’re ready to view the Accounting area. It’s no QuickBooks, but it covers recent invoices, recent payments, and provides helpful information about client balances and net profits. Perhaps my favorite section of the invoicing page is “Company Cash Stats” which shows totals each employee of your team has made and how much you received from invoices with the end net profit. The cash stats can also be found in an individual project page letting you see how much profit your company actually took in after paying your employees for time on a project. Another helpful section is “Account Balances” which lists each client with collected information on invoices and payments giving you a quick glance at who’s on top of payments and who’s not. My only complaint about the accounting section is that there doesn’t appear to be a way to export the data or print it out.

In all, Cashboard seems to be a helpful product for service-oriented businesses. It’s a well thought out product that was obviously created by people in the design and development industry. You can create estimates, manage projects, manage timesheets from company employees and subcontractors, send off invoices to clients, review company payments and more. I was a bit overwhelmed at first and had some confusion when invoicing clients and splitting employee earnings (figured this out after adding employee hourly rates), but the rest came without problem. It’s also worth mentioning that Cashboard has a Mac Dashboard widget for submitting time and that Basecamp users can sync tasks and use projects from Basecamp.

Cashboard is currently in its alpha stage and offers plans ranging from free to $40 per month. However, and take note, the pricing page states prices are at half price during it’s alpha stage and that pre-launch users will get a promotion code for two free months once the alpha stage has completed.

Can’t get enough social networks? I know I, um can’t. Anyways, here we go. MyQuire, it’s a network where you can handle a lot of different things including tasks, scheduling, projects, even photos. Of course you’ll also immediately find the social community aspects under its skin. Friends, networks, and associates features are there. Brian made the point that MyQuire mimics 8apps a bit in the overall goal its trying to accomplish, and I agree with him. Both applications are trying to make organization, brainstorming, and task handling on the web easier.

Looking deeper under the surface you’ll find everything you’re used to. You have your own homepage that you’ll be able to edit at will. It’s split up into sections including, Photos, Tasks, Projects, Friends, the Wall, etc. Each section does essentially what you’d think it would do. Photos allows you to upload pictures from your computer. Your main profile holds all the necessary personal information identifying you, age, relationship status, location, email, even spiritual and political preferences. You have your own inbox on MyQuire that you can send and receive messages from other users. Also on your main page you have the “Wall” which simply allows you to post random comments and ideas that may come to your mind.

You have a projects area where you can create projects and assign members to. In the free plan, I felt it would’ve been nice to allow users to create more than one project to play around with. To add members to a project, simply drag the people you want working on the project from your friends list, onto the desired project. Also, each project is logged into a folder in the “My Hard Drive” section of the website also. This area allows you to manage each of your projects folders. You can open up and revise the files within each of these folders in a WYSIWYG. Easy enough. You can create new files in the hard drive sections and they’ll be stored there and displayed under the “My Files” section on your profile’s front page as well.

The calendar part of MyQuire is probably one of my favorites. It sets you up with a calendar that you are able to add tasks to by day and time. It works very nicely for keeping track of numerous events if your life is a little hectic. You can display them by day, week or month and you can also use the “Subscribe” button to synchronize your MyQuire calendar up with some of the more popular offline calendar applications, including Microsoft Outlook, iCal, and Mozilla Sunbird. The tasks section of the site also has this synchronization feature. Not much to really say about the tasks section though. You create tasks and assign them to a specific due date, if applicable.

While MyQuire doesn’t do anything wrong, it doesn’t do anything really new. We’ve been seeing these networks emerge like dandelions on the internet. One sprouts and soon its ideas fly through the virtual wind and attract others to try and make something similar. I have nothing against MyQuire, it functions, it’s very easy to learn and use, and it covers all the necessary aspects to help people keep themselves organized. Would it be worth upgrading to the Premium plan? I personal wouldn’t, but if it’s your cup of tea, go for it.

Social networks are sprouting across the internet faster than you can shake a stick at, however a social network for 3D artists is quite the rare find. Teapotters is that rare discovery. It’s your standard run of the mill community, however just knowing that it revolves around 3D work is unique in itself.

Right off the bat, you’ll have to go through a small installation of the 3D Life Player plug-in. This will allow you to view the models that other members have uploaded and give you the freedom to zoom, pan, and twist and turn the models at your leisure. Each user is able to upload their 3D work from Blender, 3D Studio Max, Maya, Poser, and Lightwave, just to name a few. Also, on the upload page there are many choices of customization for your model(s) including: privacy preference, tagging, license selection, and whether or not you wish for your model to be available for download.

On the main page there is a little summary of your activity and other various information coupled together with a gallery of thumbnails of any models that you personally uploaded. You’ll find small statistics such as a percentage of account usage, profile views, and number of times your profile has been saved by others on the sidebar. Links to your Contact List and profile editing are also openly available from your homepage. In the Edit Profile section you can change your password if needed, select your preferred 3D player (3dxml player, or virtools player), upload a picture of yourself, and decide whether you want your email address visible on your profile page for the public eyes to see. Note: using the 3dxml player requires ActiveX support. Below the main information are places to fill out more in-depth details: company name, address, website, current skills, and a brief description of yourself.

In the actual 3D interface you can pan (moving left, right, up and down), rotate the camera, zoom in and out, and re-frame the model back to its original position. You are also given the option to see the actual wireframe of each model along with the ability to smoothen the hard edges of any objects by anti-aliasing them. They also have a full screen option if you desire. You’re also able to comment on any of the models.

When viewing a model, the side bar will indicate file name, file size, object count, polygon count, surface count, vertices count, texture count, and which authoring software it was created in. If the creator has allowed it, the model and textures can freely be downloaded and experimented with by users. A counter of the amount of times a model has been download is also present. You are also enabled to add tags to models in addition to what the author had originally put for tags. Furthermore, in each model’s page there is a HTML widget giving you the code to implement it into a blog, a MySpace, or simply a normal forum. Additionally, there’s a directory listing all the currently signed up members to Teapotters. There is, of course, a listing of all the uploaded 3D models with thumbnails as well. You can sort models by favorites, and users by contributors. Models are organized by tags and the program in which they were created in is also indicated. Another nice feature is that you are able to add any member’s RSS feed to your personal feed reader to continually be up to date with any new models from that specific author.

Members have a Contact List in which they can add and sort people into a Friends List or Business List. You can manage your contacts, invite new contacts, and view your contact history in the “Manage Connections” portion of the site. They have a small “How It Works” section, describing briefly how to use Teapotters and you’ll find a demo video in this section as well, if you’re slightly confused on procedures. They also have a small blog to keep you informed on any updates done to the website. Also, some of the models that have been uploaded to Teapotters are actual models from popular games on the market currently. Who wouldn’t be at least curious to examine in detail how exactly these figures were constructed? I wish they gave members more than a single invite to give away to anyone interested in the community. However, this small downfall is easily trumped by how functional and organized the network is.

Teapotters was a nice fork in the road on the endless avenue of mundane social networks that are blanketing the internet like the plague. There aren’t many 3D networks are out there that can adequately present your work as well as Teapotters does. I’m anxious to see how well they do once they’re out of private beta.

Everyone at some point in their life has an opportunity to have a space they can call their own; whether it’s a bedroom, home office, or a closet. Curbly is a web community that lets you show off, learn, and explore those spaces. Upon entering the home page of Curbly, you are first introduced to a very inviting color scheme and design. A featured content block gives a glimpse into what the site is about: sharing, discussing, and learning about making any environment better. Whether you are a first-time home buyer, or an architect with a lifetime of experience, Curbly may have something for you.

Before I continue, keep in mind that Curbly is not a word, but if I were to define it to put the site into context, it would be used as an adjective describing the curb appeal an environment has. For example; “Your home is looking very curbly!” or, “This room would be much curblier if it had a new sofa,” or even, “Solution Watch looks so curbly on your web browser!”

Signing up takes just a minute and you can join as a standard Curbly user or a Curbly Pro. With both account options being free, a standard Curbly user is typically a person who has interest in making their home curbly, where Curbly Pros are those who know what it takes to make your home curblier.

Every Curbly user has their own profiles where they can post photos, blog, and create clippings, which I will discuss in just a moment. Creating a profile is easy and it’s just a matter of filling in the blanks to make it personal. You can also customize the design of your profile to better reflect who you are. If you don’t have much experience with code, you can simply choose one of the three styles they provide. I went ahead and created my own style sheet seen in use on my Curbly profile. You will also find the standard, but necessary social networking features like friend lists, profile commenting, discussions, and ways of finding people.

One thing that makes Curbly a great place is that when you make a post on your blog, not only does it show up on your profile, but also on the main page of Curbly and in a topic page that relates to your post. Outside eyes immediately see your post and you can expect your moment of fame with a comment or two soon after posting.

There are three types of content you can publish. These include writing a blog post, posting photos for others to see, and posting clippings of things around the web that interest you. There are also five different sections users can view or contribute that make up Curbly:

How To: If you are looking for a DIY (Do It Yourself) project, you can find plenty of things to do here. From building a Spaceship Table to finding the recipe for a great tasting home office.

Inspiration: Whether it’s cardboard furniture or the most awesome home theatre in the world, you will find something that inspires you to make your home look curblier.

News: If you have been waiting desperately for a sale at your favorite stores or are waiting to hear what others think about Brovo’s Top Design show, you will find the latest news in this section.

Questions: For people like me who don’t have a clue how to do something to make your environment more curbly, ask the Cubly users. You can expect some great answers and advice from Curbly Pros and standard Curbly users. You can get help with things like decorating your living room or advice on how to bend plywood so you can create that skateboard half pipe in your room that you’ve been dreaming of since 10 years old.

Talk: Feel free to say anything on your mind in the Talk section. Want to discuss the Valentines Day Google logo or brag about finding a new home? This is the place to do it.

Writing a post is simple. It even has a WYSIWYG editor allowing you to style and format your content. At first, the lack of drafts and post previewing didn’t seem so crucial. However, after adding numerous photos, headlines, and video in one of my posts, I quickly realized the growing stress leading up to the save button. After clicking “Save”, I found that my post wasn’t formated the way I anticipated. Being that I am a graphic designer, I immediately panicked after seeing it on the main page, in my blog, and in the “How to” section. Thankfully there is a “Edit” link that I used multiple times after posting until it was at it’s intended perfection. Once posted, you begin to feel like Martha Stewart’s upcoming competition. Don’t be surprised if I turn into a interior design consultant after a year of posting on Curbly instead of reviewing start-ups here at Solution Watch… hypothetically speaking of course.

You will also find a feature on Curbly called “Clippings”. Clippings let you save images and links from around the web that you can display on your profile or website for others to see. Using the Curbly bookmarklet, you can go to any site that has an image you like, click the bookmarklet, and post about it within seconds. There is even a widget for your clippings that you can place on your own website for others to see. This is one feature I immediately got addicted to. I thoroughly enjoy posting my Clippings.

Overall, Curbly is a great community. I have met many neat Curbly users, although, it was difficult to find them without knowing where to look first (cough, cough), and once I found them, I wasn’t able to send them a private message (cough, cough). Otherwise, I found that Curbly has become the answer to many of my living space dreams and aspirations, not to mention the frequent Curbly contests that can better your chances of living that dream (this one being the latest).

Watch out Martha Stewart! I am Tim Benzinger and I have a profile on Curbly!