We’ll be taking a closer look at this handy looking IDE for mobile development over the coming months, let’s just say it’s in the labs folder for now while we test it out.

Here at D2T we don’t believe too much in IDEs, preferring always to hand-code and understand the hard code – but sometimes these IDEs can be helpful for launching demo sites, or quick-launching prototypes.  So it’s worth taking a look around to see what’s happening.

At first glance the ApplicationCraft team have a nice, cloud-based IDE which seems to perform “a la dreamweaver”.  A very complete development environment with visual and code views and a whole bunch of handy components, which are called Widgets.  Also included in the IDE are some useful user permissions and access levels, which is great for collaborative development.

“Download” it for yourselves and take a look at their Video introduction guides for a quick overview of what you can achieve.

Here is the link to ApplicationCraft website.

Colour lovers is well known among veteran designers, but for newbies out there who may not have experienced the epiphany that is ColourLovers - I post this for you.

Tired of fiddling with HSB sliders?  Take some inspiration from, literally, countless palettes designed by colour-mad-freaks like me and you.

Best thing to do is take the tour – Create and Name a Colour (how fun is that?).  Then make a palette from that colour and others (this can take time) and name that sucker too!  Your very own palette, named and framed in glory.  The fun doesn’t stop there – from your palette create a pattern and from that order a framed work or fabric.  Absolute design heaven/madness!

Enough raving, I haven’t time to write more because I have to get back on there and design some more palettes.  See you there (follow D2T studio).

The Pro of this equation is that Cloudflare promises to – and I quote:

…optimize the delivery of your web pages so your visitors get the fastest page load times and best performance. We also block threats and limit abusive bots and crawlers from wasting your bandwidth and server resources.

The Quo of the equation is that all our web traffic is diverted through these guys, perforce.  What this might actually mean is something I am still pondering.  But in the meantime I have gratefully accepted Mediatemple’s offer of easy-integration (one click install! Love you guys) and placed it on a test site beta.  We’ll see what happens.

Mediatemple acolytes will find Cloudflare automatically available for automagic installation in their control panel. Otherwise non (mt) bods will find Cloudflare here.

NB: I saw some reports of issues with CNAMEs and other custom DNS configurations – just a heads-up.

iPhone users can also get double the pleasure by installing the app and syncing the information direct to your portable “Chum” (i.e. iPhone).

TripIt | Online travel itinerary and trip planner.

I like last.fm but it seems that everytime I play the same Tag radio, there are always the same songs on.

My 30 tracks freebie is already wearing thin, so, looks like I’ll have to dig out Spotify and let advertisers pay for the airtime.  Otherwise back to Radio One and all their wizzles, chats and ads that come with it…

UPDATE:  Grooveshark is now officially the music app of the moment.  Although I do need to check out Soundcloud, Pandora and a bunch of other music sites – Stereomood was another cool one…  actually might do a review of the main music sites at the moment and do another post.

For me, working at D2T Studio and being a creative designer, my reviews will be biased towards design and ease-of-use, with a more cursory glance over technical issues.  I am testing out the freebie accounts which can be quite limited, but they will be fine for this brief overview.  I hope you find it useful.

BlinkSale

Blinksale is actually the last product I looked at out of these three, but, thanks primarily to the design and layouts, it´s already probably my favourite (unless something goes horribly wrong technically).  The design is really sweet, it´s very easy to use and really quick and intuitive, easily the best interface out of the lot.   Technically not as complete as Zoho for example, but it´s simplicity is what I love most about it.

It has most of the basic functions you will need for invoicing, and you will be setup and running in no time at all.  Also it integrates nicely with Basecamp which is another excellent web2 product that will probably stay the distance.

If they beefed up the connectivity with other products and widgets as Freshbooks did, this billing software could be just perfect.

The product is designed and built by a small team located in Southlake, Texas and Blinksale was awarded the CNET Webware award in 2007.

Accounts range from the Freebie which entitles up to 3 invoices per month, through the lowest package at $12 to $45 a month.

www.blinksale.com

FreshBooks

Freshbooks, the Canada based service, has already roused quite a serious following, with over 700,000 subscribers.  The system is quite complete, tracking invoices, expenses, time and full reporting.  The interface is simple, if a little clunky and old-fashioned (if that can be said about web2).  Nothing as slick as the Blinksale interface or as organised as the Zoho, but still perfectly usable.

Freshbooks integrates with Payment Gateways: Paypal and Authorize, amongst others.  More importantly, it integrates with Basecamp and has a host of tasty Add-ons which basically takes it to the next level, beyond the other two mentioned here for pure connectedness (if you can say that).  How about tracking your time from your OSX Dashboard, or even iPhone?  Connect directly to Xpenser (Expenses) and Oprius (CRM).

Free accounts limit you to 3 clients, but unlimited invoices.  Paid accounts range from $14 to $149.

www.freshbooks.com

Zoho

Zoho is the Web 2 version of AdventNet, a software company from California setup in 1996.  They have various integrated products, however here I will concentrate on the Invoicing side.  I´d better cut to the chase:  Zoho is very easy to setup, very complete and works very effectively.  Obviously plenty of thought and experience has backed up this excellent online product.  Also a plus is the possibility of integrating the other modules that Zoho offers with Invoicing for a more complete solutions package.

The design is clean and straightforward, intuitive and, thanks to the step-by-step approach, very easy to use.  On the downside, adding your logo isn´t too easy as Zoho resizes it to fit their dimensions, which means opening photoshop.  There are several pre-designed templates available too, and you can even add your own.

Three Payment Gateways are available at time of writing; Paypal, Google and Authorize.net.  Sent invoices will include a direct link to payment online.

Message Templates are included, and are very comprehensive, and can be completely personalised.

Finally, reporting is comprehensive; Sales Reports, Tax Reports and Customer Reports, amongst others are available at all times.

Free accounts allow you to send up to 5 invoices per month, which isn´t much.  Paid accounts range from $8 to $35 dollars.

www.zoho.com