Geez, this was supposed to be a monthly post, but lately it just seems that there’s a huge amount of awesome web applications being launched! I’m actually really stoked that there are so many of these and I’m looking forward to covering them in more detail at a later stage.

So without further ado, here’s installment 2 of Cool Apps:

• Emprise Javascript Charts
  This is a hellishly cool Javascript Charting application that uses AJAX (duh) to create zoomable, clickable, navigable charts. Hover over certain points and popups appear with relevant data etc.. Its all very smooth and very cool. I’m not entirely sure if I would ever use this, but it’s still a very hand application.
• Joost TV
  Joost lets you watch TV in full screen, while giving you full control over your viewing. When you’re just sitting back and watching, all you’ll see is the video. But as soon as you lean forward and move the mouse to the edge of the screen, the Joost controls slide into view, letting you quickly switch between programmes and fire up the built-in content and community features.
• Blinksale
  Ok this is an application that I have used and holy crap its so cool. I generally hate invoicing. Those Word document invoices are just so cheesy and crappy and besides that, its a pain to have to generate all the content over and over for each invoice. Enter Blinksale. Blinksale invoices are typically sent via email. You may also print and snail-mail your invoices if that’s your thing. You can setup recurring invoices, send thank you messages.. It makes invoicing fun.
• Clipmarks
  I’m also having a lot of fun with this little application. It’s like Digg, but with a nifty little difference. You install the IE or FF plugin, and then when you find a webpage that you like, you simply activate Clipmarks, and click on the elements of the page that you like – text, video, images – and then save your Clipmark. This way you’re saving all the best parts of the page you’re visiting. Very cool.

And that’s that… another handy installment of Cool Apps. Try them out. You won’t be disappointed.

I hope I’ll be able to keep this up over the next few months. Shouldn’t be a problem because it seems that there’s a growing number of companies that are expanding beyond just creating websites – they’re using their time and talents to create online applications that, in most cases, are really wikkid and save you having to purchase expensive branded software.

So here’s the inaugural list of Cool Apps for April

• Less Accounting
  These guys have created a nice, easy to use UI for managing your small company’s books. You can keep track of clients, contacts, invoices, whether they’ve paid or not (great feature), expenses – including a mileage log, and at the end of the month, you can print out all the necessary documentation to make your accountant love you and charge you less.
• BaseCamp
  I know this has been around for a long time, but I’ve only recently signed up for it and given it a test run. Wow! This is an impressively written application that allows you to easily manage your clients, their projects, to do lists, collaborative writing and more. I can see how this is a valuable tool for many companies. I know I’d love to use it more.
• Popuri.us
  This is a nifty little, ‘on-the-fly’ stats tool for information regarding your site. After a few computing seconds, it generates (with the grace and agility of AJAX) reports on your Google Page Rank, Alexa Ranking and a bunch of other cool stuff

Awesome. There you have it… Enjoy testing out April’s apps. Let me know how you fare…