That’s why I thought of sharing a resource for invoicing which some of you may find useful – CurdBee. The objective is simple – if you’re doing some sort of business, it helps to look professional. So what better than a free solution that allows you to send out professional looking invoices?

Of course, you needn’t take my word for it, check out what the rest of the web has to say:

• Manage Client Invoices and Accept Payments with CurdBee by Rick Broida on BNET.
• Included in WebWorkerDaily’s list of 10 apps you can’t do without
• Featured on ES Developed, in a post about CurdBee’s new features.
• Used as the billing method at WeAreAGoodCompany.

P.S:

In the interests of full disclosure, I used to work at Vesess - the company behind CurdBee – for around a year, ending November 2005. The only reimbursement I would get out of publicising their service is the satisfaction that I was part of a small Sri Lankan company which is now able to offer world class solutions.

My experiences in debating lent themselves to an advantage in presenting in front of an audience, which sometimes led people to think I had an innate talent in presenting.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Being an inherently shy person and a Geek to boot, social interaction was never my forte. That is probably why my mother encouraged me to join in debating and Interact. During my stints in both organisations in school, I studied my seniors as well as others in how they presented themselves, developed relationships and handled situations. These self-taught lessons would thereafter be mashed together with my own perspectives to define my own style of doing things.

So while I may have had some experience in speaking in front of an audience (which in many cases is the biggest hurdle of them all), I was by no means an accomplished presenter. However, thanks to the internet I was able to expand my learning and thought I’d share some of my favourite resources with you:

1. Seth Godin did an ebook called “Really Bad Powerpoint”. A google search would yield the .pdf file, while his article can be found here.
2. Garr Reynold’s did a summary of a book by Dr. John Medina – “Brain Rules” – on Slideshare, which can be found here.
3. Garr Reynold’s site “Presentation Zen” does a good job of highlighting the work of one of arguably the world’s best presenters – Steve Jobs.
4. You can watch Steve Jobs demo the Macintosh in 1984 on Youtube by clicking here and you can watch him demo the iMac here. Both are interesting to watch. If at all, I identify with Steve not so much in terms of presentation skill, but in terms of receding hairline…

On a completely unrelated note, many thanks to Jack Point for linking to some cool retro songs!

To be honest, it’s nice. Nice to use WordPress again and nice to be blogging again. Over the last few months, much has happened.

• September whizzed by and South Africa won the Rugby World Cup (as I predicted to my All Blacks’ fanboy colleagues, weeks before the tournament).
• Sri Lanka fought hard and got into the Cricket World Cup finals, only to lose out to Australia (and don’t even think of discussing the whole squash ball incident).
• I watched the finals of the aforesaid cricket match, whilst running intermittently to the balcony to watch tracer bullets fire at the possible locations of LTTE light aircraft.
• I never got around to buying the new computer, although the people from ABC Computers thanked me for pointing out that their website was a bit out of date.
• I married an amazing young lady. Life has taken a distinct turn for the better!
• I got promoted.
• After much deliberation, I bought a car.
• I got over my suspicions of social networking and finally joined Facebook.
• The guys at Vesess totally amazed me with their new look and have now gone totally Free.
• A number of blogs that I enjoyed reading have vanished – notably Mahangu’s which is now used by someone else (unless that is, Mahangu.org is written by MW in an intentionally different style).
• The local website for HSBC was revamped and now allows access from a variety of browsers. Haven’t checked whether it works with linux, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t.
• I realised that 34 posts over a period of almost three years (since Nisadas went live) is pretty lame for a blog.
• I also realised that apart from fetish-crazed spambots, no one (well, except for one special person) really vists Nisadas anymore.

So that’s it. Things have happened – not limited to the list above – over the last few months. If you will join me again, you may find out more…

I didn’t really notice it earlier. Perhaps games were meant to be played that way – where the road was more a matter of faith than anything else. Or perhaps the photos I got actually were dark and it wasn’t just my imagination.
Incredibly, that’s not the case. Gamers around the world have had problems with either their monitors or their graphics cards or even the games themselves. So much so that there are gamma adjustment software.

Having found one such software, I thought I’d share it with you. Who knows, you might discover some good use for it.

Just check out the IPGamma software from IPlay. It’s a handy little software that sits in your (Windows) system tray and allows a little Ctrl+Alt manipulation of your monitor’s gamma settings.

So if you’ll excuse me – there are colours and details I shall be seeing for the first time…

update – September 3, 2007: It seems the IPGamma software is no longer available at the location mentioned. Even worse, I’ve lost the only copy of the file that I had. Another option available is Powerstrip, available from En Tech Taiwan

Sometime back, Prabhath directed me towards an interesting and very thought provoking article – Small is the new big. An interesting read that makes very succinctly clear the advantages of being a small company.

Well, my association with the Vesess Web Design team has shown me the truth of this situation. Having a small, multi-skilled team works out in so many ways for the organization, as well as its clients.

Everyone has a clearly defined responsibility which they have to fulfil. But when it comes to skills, everyone develops a multitude of them. We all discuss what we’re doing – so we collectively learn from each other. In this way, while we individually specialize in our particular fields, we obtain a better understanding of how we can perform best as a team. The better we function as a team, the better our service.

Further, there’s the cost component – being small means lesser costs. Lesser costs for us means lesser costs for our clients.

Then there’s the advantage that comes from being a close-knit team. Bureaucracy doesn’t even come into the picture. Decisions can be made quickly and acted upon almost immediately.

So it’s really no great surprise that some of the best up-and-coming companies out there are built on the “small is big” idea. I like to think of it in terms of Velociraptors – small, agile (and vicious) dinosaurs who, by acting as a team turned out to be some of the most effective hunters of their time.