(Photo: DNY59 / iStockphoto)

Two years ago, we took a look at Shoeboxed.com. In short, you’re able to outsource your receipt management to this company — it scans, categorizes, and organizes your receipts for your online management. The receipts are then be securely shredded and discarded.

From your end, all you had to do was stuff all of your business receipts (and personal receipts, for that matter) into a prepaid envelope and Shoeboxed.com would take care of the rest. In addition to paper receipts, you can also send receipts via email or your mobile phone. It’d then enter the data and you can then export this information to Excel, Quicken, CSV, and PDF as needed.

This all sounds great, with pricing plans ranging from free to $49.95 per month, but how does it really stand up? Well, we took a look at some other reviews posted on the Internet and here’s what real users had to say.

Productivity 101 said that the “system is straightforward and fairly easy to understand.” While “someone who does not have a substantial number of receipts…would most likely not benefit from the program,” they do go on to say that this tool “could become indispensable” to those who need a better way to control their purchase records.

Articles Base says that combining a Shoeboxed account with one from Outright is the best way to go about it. Outright is a free online bookkeeping system and it can automatically receive uploads from Shoeboxed. The review goes on to mention the live customer support, “a real human being you can call for help or answer questions and they are always polite.”

The Prosper Magazine has been using Shoeboxed for over a year and he says that it “has made [his] life a lot easier.” This was especially pronounced in his “start up stage, tracking expenses and storing important documents.” This expanded beyond just receipts and into the realm of contracts and other sensitive information.

Shoeboxed

Better Business Bureau doesn’t provide a full review of the services offered by Shoeboxed, but it has given the recently accredited business a solid rating of A-.

Appolicious took a look at the Shoeboxed iPhone app, noting the ease of simply using the camera on the phone to take a picture of the receipt. The fact that the digital receipts are accepted by the IRS makes “tax time a breeze.”

WebWorkerDaily says that Shoeboxed “could provide a simple solution to an irritating problem.”

Mobile Industry Review did find one flaw with the system, however. The iPhone app did not really understand the BART ticket to the airport with the amounted printed on it in small text. The trouble is that “you can’t edit a receipt until it has been processed, so this “receipt” wasn’t processed by the time that my expense report was due.”

Google Apps Marketplace has several user reviews of Shoeboxed. They like this “very useful service” overall, but they are disappointed there is no Android app currently available.

Shaine Mata says that Shoeboxed is “one of the best investments a freelance/work at home person can make to keep track of finances.” He goes on to say that the “time savings is well worth it.”

All in all, it looks like the general response to Shoeboxed has been very positive and it’s well worth considering if you want an easier way to manage all your expenses. It also appears to be a powerful tool for other documents too, automatically scanning and categorizing them as needed. The iPhone app is really the icing on the cake.

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(Photo: endopack / iStockPhoto)

The conference room is an instant oil-check for any company: if it’s where things get done, well done…but if it’s a pit of endless PowerPoint despair, there may be room for improvement. By shooting anyone who goes over time, for instance. Unfortunately, we can’t advise such violent courses of action (unless we disclaim it immediately afterwards), but we can offer some entertaining options to upgrade the battlefield. And that doesn’t mean installing better games on your Blackberry — that’s hiding from the problem instead of dealing with it, and Enron provides an excellent example of that strategy’s success level. Behold some of the best conference tables to be bored at!

1. The TelePresence 3000

It sounds like something Buck Rogers would use to make meetings awesome, before punching everyone (even awesomer!), and it actually is pretty cool. The Cisco TelePresence 3000 establishes life-size HD connections around the world, enabling international companies to establish old-school communications.

The Cisco TelePresence 3000 (photo: CNET)

If it looks like pointless frippery, which should be replaced by e-mail, you’re

1. possibly part of the new generation
2. definitely bad at meetings

The importance of all communications channels in business can’t be overstated, because — unfortunately — reading other executives’ moods is just as important as being right when it comes to getting things done. E-mail restricts you to text information, while face-to-face meetings arm you with all kinds of unconscious extras: body language, pose, who’s playing with their Blackberry while someone else is talking, etc. It’s true that telepresence doesn’t transmit all possible data — but if you’ve reached the point where smell is a factor, your business is in more trouble than any fancy desk can solve.

2. Work and Play

Furniture choice plays a big part in establishing the environment — immense mahogany feels rich, while smaller sharper tech companies tend towards casual options. If you plan to play around but still make a lot of money, the “table&tennis” could be exactly what you’re looking for. A beautiful wooden conference desk…

(Photo: tableandtennis.tumblr.com)

… doubling as an informal de-stressing station by becoming the first time in history ping-pong bats have looked cool.

(Photo: tableandtennis.tumblr.com)

3. The Ultimate Meeting Room

If you want to see the slickest meeting room in existence, you need to go to an advertising company, and you need to go to Beijing.

Saatchi Dome (photo: Jianfei Xue and Zhiyi Zhou)

Saatchi & Saatchi execs sit in a super-stylish chamber (because “room” just doesn’t cut it for things this fancy) featuring more modern art design than most art galleries, complete with contents. That giant wooden dome rotates as required by the attendees, swiveling to show a screen, projection, or — presumably — rare species imported and trained to serve champagne to give the meeting a bit of “feel.”

Behold, the MeetingDrome! (photo: Jianfei Xue and Zhiyi Zhou)

4.  The Meeting In A Box

Atalier Graff’s LOFTBOX101 is an extremely cool concept at the opposite end of the scale spectrum from Saatchi’s — and it may be super-small (in fact that’s kind of the point), but it’s just as cool.

(Photo: atelier-graff.com)

Instead of dedicating an entire room to meetings, or the informal option of talking over cubical walls (with all the difficulties of enforcing real commitment involved), the LOFTBOX is an unfoldable office space which can be used to declare “Okay, now we’re working.”

(Photo: atelier-graff.com)

In storage it looks like an iBox, a smooth rectanguloid of whiteness, but origamied out it’s an entirely workable discussion area complete with monitor for presentations. Small companies, and those working from home, could seriously benefit from such an item.

BONUS FAILURE:  They “You Can’t Play Now” Table

The above items all offer advantages, but we found this failure so spectacular we simply had to include it.

ABGC Architecture built a LEGO table for advertising agency Boys and Girls, and you’d think someone whose whole job was “make things people have to live with” would understand the psychological effects of LEGO.  It looks cool, but glassed-over LEGO is the worst brain-breaker since a blow to the head.

(Photo: abcg.ie)

Sitting through slide one trillion of an endless meeting the sealed-in blocks will start to mock your pain: you already know you’re working instead of playing, but the buildings under the table rub your face in it every second. Add the endless variations of color and imagined pattern under the surface — infinite distractions as your mind starts to wander — and you’ll be lucky if you remember your own name by the end of the meeting, let alone what you’re meant to get done.

(Photo: abgc.ie)

And that’s assuming the people at the corners don’t just start breaking the table to pieces.

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(Photo: konradlew / iStockphoto)

As summer nears an end and fall approaches, the change in seasons introduces a number of pesky to-dos. Thankfully, many of these items can be outsourced, freeing up more time to enjoy the autumn leaves — or whatever it is that you do.

1. Winterize your home: Many handyman services offer a package deal where they come to your home and get it ready for cold weather.
2. Drain unused pipes and hoses: During the winter you won’t be watering your lawn, so having a landscaping service drain hoses and put them away or empty out your sprinkler system for the winter is a must.
3. Update your winter wardrobe: Some style consultants have started offering services where they help you switch out your summer and winter wardrobes and update it where necessary.
4. Change out your tires: If you live in an area that requires snow tires, your mechanic will likely be able to swap out your tires.
5. Rake the yard: Most landscaping services can get your leaves up and gone.
6. Clean up from the summer: Summer  gear can take special storage, whether you’ve got a boat or something much smaller. Depending on what you have, a handyman, a pool maintenance company or a mechanic can get everything put away properly so it runs next spring.
7. Plan for next spring’s yard: If you sit down with a landscaping service this fall, they can handle tasks like mulching leaves that will make the spring much easier to manage.
8. Add an emergency kit to your car: You can pick up winter emergency kits for your car without assembling it yourself.
9. Clean ducts: Vacuuming your ducts is a fall cleaning project recommended by most maintenance services — it can make your furnace run much better.
10. Seal your driveway: Sudden freezes can leave cracks in your driveway. Having a handyman seal your driveway can prevent those cracks.
11. Check your furnace: The time to make sure your furnace is in good shape is before you actually need it. Have an HVAC team give your furnace a once over in the fall and you’ll be ready for winter.
12. Clean your gutters: Most landscaping companies will clean out your gutters and fall is an ideal time to check them out.
13. Add weather-stripping: Sealing your house against winter weather can reduce your heating bill — and any handyman service can handle the work.
14. Stock your pantry for the fall: Many CSAs offer fresh produce well into the fall. While you might not have time to can some of that produce, you can easily store certain items for the winter.
15. Build a root cellar: Few handyman services have this item on their standard lists, but it’s a task most are willing to take on.
16. Plan for the holidays: While you’ve still got some time, outsourcing your holiday projects in the fall can mean better service and lower rates.
17. Buy school supplies: Most schools provide a back to school list that a personal shopper can complete with one stop.
18. Get a back-to-school wardrobe: If you’ve got a child going back to school, having a personal shopper round up some new clothing for them makes sense.
19. Enroll for the fall: If you’re considering a few classes yourself, a virtual assistant can handle the process of finding classes for you to choose between and getting you enrolled.
20. Plan for your business’ winter promotions: If your business has a winter marketing campaign, bringing in a marketing consultant now means that you won’t be rushed when the holidays get close.
21. Plan for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: If you’re observing the Jewish High Holidays, you can outsource dinner and other organizational details so you can focus on the holiday and your family.
22. Get Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur covered: If someone will be out of your office for several days in September, you can have a temp agency cover that absence.
23. Handle office maintenance: Preparing your office building for winter weather can be as easy as bringing in a maintenance company.
24. Conduct an energy audit: Fall is a good time to have someone audit your company’s energy use and tell you if you can save money.
25. Audit your business: It’s better to know about potential problems before you have to start thinking about closing the books for the year and handling taxes. Bringing in an accountant to audit your business can give you a head start.

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(Photo: diane39 / iStockphoto)

Maybe you’re too tired at the end of a long work day to bother. Who has the time to make up a shopping list, visit the grocery store, look up the recipe, prepare the ingredients, and cook the meal? These are all very time-consuming and eating out all the time is neither healthy nor cost-effective. There has to be an alternative.

And there is. Thanks to the beauty of the Internet, there are a number of different resources online that can provide you with complete pre-made meals, delivered straight to your door. These are great after a long day at work, for a special occasion, or even for people who aren’t exactly masters in the kitchen.

Artiko Chef

Artiko Chef — Enjoy chef-prepared meals delivered to your door. Receive a week’s worth of meals via the meal plan or choose from a range of great gift ideas. They deliver nationwide.

Bistro MD — Lose weight while enjoying gourmet diet food. This program has been featured on the Dr. Phil show, being described as “the best home meal delivery available.” Menus rotate weekly.

Body Chef — Delivering fresh food diet plans and custom diets direct to customers all across the United Kingdom, Jayne Ritchie helps to “make losing weight fast and simple.”

Butter Root — Instead of delivering frozen meals, this service run by chefs Tiffany Friedman and Mathew Martin deliver meals in the Tupperware that you provide them. You choose the menu; they handpick the ingredients and deliver it to your door.

Chef’s Diet — Featured on The View and The Early Show, this program offers fresh and frozen prepared meals, as well as kosher and vegetarian options.

Diamond Organics

Citarella — Choose from a range of fine dining options from this New York-based company. Menu items include smoked fish, truffles, and foie gras. This isn’t your mother’s meatloaf.

Diamond Organics — Eating healthy with fresh ingredients is one thing, but you can go to another level by sticking with organic produce! Choose from a number of menu items from Kathleen’s Kitchen and call into the toll-free number if you’d prefer not to order over the Internet.

Diet to Go — Cut the calories and choose between the low-fat traditional, low-fat vegetarian, and low-carb diet menus. The great tasting meals are doctor approved for weight loss plans and programs.

Family Chef — Mega Meal Packs offer a variety of complete ready-made meals, deliverable to your home or office nationwide. The food arrives in freezer-stackable and microwave-save containers, kept cold with dry ice and reusable gel packs.

5 Squares — Offering customized diet delivery to your door, this program is designed to provide you with five meals a day, three to seven days a week. Plans can be customized to suit your tastes and health requirements.

The Fresh Diet

The Fresh Diet — Select from a number of different program choices, including gluten-free and vegetarian menu options. Deliveries are available in South Florida, LA, Chicago, and the New York Tri-State area.

Fresh ‘n Fit Cuisine — Boasting “food to diet for,” prepared meals from this service are available for pickup in Atlanta or anywhere in the Southeastern United States via UPS.

Gourmet Grocery Online — In addition to gift baskets and fresh flowers, this site also offers a number of prepared meals. Choose from the meat market, desserts, seafood, coffee, and even caviar.

Gourmet Station — Featured in such places as USA Today and Good Morning America, Gourmet Station offers everything from salmon dinners to delectable desserts. Choose between dinner gifts, occasion dinners, and meal plans.

Home Bistro — These prepared meals are now handled by DineWise, one of the America’s most popular prepared meal companies. Choose from the large inventory ranging from light dinners to hearty pasta meals.

Impromptu Gourmet

Home Cooking For You — Now available with kobe beef, this online store ships and delivers delicious dinners nationwide. They guarantee 100% satisfaction or your money back.

Impromptu Gourmet — Enjoy chef-inspired meals, foods, and gifts delivered to your door. The menu includes everything from entrees to appetizers, side dishes to breads. Expect to choose from such fine dining options as chicken marsala, orange ginger encrusted mahi mahi, and crab stuffed shrimp.

Indish — Specializing in fine dining with locally sourced ingredients, this Vancouver-based service offers fresh, ready-to-cook meals either from its two retail locations or via its home delivery service.

In the Zone Delivery — Unlike other meal delivery service, the food here is always fresh and never frozen. Service is provided throughout the USA and Canada with more than 500 unique meals available.

Legal Sea Foods — This restaurant offers many of its “superior quality fresh fish and shellfish products” via its mail delivery service. Complete meals include lobster, shrimp, surf and turf, chowder, and more.

Personal Chef To Go

Magic Kitchen — Expect healthy, chef-prepared meals using fresh produce. The “trusted meals” are delivered in frozen form in a dry ice package, so all you have to do is defrost, heat, and serve. Both meals and customer service are guaranteed.

Nu-Kitchen — Originally serving just the New York City area, Nu-Kitchen now offers ground shipping options to many other eastern United States cities like Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, and Charleston. Expect fresh, all natural diet food delivered to your door.

Personal Chef To Go — This destination for “smart ‘n healthy meals for a smart ‘n healthy lifestyle” offers menu plans for busy singles, couples on the go, and family favorites. Delivery frequency can range from one-time shipments to recurring weekly auto-shipments. The menu has been developed by professional chefs Gene Castelluccio and Blair Grossman.

PureFoods Fresh Start — provides chef-prepared, complete meal programs delivered to your home or office. Try the 3-day sampler, opt for gluten-free meals, and try the 3-week jump start program.

Seamless Web — Can’t be bothered to reheat frozen meals? Use this network to order your delivery and takeout meals online from such cities as New York, Haboken, Greenwich, Philadelphia, Santa Monica, and Bethesda.

Susan’s Healthy Gourmet

Send a Meal — Gourmet prepared meals can be sent to your home or office with same day delivery as an option. Be hearty with Italian chicken dinner or go decadent with live lobster and more. There’s nationwide delivery too.

SupperWorks Delivery — With deliveries made once a week, this Canadian service will pack many of its ingredients fresh so they will still be fresh when delivered. Other items are packed frozen.

Susan’s Healthy Gourmet — It’s right there in the name. This delivery service offers healthy gourmet meals at a reasonable price, including hormone-free poultry and organic greens. Have them delivered to your California home or pick up at one of the available outlet locations.

Tastes of Chicago — Delivering everything from deep dish pizza to delicious ribs, this service puts you in the middle of the Windy City without ever leaving your door. Perishable packages are flash frozen and packed with dry ice in reusable coolers, whereas non-perishables are shipped ground.

Time To Eat — Offering prepared meals to the Vancouver and Lower Mainland area, Chef Pam van Woerkom can take care of the shopping, cooking, and cleaning for you. She also offers cooking lessons and personal chef services.

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The Product Watch Satellite (image: cristimatei / iStockphoto)

Product/Service Name

Central Desktop

Brief Description

Central Desktop is a web-based collaboration platform that businesses can use to manage teams, projects, and documents from anywhere at any time. Central Desktop includes a full suite of online collaboration tools including wikis, online documents, task management, shared calendars, discussion forums, databases, and micro-blogging. Easy to implement and scalable for mid-sized businesses, Central Desktop helps businesses communicate efficiently, increase productivity, and reduce costs.

Target audience: Small and medium-sized businesses, as well as departments within larger companies

Central Desktop

The Inspiration

Central Desktop was created to provide teams, workgroups and departments with web-based collaboration tools to efficiently share files, manage projects, and connect with employees. This results in increased productivity, valuable time savings, and reduced operational costs.

Key Features

• Team Collaboration. Work with different team members remotely, collaborating with online discussion threads, forums, wikis, blogs, web meetings, and social technology tools.
• Document Management. Organize, share, collaborate, edit and file all your documents online.
• Workflow Solutions. Automate business procedures and save time with powerful workflow solutions.

Benefits

Intranet and project collaboration solutions provide enterprise security and performance without the enterprise hassle.

Costs

Prices range depending on the plan chosen. The Workgroup Edition plans start at $0 with two workspaces and five members per workspace and go up to $99 per month for 25 workspaces, 25 internal members, and 10 additional members per workspace.

The Enterprise Edition offers unlimited workspaces and 50 minimum members at $10 per month per user. The Community Edition allows for 25 workspaces and 100 minimum members at $3 per month per user. Other features that differentiate the plans are the total storage, maximum upload, API access, web folders, offsite backups, support type, and web meetings, among others.

Similar Products/Services

There are many other online collaboration tools available like Onehub, Google Documents, and Basecamp.

Opinions from around the Web

• Positive. “An online video demo and easily-navigated dashboard help Central Desktop be a great choice for the casual project management user.” (TopTenReviews.com)
• Positive. “Despite a few drawbacks, this is the only product on the market that I found so far that provides this level of functionality for the price.” (Office2Reviews.com)
• Positive. “It is also great for collaboration, and because it runs like an academic bulletin board system, it can make it easy for entry level team members to become acquainted with it.” (Brighthub)

Company Background

Central Desktop delivers a complete, pure Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) social technology platform that allows business teams to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. Easy to implement and scalable for mid-market businesses, Central Desktop’s software collaboration solution allows business teams to interact, share and manage their daily work activities from anywhere at any time.

Founded in 2005, Central Desktop is a privately-held company with headquarters in Pasadena, California.

Smartlife’s User Advice

Central Desktop looks like it could prove to be an invaluable tool to small- and medium-sized businesses, particularly with team members who are working remotely. The feature list isn’t quite as robust as some other collaboration tools online, but the pricing schemes and the enterprise-level security are certainly attractive. Take the free account out for a test drive and determine whether Central Desktop will satisfy the needs of your business.

Smartlife’s Recommendation: TRY IT FIRST

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Product Watch is part of an on-going series that cuts through the sales propaganda and marketing hype, and reviews products and services from the standpoint of the user and how they actually help us get more out of life.

(photo: lisas212 / iStockphoto)

When you have children, one of the most important things you can do is spend time with them. Using your outsourcing skills to get projects off the table so that you can do just that simply makes sense. One of the best reasons to eliminate the time-consuming tasks that wind up on your plate is family, after all.

1. Choose a daycare: Sites such as Childcare Ratingz provide reviews and recommendations to narrow down your choices for a daycare.
2. Check references for a daycare: Make sure that the people you’re trusting your children to are reputable by having a virtual assistant check their references.
3. Track nursing: Mobile applications, such as iNeedMilk for the iPhone, help you make sure that your baby is getting enough milk.
4. Get rid of diapers: If you’re interested in using cloth diapers for your babies, using a diaper service makes the process simple.
5. Buy diapers and other necessities: Alice.com and other online shopping tools can help you set up recurring purchases for those necessities you and your child need.
6. Find a babysitter: Services like Sitters help you find good babysitters in your area.
7. Childproof the house: There are dedicated childproofing companies in many cities, as well as handymen who offer childproofing services.
8. Get a tutor: With an older child, working on homework can become a long drawn out affair, especially if you aren’t up to speed on the material anymore. A tutor can speed up the process.
9. Plan a party: As your child gets older, you’ll have graduations, bar mitzvahs, quienceneras or other parties throw. You can hand the process off to a party planner.
10. Buy gifts: After a few friends’ birthday parties, managing buying gifts for each party your child goes to can turn into a process. A personal shopping service can pick out a whole stack of gifts, so you just have to grab one and go.
11. Find a bathroom: Being able to quickly find bathrooms is crucial with a kid. Using a site or mobile application like SitOrSquat can make the process much easier.
12. Decorate a bedroom: There are interior decorators who will take special care in creating a room your child will love.
13. Track allowances: You can help your child manage his or her allowance through online tools like Zefty.
14. Do the laundry: While many laundry services will take children’s clothing, au pairs and housekeepers will also typically handle laundry.
15. Avoid allergens: Between allergies and picky eaters, some kids wind up eating nothing but hot dogs. A nutritionist can help you find alternative meals.
16. Monitor your child’s phone: If cell phone usage is a concern, you can monitor it with a tool like My Mobile Watchdog.
17. Monitor internet usage: There are plenty of educational sites out there that your child can use safely. It’s just a matter of reducing access to other sites with software like Visikid.
18. Buy clothes: A personal shopper can keep your child stocked with the right size of clothes, even through constant growth spurts.
19. Build a tree house: Services like Tree Top Builders can build your child the perfect tree house.
20. Cooking meals: Good nutrition is important to a growing child and if cooking isn’t something you have time for, bringing in a service that will cook a few meals a week is better than going for fast food by a long shot.
21. Home school: If you have a preference for homeschooling your child, there are both programs that offer full curriculum planning for you as well as private tutors that handle the details of homeschooling.
22. Teach skills: There are professionals willing to teach your child everything from riding a bike and up.
23. Apply to private schools: For children who will be attending a private school, many college application consultants now provide help with private school admissions earlier in life.
24. Train for sports: If your child is interested in learning a sport, there are trainers and coaches willing to do everything from teach the basics of baseball to train an Olympic level athlete.
25. Discipline: In the event that discipline is a problem, there are specialized therapists who deal with such concerns. Such therapists are typically behavioral specialists.

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