Monday, Sept 18: Starting a company for under $1,000

See also Under1K-Business, Under1K-Engineering, and Under1K-Marketing

Operating Infrastructure

• Phone / Conference Calls
  • Skype is free. Can call regular phone through Skype, free this year for US and Canada.
    • But don't send (or pickup) email while on phone, traffic impacts call quality
    • Skype has separate conferencing service, free this year.
  • SunRocket.com works great! Free for a year. $199/year unlimited, everything.
  • FreeConferenceCall.com is free, has recording feature (for $) but requires each participant to make a toll call (typically to Iowa)
  • FreeConference has both free and paid versions, can record (for $), free version requires each participant to make a toll call (e.g. to Iowa)
  • liveoffice's free conferencing service

• IM
  • AOL Instant Messenger
  • GoogleTalk
  • Microsoft Messenger MSN
    • see also Microsoft Messenger Removal from XP
  • Yahoo! Messenger
  • Meebo is web based IM client that supports AOL/ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and Gtalk/Jabber. Buddy List is saved on Meebo.

• Distributed meetings (synchronous tools and presentation)
  • Adobe Connect (new name for Breeze) expensive
  • CampFire from 37signals folks; cost options: free, $12, $24, $49 per month
  • Glance is $50/mo. for a limited number of users.
  • GoToMeeting is $40/mo. Many recommendations.
  • Interwise is very good but very expensive.
  • LiveMeeting (previously Placeware) from Microsoft; expensive
  • WebEx expensive
  • Vyew Beta software, but looks very powerful and free!

• Tools for small teams, Project Information Management for teams
  • Google Desktop is powerful, has calender, mail, search, alerts. It's free right now.
  • JotSpot has Wiki and collaboration. (see also wiki section of Under1K-Engineering for others
  • Joyent
  • BaseCamp Project Collaboration for small teams, from 37signals cost free, $12-149/month
  • Accomplice is for project management for to-do lists.
  • Zimbra

• Sending Large Files - alternatives to e-mail
  • YouSendIt free for files up to 100MB, paid $5-29 per month allows up to 2GB size
  • Dropload -- free, files up to 100MB
  • SendThisFile free and paid $3-400/month

• Most anything 2nd hand
  • Freecycle is email list to offer items for free.
  • Craigslist is free classified
  • SwapThing is for swapping items.
  • eBay auctions of pretty much anything

Incubators

• Girvan Institute of Technology
  • 3940 Freedom Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054
• Plug & Play Real Estate
  • 440 N Wolfe Rd. Sunnyvale, CA 94085
  • also just rent a cube for about $300/mo.
• SDForum Company in Residence Program
  • 111 West St. John, San Jose
• San Jose Software Business Cluster
  • 2 North First Street, San Jose, CA 95113
• TEN - The Enterprise Network of Silicon Valley
  • 2953 Bunker Hill Lane, Suite 400, Santa Clara, CA 95054

Miscellaneous

• Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware:
  • searchanddestroy, $5/mo
  • Mcafee is free with Comcast.
  • Windows Defender is free
  • AVG Anti-Virus frm Grissoft is free and it is good
  • Spybot is free

• Online Backup & File Synchronization
  • see also PC World's Store it on the Web Jun-2-06
  • Mozy free for up to 2GB
  • Carbonite $50/yr for up to 50GB (one PC's worth of files)
  • G Drive from Google
  • XDrive is free for up to 5GB
  • iBackup $10/month for 5GB, larger plans available
  • Reconfigure Gmail account.
  • FolderShare for synchronizing folders; files up to 2GB, Free
    • Microsoft acquired them in Nov 2005
  • rsync command on Unix for synchronizing folders.
  • ElephantDrive is free during beta, no post-beta pricing