Brian Dusablon

It’s new. It’s gorgeous. It’s cool. It’s not revolutionary. It’s nice. It’s got limitations. It will succeed.

It’s the iPad.

While I don’t need one, I think it would be cool to have around the house. Not sure $500 (for the bare bones edition) is worth it for a 3rd or 4th computer, though.

I hear lots of people talking about getting one for the family, including kids. Not so sure about that. My five-year old girl with grubby syrup hands does not need to mess with the $500 piece of glass.

No SD slot? No multi-tasking? No thank you.

What it is, is an awesome gadget for those who will use it for specific things. Like to read e-books? Perfect. Kindle-killer. Like to sketch/draw? Go for it. (Philip is an example).

I won’t use this thing a lot. If I traveled more, maybe. But then I’d have to have my Macbook Pro and my iPad. Two devices. Why not just use the MBP?

Around the house, sure, it’d be awesome, but $500 for an additional machine that gets used occasionally is not in my budget.

My uses would include: reading mags/books/RSS on the pot and on the couch, occasionally writing blog posts and updating Twitter. I can do these now with my iPhone, and I prefer real books.

I think doctors, students and older kids could use these quite a bit. However, in most cases, they also need a full computer for some activities the iPad cannot perform. So, again, this becomes an extra device.

It’s a very cool product. And, of course, Apple did it right, and waited until they could do it right, to launch.

There is a market for these. I’m just not in it.

Gen X is Middle-Aged – Proud member! (via Aaron)

Flickr vs. SmugMug – nice review from 2008 – need to post my photography setup and storage and reasoning. Also need to take more photos!

The Square – Revolutionizing mobile transactions? Could be interesting.

Three things about Marco Arment – Great stuff about the creator of Instapaper, a huge part of how I read the internet.

Please design a logo for me. With pie charts. For free. – no words can describe how awesome this is (via Gruber)

Disable Invisible Flash in ClickToFlash – Good advice – why? Here’s why. (via Gruber)

Hubble Telescope Snaps Deepest-Ever Image of the Universe – Amazing how small we are.

The Unbelievable World of Snowflakes – Amazing macro photography and back story. Show your kids.

Dreaming of an Apple Tablet – Excellent stuff – awesome graphics. I’d buy 2 also. (via DF)

I read a lot online. The internet has been good to me. But it needs filters. I follow 241 people on Twitter, and that number is growing. Those folks post a lot of links I want to read, but often don’t have time to at the moment they post it.

Enter Instapaper. Integration with Twitter apps and all my browsers, and a iPhone app. Brilliant and simple. If it’s worth reading, I’ll “read it later.”

My other favorite tool is Readability, which makes most websites 20 times better by cutting out the sidebars, ads, Flash, and other crap and just giving me the article I want to read, in a wonderful typeface of my choosing, at the size I prefer.

I’ve set my father-in-law up with Readability, because he, too, hates the crap on websites that disturb good content. It’s good stuff. Arc90 deserves a medal.

So here’s how I read the internet:

1. Twitter to Instapaper (to read later) or to Safari/Readability
2. Safari to Instapaper or Readability (depending on time)
3. Google Reader in Fluid with Helvetireader
4. Email – I still prefer some email newsletters and Feedburner because it, again, is just the content.

More goodness:

• Give Me Something to Read – a list of the most “Instapapered” articles.
• Netvibes – was my primary for a long time. Works well with Fluid.
• Instapaper Restyled

After much deliberation, I decided to use Freshbooks exclusively in 2009 for my small business. I loved it. It was simple, it was easy to use. It was fast. Paired with Fluid on my Mac, it was almost perfect.

They are decent at adding new functionality, but mostly they just got it right with the core app, except for one thing:

$14 per month.

Doesn’t seem like much, does it? But look at it this way: $168 (one year). Now how about $336 (two years). That is a LOT of money for one tool in a freelancer’s/small business owner’s toolbox.

Less Accounting ($12/mo, $144/yr) and Blinksale ($6/mo, $72/yr) are other options, but they’re still expensive.

I’m switching to Billings for a one-time payment of $39. If I upgrade, it’ll probably be once, maybe twice over the next two years ($25 or $50), bringing my total to a max of $89 over two years.

I’ve been drooling over some amazing graphics and diagrams recently, but this is the best I could do to show my potential cost savings over the next two years:

Just thought I’d share my thoughts and recommendations. Freshbooks is awesome. Less Accounting seems like a good tool. Blinksale is good also. If you run multiple computers or have more than one employee, it might be worth the extra cost for the online services.

But as a freelancer/small business owner with one or two employees (the wife does some HR consulting occasionally), and only one responsible for estimate, invoicing, etc., I’m going with the cost savings, while retaining the same functionality (albeit local to my machine) as the web-based tools.

I’ll probably have more on this subject after a few months or a year with Billings.

(Thanks to Aaron for the nudge).