After a couple weeks catching up with family and road trippin’ through Outback South Australia and New South Wales we’re back on deck.

• Google Apps – Includes Google’s email app (Gmail), Google calendar, and Google Docs (which provides excellent web-based word processing and spreadsheet tools). As Google Apps are web-based you don’t need any special software or hardware, and you can access your data from anywhere. The standard edition is free. If you’ve got a larger business or need additional support you may want to consider the premier edition (which has a 30-day trial period).
• Google Analytics – Powerful tool for tracking, analysing and reporting on your website traffic.
• CutePDF – Create professional PDF files from any printable document.
• Paymo – Online time-tracking tool. Free for small businesses and freelancers (up to 3 users).
• Mindomo – Web-based mind mapping tool which allows you to create and edit mind maps, and share them with your colleagues or your friends.
• WordPress – Blog tool and web-publishing platform. While being incredibly powerful and well-featured, WordPress makes it simple to create and manage website content. At finding simple, we love WordPress.
• Skype – Make free video calls to other Skype users. Great for video-conferencing.

A couple of other apps we’ve heard good things about and are looking forward to using include:

• Jing – Grab and share screenshots and video straight from your PC.
• Remember the Milk – Online to-do list and task management program. Integrates with GMail and Twitter, syncs with Blackberry and Windows Mobile, and now features an iPhone app.
• Screenhunter 5.0 Free – Screen capture software. Instead of using ‘Print Screen’ and pasting into ‘Paint’, this application offers easier and more flexible screen capture.

While consumers may be purchasing less frequently than when the dollar was strong, e-commerce will remain important for many businesses, with Australian and New Zealand consumers showing the second highest rate of online sales conversions behind the US.

With more Australian consumers looking to local websites for their online shopping, should your business be thinking about offering your products online?

Businesses put a lot of effort and preparation into spreading Christmas cheer within their stores and around the workplace but generally not so much online. Why is that? Everyone loves Google’s holiday logos so why don’t more business do something similar?

Adding some Christmas spirit to your own site is a great way to connect with your visitors and show that your site is kept up-to-date.

We think that there needs to be more of it. So, to help you, here are a few examples of ways that you can add some joy to your own website this Christmas:

• Add some Christmas wallpaper. It doesn’t have to be over the top or tacky (in fact we advise against this). A few transparent snow flakes over an existing background or a simple pattern using the customary red, green and white will usually do.
• Add some decorations. Just like your office or home, why not add some stockings, tinsel or a Christmas tree to your website (but again, don’t go overboard). Simply modify some of your existing graphics (remembering to make a backup of the originals) and you are good to go. A great example is the Canberra Furnished Accommodation website where they have added a stylish looking Santa hat to the corner of their logo.
• Add a Christmas counter. Working so hard you are not sure how many days are left until Christmas? Or perhaps you want to give you customers a subtle reminder that there aren’t too many shopping days left? Why not add a counter to your site counting down the number of days left until Christmas? There are lots of generic timers available online if you do a quick search of Google but if your having trouble finding one, I found this one especially for Christmas which even comes as a WordPress plugin.
• Add some falling snow. If you are feeling a little bit more adventurous you can also add some falling snow to your site like that used on Ma.tt’s website. You can download the code for it here.

The location was perfect, there were lots of like minded people doing similar work in the web design space, the food was delicious, the free wifi was flawless and everyone received a funky free t-shirt upon arrival!

Matt’s presentation was easily the highlight of the conference, closely followed by presentations by

• Dan Milward who spoke about experiences with the WP-eCommerce plugin;
• Jane Wells who spoke about the upcoming version 2.7 release of WordPress (we’ll be doing free upgrades for all existing clients when it comes out!);
• Sam Bauers who spoke about his pet project “Prolouge Projects” – a great looking theme which lets teams of people collaborate and track tasks easily;
• Jeff Waugh who spoke about his love of WordPress and his work on Crikey!; and
• Alister Cameron who stirred up bit of a debate on licensing and the GPL.

In a nutshell – it was great to see so much love for and enthusiasm for the ongoing development of WordPress – it can only mean great things for WordPress and WordPress Community.

It looks like there are going to be some really interesting presentations about new media, blogging and better business using WordPress. Matt Mullenweg – the founder of WordPress – is even going to be giving the key note presentation!

We’ll be posting more about the conference over the next few days. In the meantime – you can check out the live video stream or follow the twitter.

To help this process along I’ve decided to start a little non-event called the Very Small Business Lunch to bring soloists, entrepreneurs, freelancers and small business owners in the Canberra region together for an hour-long lunch once or twice a month.

I’ll be sending an email around for the first event in late October to early November, so if you are interested in tagging along, meeting a few new people and making some connections all you need to do is flick me your address on the Very Small Business Lunch site and I’ll let you know when and where (I like to keep things simple).