I’ve been doing some research lately on various graphing packages that are available and thought I’d share a few of the top choices I’ve found. Depending on your needs there are options for PHP, .NET, Adobe Flex, Adobe Air, ColdFusion, Java, Perl, or Ruby on Rails. Here are of some the best I’ve found:

FusionCharts

FusionCharts is one of the best I’ve found. These charts can be integrated with ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails, Python or HTML pages. They also work with Adobe Flex. FusionCharts is built by InfoSoft Global and also provide FusionWidgets (gauges, funnels, and Gantt charts) and FusionMaps.

.netCharting

.netCharting provides some of the best looking charts I’ve seen, however as the name implies they are limited to .NET. The charting components contain various elements including gauges, maps, funnels, and financial charts, to name a few.

Emprise Javascript Charts

Emprise Javascript Charts aren’t as visually appealing, in my opinion, as FusionCharts or the .NET charts however they seem to be a solid option if you’re looking for javascript charts. They feature Ajax driven data (supports XML formatted data) and loads data on the fly.

amCharts

amCharts provides Flash based charts, charts for Flex, and .net charts as well. amCharts can extract data from CSV or XML files and read dynamic data generated by PHP, .NET, Ruby on Rails, Java, Perl, or ColdFusion.

Related posts:

1. Top 12 Sites for Design Inspiration and Tutorials Hello Everyone! This is our first post on the site...
2. 25 Inspirational Designs for Website Footers If you think a website’s footer exists only to show...
3. Our Favorite Posts for the Week: Week of October 4th 2009 There were a number of great posts this week from...

Here’s a roundup of well designed financial management apps to help you with invoicing, bookkeeping, and personal finance. Are there any others that should have been included? Please share with a comment below.

Invoicing

FreshBooks allows you to send and manage invoices, track your time, and track expenses for both yourself and your clients. FreshBooks also has a number of add-ons (http://community.freshbooks.com/addons/) and provides an iPhone app.

1. http://www.freshbooks.com/
2. Free with paid plans starting at $19/month

Ballpark is an invoicing app that allows you to share and collaborate on invoices with your team and see who has sent invoices and to whom. They take invoicing a step further by focusing on the communication that happens around invoicing and provides a centralized solution to ensure that you and your team, along with client(s), are on the same page.

1. http://ballparkapp.com/
2. Free plan available with paid plans starting at $12/month

Blinksale is a simple app that allows you to create and send invoices and track payments. They also allow you to easily import clients from Basecamp.

1. http://www.blinksale.com

2. Free trial with paid plan starting at $6/month

SimplyInvoices allows you to easily invoice for time tracked in Basecamp, LessTimeSpend, Tick, or Harvest.

1. http://www.simplyinvoices.com/
2. Free plan with paid plans starting at $9/month

Bookkeeping/Financial Management

In addition to creating and sending invoices, LessAccounting allows you to track your expenses and provides nightly bank data integration. You can also grant access to your accountant and they can login to view your finances and export any needed reports or data.

1. https://lessaccounting.com
2. Free plan available with paid plans starting at $12/month

Outright is a free online bookkeeping app that tracks your records and taxes. You can also import data directly from FreshBooks and/or Shoeboxed.

1. http://outright.com/
2. Free

Pulse allows you to easily track your income and expenses by day, week, or month and organize your income and expenses by company or project. Pulse is built for small businesses and freelancers.

1. http://pulseapp.com/
2. Free plan with paid plans starting at $9/month

Personal Finance

With SmartyPig you create an account, set a savings goal, and start saving. You can invite others to join and help you save. There’s also a widget that you can add to your site to share your progress and allow others to help. Your savings earn interest and are FDIC insured.

1. http://www.smartypig.com
2. Free

Mint, who was recently acquired by Intuit, allows you to track your expenses and see where you’re spending your money, analyzes the interest rate you’ve been paying on your credit card to see if you should switch to a different card, manage your budget, and manage your investments. There’s also an iPhone app available.

1. http://www.mint.com/
2. Free

Wesabe takes a different angle on personal financial management and creates a community around its users allowing you to connect and gain insight from others. Wesabe also provides an iPhone app.

1. http://www.wesabe.com/
2. Free

I hope you found this roundup of financial apps helpful. Please share any that were not included that you would recommend.

No related posts.

Below are the three iPhone apps I use daily to plan and manage BrandFreeze. Which iPhone apps are you using to manage your blog? Please share in the comments below.

Evernote

I use Evernote daily to jot down and organize ideas for blog posts and develop a simple editorial calendar for upcoming posts. Evernote also allows you to search for text within photos, which comes in handy if you need to snap a photo of notes written on paper or on a whiteboard.

1. http://www.evernote.com/about/download/iphone/
2. Price: Free

AnalyticsApp

AnalyticsApp gives you access to your Google Analytics data on your iPhone. I keep track of overall traffic and drill down to see which sites are referring visitors and which posts are receiving the most traffic. This information is key when planning for upcoming posts and gaining a better understanding of the types of content that interest readers most. It’s definitely worth the $6.

1. http://analyticsapp.com/
2. Price: $5.99

Tweetie

I use Tweetie to keep up with what’s happening on Twitter and I’ve been using it for a while. I gave the TweetDeck app a try but prefer Tweetie. Do you use Tweetie, TweetDeck, or another Twitter app for the iPhone?

1. http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/
2. Price: $2.99

Thanks for reading guys!
Which iPhone apps are you using to manage your blog?

Related posts:

1. Thesis Theme: SEO Goodness and Design Flexibility About a month ago I decided to purchase Thesis Theme...
2. Setting Up a Simple Backup Process for WordPress With the recent attacks on older versions of WordPress (pre...
3. 20 Creative Ways of Displaying Share Icons Twitter and Digg and Delicious – Oh my! In seeking...

I think we all know the importance of tracking how visitors interact with our websites and users with our applications. There are a number of tools available depending on your budget, what you’d like to track, and how you’d like to track it. Below I’ve included a number of tools to help you collect valuable data on your users and help make decisions based on this information.

Visual Tracking of User/Visitor Interaction

CrazyEgg is a great complimentary service to your existing analytics application allowing you to “visualize your visitors” with heatmaps and overlays.

1. http://crazyegg.com
2. Starts at $9/month

ClickTale allows you to record how visitors interact with your website. You can then watch these videos and see mouse movements, where visitors click, and how far they scroll on a given page. It’s also great for testing the usability of forms and seeing where visitors abandon within the process.

1. http://clicktale.com
2. Free and Paid Plans. Paid plans starting at $99/month

Usability Analysis & Testing

SilverBack allows you to run usability tests on your site and capture screen activity, record the user’s voice, and video the participant’s reactions as they navigate your application and website.

1. http://silverbackapp.com
2. Free Trial for 30 days and one-time purchase of $49.95

Web Analytics

Not much to say here. I think we’re all pretty familiar with Google Analytics, but I found AnalyticsApp a couple of days which is an iPhone app for Google Analytics. It’s $6, but well worth the price.

1. Google Analytics: http://google.com/analytics
2. Mobile App Available? Yes via http://analyticsapp.com
3. Real-time? No
4. Web-based
5. Pricing: Free

VisiStat is a web-based analytics service that tracks visitors in real-time. They also provide a slick geo-map that shows visitors who are on your site now and where they are located. They also offer additional services such as heat mapping and site monitoring to ping you if/when your site is not available.

1. VisiStat: http://visistat.com
2. Mobile App Available? Yes
3. Real-time? Yes
4. Web-based
5. Pricing: Starts at $29.95/month

Mint is a self-hosted option that is brought to us by @shauninman. The interface is clean and simple and functionality is extensible via “Peppers”. An additional advantage over other paid options is that you pay a license fee once instead of a recurring subscription.

1. Mint: http://haveamint.com
2. Mobile App Available? You can use iPhone Pepper to view your stats in a single-column format.
3. Real-time? Yes
4. Self-hosted
5. Pricing: $30 per site (one-time license fee)

Piwik is an open source option, so it’s free and you host it on your server. If you enjoy diving into the code, Piwik is a great option as it allows you to build custom analytics plug-ins. Overall, if you’re a developer it gives you much more flexibility than many, if not all, of the other analytics services.

1. http://piwik.org
2. Mobile App Available? Yes (available from independent contributors/developers)
3. Real-time? Yes
4. Self-hosted
5. Pricing: Free (open source)

Clicky is web-based analytics app that displays visitors in real-time. They have a free option available and paid plans depending on the number of websites you’d like to track and number of pageviews. They also provide a tab for Twitter where you can view mentions of your site via Twitter, links, tags, and Tweet types such as questions, Tweets with positive tones, and reTweets.

1. http://getclicky.com
2. Mobile App Available? Yes
3. Real-time? Yes
4. Web-based
5. Pricing: Free and Paid Plans Starting at $4.99/month

ChartBeat is a web-based analytics app that gives you real-time data on visitors to your website, provides alerts for site availability, and tracks your presence on Twitter. It’s beautifully designed and takes “dashboard” quite literally with gauges for page load time and displaying the number of people who are visiting your website.

1. http://chartbeat.com
2. Mobile App Available? No
3. Real-time? Yes
4. Web-based
5. Pricing: Free Trial and Starts at $9.95/month

No related posts.