So I’m happy to announce my project NextAction.ie is released to it’s second 1.1 version. I worked quite late yesterday to get that ready. Thanks to my really amazing team!

What’s new:
- Calendar. Which means you can review tasks in past and in future.
- Closed tasks. You can review tasks that has been already done.
- Someday Maybelist. My favorite. I can put task in Someday Maybe and don’t worry about it any more
- Specify Date. I can put task for some date in future
- There is even more contexts (before there were only 4 of them and I always put everything in “errands”)
- Design is improved for IE, Safari and FF
- Timezone in Preferences. Doesn’t need much of explanation
- UserName implemented (previous use of only e-mails didn’t make people happy)
- Added Terms of Service and Privacy Policy at last
- Tasks can be Deleted (in case it is not important any more)

And best of all – you can try it for FREE! Please try it and give me your comments.

Cheers! Have to go and buy some red wine and get drunk.

Just met with my financial adviser assigned to our company by M50 courses. I completed Accounting for Small Businesses course last year, but I still feel very, very insecure about my ways of expressing financial projections. He actually told me that I can’t put balance sheet, profit/loss and cash flow in one table (*^_^*). Next time I will ask my accountant to create those…

There is very few sites in Ireland, where you can search for new software projects. Even thought there is so much online stuff going around, it is hard to find new leads.

I have been looking at www.freelanceireland.ie for a while, but small jobs and projects appears there only once in half month. And there is not much alternatives for this site. Everything happens through connections so networking happens to be the most important thing for IT companies. It doesn’t matter how good specialist you are or how good sites you have developed. Unless you really don’t know somebody, you won’t get any projects.

Should I say that people won’t trust each other in Ireland?

I keep going to those networking events (though I’m more IT person and it really makes me nervous). It’s unbelievable how much networking events there are in Dublin. Even if you just look at Dublin Enterprise Board site, there is Link! and Plato and Enterprise Women etc. And people keep making events just to network… Does it do any good? Sometimes. But you really have to find the ones that suit your business best. It takes time and money. There is very few that doesn’t cost anything.

I found Open Coffee, Techludd, Irish Web Conference and Enterprise Women networking the best for us.

Today I reviewed my product before release and my designer accidentally noticed few issues with IE. So now I’m wandering – can I install IE on my computer (and different versions of it) without installing Windows VM (yes, I’m using MacBook)? And I actually have to upgrade to FF3. Been lazy doing that for a while.

Jamie on Twitter gave me link to nice site http://browsershots.org/ however it gives only like 2 screen shots and then expects you to pay for it.

Anyone knows any cross-browser testing sites or strategies?

Actually it’s so strange that some buttons don’t work on IE. Works fine on Safari and Firefox. I’m confused. Should do some more monkey testing on it…

I really wanted to go out today evening, but I wasn’t able to..

So I wanted to eat something sweet, but there was nothing on my sweet shelf. It is very important to never give up when you really want something to light your day.

I took some help from daughter and we cooked butter cookies.

This recipe is very easy. Everyone can make it.

You take 250g white flour and mix it with 100g sugar. Then you add 200g unsalted butter and form a dough. If it is too sticky, add more flour. If you like you can add cocoa or some nuts to it. Decorate cookies with different things such as confetti, food colors, poppy seeds, nuts, cinnamon, sugar etc. My daughter really enjoys decorating them. Put on the pan and in the oven on 200 C for about 10 min.

The best thing about this recipe is – you can eat the dough, because there is no eggs in it

Kids love to play with dough and can do it for hours (of course after that nothing is left to cook).

I got a nice prize yesterday from my squash practice. I hit the metal pole right above squash court and 3 extra balls came out. Should hit there next time again.

Here is photo of me and balls

I was going to write today link to my previous blogs (one was our family blog, another was blog which was about our travel to Japan), however they don’t seem like working

Problem is with our server. We changed from SevenL to Amazon few days ago and not all things are sorted out yet… But I will post as soon as I get them working.

I read Skip Beat! manga yesterday. It is quite strange concept that most of the people think animation (animes) and comics (mangas) are only for children. This however is completely opposite in Japan. Most of the mangas and animes are for grown ups. You can actually see people in metro or stations reading mangas.

Mangas and animes was one of the reason I traveled to Japan in the first place I just wanted to see – is the life like that really exist? For me it is like reading books in the evening before sleep. You should really try out.

The best anime I have seen so far is “5 Centimeters Per Second”. It has beautiful animation and sad love story. Only after watching few times you can really understand what it is about.

Here is list of sites I review regularly :

Girl Geek Dinners site as I’m geek and I’m proud of it

TechLudd event doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it rulz

Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Enterprise Board event calendar is good if you want to keep track of new cheap training courses and networking events

Yahoo events – all events in Dublin (if you search for them)

Dun Laoghaire events which are not related to business or tech, but at least they are good for going out on weekends

Digital Hub – sometimes there is some goods events

Enterprise Ireland – different enterprise events, some of them might be interesting

Open Coffee meeting for web and business people like me I haven’t been to them though (I always send my husband)

Irish Business Women Forum – this is the best forum in Ireland so far. I think it’s much more better than boards.ie

Zircol network – some events like First Tuesday comes from this site. Thought it is really hard to navigate and I never made it through registration… Maybe my mind is different from other people using it?

LinkedIn – in case you need to find person and know more about it or maybe somebody can introduce person to you… Very great site and a lot of useful groups too.

IrishDev – it’s not working at the moment, but it will start working soon (I know owner). Before it went down, there was the best calendar of all events!

Tester Tested Blog – did I told you that software testing is one of my hobbies? I break stuff with my bad aura, I don’t even need to touch it

Dublin blog. It is rather nice blog of all the events and nice pictures. It really keeps you informed about things around Dublin

NextAction – this is my project, that’s why I access it so often. And actually it helps me organise tasks. I can’t wait for new release of it this week or next, because a lot of things still annoys me..

I’m starting this beautiful blog with my first post.

Let me explain the reason, looks and feeling about it.

First, I decided to write blog about month ago in Girl Geek Dinners meeting. However only today I got somebody who installed WordPress on my server (I could do it myself, but was too lazy).

Reason is very simple – everybody writes blog and I love to write so why shouldn’t I? I willn’t write too often (at least I don’t expect to). I really need writing mood for stuff like that.

Looks of blog – this is maple trees design. Autumn is one of my favorite seasons. In Latvia, my home country, there is city Sigulda, which lies on the hills. And hills are covered with maple trees. You can imagine the sight on the autumn. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

So that’s about the end of my first blog post