The creative world has, traditionally, not been a friend of Monday mornings. 

It is hard to wake up on Mondays feeling the "Energy, Work, and Power" that leads to clean, succinct ideas that translate into usable concepts.  For example, Industrial Luxury hates scheduling meetings on Monday mornings.  In fact, we like it if there are no meetings on Monday at all. 

This does not mean, however, that we are afraid of work or Mondays in general; far from it.  We see it as a good time to plan the rest of the week, get our minds around the notion of, "creativity on demand," and use the time to keep projects already moving forward on track.

I would like to use this opportunity, first thing this morning, to suggest a couple of online, browser-based applications that I personally use to streamline the amount of "software clutter" on my own computer.  I find that there are very good, well-designed tools available to creatives that A) can be implemented "cheaply" (I consider "free" to be another word for "cheaply"), and B) allow one to move and flow without the constraints of heavy licensing and TOS contracts that tie themselves to a particular computer (or brand).

This is by no means exhaustive or complete... what do I look like? @Mashable?  These are working for me:

Zoho - Productivity and Collaboration Apps

Bizroof - Web-Based CRM

Drop.io - Simple file-sharing and faxing.  (Great for sending drawings that are too large for email.)

Box.net - File storage.  Keep spec sheets, vendor catalogs, etc. handy online instead of filling up your hard drive.

If you have more than one of you hanging around, then, for $50/year, set up your company with:

Google Apps  (you will need your own domain name (like, http://industrial-luxury.com, to use this) 

If you are solo, then the tools you can use with your Gmail account on Google work perfectly fine.  (Docs, Calendar, Spreadsheet, etc)

Someday, I am going to tell you what (free) applications I have loaded onto a USB drive that allows me to take my whole design studio with me wherever I go. (hint: check out Open Office to get things started.  And, look closely at PortableApps.

These are basics many of you probably already know.  I realize that.  But it is Monday after all, and we like to start slow.