10 Tools That Make My Life Worth Living

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Or, should I say… “tolerable” (smile)? I’m a man of simple pleasures and having tools that make my life simpler………..well………. need I say more? Here are my Top 10 Most Used, Most Favorite, tools in my box (in alphabetical order):

Clipboard Magic: Let’s face it, copying and pasting and then copying again and pasting again sucks. Office programs like Word allow you to save multiple clips on the board but if you are just in Windows, no such luck. With Clipboard Magic you just pop it up (I have it on quick launch) and it runs in the background. Every time you copy something it goes to the clipboard. You can have multiple boards and you can add or delete clips to and from boards. Ready to paste? Click “copy all to clipboard” and then paste once. Everything. And…it’s free (smile).

Duct Tape: Not exactly electronic but, what else do you know of can be used for wrapping, holding pieces together, patching anything, securing, taping, you name it? WD-40 came in close but can’t hold a candle to duct tape (smile).

Google Reader: There is simply no other way to keep up with advancements and introductions in Social or Business-Social Media without some sort of a reader. Having this allows me to be automatically notified of all new blog or otherwise postings from some of my favorite sources. I have reader on my iGoogle Home page and it shows me headlines of each article and the source, I can then read a short version of the article right there, and then go to the original web article if desired. No need to try to remember to check back to see if there is anything new. A reader is indispensable and easy to maintain. Follow folks for awhile and, if they suck, delete them (smile).

iGoogle Home Page: I love my iGoogle Home Page. For me, displayed in one easy to see and manage area I have: Gmail, multiple news feeds, weather, stocks, a yellow note pad, a calendar, and my Google Reader. Of course, I can search or access Google Docs or Google Sites. There are so many add-ons and widgets you can get, it’s tough to count them. Convenient and comprehensive.

LinkedIn Toolbar For Outlook: If you use Outlook and LinkedIn, you would be nuts not to add the LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook. It is as much an invaluable assist to Outlook as it is to LinkedIn as it allows you to grab email signature lines and create Outlook contacts and it will also merge and edit existing contacts. On the LinkedIn side, it allows you to send invites to incoming emails contacts without ever leaving Outlook. There is more, of course. Try it out.

PrintFriendly: I am hopelessly in love with paper and Canon and Weyerhauser are hopelessly in love with me (smile). I like the feel of paper. I like to take it places with me. I like seeing it on my desk. What I don’t like is printing out a web page and getting a lot of junk and a lot of extra pages. PrintFriendly takes care of that for me and will even allow me to create a .pdf of the page. Invaluable and, my favorite widget (smile)

TweetDeck: Seesmic is coming on fast but I still like TweetDeck. I just like the look and the feel of it. It is easy to use and the layout makes sense to me and it keeps getting better. Competition has a way of doing that (smile). What I really like is the ability to search on keyword Tweets from outside my immediate network as it helps me to find folks that seem to be worth following. What I don’t like is that I can only show 4 columns on my screen at any time. It would be nice if you could either stack them or make them narrower. Seesmic does at least have the ability to save searches and then bring them up as needed whereas with TweetDeck you either have to delete and add columns or move them left and right with those lame arrows (smile). Seesmic also has “drag and drop” on columns.

TweetLater: Man, do I ever love this thing (smile). TweetLater allows me to pre-write and schedule Tweets to go out on specific dates and times. What’s cool about it is that there are certain kinds of Tweets that, for me at least, this works very well for. I like to Tweet funny quotes, inspirational quotes, and links to pages on this site. So, what I do is pre-write 4-5 Tweets per day (usually on a Sunday) and then I am covered for the week regardless. I just spent 3 days fishing but the Tweets kept coming (smile). Then I just add a Tweet here and there during the day that is more time sensitive and pertinent. It’s free (everything I’m talking about in this post is free), easy to use, and ………. a life saver for a lame Tweeter like me (smile)! And, I will tell you that once I started using Tweetlater, page views on this site have since doubled. Got to love that (smile).

Xobni: “Inbox” spelled backwards is another tool for Outlook. It does a lot of things including integrating with LinkedIn, FaceBook, and some other Social Media sites but may be even better for tracking email conversation threads and general email searches. Very slick.

Zemanta: 90% of the links on this post come courtesy of Zemanta. Suggested articles below, same source. “Reblog” badge. Same. Let me tell you, this has saved me an enormous amout of time in terms of research and copying and pasting. And, it also works the same for my Gmail. What really surprised me is that just by installing the Firefox Browser version (there is also a WordPress.org plug-in), it integrated itself seamlessly into my WordPress.com account and .com accounts do not allow plug-ins that are not part of the WordPress package itself. Don’t ask me how this works ’cause I don’t care (smile).

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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