I want to share with you some of my favorite tools that I use on a regular basis. These tools can help the business owner that finds themselves on the computer for a majority of their day, or even the occasional web browser looking to decrease the amount of time taken to accomplish a handful of tasks. Either way, I hope you take sometime to use them, if only once every other day. It’s great learning about programs and what they do to help with you next latest and greatest conversation, but if you use them and benefit from them, you’ll still be able to have that conversation while reaping the benefits.

1. Egg Timer

At times, we find ourselves becoming distracted from the task at hand and checking the new email, or the new comment on Facebook. This not only creates the problem of accomplishing a task, but also sends your mind in different directions, furthering you from this goal. You might look at Egg Timer as just a stop watch that does nothing more than keep time, but it’s more than that. If you use it right, it can help you become more productive. Say for instance, I need to get an hour long task finished sometime today. So comes that time, and I decide to start working on it. Now before I start, I open up Egg Timer in a new tab in the browser and set it for the time needed. By setting this timer I am allowing myself to know the amount of time taken and also helping realize I am “on the clock,” so to speak. So check it out, it’s free, and most importantly it will help you become more productive. Oh, and when the time runs out — you’ll know!

2. Jing

If you didn’t know about this already, you can capture a screen shot (or picture) of what you can see on your screen at all times, pressing the print screen button on your keyboard. While this is a great tool, what happens when you only need a portion of the screen shot, and not the entire thing? Jing allows you to highlight this portion of your screen and save it as a picture. Rather than opening up your graphics program and editing it to size, it is taken care of instantly.  While very neat in itself, it also allows you to take movies of the activity on your screen that you want to share with someone. So for instance, if you are making tutorial videos on how to use a certain program that you want to share with your colleagues (rather than resorting to showing them in person), you can capture the video and then share it with them. Although there are many programs that are similar, and it’s not a new technology by any means, Jing is by far the simplest, easiest screen capturing program I have came across.

3. Fireshot

Ok you might be saying, well I want to take a screen shot of an entire web page — something that extends farther than the viewable area. Fireshot is a Firefox add-on that allows you to do just that. When you are on a website, simply click the Fireshot button on your browser and it will give you a few options including, snap a photo of the viewable area, or the entire website. It has helped us share various websites with clients, sending them a photo of a website, rather than asking them to go there themselves.

4. Bubbl.us

If you haven’t had a chance to mind map, there is a free mind mapping ser

vice online at Bubble.us. Mind mapping can help you brainstorm and organize your thoughts into a visual format, rather than the typical roman numeral abbreviations. It’s f

ast, easy, and

helps you brainstorm without thinking about formatting your thoughts; press enter for a new category, and tab to create within the same category.

5. K7

Although I didn’t understand the potential of getting a voicemail service, it can be very beneficial (plus it doesn’t hurt being a free voicemail service). K7 gives you a free phone number that function

s as a voicemail, fax, or one or the other. They also allow you to create your own personal greeting. Having a voicemail can allow you to post your phone

number online, without the regret of receiving calls from spammers. Of course you will still receive those calls, but the number they are calling isn’t your cell phone number, and you can choose to call them back or not. And lastly, K7 allows you to check your messages on the phone, or even through email as they send the voicemail in an audio file (which you can opt out if you would like) or fax through an image. Brilliant.

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