Your favorite weapons of choice

[Krisztina U]

Ronald T in this thread inspired me to do a post on tools and programs. I learned about three seemingly really cool solutions I never heard of. Which tools are you using frequently and why do you like them? Some of mine are below (all for Windows).

Time and project management: Toggl. They have a freemium model and I love how easy and nonintrusive it is to use and how the visualize the different projects/time spent.

Conference bridge and screensharing: Blue Jeans and join.me. I like join.me because it's very low cost and quick to set up (no lengthy and constant updates needed and I can set up a session in less than 30 seconds). I don't personally pay for Blue Jeans but get it through work and like it because it's very reliable and never let me down on audio quality or availability throughout 100s of conference calls.

Gmails and Salesforce.com: I LOVE Cirrus Insight. Pause. It's got to be one of the most innovative and customer friendly companies out there. They're constantly rolling out cool new features (without bugs! ), and if there ever is an issue, they resolve it within hours. For mass Salesforce data manipulation, uploads, etc. I use the Excel Enabler. It's not the prettiest or most intuitive tool out there, but it must've saved me 1000s of hours by now.

Media: For all my video watching needs, I use VLC media player. Night and day difference to clunky, slow, and resource-intense Windows Media Player. For images, I've been hooked on IrfanViewer since the 90s, and it's one of the first things I download after a fresh Windows installation. 

Text: Notepad++. It's free, lightweight, with tons of functionality.

Your turn!

[Isabelle Anne A]

I am so unadventurous when it comes to online tools/software/apps. All I use is MS Word, Google Docs, and gmail (for work). Plus an actual (offline) diary for any notes 

[Pandora H]

@Krisztina

Nice idea and thanks for sharing

Notepad++  - I second this. It's one heck of an awesome replacement for Windows Notepad. I have a special .txt file I use all day, every day, to handle temporary stuff that doesn't yet have a home.

Training / Support / Meetings - Teamviewer and Skype. I can record both for later usage.

Big Group Meetings - GoToMeeting (Clients account) - Not just for webinars!. Recent improvements have really impressed me. It's not free, but it does what it's supposed to, and more.

Video Tutorials - Screencast O Matic - A very cheap video recording tool that produces much clearer video then Camtasia. Glad I switched.

Email in One - Mozilla Thunderbird - Awesome email app for mulitple client / personal email account management. Handles most popular email protocols and services including Imap, Pop, Gmail, Yahoo and more. Can integrate with Google Calender.

Digital Documents - MS Office, Google Apps, Google Drive, Dropbox

Email Notification / IM - Trillian - Plug in your Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google IM accounts and email accounts. Used for client  / personal IM and lots of email notifications.

Desktop Widgets - Rainmeter - lots of things, including a time-zone widget that displays the time in several countries where team members are located. Note: personal configuration of Rainmeter widgets requires basic skill with coding.

Images - Photoshop and Illustrator CS4. Don't use it a lot for clients, but as a personal tool for all sorts of things, it rocks. I'm also a hobby designer of art and desktop widget themes. I've had Photoshop for more then a decade and can zip in and do quick stuff real fast. Oh, and I have WAY too many fonts.

[Garnor M]

Great thread Krisztina, thanks for sharing!

Some of us here are fans of Evernote. Admittedly, I often fall back to the old school paper notebook, but there are some cool features with Evernote such as the sync with mobile, etc.

[Lena E]

This is really great information!

I am a fan of MindMeister, as a great collaboration tool for brainstorming and presentations.  Also Remember the Milk, to help with organization and task-lists, which you can sync with your phone, email and with Evernote.

[Ronald T]

Lena, nice "recipe" for a mix of solutions. Have you ever tried XMind?

[Suzanne N]

I have a huge list of programs I use, but some of my favorite are:

Skype and Google Voice for calls, and video conferencing.

Asana and Mavinlink for Project Management

Just learning Mavinlink and it has a bunch of cool stuff.

Resophnotes for my note stuff which intergrates with Simplenotes online, so I can access my notes on my phone, tablet or computer no  matter when I am. It nicely syncs.

Dropbox for using with customers who have big files

Google Docs of course 

Gmail

Excel (Microsoft Office)

Freshbooks for bookkeeping etc.

Picasa 3 for editing and optimizing images for websites

Keypass for a password keeper

ScreenRecorder - For making desktop videos. It works quite well and it is free.

Want to me continue?

[Pandora H]

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@Suzanne N wrote:

I have a huge list of programs I use, but some of my favorite are:

Skype and Google Voice for calls, and video conferencing.

Asana and Mavinlink for Project Management

Just learning Mavinlink and it has a bunch of cool stuff....

---

Suzanne, I've been stuck setting up Asana for a sorta new client (6 months isn't really new, but...). The management team loves it. Personally, I'm not super thrilled, but that's no suprise.

What might you be able to tell me about Mavenlink that would make it worth my time to add as a recomendation for Project Management tools, specifically Internet Marketing Agency clients?

[Suzanne N]

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@Pandora H wrote:

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@Suzanne N wrote:

I have a huge list of programs I use, but some of my favorite are:

Skype and Google Voice for calls, and video conferencing.

Asana and Mavinlink for Project Management

Just learning Mavinlink and it has a bunch of cool stuff....

---

Suzanne, I've been stuck setting up Asana for a sorta new client (6 months isn't really new, but...). The management team loves it. Personally, I'm not super thrilled, but that's no suprise.

What might you be able to tell me about Mavenlink that would make it worth my time to add as a recomendation for Project Management tools, specifically Internet Marketing Agency clients?

---

Pandora,

I am still learning my way around Mavenlink, but it has quite a bit of integration for Google, Quickbooks and other programs such as Zendesk and my client is real excited about it has Gantt charts, It is fairly easy to learn, mails tasks like most project management software, It has time tracking and many other features. I suggest you just look up reviews on it and take a look at it. As I get better with it I can give you more info.

[John T]

Another Notepad++ fan here. An endlessly useful tool.