With the beginning of the new year and the shift in focus now in effect, it’s become more and more apparent that having the right tools are necessary if I intend on maximizing my efficiency and productivity, in general. How better to achieve this than to turn over my list of tools to the community?!
In my general day I use a ton of programs and systems to manage the flow of info to try and make this as constant a two-way process as possible. Please feel free to use this list as advice and also to advise me on ways to improve what I have going on here.
Blogging
Qumana
Qumana is a free desktop blog editor that is pretty comparable to both of the other editing programs I use. It’s full-featured and includes a nice drag-and-drop interface for items found on the web to be easily published to your blog. While the feature is quite convenient, I find myself rarely taking advantage of it. For bloggers who use a lot of imagery from around the web, this tool may come in very handy, I simply don’t fall into that category. The other reason I tend to shy away from Qumana is the serious strain it places on my system resources. Regardless of use, it seems to bottom out my resources anytime it’s running in the foreground or background.
Windows Live Writer
Windows Live Writer, I believe, is still in beta version and is Microsoft’s foray into free desktop blog editing. All-in-all it’s a great product. The only downside I have with is that it does not run in the background, forcing me to re-open the program anytime a new idea pops into my head. This particular feature is nearly a make-or-break deal for me as I need to put ideas down as soon as they enter my mindset or I’m guaranteed to lose focus and possibly forget the idea all together. Introducing this feature and removing some of the glitches notorious in beta products and this could turn into my de facto editor.
Performancing
Performancing has been pretty well solidified as the bloggers preferred editor. Full-featured and free, this program actually comes in the form of a Firefox extension. All-around I have had the most success with this editor as it allows me to explore topics while writing about them. The only downside is that it does require Firefox to be running which, on rare occasions, can be one more step than is necessary.
On a side note, Performancing has recently been purchased, the original blog editor will remain as is but will soon be re-branded Scribefire.
Dark Room
Not a blog editor at all, I find Dark Room to be one of the most useful programs in my arsenal. It’s a small word processor that offers little to no options beyond typing and saving documents. The benefit to Dark Room is that it works in full-screen mode with green font on a black background providing the perfect solution for when focusing becomes a priority. Generally speaking I can find a distraction anywhere and Dark Room is great for keeping my focus on the writing.
Bookmarks
Del.icio.us
As with many bloggers, I’ve been using del.icio.us for over a year now. For anyone unfamiliar with the website, it’s a social bookmarking site for sharing bookmarks that provides a simple solution to sharing links of interest. Unfortunately, it’s remained pretty stagnate since Yahoo purchased it over a year ago. It’s a boring, relatively ugly site but it does it’s job well. My particular bookmarks can be found at del.icio.us/bendi.
Google Notebook
Google Notebook doesn’t have nearly the popularity that del.icio.us has and is relatively unknown even to Google power-users, but I find it to be pretty useful tool. The overall idea is similar to the former Yahoo property but allows for quite a higher degree of control. I use the Notebook to organize websites for specific projects or plans and choose to share only particular notebooks with particular colleagues.
Feed Readers
Feed Demon
Feed Demon is a desktop reader that I have used off-and-on for the last two years. While not free, it seems to be the top-of-the-line when it comes to feed aggregators. It also has the benefit of being owned by Newsgator and allows for syncing between your desktop reader and your online newsgator account. For my purposes, I use the Feed Demon/Newsgator combination to follow career-specific information such as marketing, social media, blogging, and similar news. This allows me to read through related news items without being distracted by all of the unrelated feeds.
Google Reader
Google Reader is my preferred reader for all feeds. While previously sitting on Google’s back-burner, the recent updated version has hit the spot and successfully pulled me away from my previous favorite, Bloglines. The intuitive setup and ease-of-use allows me to casually surf my feeds in a river-of-news fashion keeping me up-to-date while allowing a fair amount of control at the same time.
(to be continued)
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