Hello All!
As some of you may know, I was fortunate enough to have an interview with New Media Manitoba last week and sit down with Kevin Hnatiuk, Louie Ghiz and Kathy Driscoll. Even if I don't get the job it was worth it to pick their collective brains about what is happening in Manitoba with the Digital Interactive industry. Exciting things!!!
Facebook is earning more and more respect from me as I see it connecting more people in our community, locally and globally. Did you know 16 550 620 Canadian's are on Facebook? That's almost 63% of our population. Just a personal example below, without a social tool such as Facebook how would my accountant, brother, cousin who lives in BC, and close friend who is so busy with her own career be able to offer support and advice to this silly girl? BTW Thanks guys!
In the interview I feel I talked a lot about my web-foo(web kung-foo, translation for my mother) as a practice but not that much about the weapons I use. Just like BabyDoll in SuckerPunch with her samurai sword and hand gun I have a few weapons of choice when it comes to projects.
Evernote is a FANTASTIC app shown to me by the talented Ms. Lori Dyck of Wildfire Online. It revolutionized the way I take notes! Evernote is an online app or Saas that helps you make, store and organize 'notes'. Pre-evernote I was using the .rtf. The plain text file I would keep on a project or client with 'notes' and upload it online to my website server so it was available to me anywhere. This app has streamlined this process. It allows you to make:
A text note.
A picture note.
A VOICE note! (Recording things for later is the equivalent of taking down a giant robot samurai)
A web page Clipping.
A twitter clipping with notes.
It also has a tagging system that allows you to tag every note so you can organize your notes and search through them quickly later. Storing them online I am able to take notes with my mobile and it syncs directly with my online account, giving me access to them from any computer.
I never hide my Google love! They are creating such fundamental developments right now that I must tip my hat to them in general. Google Docs is a fantastic online alternative to Microsoft Word and Excel. It allows to to create:
A written Document
A Spreadsheet
A Presentation (Power Point)
A Form (to fill out, great for clients)
A Drawing
A Collection (a way to organize the files)
These documents are stored online and you are able to share them via email with other people. Very helpful when communicating and collaborating on a project with multiple users. It allows you to import and export documents easily and in multiple formats, you get free file hosting(within reason) and you can store Gmail attachments sent to your documents automatically. Other apps I use are Google Calendar, Google Reader (very helpful with research and development), and of course the all mighty Gmail. All the hype with Google+ I have an account but have not yet explored it's capabilities. I don't see how it could be bad as they had all of Facebook's social networking mistakes to learn from. I have a feeling it will soon be an essential tool.
Mail Chimp is my favorite email campaign program. Again it is online and FREE up to 2000 subscribers which is normally for our purposes enough. I find this helpful not just for the subscriber database and the ability to send updates to my readers automatically but it alerts me to their birthday, which is a great way for you to contact someone, wish them a genuine happy birthday and touch base.
So there is my round up of organizational weapons I use every day to help me beat the enormous monster of a project I am currently battling.
What do you use?
