Randy Stuppard – Common Sense Marketing

There are many tools on the internet to make our lives easier. Below is a list of the top tools I use every day. And as the saying goes "The best things in life are free!"

Email – Thunderbird. With the number of addons it has, I don’t need to go elsewhere. And it has a smaller ‘footprint’ than Outlook. (That means its uses a lot less computing power.)

• Google iCal to integrate with Google Calendar
• Lightning for my own calendar
• Signature Switch. Depending on who I am talking to, I can change my signature

Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Forms - Google Docs
Everything is in one place. I can get to these these files when I’m travelling or at home, as long as I have internet access. I can share these files with others in either "view only" or "edit mode" And I can further arrange them in their own folders. Who needs Microsoft or a network? Forms is particularly powerful as I can provide a link in an email or on a site to capture information or conduct a survey. (I mostly use SurveyMonkey to take care of my surveys)

Password Keeper and Generator – Robofom
This nifty tool keeps all my logins in one place. You click on the item in the drop down menu,  Roboform opens up the site and enters your login information all in one smooth motion. It has a password generator (no more using the same password everywhere!) and is itself password protected. I have the mobile version so I can carry easily it with me on a thumb drive.

Internet Browser – Flock
The addons, speed and small footprint makes this browser a must have.

Image and Picture Editing – Gimp
While not as powerful as Photoshop, it’ll do 80% or more of the same types of editing.

More Image Manipulation – Jing & Fireshot
Jing is a program you install onto your bottom tool bar and Fireshot is a browser addon. You can "Jing" anything that appears on your screen. It’s like taking a picture. Then you add arrows, highlights, or text to aid in your conversation. I use Fireshot when I want to take a picture of the whole screen – even though most of it may be below what I can see on the monitor. Then I add arrows etc before saving the edited image. There are times when I use the two together because I like some of the features in Jing better than Fireshot.

Phone  – Skype
Free for computer to computer communication, and less then a few cents per minute for calls to landlines or cell phones. It also doubles as my IM (instant messenger). The really cool thing I like is the Skype addon to my browser. When I go surfing, and if there is a phone number on the website, I can click on it and Skype will dial it. How lazy is that?

And there you have it. Short and to the point. These are the tools I used today.

Later…
Randy Stuppard

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