Enhance productivity with these free tools
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In any kind of field, daily workloads vary and it’s particularly tough when you’re barely out of the cul-de-sac we all lovingly refer to as the Weekend. You can practically tell from the your In tray as you approach your office cube or office e-mail inbox whether your week’s going to be a ‘light and manageable’ or ‘hair-pulling desk pandemonium.’ Well, we can’t have that last one, can we? Here are a handful of tools and services some of us here at SEOP.com use you to help us get things organized and done before work dares to siphon off what’s left of our sanity.
Google Docs
By now you’re either using Google Docs or at least have heard of it, but for the uninitiated: it’s the search engine giant’s suite of cloud-based word processing apps. Though it mirrors some of the Microsoft Office’s features (albeit rudimentary), two of Google Docs’ finer features point to the right direction: direct storage on the cloud and real-time collaboration. With it onboard, you can write documents, spreadsheets, presentation, create forms and draw or you can upload your own document and file for easy sharing and editing with colleagues online. You can specify who gets access and editing privileges on your documents and all of you can make changes to a single document in real-time.
Windows Live SkyDrive
Originally introduced as the Windows Live Folders back in 2007, Windows Live SkyDrive is Microsoft’s free online storage service. It offers a generous 25GB storage space and you can upload almost any type of file which you can easily organize into folders. It’s purely cloud-based so you don’t need to downloading a native application into your machine though you’d need a Windows Live ID to be able to sign in and use the service. It’s a really useful storage solution for when you have to deal with your netbook’s paltry capacity or for making sure your productivity won’t cut short even when the network or your office computer decides to ruin your week.
NowRelevant
NowRelevant is a search engine that, unlike the Googles, Bings and Yahoos of the Internet, only presents you the relevant information published online within the last 14 days. It includes a slider to help you indicate how far back in the two-week period you would like to search through. It’ll also probably be best suited for conducting online research for content creation among others as its algorithm filters out company sites and clutter intended for improving search rankings.
ooVoo
The communication tool ooVoo comes with text and video capabilities in addition to your standard voice and chat features. On the free side, it’ll let you do the usual two-way videocalls even with non-ooVoo users and you can even directly call both landline and mobile phones from 18 countries (for two cents per minute). You can also record and send one-minute video messages, send files at up to 5MB at a time and create a video chat room you can embed on your site. ooVoo also offers several paid plans which allows up to six participants per call, video messages at five minutes, video effects and sending of files up to 25MB at a time.
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RSpears @ July 19, 2010
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