Web Tools I Don’t Want to Work Without
I’ve got a few tools that I probably don’t mention enough. These are the things that let me work faster, better and, at least appear, smarter. They’re not the sexy, but less useful stuff, like Twitter, etc. These are the day in day out go to services that you’d be a fool not to use:
- Skype – how the heck did I live without this? Video conference, the internet as your telecom company, with chat. Seriously, why would you pay for phone service. I often have an open line with someone half way around the world for an hour or two at a time as we sort out issues. This is great for family use as well. My aunt is using it to video conference with her daughter in Munich on a daily basis, allowing her to be a part of her grandchildren’s lives even though she’s multiple timezones away in New York.
- Webex – it’s not free, but it’ll save you more than enough to pay for itself in increased employee productivity and in travel savings. NameMedia uses LiveMeeting, which I’m just getting used to, which is somewhat similar, but I’ve got to admit it, I’d make much more use of Webex. The ability to share desktops using their Meeting Center is far superior, allowing you easily hand off control and do just about anything on a coworkers computer is excellent. Pair the basic service with Support Center if you want to be able to work unattended on remote machines for long periods of time, or if you’re doing a lot of remote customer support.
- Carbonite – I don’t have an IT support staff for my home office. I do backup my files to a remote drive, but that’s as often as not still sitting in my home office, hence it’s not a real offsite back up. For $49.95 a year, or less with a multi-year subscription, you can automatically backup everything to Carbonite’s servers and never again worry about accidental deletes, hard drive failures, theft or disaster. (disclaimer: I’m not currently using Carbonite, but it’s going to be added to my services shortly. Right now I do a secondary back up to my work computer.
- Avast Antivirus Home Edition – I use the free version of Avast at home. I really hated McAfee and their never ending quest to separate me from my dollars. It’s excellent when you team it with the next item.
- Ad-Aware – Ad-Aware keeps me protected and removes any nasty spyware, adware crap that I may pick up as I wander the net. It’s one of the first things I install on any machine I sit in front of.
- Gmail – Nothing handles mail like gmail. I’d love to forward my corporate stuff through gmail, but I’d get my hand slapped eventually.
Honorable Mention:
I’ve just started using Flickr, and I can already see it’s probably going to become one of those go to apps that I’ll be using all the time. Similarly, I suspect I’ll be saying the same about the Amazon S3 service, as it gives me a great remote home with ubiquitous accessibility for my files.
So what are the tools you wouldn’t want to work without?
5 thoughts on “Web Tools I Don’t Want to Work Without”
You like Avast, huh? I used to have Norton installed but that caused more errors than not fue to Norton infesting every file on my computer system… so after seeking advice, I downloaded ClamWin. It’s open source, too:
http://www.clamwin.com
I backup my files and emails with a very easy to use software called Titan Backup, the destination is a 500gb WD harddisk, but the company stated that an online feature is under work also. Give it a free trial here.
I also got my hands on a 30% discount coupon from them, during the order process enter this coupon:NEOB-M5VL
@ariherzog – I’ll give that a shot on the next computer I set up. I’m always looking for good solutions.
I switched from AVG to Avast for one simple reason, my IT guys at work swear by Avast. They’re the absolute best at what they do, so I take their recommendation without question.
Hi Mark,
This is Jonah with Yugma. If you’re looking for a “can’t live with out tool” that is easy to use, cost effective and reliable for web conferencing visit http://www.yugma.com and try us out. Yugma is a Java-based web conferencing and online meeting service that is for everyone – Mac, Windows and Linux users.
Our Personal version is FREE forever to use for desktop sharing and allows you to invite up to 10 attendees at anytime. After signing up, you’ll be able test drive the Yugma Professional for 15 days. If you like our approach to instant online meetings, you can use our Pro service for only $9.95 a month.
Note: Don’t forget your guests can join a Yugma meeting using our View Only viewer – no Yugma download is required. Guests can select Join a Session on our website then select the View Only button.
If you have any comments or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you (email to: info@yugma.com). Many thanks!
Thanks for the tip Jonah, I’ll be testing Yugma within the next week and will post a review.