Free Resources for Personal Productivity
“You have to find the right tool for the job” is a little phrase that I say often. I am constantly on the lookout for better tools. Finding the right tool for any job is just something I have always been fanatical about.
After 3 months of searching, I still haven’t found the right set of tools to stay organized, productive, and sync’d up. That’s to say, I haven’t yet found the right combination of tools that meet my needs, which are somewhat specific - I manage a LOT of information and data.
Up until a few years ago, these tools and online applications are the types of things that I spent time creating for my clients and for my own use. But with an ever-growing blog community, these tools are popping up everywhere in the form of add-ons, plugins, extensions and such. I think someday the blog will be our personal operating system - each as unique as its user, a la MySpace perhaps?
Okay, back on topic….
During my never-ending search for better options, I ran across this post by Christina Laun that discusses open source resources. The list is geared toward writers who publish online, but many of her choices are great for any of us who are working to stay organized and be more productive.
A few of these I have already tried and didn’t care for them, a don’t fit my needs to start with and there are a couple on the list that I like and already use. One of those is OpenOffice, an excellent alternative to the Microsoft Office Suite of products (which will soon be obsolete, in my opinion). OpenOffice Writer is FREE and in some ways even even better than Microsoft Word.
BTW, “open source” just means that the software developer has made the source code available for anyone to use and modify. Also, this generally means that the software is given away for free, at minimal cost, or for donations.
I have adapted Christina’s list, visited the web site of each entry, and will be blogging on each of the tools that I choose to try out. At the end, I have also included a couple of other resources that I recently started using. So, here the list:
- yWriter: A word processor designed especially for writers.
- wikidPad: A great little tool for quickly and easily gathering ideas and notes wiki style.
- TiddlyWiki: Another wiki style tool allows you to take notes ideas anywhere you have a connection to the Internet. You can even link and organize your entries using the program.
- WordIt: A small word processor that might be good for college students or business writers.
- JaLingo: Cool, a desktop dictionary.
- GNU Aspell: An open source spell checker that you can use by itself or with another application.
- WordWeb: A dictionary and thesaurus program.
- GNU Style and Diction: This program makes it easy to check your style and diction
- Bibus: A program to help you cite your sources, makes it easy to organize and maintain your citations.
- Research Assistant: If you’re doing research for your next project you can organize your findings with this helpful research assistant. You can keep all your information in one place so you can easily access it later.
- Sonar: Getting published can be an uphill battle, but Sonar can make it a little easier. It helps you to track your submissions and who you’re waiting to hear back from.
- EverNote: EverNote can be a great way to capture, store and organize information that you’re using in your writings. Best of all, you can use it from anywhere, even on your phone.
More to come soon.
If you are into Wiki style editors, you will like these next two applications which are basically wiki-style editors. Personally, I don’t really care for that sort of application. These two don’t particularly work for me, but I left them in because are very good tools in general.