Cool Toyz: Free Online Productivity Tools

Lorena O’EnglishWashington State University Librariesoenglish@wsu.eduYahoo/MSN/AIM IM: wsulorena

Productivity: What do we want to do?

• Organize and manage your own stuff

• Work collaboratively

• Use graphics

• ???

Decision Rules for Change

• Is there a need?

• Does the tool solve that need?

• Does it work for you/your workflow?

• Future thinking…

Organizing and Managing Stuff

• Evernote http://www.evernote.com/en/

EverNote

• New metaphor: from documents on files to notes on an endless tape.

• Can save text, MS Office items, images, clips from webpages and email, and more; saves link to online source.

• Notes are categorized using tags

• Find by date, category(s) or search

• Customizable, via template forms that can be shared with others

• Can email notes to others

• Automatic backup (5 most recent)

Right-click on the email or highlighted text to add to EN

EverNote Tools

EverNote ”Universal” Clipper

Clipping integrated into IE and Firefox browsers and email clients via bookmarklets and/or browser add-ons.

Upcoming web-based add-on: storing, tagging,searching, and sharing.

Working Collaboratively: Sharing

• Save and share Web sites via social bookmarking services: Bookmarks accessible anywhere Social - searchable, traceable, sharable, sendable Bookmarklets allow easy saving Archivable

Del.icio.uswww.furl.net

Librarything: http://www.librarything.com/

Working Collaboratively: Sharing

• Documents, Spreadsheets, etc.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets• http://docs.google.com

Zoho• http://zoho.com

Use Graphics

• Fotoflexor -  http://fotoflexer.com/start.php • Phixr – http://www.phixr.com

3hrs to upload to Flickr, PhotoBucket, etc. or download

• Picnik - http://www.picnik.com/ For immediate uploading/downloading

• Pixenate - http://pixenate.com/• SnipShot - http://snipshot.com/

• Thumbalizr - http://www.thumbalizr.com Creates thumbnails from screen or page; resizable

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A little tweaking…

Cautions:

http://spokesmanreview.com/features/story.asp?ID=211006

Cautions: Who’s Holding your IP?

http://mydigimedia.com/2007/08/09/who_owns_what_media_v20.html

Implementation:Push, not Pull

• Modeling and training (Patrons too!)• Make it easy• Automatic application opening• Create a *useful* home page with links to what you

use• Use RSS/syndication • Consistency!

• …watch out for money/time pits

Questions???

http://wiki.wsu.edu/wsuwiki/Productivity_Tools

Gilding the Molly…