If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, its rare to find something that is “FREE.” However, I know for many households and/or small businesses, it is not economically feasible to pay large sums of money for software that makes life easier. As such, I’ve put together a small list of some of best tools I’ve found on the Internet to help keep your life and/or business manageable!
By no means is this a “complete” list of available tools. Rather, it highlights some of the tools I’ve had success using.
Email and Calendars:
- Google Gmail and Google Calendar
- awesome spam filtering and the ability to report messages as “spam” or “not spam”
- customizable “rules” (aka filters) and color-coded labels to help you manage your inbox (see their “Ninja” article)
- a 7Gb+ storage capacity and built-in email search capabilities
- ability to check other email accounts, and POP/IMAP access (for email clients such as Microsoft Outlook)
- Sync clients for Outlook, Blackberry, and iPhone allow you to keep your mail and calendars up-to-date
- integration with other Google programs: Chat (Instant Messaging), Talk (Voice-over-IP), Docs (office productivity), Picasa (photo sharing), Sites (websites), and YouTube (video sharing)
- Windows Live
- spam filtering (in my experience, it wasn’t as good as Google’s)
- large storage capacity
- integration with Windows Messenger (IM) and Microsoft Outlook, Spaces (websites), Calendars, and SkyDrive (online network storage)
- Note: if you decide to change email addresses or providers, you can ONLY forward Windows Live email to other Windows Live addresses
- Yahoo!
- I got so much Spam to my email addresses here, that I discontinued my account!
- Pretty much the same functionality as Windows Live
- Google Apps Standard
- Brand Google’s services with your own domain name – “mail.myfamilyname.com”
- Configure up to 50 users to use mail, docs, calendar, etc.
- As mentioned in my previous post, The Digital Family, this is a great way to bring everyone together on the same platform and facilitate sharing. You may particularly enjoy the ability to share calendars with each other!
Documents and Office Productivity:
- OpenOffice.org – This is about as close to an install of Microsoft Office on your computer as it gets!
- Office Live – Microsoft’s offering provides branded email (you@yourdomain.com), document sharing, and free website hosting (with WYSIWYG editing) for up to 5 users (free – you can add more for a price).
- Google Apps Standard – Google’s offering provides branded email, document sharing (and online, client-less editing), free website hosting (with WYSIWYG editing) for up to 50 users.
NOTE: Here is a great blog which does a feature-by-feature comparison of Google Apps and Office Live
- CutePDF Writer – Creates a “pdf printer” which allows you to create PDF documents on the fly
- PDFCreator – A few more features than CutePDF, including encryption.
Photos, and Music:
- PIXresizer – Allows you to reduce the size of your digital photos (for emailing, websites, etc)
- Google Picasa – Make quick, easy edits to photos, organize them, and post them to a web album (1Gb) to share with your friends/family
- Flickr – Allows you to upload photos to online albums for easy sharing/organization. Also allows you to geotag your pictures on a map, make quick edits (using Picnik), and use your photos to make gifts (photo books, pints, cards, etc). This service also integrates seamlessly with just about every social networking site
- Media Monkey – Free version allows you to manage your music library without much hassle
- Blackberry Media Sync – I put this on the list as it allows you to liberate your iTunes music from your iPod and play it on your Blackberry smartphone. This is good if you want to have some tunes on your phone in case you do not have you iPod readily available
If you have questions about how to set any of these up, feel free to contact me! I’d be happy to help!
Related posts:
Ugh, I liked! So clear and positively.
Have a nice day
[...] a supplement to my previous posts (Setting Up Google Apps Standard and Free Internet Tools), I love Google Apps! I’m definitely a Google Apps Standard user, and advocate it to [...]