Software Roundup

Time for a quick roundup of some of my current favorite tools, starting with software. In future posts, I'll showcase some online tools and other useful utilities.

The overriding theme to these tools is that they are useful, cheap or free, and accessible wherever you go, by phone app or computer. You may have never heard of these, or they may be so obvious you've already moved on to the next thing. Let me know if you find them useful, have other suggestions, or comments on what I've found.

Evernote

A simple premise lies at the heart of Evernote. Their tagline is remember everything. Essentially it's a notepad that you carry with you everywhere. Make a note on your computer, your phone, your laptop, or wherever you're connected to your account. The same note will be available to you whenever you need it. It's a simple concept, and surprisingly useful.

And it's not just text- it can voice memos, photos, video, web pages, word docs, etc.

Dropbox

I work at my office most of the time, but there are times when I pull out the laptop at home and want to dig into a current project.  Before I had an office, I would often work on my laptop part of the day about town, and then return to my home office desktop to work. The problem is having two sets of data on multiple computers, and keeping track of what's the most recent file set.

Dropbox makes it dead simple. Sign up for an account, and Dropbox will quietly monitor the files in the Dropbox folder on your computer. You can decide where the Dropbox folder should go, and what goes inside it.

Anytime a file inside the Dropbox folder is updated, the software will load a copy to your online account. Login with a different computer later on, and Dropbox will automatically go out and update any new or updated files in your account.  I can keep my folders of project proposals, current jobs, invoices, and more, all synced between multiple computers and the best part is I don't have to think about it. It just happens.

Dropbox is free for the first 2GBs, making it very easy to give it a try and see if you find it useful. If you're like me, and already have a folder structure that you'd like to keep, and not move everything to the designated Dropbox folder, you do have other options.  Using symlinks, I am able to keep my Jobs folder as is, but snyc the contents with my Dropbox account.

An additional bonus- you can access your files through an iPhone app and through a password-protected account online. Use the Dropbox link here and get an extra 250MBs free when you sign up.

Carbonite

Everyone knows that backing up files regularly is important. Hard drives can and do fail. Files can get accidentally deleted or overwritten. But remembering to do your backups is another chore that's best left to a mindless machine that doesn't get distracted, and does what you ask.

Carbonite allows you to backup your entire computer online. For $55/year, Mac or PC users can have unlimited backup space. Carbonite, like Dropbox, runs quietly in the background, monitoring your computer for any changes. Then it backs up those changes to your online account. Once it's set up on your computer, you don't have to think about it again. Until you need a file or files that are no longer there. Then the value of a backup system really kicks in. You can go into your Carbonite account, and Restore the files back.

FormStack

Forms are one of the most useful features of any website, used for collecting info, processing orders, taking surveys, etc. Writing custom forms and styling them typically requires a web designer and developer. But with online services such as Formstack, you can create stylish forms without any knowledge of code. Make contact forms, surveys, donation forms, event registrations, online payments forms and more, all through an online account.

Formstack has easy-to-use online tools—after you create a form, you can add fields for text, radio buttons, file upload, and credit card fields to your form, with just a drag and drop. Additional features allow you make simple calculations based on field input. For example, take the number of items in Field A times (x)  the Cost per item = $Total Owed. You can embed these forms into your own website, or use their hosted pages. 

There are monthly fees to using a service like Formstack, so for a simple contact form on your site, it probably doesn't make much sense. You could pay for a custom form once and be done with it. But for multiple forms, and more complicated projects, it can make more sense to pay a low monthly fee versus a larger custom fee to a web developer. Or your web developer can use the online tools to quickly develop a series of custom forms that would cost more time to develop from scratch. It's fairly easy to get started with Formstack, but for more complicated forms, an experienced developer would probably work a lot faster than someone less experienced with forms.

In a recent project, I was asked to build forms for the Minneapolis theatre company, Theatre in the Round, for patrons to purchase online season tickets, make online donations, and sell gift certificates off their website. Using Formstack, I was able to create a series of online forms to accept online payments, fully integrated with Authorize.Net, and use Formstack's secure servers to host the forms. I was able to create 5 different forms, on time and within budget.

TweetDeck

Another free tool I'm using often is TweetDeck. There are many applications out there designed to improve the way you interact with Twitter, and I can't speak for the effectiveness of those (perhaps someone wants to enlighten me). I haven't sought them out because TweetDeck has been working great for me, and again, the price is free.

With TweetDeck, I can create lists of the people I follow, and save them to an online account that will update wherever I go. Once you start following a number of people on Twitter, it's useful to separate the feed into groups, so you can view only the people you are interested in following at that particular moment. Some users tend to dominate your Twitter feed with a nonstop stream of posts. Rather than drop them entirely (which is an option, of course), just leave out your favorite lists.

I find it useful at times, when tweeting, to share my post across multiple services. One post that appears on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. TweetDeck lets you choose which accounts your post will go to, on a post-by-post basis. You can even post directly to Facebook and not make a Twitter post, it's up to you.

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