3 Tools to Make Your Online Life Easier
As a Web developer, I spend much of my life online. And I’m a bit of a nut when it comes to efficiency. Here are three of the tools I use tools that make my life easier.
Yes, video is the future – and the present, for that matter.
Almost every site I build or maintain these days has at least one video. And all the online marketing experts strongly advise that you use video in your marketing.
So what are your choices? Self-hosting? No, please. YouTube? OK, but you’re limited in how you can display and market your videos. (They’re publicly available, and they look like YouTube.)
What if you want to charge for some or all of your videos? What if you want them to look truly professional, to match the website you’ve so carefully crafted?
Or, what if you want to live stream your workshops – and have the option to charge for them? Not many affordable choices there…
That’s where Niche comes in. They offer a secure, white label video storage and streaming service. You can easily make it look just like your website, and integrate it seamlessly into your site. No ads, no links to other sites.
And you have the option to charge per video, per channel, with or without time limits. (You can offer monthly subscriptions if you like.)
If you want, you can also let other people upload videos as well – and create your own Internet Video Channel!
http://evernote.com
I honestly don’t know how I ever got along without this application! (Actually, I do, and it wasn’t pretty!)
It’s essentially an application for storing all kinds of information you need to keep track of. I use it for design notes, to-do lists, client information, code snippets, recipes I want to try, tidbits I run across on Facebook, notes I make in meetings, and lots of miscellaneous stuff.
You can download the app to your desktop, your laptop, your tablet and your phone. And each device stores it’s own copy of your data, which is synced to the cloud version.
It is exceptionally easy to create and manage the “notes”, including images, scans, links, etc.
So. I go to a meeting, take notes on my laptop. Return to my desk, and my notes are there! No need to transfer or transcribe! And, in the event ALL of my devices die at the same time, the cloud version is still there! Talk about redundancy!
And the best part: it’s FREE. There is a paid upgrade, but it’s completely functional as a free app.
http://lastpass.com
I know you’re overwhelmed by keeping up with your passwords!
Gone are the days when you could safely use the same password for everything. And almost every site now requires upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols, a rune, and a personal hieroglyphic. That’s not too much of an exaggeration. 🙂
You may not have quite as many as I do (all of mine and my clients’), but unless you only turn on your computer once a month to check email, you have a bunch!
So you keep them in your inbox? Not too secure.
In a notepad? Not always with you, and, again, not that secure.
In your head? You’re a better man than me, Charlie Brown!
Problem solved with LastPass! Only one password to remember – ever!
Like Evernote, all your data is stored securely in the cloud. You simply create the account (FREE), and download the extension for your browser(s).
You can let LastPass import all the passwords your browser has already saved, to get you started.
The next time you visit that page, LP will fill out the username and password for you. (You can even set it to log you in automatically if you want.)
When you visit a new site and enter credentials, LP will ask if you want it to save them.
Seamless and easy!
Of course, since you only have one password to remember, you can make it a doozy… one that no one could ever guess, but that you can remember. (Mine’s a long sentence!) You only have to type it in when you get logged out of LP for some reason, and that doesn’t happen very often.
Need to actually remember what your password is for some specific site? Easy. Go to lastpass.com, and you can see and edit all of your passwords.
It’s a real brain-saver!
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I hope at least one of these apps will be useful for you!
