…if you haven’t read last week’s post, this is the second installment of “10 software tools you can’t live without.”
Enough fluff, scroll down to business!
#6: Lynda.com
Why I love it: Wouldn’t it be nice to have “how-to” videos for just about everything? This dream comes true with Lynda.com
How it works: Lynda.com is a membership based website. For a monthly (or annual fee) you gain access to an enormous variety of online training content. They have excellent videos covering topics from ‘Adobe Photoshop’ to ‘How to Become an Invaluable Employee.’ It’s a great bang for your buck and allows you to learn at your own pace. I bookmark this site and use it every now and again as training is very expensive and software is always changing.
#7: Picasa
Why I love it: A simple tool to make you look like a Photoshop pro. Plus it’s free and made by Google.
How it works: Want to crank out cool photos in a few clicks? Picasa is what I call “Google’s version of Photoshop.” It’s free, it’s simple and it’s powerful…and yes, I’m gonna hate for a second. It blows @instagram out of the water! You can download a copy for free here.
#8: Gimp
Why I love it: Photoshop meets open source – aka “the free version of Photoshop.”
How it works: Gimp is literally the free version of Photoshop. It’s part of the open source movement of free software on the internet. The great part is that it’s a very powerful tool, the drawback is a potentially steep learning curve for those less tech savvy. There is very thorough documentation available, but you will need to wade through it to get some traction if you are new to open source software. However, a quick Youtube search shows several excellent training videos.
#9: Cute PDF Writer
Why I love it: Because, sometimes a guy’s just gotta print to PDF…
How it works: “Ctrl + P = Print”…”Ctrl + P + Cute PDF writer = print any document to a PDF file. This little tool works very well and is very handy. I believe that Word 2010 allows you to print to PDF so this may squash out Cute PDF Writer, but for those who aren’t rockin’ Office 2010 it’s a free workaround that is rock solid!
#10: Hootsuite
Why I love it: So, you’re on Facebook, have a fan page, Linkedin, and two Twitter accounts? There’s no place like home! Hootsuite!
How it works: Schedule tweets, facebook posts, track click-through rates and see all of your social media sites aggregated on one dashboard. Yep, that’s Hootsuite. It’s free, but you can pay a small monthly fee for some upgrades, reports and advanced analytics.
Honorable Mention: Avast! Anti-Virus FREE
The Skinny: Don’t love malware and viruses? Neither do I. And thanks to Avast!, I’ve been virus free on all my machines for the last five years. Did I mention it was free? Worth a look.
Question:
Some great comments and tips last week, what else is missing from the list?
Cover photo by zzpza
