This presentation was delivered to the Arizona Society of Association Executives as a part of the monthly learning series.
Free Tech Tools and Tips to Keep You Moving
FREE TECH TOOLS
- Google Apps — Free Version available. The Premier version of Google apps is $50 per year per user.
- Google Calendar — www.google.com/calendar
- Can share the calendar with multiple people just like an exchange server
- Can sync with numerous devices including iPhone and blackberry
- Google Online Form — Using Google Docs, you can set up an online form that will feed date into your google spreadsheet. Sample forms include:
- Board and Volunteer Mileage Reimbursement — http://tinyurl.com/AzsaeBODReimbursement
- Board Meeting Evaluation — http://tinyurl.com/AzsaeBODEval
- Committee Report — http://tinyurl.com/AzsaeCommReport
- Google Sites — I use google sites as the format for my volunteer website. Check it out at http://volunteers.naswaz.com.
- Google Docs — http://docs.google.com — This is a typical ASP (Application Service Provider) model that includes documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that resemble Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
All docs can be shared so that multiple users can contribute to the editing of a document.
The settings can be adjusted that multiple people can see the doc, but only a select few can edit the document.
In order to edit the document, one needs to sign in to Google, which means they need a google un and pw.
google or my yahoo — http://www.igoogle.com or my.yahoo.com — This is a customizable front page that can house your RSS feeds and everything that interests you on one page - Google Analytics — http://www.google.com/analytics/ — Gives web stats including the type of browser used by users, number of views, length on-site, and even what state and country your visitors are coming from.
- Tiny URL — http://tinyurl.com/create.php Allows you to take very long URLs and create shorter ones. They now have the ability to give you custom URLs as well.
- Upvise.com — Shopping list, wiki, project manager, contact manager sales tracking
- Evernote.com — Another cloud app where you can clip info from webs, type messages, pictures from a mobile phone, etc into notes. Notes can be shared and are fully searchable. (A precursor to Google Wave)
- 280slides.com — Let’s you collaborate on the web with PowerPoint presentations. Upload the presentation, multiple people have access and then can download it back into 2007 .ppt format.
- Prezi — www.prezi.com — Graphical and non-linear storyboarding to replace PowerPoint.
voicethread.com — can create powerpoints or multimedia presentations that people can comment on either by webcam, voice, or typing. - www.mileagetrackerpro.net — sync’s with handheld and batches your mileage on the web.
- Wordle for Presentations — www.wordle.net — This a free tool that allows you to enter in a bunch of text and it will spit out a graphic that shows the frequency of the text entered. Here is an example. I put in the cities of my members and you can see from the size of the word, where most of our members are from. See below
- Time and Date — http://www.timeanddate.com/– for the world time-challenged.
- When is — www.when-is.com — Have you ever wanted to know when the Jewish holidays will be the year after next so you can plan an event around those important dates? This website helps you see when you need to know these dates. It appears to go out 7 years from the present.
- Photo Effects — http://www.befunky.com/ — Take photos and apply special effects to them. Free service.
- Photo Effects — www.photofunia.com — Another great service to take photos and create interesting gifs.
- Convert files to podcasts — http://www.real.com/realplayer/media-converter — Converts media files to many different formats (excellent for creating podcast files)
- RSS Feeds — http://www.feedforall.com/ — Creates an RSS feed of your content that can keep visitors informed of any changes to your site.
- RSS Feeds — http://www.feedburner.com
- Rapidshare — http://www.rapidshare.com Free and a premium version that allows you to upload large files that are too big for email. You then send the link to a person and they can then download that file. The free version has limits (file size max is 200 MB. Premium version has a max file size of 2,000 MB)
- Megaupload — http://www.megaupload.com — File sharing site like Rapidshare but with more space available for members. Membership is free, but there is also a premium membership with unlimited storage and upload size.
- Viddler.com — Viddler is like youtube.
- YouTube — www.youtube.com This is the ultimate of web 2.0 with end users driving the content. It is known for its outrageous and personal videos. It is becoming increasingly used for business purposes.
To see videos of Social Workers telling why they are social workers search for naswaz on youtube.
To see a video of my daughter’s volcano birthday cake that erupts marshmallow creme lava, search for azjayhawk90. - Schedule Once Meeting Scheduler — http://www.scheduleonce.com/
- Doodle Meeting Scheduler — Meeting schedular that allows you to set the possible meeting times and then email the url out to people so that they can sign up and click on which meeting date and time they can attend. http://www.doodle.com/main.html
- Sample Meeting Scheduler –http://www.doodle.com/vqys5gxa39zqwke4
Every time someone fills out the doodle scheduler, I get an email telling me that another person has completed the form. - InDinero — www.indinero.com Online secure financial dashboard that integrates credit cards, bank accounts, PayPal accounts, etc.
- Freshbooks — www.freshbooks.com — Online invoice and time tracking software. Integrates with InDinero.
- Expensify — www.expensify.com — Connects credit card to Expensify account. Will allow you to take pictures of receipts with a cell phone camera and attach them to reports.
- Mint.com — Personal edition of InDinero — Online accounting dashboard for personal finances.
- Flickr– Stock photos and images can be used from Flickr if you go to the creative commons area and make sure that you attribute the photo to the photographer. Use Advanced search to search for photos in the
- Creative Commons.
- Ustream.tv — Can do live streaming of events, interviews, etc. It looks a lot like youtube, but your followers can get an email that you are streaming and can watch live.
- Ninite — download multiple applications at one time. Particularly helpful when setting up a new computer.
- Volunteer Coordination — http://www.volunteerspot.com/index — This website helps with online coordination of volunteer tasks, duties, and what to bring. Great for scouts, PTO’s and any volunteer-driven organization.
- Teamspace.com — Collaborative virtual team environment complete with virtual offices and virtual conference rooms. Starts at $7.90 per month.
- Google Maps “My Maps” — This is known as a “Mashup”. You can use the existing google maps and then create your own special map and save that url. http://maps.google.com You can make it a public URL so that everyone can see. You can go to google maps and find people’s favorite walking tour of San Francisco, or their favorite 10-mile run route around Scottsdale. These are public.
You can make your map private so that a person has to have the URL to access it.
The map also will give you the code necessary to embed it into a web page.
Here is the map of a recent trip to an AzSAE meeting. 🙂
Possible uses include directions to events, walking tours near an event venue, etc., etc.NOT FREE, BUT NOT A BAD DEAL
- Stock Photos — http://us.fotolia.com/– At first it sounds expensive, but if you do a lot of PowerPoint presentations and need pictures and photos, you can do a one-month subscription for $200. Sounds expensive, but with that subscription, you can go every single day and download 25 pictures. At the end of your 30 days, you cancel and have 750 stock photos.
Google Apps Premier Edition — a more robust version from the free version.
Screencast.com — Can upload videos for streaming. 200 gig for $99 per year.