Online productivity tools

I think there is an amazing variety of these tools available free on the internet, even if they don't have all the features of the versions you subscribe to. I had no idea there were so many free online tools out there. I couldn't access the Thumbstacks site but had no trouble with the others in this week's lesson.

Picnik - online photo editing in your browser at www.picnik.com - could be useful if you carry photos around on USBs and have them emailed to you. I sometimes do this as I don't have a computer with graphics software. Or if your library doesn't have graphics software but you want to edit photos of an event or exhibition to put on a blog or website. Text documents like Google Docs and Writeboard would be useful too if you don't subscribe to MS Office, especially as you can roll back to any version and share a particular version instead of emailing attachments (and creating new copies). I like the idea of Yousendit where you can email a very large file without freezing email or taking down a network. You don't need to register for this. Yousendit holds the file for 30 days and emails the recipient. This could be useful for emailing Youtube videos or podcasts in a library situation (provided work firewalls didn't interfere too much).

With Zamzar you can save and convert YouTube videos. If you wanted to save a frame from one as a still picture and post it this could be useful. I also liked the presentation by Janie Hermann and her co-author, about 15 freebies in 50 minutes, hosted by www.slideshare.net. Slideshare lets you post your slides and share them with others, thus creating online presentations or webinars.

Even Jott could be useful, it lets you leave a voice message and have it transcribed and texted. I'm not sure how user friendly the interface is though -- perhaps you have to spell half the words.