Computer failures are never fun and mine today brought to mind how much I am thankful for certain applications and cloud computing. So I thought I would share what's in my tool box.
Productivity
This program helps you organize and share your notes. The genius of the application is that it works on the web, macs, pcs, and mobile devices. You can store text, PDFs, snapshots, etc. I've used it in meetings to bring my notes on the agenda as well as snapping a picture of the whiteboard at the end of the discussion. I used to carry spiral notebooks for different projects I was working on, but now with evernote I can make a specific notebook for a project and the notes are always available to me. I still have a sketch book for instructional design ideas, but I either scan my drawings or snap a photo with the iphone. Another amazing feature of evernote is that it can do character recognition on photos/images. My handwriting isn't the best and it has done a great job recognizing words. The Evernote Web Clipper also is handy to store information for later review from webpages. Learn more at www.evernote.com
I've used quite a few personal information managers over the last 20 years. Until I started using gCal all my data was stored locally. I remember getting my first 3Com PDA in 1996 (that would rather become Palm) and being able to sync. But it was still far from ideal and if you were away from the computer and your PDA, you were out of luck. With google supporting CalDav, I can sync my calendars between multiple computers and add events from the web, my iphone or iCal. When I'm on the go, if something gets added to a calendar (say at work), it will get pushed to my iphone. It's like Microsoft Exchange for the little guy. www.google.com/calendar/
I've been a pro user for Remember the Milk (RTM) for nearly a year. While google has come out with its Tasks, I don't intend to switch anytime soon. RTM is a really powerful todo manager. You can manage multiple lists, share lists with contacts, receive text message reminders, and more. RTM has a really great iphone application and now with the recent upgrade push notifications. Third-party developers have created a bunch of add-ons to RTM to make viewing and adding todos very easy (link). I use the QuickSilver plugin to add todos without even having to go to the RTM website. I also really like the being able to forward emails I receive to RTM and even assign the task to a specific list and given due date. www. rememberthemilk.com
Utilities
Carbon Copy Cloner: This MacOS program makes a bootable backup of my hard drive. I do use Apple Time Machine as well, but the redundancy gives me piece of mind. Both are backed up to an external Drobo drive, that currently is 2 gigs. The Drobo is RAID-like so there is redundancy there as well.
TextWrangler: I used BBEdit for many years and TextWrangler is everything I need in a text editor. It is great for coding and cleaning up text files. It is always on the top of my list to install on a new computer.
Growl: Growl is a notification manager for Mac. Several of the applications I use have Growl notifications support. Growl pops up alert messages when I get a new email, iTunes starts playing a new track, a download is completed, etc. It's very handy. www. growl.info
Development
Navicat MySQL: MySQL is my primary database of choice for projects and Navicat offers a nice GUI to view/edit tables. The PC version has more options than the Mac, but it is a very strong database development tool. navicat.com
All my coding projects are backed up to a subversion server. In the past, I've also used hosts such as spring loops and assembla. If you are developing any type of elearning, you really should be incorporating version control into your development process. I have slide deck from a talk I gave on the topic available here
Flex Builder built on Eclipse: While I could have installed the flex plug-in into standard Eclipse, I instead modified my Flex Builder with several plugins/frameworks. My installation includes plug-ins for:
- Subversion
- Cold Fusion
- XML development
- Myln/Trac
Adobe CS4: I recently updated from the dark ages (ie before Adobe called their web/image programs CS 1,2,3). I used dreamweaver primarily, but I'm in code view most of the time. When I have a need for graphics I will use Fireworks and after eons of not having photoshop I'm starting to use it again. CS4 has subversion built right into it, which is quite convenient adobe.com.
Audacity: This is a great tool for editing and recording audio. It's open source/free. I've used it primarily when creating podcasts and it works great. download link.
Cyberduck: This is mac file transfer client that supports multiple protocols. I use SFTP quite a bit and its bookmarking feature makes it so easy to get where I need to go. download link.
