Media & Communications Corner: 21 Top Web Tools

As marketing professionals spend more and more of our workday with our heads in the cloud ' in cloud computing, that is ' honing in on the newest, best-fit tools and applications for our needs is essential. But with hundreds out there and fresh players entering the fray every day, honing in on the best is no easy feat. So we took up the challenge, polling dozens of Internet pros and doing the heavy lifting (and sifting) for you. Read on for the 21 Web tools that are not only useful and cutting-edge, but easy to use. Of course, our top 21 should be considered an addendum to the obvious suspects such as Google's suite of applications. And we passed on some great apps that were pretty sweet but required too much of a learning curve to put quickly and effectively into use. Our goal, after all, is to save you time up there in the cloud ' so you can hit the ground running every day.

Simplify Your Social Life

When we need to scour the social media universe for news and information, we rely on Social Mention. Enter a phrase and Social Mention searches blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, video, audio, Q&A and social networks. The site allows you to filter a search by date and by source, and also provides informative stats on keywords, sentiment, and top hashtags.

Tweet much? With SocialOomph, you can set up your accounts to find and vet new followers, send automatic DMs to greet new followers and schedule future Tweets, all for free. For a nominal monthly fee, a professional account offers a host of services to simplify and amplify your Twitter world.

Savvy Tweeters know that maintaining lists is mandatory for increasing your following, building credibility and staying organized, but, boy, it can be time-consuming to set up. With Formulists (currently in Beta mode) you can instantly create lists ' like those comprised of mutual friends and “people like me” ' that self-populate and auto-update daily.

If you need to get work done but can't bear to tear your eyes away from your social networks, slip on SocialVisor, a tool that stretches across the top of your screen to give you a continually updated view of your online social life without getting in the way of your productivity. It has all the standard functionality ' you can Tweet, comment on Facebook status updates and post your own, and a host of other options. And, it includes Yammer, which your boss (if she's wise) may just encourage you to use '

Connect and Collaborate

Yammer provides a private social network for your company, allowing employees to communicate, collaborate and share more easily and efficiently than ever. The free basic service allows microblogging within your enterprise, the ability to create groups to collaborate privately or publicly, share files, and more. Plus, it's mobile.

If you want to move beyond the written word, Dimdim lets anyone host and attend live meetings, demos and Webinars using just a Web browser. You can save money, time and travel by instantly sharing documents, Web pages, whiteboards, audio, video ' even record your events ' with no software to install. Dimdim is free for small meetings (up to 10) and starts at $25 per month for unlimited use with more participants.

Everyone has heard of Skype for free online video calls. But now, with group video calling, you can bring your work team together for “face-to-face” meetings no matter where in the world they are.

For optimal project management, seriously consider joining the Huddle. Huddle provides an affordable scalable solution to meet every need free for personal use up to an enterprise solution at $8 per person. Its Web-based dashboard presents an overview of all the projects you are working on with sections for files being edited and those awaiting approval, tasks, notifications, what's new, and a calendar that incorporates all your projects.

Personal Power Tools

If you simply can't seem to concentrate getting that release, report or article written, FocusWriter is a full-screen, distraction-free word processing program designed to provide a full immersion (hence zero-distraction) experience. Once launched, FocusWriter takes over your entire screen. You can, of course, minimize or exit FocusWriter at any time, but the program otherwise will stay on top of your desktop and will not give you any room to open additional windows.

Need to give your presentations a boost? Although it's Web-based, 280Slides feels like a desktop app, letting you import from and save to PowerPoint, as well as integrate media from YouTube and other popular sites. You can share your work through SlideShare, and your colleagues and clients can view it in their browsers without having to download anything.

And when you need great-looking diagrams, Lovely Charts is an online application that allows you to create professional-looking diagrams ' flowcharts, sitemaps and wireframes, for instance ' using a simple and intuitive drag-and-drop drawing mechanism. Export your creation as a jpeg or png file and add it to your next big presentation.

While Weebly may sound a bit silly, the Web site you'll end up with is anything but. The app enables you to create a free site using an easy drag-and-drop interface, providing professional designs that you can customize (no technical skills required!). Weebly even offers free domain hosting using your own URL. Now, that's what we call taking control.

Offering templates to suit virtually every scenario, Constant Contact allows you to create professional-looking e-mails as easily as 1-2-3. Upload your contact list, select the date and time for your missive to go out, et voila. Check back for Social Stats reports to see how many people are sharing, tweeting and “liking” your e-mails. It's not free, but with a 60-day free trial and then starting at $15 per month, it's as good as it gets. Once you're up and running, you can delve into their other services like surveys and event marketing.

Speaking of events, next time you host a conference and need to sell tickets, try Eventzi. The site provides online event registration that's free for free events and only 20 cents per ticket for other events, regardless of the cost. You can create your own branded event page, send customized e-mail invites, sort your contacts into lists and create multiple ticket types.

Or, perhaps you're planning a party and need to send invitations? Pingg to the rescue! For only $10, you can create an ad-free customized URL for your event's Web page, zap invitations with digital envelopes to up to 2,500 people, and chose from over four million designs by the Pingg design community. For an additional charge, the site will even send snail mail versions of your online pings, and still let you collect RSVPs and manage your event online.

Syncing and Backing Up

If you're constantly e-mailing files to yourself or carrying around a USB drive and stressing about version control, worry no more. With Windows Live Mesh you can access the stuff on your computers ' whether Mac or PC ' from almost anywhere. You get 5 GB of free storage for syncing your files and the program allows you to work on your PC from another location, similar to using Remote Desktop Connection in Windows.

If you're a “lists” person and are forever misplacing that slip of paper you jotted your important to-do's on, then Remember The Milk could be your life-saver. With so many ways to access your tasks ' iPhone, Android, Gmail, Google Calendar and Twitter, to name a few ' you'll never forget the milk again.

Do nightmares about your hard drive crashing keep you up at night? Carbonite might help you rest a bit easier. Its simple, automatic and secure back-up of your files starts as little as $54.95 a year (less than $5 per month) for one computer ' Mac or PC ' with unlimited storage.

You have important data locked up in cloud-based applications ' but how to ensure that cloud won't evaporate? Backupify provides daily automatic backups, archiving, and export for all your social media and SaaS data, including Google Docs, Basecamp and Zoho. The basic personal plan granting 2GB of storage space is free.

On the Go

If you're like most of us, your wallet is crammed full of credit cards for both business and personal use. Lighten your load with MobilePay, a new service accepted at select stores. The app, which connects your phone to credit or debit cards of your choice, uses GPS technology to let you know if the store you're in accepts payment, and, all you need is to do at checkout is tap a few keys and voila ' done.

And, finally, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then Google's Goggles is worth, well, a million? The nifty new tool lets you search the Web by snapping a photograph with your iPhone or Android, particularly useful for “scanning” a business card (converted into text for easing saving to your address book), translating a foreign-language menu (snap a photo of Italian text and get the English translation pronto) or learning more about that historic landmark on your next overseas business trip.

Nicholas Gaffney, a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors, is a lawyer and former journalist. Nick manages Infinite Public Relations' San Francisco office and can be reached at [email protected] or 415-732-7801. 

As marketing professionals spend more and more of our workday with our heads in the cloud ' in cloud computing, that is ' honing in on the newest, best-fit tools and applications for our needs is essential. But with hundreds out there and fresh players entering the fray every day, honing in on the best is no easy feat. So we took up the challenge, polling dozens of Internet pros and doing the heavy lifting (and sifting) for you. Read on for the 21 Web tools that are not only useful and cutting-edge, but easy to use. Of course, our top 21 should be considered an addendum to the obvious suspects such as Google's suite of applications. And we passed on some great apps that were pretty sweet but required too much of a learning curve to put quickly and effectively into use. Our goal, after all, is to save you time up there in the cloud ' so you can hit the ground running every day.

Simplify Your Social Life

When we need to scour the social media universe for news and information, we rely on Social Mention. Enter a phrase and Social Mention searches blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, video, audio, Q&A and social networks. The site allows you to filter a search by date and by source, and also provides informative stats on keywords, sentiment, and top hashtags.

Tweet much? With SocialOomph, you can set up your accounts to find and vet new followers, send automatic DMs to greet new followers and schedule future Tweets, all for free. For a nominal monthly fee, a professional account offers a host of services to simplify and amplify your Twitter world.

Savvy Tweeters know that maintaining lists is mandatory for increasing your following, building credibility and staying organized, but, boy, it can be time-consuming to set up. With Formulists (currently in Beta mode) you can instantly create lists ' like those comprised of mutual friends and “people like me” ' that self-populate and auto-update daily.

If you need to get work done but can't bear to tear your eyes away from your social networks, slip on SocialVisor, a tool that stretches across the top of your screen to give you a continually updated view of your online social life without getting in the way of your productivity. It has all the standard functionality ' you can Tweet, comment on Facebook status updates and post your own, and a host of other options. And, it includes Yammer, which your boss (if she's wise) may just encourage you to use '

Connect and Collaborate

Yammer provides a private social network for your company, allowing employees to communicate, collaborate and share more easily and efficiently than ever. The free basic service allows microblogging within your enterprise, the ability to create groups to collaborate privately or publicly, share files, and more. Plus, it's mobile.

If you want to move beyond the written word, Dimdim lets anyone host and attend live meetings, demos and Webinars using just a Web browser. You can save money, time and travel by instantly sharing documents, Web pages, whiteboards, audio, video ' even record your events ' with no software to install. Dimdim is free for small meetings (up to 10) and starts at $25 per month for unlimited use with more participants.

Everyone has heard of Skype for free online video calls. But now, with group video calling, you can bring your work team together for “face-to-face” meetings no matter where in the world they are.

For optimal project management, seriously consider joining the Huddle. Huddle provides an affordable scalable solution to meet every need free for personal use up to an enterprise solution at $8 per person. Its Web-based dashboard presents an overview of all the projects you are working on with sections for files being edited and those awaiting approval, tasks, notifications, what's new, and a calendar that incorporates all your projects.

Personal Power Tools

If you simply can't seem to concentrate getting that release, report or article written, FocusWriter is a full-screen, distraction-free word processing program designed to provide a full immersion (hence zero-distraction) experience. Once launched, FocusWriter takes over your entire screen. You can, of course, minimize or exit FocusWriter at any time, but the program otherwise will stay on top of your desktop and will not give you any room to open additional windows.

Need to give your presentations a boost? Although it's Web-based, 280Slides feels like a desktop app, letting you import from and save to PowerPoint, as well as integrate media from YouTube and other popular sites. You can share your work through SlideShare, and your colleagues and clients can view it in their browsers without having to download anything.

And when you need great-looking diagrams, Lovely Charts is an online application that allows you to create professional-looking diagrams ' flowcharts, sitemaps and wireframes, for instance ' using a simple and intuitive drag-and-drop drawing mechanism. Export your creation as a jpeg or png file and add it to your next big presentation.

While Weebly may sound a bit silly, the Web site you'll end up with is anything but. The app enables you to create a free site using an easy drag-and-drop interface, providing professional designs that you can customize (no technical skills required!). Weebly even offers free domain hosting using your own URL. Now, that's what we call taking control.

Offering templates to suit virtually every scenario, Constant Contact allows you to create professional-looking e-mails as easily as 1-2-3. Upload your contact list, select the date and time for your missive to go out, et voila. Check back for Social Stats reports to see how many people are sharing, tweeting and “liking” your e-mails. It's not free, but with a 60-day free trial and then starting at $15 per month, it's as good as it gets. Once you're up and running, you can delve into their other services like surveys and event marketing.

Speaking of events, next time you host a conference and need to sell tickets, try Eventzi. The site provides online event registration that's free for free events and only 20 cents per ticket for other events, regardless of the cost. You can create your own branded event page, send customized e-mail invites, sort your contacts into lists and create multiple ticket types.

Or, perhaps you're planning a party and need to send invitations? Pingg to the rescue! For only $10, you can create an ad-free customized URL for your event's Web page, zap invitations with digital envelopes to up to 2,500 people, and chose from over four million designs by the Pingg design community. For an additional charge, the site will even send snail mail versions of your online pings, and still let you collect RSVPs and manage your event online.

Syncing and Backing Up

If you're constantly e-mailing files to yourself or carrying around a USB drive and stressing about version control, worry no more. With Windows Live Mesh you can access the stuff on your computers ' whether Mac or PC ' from almost anywhere. You get 5 GB of free storage for syncing your files and the program allows you to work on your PC from another location, similar to using Remote Desktop Connection in Windows.

If you're a “lists” person and are forever misplacing that slip of paper you jotted your important to-do's on, then Remember The Milk could be your life-saver. With so many ways to access your tasks ' iPhone, Android, Gmail, Google Calendar and Twitter, to name a few ' you'll never forget the milk again.

Do nightmares about your hard drive crashing keep you up at night? Carbonite might help you rest a bit easier. Its simple, automatic and secure back-up of your files starts as little as $54.95 a year (less than $5 per month) for one computer ' Mac or PC ' with unlimited storage.

You have important data locked up in cloud-based applications ' but how to ensure that cloud won't evaporate? Backupify provides daily automatic backups, archiving, and export for all your social media and SaaS data, including Google Docs, Basecamp and Zoho. The basic personal plan granting 2GB of storage space is free.

On the Go

If you're like most of us, your wallet is crammed full of credit cards for both business and personal use. Lighten your load with MobilePay, a new service accepted at select stores. The app, which connects your phone to credit or debit cards of your choice, uses GPS technology to let you know if the store you're in accepts payment, and, all you need is to do at checkout is tap a few keys and voila ' done.

And, finally, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then Google's Goggles is worth, well, a million? The nifty new tool lets you search the Web by snapping a photograph with your iPhone or Android, particularly useful for “scanning” a business card (converted into text for easing saving to your address book), translating a foreign-language menu (snap a photo of Italian text and get the English translation pronto) or learning more about that historic landmark on your next overseas business trip.

Nicholas Gaffney, a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors, is a lawyer and former journalist. Nick manages Infinite Public Relations' San Francisco office and can be reached at [email protected] or 415-732-7801.