Tools, tools, tools - Productivity

Over the last week I’ve found myself  including links to various tools in more emails than usual, so I thought I might collect some of them here too in a series of short posts every few days (goodness knows it’s been way too long since a tools post here on the blog).

First up are three great productivity-related tools:

• Google Apps - a no-brainer perhaps, but if you haven’t used this cloud-based suite of services (primarily Google Docs, and Calendar) than you might not appreciate how handy it is to be able to quickly and easily edit docs, as well as (especially) share them with friends. Google are also increasing the number elements that can be synced across an increasing number of mobiles devices
• Survey Monkey - Ever need a quick & dirty survey to, for example, collect answers from friends when trying to organise a sporting team? The Monkey is free for basic surveys, and the paid version ($20 per month) let’s you have branched questions, as well as tart the pages up with your logo etc.
• SugarSync does cloud-based file backup and synchronisation. Have a few key folders or files that you want to keep backed-up but either don’t want to buy an external hard drive, or want something stored far away in case your house burns down? The big recent change is free accounts: up to 2gb of storage is free which is heaps for a key set of files, and paid plans start from a substantial 30gb. PLUS you can nominate specific folders that you want anyone to be able to access via web browser (behind a password) - making it great for sharing files with clients in place of other sites like Dropbox.