Web 2.0 productivity tools

A roundup of apps & resources to make your day go easier

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, social benefit organizations, NGOs, educators, students, journalists, Web publishers, general public.

Following are Web 2.0 tools we’ve come across that have increased our productivity. Part of the early adopters creed is to share discoveries with others. Please add your own recommendations in the comments!

Academic search

scholar
Socialbrite recommends:
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Blog

weblog
Socialbrite recommends:
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Bookmarks

bookmarks
Socialbrite recommends:
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Calendar

calendar
Socialbrite recommends:
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Contacts

contacts
Socialbrite recommends:
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Document manager

document manager
Socialbrite recommends:
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Email

email
Socialbrite recommends:
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Feed reader

feed reader
Socialbrite recommends:
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Instant messaging

IM
Socialbrite recommends:
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Microblogging

microblogging
Socialbrite recommends:
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Personal pages

personal pages
Socialbrite recommends:
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Photo editor

photo editor
Socialbrite recommends:
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Photo manager

photo manager
Socialbrite recommends:
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Polls

polls
Socialbrite recommends:
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Presentation

presentation
Socialbrite recommends:
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Scheduler

scheduler
Socialbrite recommends:
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Spreadsheet

spreadsheet
Socialbrite recommends:
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Video editor

video editor
Socialbrite recommends:
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Video podcast player

video podcast player
Socialbrite recommends:
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Word processor

word processor
Socialbrite recommends:
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Development tool

development-tool
Socialbrite recommends:
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Drawing

drawing
Socialbrite recommends:
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Event manager

event-manager
Socialbrite recommends:
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Expense tracker

expense-tracker
Socialbrite recommends:
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Fax

fax
Socialbrite recommends:
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Feed processor

feed-processor
Socialbrite recommends:
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File exchange

file sender
Socialbrite recommends:
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File manager

file manager
Socialbrite recommends:
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Form designer

form designer
Socialbrite recommends:
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Group manager

group manager
Socialbrite recommends:
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Mind mapper

mind mapper
Socialbrite recommends:
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Music player

music player
Socialbrite recommends:
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Notepad

notepad
Socialbrite recommends:
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Office manager

OS
Socialbrite recommends:
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Outliner

outliner
Socialbrite recommends:
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Personal organizer

personal organizer
Socialbrite recommends:
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Printer

printer
Socialbrite recommends:
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Project

project
Socialbrite recommends:
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Scanner

scanner
Socialbrite recommends:
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Sound mixer

sound mixer
Socialbrite recommends:

Time tracker

time tracker
Socialbrite recommends:
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Utilities

utilities
Socialbrite recommends:
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Voicemail

voicemail
Socialbrite recommends: Alternatives:

Web conferencing

web conferencing
Socialbrite recommends:
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Wikis

wikis
Socialbrite recommends:
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Sites and links of note

Education

Education 2.0: A good directory of Web 2.0 teaching tools and resources.

Free Music Directory: Where to find legal, copyright-free music and sound clips for your site or presentation.

Free Photos Directory: Where to find images you can reuse and include in your work or on your site.

Free Video Directory: Where to find video footage you can reuse and include in your work or on your site.

Glossary: A quick, thorough guide to social media terms.

Creative Commons: A quick guide to Creative Commons.

Blog platforms: A comparison of different blogging platforms.

Social media essentials: Essential tools for social media from Essential Keystrokes.

Video translation: Everyzing uses voice recognition technology to tease rough transcripts out of videos, making them more searchable and indexable by search engines.

This page may be used for educational purposes only. Collected from various sources on the Web, particularly the Office 2.0 website. Icons designed by Jakub Steiner for the Tango global linux desktop look. What other cool tools have you discovered? Please add them in the comments.
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katrinadan86 5 pts

14dayz is a nice online time tracking tool but I recommend Talygen as it is compatible with most of the browsers at present.

melissaevans 5 pts

Talygen comes as a free trial and offers a number of functional modules that help to increase your business productivity.

Time Clock 7 pts

How about considering adding Replicon <a href="http://www.replicon.com/olp/project-management-software.aspx">project management software</a> to your list?

JamieLeePortent 5 pts

I'm working with Attachmate, and they offer a managed FTP client, FileXpress: <a href="I'm working with Attachmate, and they offer a managed FTP client, FileXpress: http://www.attachmate.com/Products/mft/filexpress/filexpress.htm"> http://www.attachmate.com/Products/mft/filexpress/filexpress.htm</a>.

I use http://www.meetingdeck.net to organise and record all my meetings. It's free and really clean and easy to use.

Virtual board with sticky notes for planning and organizing work, managing tasks and real-time collaboration www.kanbantool.com.

As a drawing tool I think Creately is much better than Gliffy. At least it should get a mention in the list. When doing social media for social good campaigns in Sri Lanka their desktop version came handy in places where there is no Internet connection. Also they have real-time collaboration which comes in very handy when working with groups especially in different locations.

I would like to know what SocialBrite will recommand as a Social Management Software

Another great app for time tracking is Clockmeister.

Laura M. writes: The 123ContactForm web service helps users build any type of web form and survey as easy as 1-2-3. We focus on usability and 3rd party app integration with services such as MailChimp, SalesForce and VerticalResponse. Under your Form designer category, the 123ContactForm platform has over 150.000 active users, among which many non profit organizations and educational societies.

Thanks for all of the info! Another free ftp solution you can try is JSCAPE's AnyClient. http://www.anyclient.com

For projects -- www.sapstreamwork.com offers great service for free.

Thought you might be interested in Timetastic, the online staff leave/ vacation tracker. http://www.timetastic.co.uk

A wonderful, helpful list. Thanks! It might be good to have a section on Press Releases and include links to PRweb, PRnewswire, etc. Also, not sure of the category, but I think the RSS widgets from WebRSS.com are useful to those who'd like to add a newsfeed/ blogfeed to their website -- like a Dog Rescue site could have an updated feed for dogs rescues in the news.

Hi, thanks for this helpful collection. I'd like to add https://www.inexfinance.com/ to the Expense tracker category. This is a great web based personal finance software for money management and budget planning.

I would have loved to see RightSignature in the Document Manager list. They provide free trial for signing upto 5 documents.

I've been using www.mail2world.net as my email provider, They offer Both business and free email. Please add it to the free email list.

Another web 2.0 time tracking tool: http://www.clockodo.com

Under web conferencing and education I would like to add Second Life to the mix. I think it goes way beyond most Web 2.0 offerings. I currently use it to collaborate with other teachers around the globe and help my online visitors improve their English. With the ability to create and share unique content, run seminars, conferences and lessons, use text, multimedia, video, voice, and groups. Most people think it's a game, but it's gone way beyond that. Oh - and it's free.

Hi everyone I had been using one system before and then switched to the Workforcetrack.com , and must say that it is the most suitable one, for it has so many business tools to use such as CRM, Project Management, Accounting and Finance, HRMS and many others but the best part is that they have android and iPhone apps, so may control and manage everything even being out. NJoy!

GoMeetNow is an interesting tool for web meetings. It supports multi-platform and costs only $12.95/month.Visit http://www.gomeetnow.com/ for more details.

This is a great article with so many time saving tools! I wasn't even aware of some of the tool categories and I'm really glad I came across your site. Another Fax to Email service worth mentioning is FaxitFast.com. You definitely covered the largest online fax providers, but we've been using FaxitFast.com for awhile now and their service is very reliable and costs less than $6 /mo. They allow you to choose between a local / toll free number and offer a 30 day risk free trial so that you can actually try the service before you buy. Definitely some great tools mentioned and I'm sure these will help many small business owners save money!

ElegantThemes for $25/yr seems fair enough I would say, in comparison with Thesis one. Wordpress all the way, we tried Joomla and Typo3 but so far the best ones is still Wordpress.

Wow, what a great list of resources. Please consider adding our service or allowing our comment to display on your page. Hello, I am with TrueShare.com (2005) and we have been in the file storage/sharing business since 2002 (easyftp.net) and along with a sound and secure system we boast excellent customer support. Business minded features, on-disk encryption security, and unlimited users are what separate us in this field. Worldwide clients in financial, medical, construction and engineering, energy, and education are our base. Check it out or contact me for a live online walk through! It is tough to compare to a free account but when you need business features, unlimited users, and SAS70/HIPAA security you can't beat TrueShare.com. Blurb: TrueShare is an online file system that allows users to store, manage, and share files remotely. Its services include online file storage, online file sharing, and remote file backup. TrueShare has the ability to handle large file sizes, and unlimited file types. Features such as Send-a-Link, TS for Windows, Direct Link, and Auto Trans make TrueShare a robust and flexible solution for secure online file storage, management, and sharing.

seocompanydirec 5 pts

I agree with Mitch we use similar ways to faciliate user experience at http://navy-gold.com

Great list. Just would like to add an event management tool – PG Events. It’s ready-made website software for events registration (http://www.eventsoft.pro)

Great list of useful tools. Another productivity tool is GoSupportNow (http://www.gosupportnow.com). It’s a remote support solution with video and audio conferencing facilities.

A complete list, only grooveshark.com missing under music players.

You might also wanna try http://www.TimeOP.com for tracking focus, productivity and involvement of your team across application and web pages - online and offline.

I can recommend Prezi for presentation software online & free it is not slide based but zooms http://prezi.com/

Hi, Guillermo. We designed the site ourselves. Use WordPress.org, of course. And chose a theme (for about $25/year) called ElegantThemes, though other themes like Thesis have come a long way since then. Best of luck! jd

I love your site! did you produce this your self or did you outsource it? Im searching for a blog design thats comparable so thats the only reason I’m asking. Either way keep up the nice work I was impressed with your content actually..

Bill On Site is a web-based invoicing system, with a unique twist: you can use Bill On Site on your mobile phone, enabling small business owners to send invoices to their customers while still on their client's site. All you need is a semi-recent phone – one with a web browser on it – and internet access on your phone.

Great list! Quite a few of these were new to me. I have another web app to suggest, which combines your categories of Task Management and Group Management. I am CEO of Teamly. Teamly is a new kind of productivity tool that helps you manage personal and group productivity. For a manager the benefit is that they now have a clear way to monitor and track what their colleagues consider are their top priorities. Teamly is now in beta and I would love you or your readers to try it out. http://teamly.com

Another great web conferencing tool to consider is TurboMeeting from RHUB. http://www.rhubcom.com TurboMeeting offers 4x webcams, polling, no download for attendees, etc. And remote support features are included for free.

Thanks, Brian, didn't know about TurboMeeting. Will check it out.

For your Event manager section you should add http://www.amiando.com as an alternative and as @SocialMan allready said eventbrite, regonline and so on....

May I add one more on Project tools alternatives? It is web based CRM www.worketc.com, which I can recommend especially those whose businesses are online like mine. More than the usual CRM and project management features, this tool helps me best in contact management because of its ability to create multiple tags which I can assign to projects and contact lists.

You are right of course. But this has been a massive project and we see each of these "evergreen" pages as living documents that we shall refine and update in the days, weeks and months ahead.

http://www.eventbrite.com was missing in the "Events" social tools. It's one of the largest Social Events products out there that Techcrunch, Mashable and Facebook use.

At the company I work for we have a PM who puts a countdown timer up on the screen at the start of every meeting showing exactly how much time the project has left. Instead of saying we have to be done by this date it gives you the exact number of days, hours, minutes, seconds left to project completion. There are many sites online to do this buthttp://left2go.com suited us the best. It was prettier :) and allowed multiple countdowns on the same page. He put the project end at the top and the the subsequent phases beneath that. Watching the seconds tick away during the meeting was very effective.

Have you considered HyperOffice Collaboration Suite?

Didn't know about it, thanks much!

hello first of all I would like to thank for this great list of resources. I would like to add to the list http://www.transferum.com - ftp space and file hosting company. regards.

Great list! I would like to add The Payer Player Try this unique tool. Cheers !!

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Toll free numbers are ideal for small business and entrepreneurs. It gives a professional image and make sure that you don't miss a single call. Few years back, I decided to buy toll free numbers from Callture. You can get more information here: Toll Free

I just launched Bill On Site (http://www.billonsite.com) a couple of days ago, and I thought it belonged on this list and similar ones. Bill On Site is a web-based invoicing system, with a unique twist: you can use Bill On Site on your mobile phone, enabling small business owners to send invoices to their customers while still on their client's site. All you need is a semi-recent phone – one with a web browser on it – and internet access on your phone. Other invoicing services offer web-based access, but completely ignore the mobile web, making sending invoices on the go difficult at best, and impossible at worst. For Bill On Site, it's our sole focus, and something we're working on improving all the time. All accounts come with a free 30 day trial, so if you wanted to try out the service, go ahead. No payment information is collected, so it is absolutely no-risk.

Hey, id like to add www.imni.de to the list. its an online picture editing tool. greetings

Rob: You're right of course. But this has been a massive project and we see each of these "evergreen" pages as living documents that we'll refine and update in the days, weeks and months ahead. We'll certainly make the changes you suggest. And hope we hear from others with other suggestions of apps that increase productivity. Roberta: I still use the Archive.org (through Ourmedia and the spinxpress.com upload tool) to host audio files for free. Other folks host audio files on their own servers or Amazon Web Services, which is insanely cheap. And the venerably libsyn.com hosts podcasts starting at $5 a month.