The Best of Blog Challenge 2009 topic for today is: Best Web Tool. ”It came into your work flow this year and now you couldn’t live without it. It has simplified or improved your online experience.”
This post will be short and sweet. And, I can’t really narrow it down. There are several that I will list.
1) Tweetdeck – this tool allows me to manage my Twitter life. You can have any number of columns so that you can divide your twitter followers into whatever groupings you like. This means you won’t miss valuable tweets from friends or people you follow minute by minute and also allows you to find the gems buried in the “noise”. Also, you can manage multiple Twitter accounts with ease. You can send tweets to multiple accounts, shorten URLs and insert pictures via your favorite Twitter picture service. And, this software runs on both my Mac and my iPhone and the columns/lists can be synced between the platforms so that no matter which device you use, you can manage everything just the same.
2) Read It Later – this tool allows me to save interesting websites to a “cloud” repository for reading at a later time. It’s like a web based bookmarking service. I use it via the various Twitter applications I use on my iPhone as well as thru the bookmarklet I have set up on my Safari browser. Basically, you simply navigate to the page you wish to read later and select the “read it later” option from the Twitter app menu or browser bookmarklet button I have set up on the Bookmarks bar in Safari. Then, when I have time, I can visit the Read it Later website or see my list in the Read it Later iPhone app, log into my account and select the website(s) I wish to review, and bam! there they are. There is even an option for saving the webpages for offline reading. How cool is that??? Oh, and it’s FREE although, for the iPhone, the premium app was a couple bucks.
3) Lastly, I have to say that the iPhone “online” tool I use the most is Tweetie 2. It supports multiple Twitter accounts, managing users and lists, has a drafts feature and even integrates with Read it Later, Twitpic and other popular services like Bit.ly for URL shortening.
As an honorable mention, I will add the Facebook App for the iPhone. It lets me check on my friends and do most of the things I would do with Facebook but when I’m not at a computer.
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:05 am
I haven’t tried tweet deck yet and I have never heard of Read it Later but it sounds awesome! Thanks for the suggestion!
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Julie, Thank you! I hope these tools help you out. I will have to check out your suggestion as well. I’m always looking out for tips to make my blog look/act better. Cheers!