Five Free Web-based Productivity Tools

Using many of todays freely available Web-based productivity tools has allow me to save money on software purchases and service bills, while giving me more flexibility in how and where I do my work. These tools are also allowing me to collaborate more easily with customers and partners.

The following five tools are the ones I use on a daily basis. They are in no way the only ones available. They are just the ones I use.

Google Personal Homepage
This is where I start my workday. The personalized homepage provides a central place for me to access my favourite sites and applications. Using RSS feeds and modules I have most of the information I need to start my day in one central place. I have all my news feeds, email messages, bookmarks, weather information, to do list, notepad, calendar and games like Pac Man for when I need a break.

Gmail/Google Alerts/Google Talk
Using the combination of Gmail, Alerts and Google Talk allows me to always be on top of any subject that interest me, communicate with customers and partners, and manage my email using conversations and automated tag's. Gmail also has one of the best spam management tool available. If your customers or friends use Google talk they can also leave voice messages in your Gmail account.

Basecamp
This is a great project management tool. It has a really simple clean interface and is very easy to use. If you are involved in a project which involves working with others this is the tool for you. It allows you to setup list of the things to be done and assign them to different members of your team. It keeps track of deadlines, allows you to share files, how long each task take to complete, etc. This is available in a limited free version and business packages for US$24 or US$49 per month.

Google Docs and Spreadsheet
Say goodbye to MS Office, I did. With Google Docs and Spreadsheet your word processing and spreadsheet application and documents are available to you from anywhere. I love the fact that I can easily share documents with others without having to email files back and forth. And if someone does send me a document in my Gmail, I can open it in Google Docs without having to download anything. If I need to share a document I can set permissions to allow others to edit it or just grant them read privilege. It allows me to export my documents in a number of different file formats including MS Word, Excel and PDF file formats. I can also upload documents which I worked on off line. I think the only limitation I find with this tools is the limited printing capabilities the browser provides, so I always export my files to Openoffice (Free desktop based office application) for printing.

Skype/Google Talk
I use Skype to reduce my long distance bill. With Skype you can call regular phones in North America or Europe for just US$0.03/minute. I usually use Google Talk for PC to PC communication.

I recently began using Googles Apps for myself and many of my customers.  What Google Apps allow you to do is have a version of Gmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheet, Google Personal Homepage, Google Calendar and Google Talk that uses your own domain name. So your emails will be you@yourdomain.com. They offer this service in their traditional advertising supported 2Gb storage/user model or you can buy the advertising free, 10Gb storage/user enterprise version for $50/year/user.