Post image for Free Tools

Free Tools

by Paul on January 17, 2012

What’s the best free tools or resources you use regularly?  I think if you look hard enough you can find a free solution to almost everything.  Doesn’t have to be IM related.  Only rules are no affiliate links allowed (even from me).  I’ve mentioned a lot of mine already but I’ll recap and add a few more.

Bubbl.us – Free web based mind mapping software

Yed Graph Editor - The tool I use to draw all the flow charts.  Little tricky at first but once you get the hang of it it’s awesome!

Tomorrow.do – The best to-do list thingy I know of

Google Keyword Tool

WC3 School – For those like me who are HTML and CSS hacks but have fun trying

Trello – Project management – Honestly I have no idea how they do this for free.  Should be top 5 internet app ever.

Dropbox – I’m sure most people know about it’s awesome powers.

Google’s SEO Guide – Good basic information in here

Rather than link to all the google products I’ll just say that gmail, google docs, analytics, webmaster tools, etc. are all great.

Gimp - Photoshop alternative – Extremely powerful but much like photoshop a PIA to learn how to use.

Cool Text Button Maker - Great site to make buttons and headers pretty easily!

Visual of Thesis Hooks – If you were to ever buy Thesis this page will be your best friend

Filezilla - Pretty awesome FTP client that I use on my Windows Machine

I think that’s a good start.  Feel free to list some of your favorites.  I left out most of the stuff that’s listed in every post.  Even if they’re really good.  I think you guys might get tired of seeing the same stuff over and over.  I left out the really geeky stuff I mess around with like Linux and what not, but feel free to include the quirky stuff.  Never know who it might help.

  • Christina

    I won’t duplicate the free tools I use that have already been mentioned. Here’s some that help me–although some of them are more from my web development world.
    -Mindmeister http://www.mindmeister.com for mind mapping, flow charts
    -Tools from SEObook–firefox extensions including a free rank tracker http://tools.seobook.com/
    -Firebug-firefox extension that helps you tweak you site and troubleshoot problem areas of the css getfirebug.com/
    -Netbeans- if you are doing more than just a few tweaks on a site’s php or css, you can do it with this. http://netbeans.org/features/php/
    Xheader- great for creating headers fast http://www.xheader.com/
    Mailchimp- great email marketing, unfortunately not affiliate friendly. http://mailchimp.com/
    Most things from 37signals for project management and collaboration-http://37signals.com/
    Newer PCs have Microsoft Office Starter installed on them. My laptop has that which gives you access to fully functioning Word and Excel with adverts. There’s no link, but some people might not be aware of this. http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/products/office/pages/office_2010_starter.aspx

  • Christina

    Hey Paul, as you grow your blog into more of a two way conversation, have you thought about adding disqus to it? It would make it easier for us to keep track of the conversation we are a part of and it’s free. http://disqus.com/addons/ there is a premium service but way over kill for what you are doing.
    Just a thought it’s been a bit difficult keeping up with the different threads with each post and such valuable info flying, I’d hate to miss something.

    • http://goalyard.com Paul

      I just tried installing disqus and holy crap is it confusing. I’m working on it as we speak.

    • http://goalyard.com Paul

      This is done now. I don’t like way it’s styled yet, but it should be working. Why do these plugin operators write instructions like we’re all developers? I want to just click 3 buttons and have it work….

Previous post:

Next post: