I’ve had the opportunity to do a few presentations on Web 2.0 and social media tools for libraries, and as always happens after presentations like these, people come up to me and ask me for recommendations for tools that I actually use. So without further delay, here’s a brief list of some web applications that I use — and like — in no particular order.
Remember the Milk – fiendishly simple to do and task management from a two-person team in Australia. You can enter tasks in plain English (i.e., “Meet Tris for Coffee on Friday at 2pm”), or use their new SmartAdd syntax that makes it easy to enter all your task details on one line. Have reminders sent to email, or to your mobile device, use the map to see where your tasks are located, and integrate RTM with Gmail or your Google Calendar.
How I use it: RTM helps me keep my life in order. I create tasks using SmartAdd syntax in the web app, sync the data with the RTM iPhone application, and using the Google Labs RTM feature, all my RTM tasks with due dates appear in my Google Calendar.
Posterous – what’s not to love about an application that makes email relevant again? Email anything – videos, photos, or audio files – to post@posterous.com, and Posterous makes a new website for you immediately. You don’t even need to create a log in if you don’t want to; as long as you send messages from the same address, Posterous will know where to store your content. Creating photo galleries is a snap with Posterous, and is in my opinion their best feature. If you attach multiple photos to a message, Posterous creates an attractive, clickable image gallery within your post (you can also choose to have images display inline instead of as a gallery).
How I use it: I send iPhone photos while I’m out and about, and Posterous, thanks to the ‘Autopost Anywhere’ feature, sends my photos to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed for me. What’s even more amazing is Posterous is smart enough to know that text-only posts shouldn’t be sent to Flickr.
CoTweet – CoTweet is a web platform that helps companies manage customer relations through Twitter. Yuu can manage up to six twitter accounts through a single login, easily monitor keywords and trending topics, and assign messages to colleagues within your organization.
How I use it: – I set up on duty notifications in CoTweet so that if someone sends a reply or direct message to the library’s Twitter account, I receive an instant email notification. This way I don’t have to devote hours to monitoring the library’s twitter feed, which makes it easier for me to complete other daily tasks. I haven’t been successful at getting the rest of the library’s Twitter team to use the platform, but I’m not giving up yet.
Jumpchart – Jumpchart is an online collaboration tool that provides simple website planning and wireframing. I love information architecture (nerd), but sometimes I find I can get easily lost when trying to visualize a complex page hierarchy or navigation scheme. I recently worked on a ‘brochureware’ site that had ballooned from a simple 5-page site to one that was nearing 50 pages. Thanks to Jumpchart, I was able to build a website preview that helped me visualize the content organization in such a way that I was quickly able to reduce the number of pages by half. If you have trouble grasping abstract navigation schemes, or if you have a client who just doesn’t get wireframes, try Jumpchart for your next project.
How I use it: When creating complex IA, I quickly build the skeleton of a site in Jumpchart, and use its drag and drop feature to reorganize content hierarchies.
What are some tools you’ve discovered lately that you just can’t do without?
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