Personal productivity

There are many personal productivity tools that will help you to be an effective learner or worker. These are of two types: online productivity tools and desktop productivity tools:

Desktop search tools

For desktop search a popular tool is Google Desktop, which not only lets you search your computer files (just like Google search lets you search the web) but also provides you with gadgets to customise your desktop.

However, an alternative to Google Desktop is Copernic Desktop Search, which is also free.

Online and desktop productivity tools

There are a number of online tools that can help you remain productive, many of which are available from the Google collection, for instance

Google Calendar (see MIni Tutorial) which is a web-based calendar (see Mini Tutorial). It can be used as a personal calendar or it can be shared with others. It can even be embedded into web or blog pages as below.

Google Alerts to keep up to date with new articles, postings, information on a given subject
Google Earth for geographic information
Google Maps for searchable maps, which can also be embedded in web pages, like the one showing the location of our offices below.

View Larger Map

Google Notebook to clip and save information from the Web; and

Additionally, there are a range of other productivity tools that help you become effective with your time, your communications and your online resources, e.g.

personal and to-do list organisers, like iPrioritize and Remember the milk!

mind mapping tools like MindManager or Freemind (see Mini Tutorial)

clipboards like cl1p.net

file sharing sites where you can host photos, and other media, e.g. Flickr (see Mini Tutorial)

file converters like Zamzar; and

being able to access your computer from anywhere, like Avvenu

Directory Listings

Selected reading

Productivity Reading List

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