TOP 10 TOOLS 2008 & 2009
Barry Sampson

I'm an independent consulting and developer working across the fields of elearning, social media and ecommerce. The lines between these areas are blurring more every day as we find exciting new ways to use the web. I'm also a committee member at The eLearning Network.  

Barry's Top 10 Tools as at 9 November 2009

1. Safari - After a brief flirtation with Firefox, I've moved back to Safari as my browser of choice, on both my Mac and Windows machines. The web browser is so firmly at the centre of everything I do, that I need to be 100% sure that the tool I'm using is reliable, stable and fast.

2. Twitter - Twitter has become an essential part of my toolbox. In the past few months I've made so many great connections in and outside the world of learning. I've tried lot's of different desktop client tools, and at the moment haven't settled on any one in particular as there is so much change going on. On the iPhone I use Tweetie 2

3. Google Reader - This is a slight cheat in that I now consume most of my RSS feeds via Feedly, which is an extended interface that sits on top of Google Reader. If push came to shove and i had to go back to the standard Google Reader interface, I wouldn't complain.

4. Delicious - I often find myself searching Delicious before Google these days, as I trust the crowdsourced results more than Google's algorithms.

5. Wordpress - I've used WP to build a number of sites recently, and as a blogging platform it's hard to beat. It has a great community supporting it, and plugins that let you do pretty much anything you want.

6. Google Quick Search Box - Last year I said I couldn't imagine working without QuickSilver, and then along came Google Quick Search Box. It's written by the same author as QuickSilver, but is better featured and of course has Google integration.

7. Google Docs - I've been using Google Docs for a while, but this year it has become my standard office suite. I do find that with complex documents I may need to load them into Word to finish the formatting, but I do prefer the simplicity of Google Docs. The collaboration features are superb.

8. Netbook - I love my netbooks. The combination of a highly portable PC, good fast 3G internet connection and increasingly good battery life has really made it possible to work anywhere.

9. Skype - Over the past year, Skype has become my standard for voice communication, to the point where I no longer have a business land line. It's on my Mac, my netbook, my iPhone and my home phone. VOIP really seems to have come of age.

10. Evernote - Probably the single biggest change to my workflow in the past year has been the inclusion of Evernote. For me it has proved to be the best way to sort and manage the ever increasing quantities of information that I deal with.

Barry's Top 10 Tools as at 14 July 2009

1. Firefox - With version 3.5, Firefox has become usable on a Mac and I've made the move from Safari. I'm trying to limit the number of extension I'm adding, but the delicious and evernote add ins are excellent.

2. Twitter - It took me a while to make sense of it, but Twitter has become an essential part of my toolbox. In the past few months I've made so many great connections in and outside the world of learning. I've tried lot's of different client tools, but have settled on TweetDeck as the most usable.

3. Google Reader - Still the best feed reader bar none as far as I'm concerned, and RSS is still the best way to keep up to date.

4. Delicious - I often find myself searching Delicious before Google these days, as I trust the crowdsourced results more than Google's algorithms.

5. Wordpress - I've used WP to build a number of sites recently, and as a blogging platform it's hard to beat. It has a great community supporting it, and plugins that let you do pretty much anything you want.

6. Google Quick Search Box - Last year I said I couldn't imagine working without QuickSilver, and then along came Google Quick Search Box. It's written by the same author as QuickSilver, but is better featured and of course has Google integration.

7. Google Docs - I've been using Google Docs for a while, but this year it has become my standard office suite. I do find that with complex documents I may need to load them into Word to finish the formatting, but I do prefer the simplicity of Google Docs. The collaboration features are superb.

8. Netbook - I love my netbooks. The combination of a highly portable PC and a good fast 3G internet connection has really made it possible to work anywhere.

9. Skype - Over the past year, Skype has become my standard for voice communication, to the point where I no longer have a business land line. It's on my Mac, my netbook, my iPhone and my home phone. VOIP really seems to have come of age.

10. Moleskines - I'm still carrying around assorted Moleskine notebooks, because there are times that only pen and paper will do.

Barry's Top 10 Tools as at 30 October 2008

1. Safari - This is my browser of choice, and my most used tool. If I was using Windows I'd probably use Firefox, but on the Mac it has to be Safari. 
2. Google Reader - I think I've tried just about every feed reader there is, but I haven't found anything to beat Google Reader. RSS is simply the best way to keep on top of everything that's going on. 
3. Delicious - It took me a while to get my head around it's usefulness, but now I can't imagine being without it. This is crowdsourcing at its simplest and most useful.
4. Drupal - I've been using Drupal for a number of years, and find it to be the most flexible platform for the developmen of web applications. It has a steeper learning curve than some of it's competitors, but you're repaid many times over by the speed with which you can develop sophisticated sites. It's what I used to build The eLearning Network website. 
5. SugarSync - The best solution I've found for keeping everything in sync between my desktop, my laptop and my phone. The fact that I can access all of my files from any web enabled device means it's the only service of it's kind that seems to live up to it's hype. 
6. Fireworks - There are lots of graphic apps out there, and Photoshop is often touted as the industry standard, but nothing comes close to Fireworks when it comes to developing graphics for the web. 
7. Fluid - This is an app that uses the rendering engine from Safari and let's you create your own site specific browsers. I have them set up for Facebook, Google Docs, LinkedIn etc. There is a similar Firefox based tool called Prism. 
8. Textmate - I use this for everything from web development to writing presentations. It's simply a well featured and very user friendly text editor. 
9. Quicksilver - If I'm sat in front of someone else's computer, be it Mac or PC, this is the application I miss the most. At first glance it appears to be just a program launcher, but that barely scratches the surface. This is what Google Desktop search should have been!
10. Moleskine + Space Pen - Nothing beats the always on, instantly accessible, tangibly pleasurable experience of putting pen to paper. You may ask why it has to be a Moleskine and a Space Pen; and all I would say is that we only pass this way once, so why would you buy an ugly notebook and pen?