TOP 10 TOOLS 2007, 2008 & 2009
Harold Jarche

Harold is an independent consultant based in Atlantic Canada. His work is centered on improving organisational performance.  Harold blogs at jarche.com.  Harold is also part of the togetherLearn brain trust.

Harold's Top 10 Tools as at 28 September 2009

1. Twitter: A performance support tool, learning platform and social network all rolled in one. I learn so much from Twitter that I write a weekly blog post on what I've found, called Friday's Finds.

2. is.gd: Being limited to 140 characters on Twitter requires URL shorteners and is.gd is fast and simple, plus it doesn't send people to a separate preview page.

3. Wordpress: I still use this open source software to run my blog and it keeps getting better. Wordpress.com's hosted service also lets me run about a dozen other blogs or test out services at a low cost.

4. Slideshare: A simple way to share slide presentations and works with Mac and Windows applications. The embed function for blogs is a handy way to share and lest you view a presentation without having to download it.

5. Keynote: Apple's presentation system simply lets you create better designed presentations.

6. Flickr: I upload many of my pictures to Flickr and have a Pro account. This robust system also offers a Creative Commons search function and the Flickr Commons of public photos from various archives.

7. Neo Office: When I switched to a Mac last year I also switched from Open Office to Neo Office, an open source office suite that lets me open and save documents in a wide variety of formats.

8. Delicious: This is still the standard for saving and sharing online bookmarks.

9. GMail: I route all of my mail through GMail because of its excellent spam filtering and it provides me with a free mail backup system.

10. Google Reader: This year I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader, which has less down time and connects with other Google applications.

Harold's Top 10 Tools as at 6 March 2008 and 27 July 2007

1. Thunderbird - This is a simple e-mail client that focuses on e-mail, though you can use it as a desktop RSS feed reader as well. Virtually virus-free and easy on memory. Like FireFox you can easily change the look.

2. OpenOffice - 've been using the free and open source OpenOffice for so long that I don't remember the other office suites. It saves in multiple formats, including MS .doc, .xls and .ppt, and exports to Flash or PDF with a single click

3. Google Docs & Spreadsheets - As much as I like OpenOffice, Google's collaborative documents and spreadsheets are excellent for group work. With Google's simple interface, it's not difficult to get new users to join in.

4. GIMP - Another free and open source tool that lets me edit photos.

5. Gliffy - This free online diagramming tool is getting better every day, with more templates and the ability to collaborate

6. MindMeister - Similar to Gliffy, but focused on mind maps. These two free tools have replaced my desktop applications like Visio or SmartDraw.

7. WordPress - Without my blog, I would not have been asked for a top ten tool list. WordPress is easy to use and has kept hundreds of thousands of spam from my website.

8. del.icio.us - I have played with several social bookmark tools and have settled on del.icio.us for my online, searchable database that forms part of my Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system

9. Bloglines - I've been using Bloglines as my web RSS feed reader for several years and I still like it, in spite of the dozens of other options. It's simple and easy to view the +/- 150 feeds that I read.

10. Commentful - This is another tool from Blogflux that allows you to monitor the comments made on other blogs and notifies you of new comments. It integrates well with the Firefox browser.