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Productivity 215: Shortcuts For Microsoft Office
NOTE: Most of these sites have alternative versions of the software that you can find on AlternativeTo or SimilarSites. Also, most of the programs that normally cost money have a free alternative software that has the same features.
Really Useful Websites
- Managing Your Online Accounts & Software
- Account Killer – delete and disable tons of Internet accounts at once
- IFTTT – connect all your online accounts with “triggers”
- otixo – manage multiple cloud services
- Secure Password Generator – generates safe passwords for your accounts
- Surfing The Internet Safely
- downforeveryoneorjustme.com – check if a site is offline
- WhoIsHostingThis? – see who is hosting a website
- Norton Safe Web – verify the safety of a website
- BuiltWith – analyze what a site is put together with
- LastPass – manage all of your passwords securely
- Maildrop, spamgourmet, 10 Minute Mail, Fake Mail Generator, Guerrilla Mail, Throwaway Mail, Mailinator – use a temporary email to avoid signing up for spam
- Have I Been Pwned? – check if your email address is connected to any hackers’ data breaches
- Calculators
- Calculator.net – calculators for almost anything
- Mathway – an educational calculator that shows the answer step by step
- Online-Convert.com – convert anything into anything
- Wolfram Alpha – a calculator for anything that can be quantified
- Google Ngram Viewer – aggregator for written literature
- How Long To Read This – measure how long it will take to read a piece of literature
- Finding Information
- Charity Navigator – records of all major charities
- Geo Location – find out the approximate postal address for a location
- Boxoh – track any package
- FlightStats – find out the location of a flight
- FindTheBest – a research engine
- Hotel WiFi Test – speed test and research hotel internet speeds
- Word Hippo – find similar words when you can’t remember the exact word
- Simple Wikipedia – Wikipedia using simple language
- Expanding Possibilities
- Copy Paste Character – copy special characters not on your keyboard
- polishmywriting.com – spelling and grammar check your writing
- Google Translate – translate text or an uploaded document automatically
- Mixlr – broadcast live audio
- Sharing Ideas
- lmgtfy.com – send a pre-Googled webpage to someone
- join.me – share your screen
- privnote – send private notes that self-destruct
- Marker.to – highlight web pages to make sharing easier
- goo.gl – shorten URLs to share and link with
- unfurlr – figure out what’s behind someone else’s shortlink
- scr.im – convert your email address into a shortlink to avoid spammers
- tinychat – setup private chats with others
- faxZERO – send free faxes online
- Tall Tweets – write Twitter tweets longer than 140 characters
- everytimezone.com – view the time zones in the simplest way possible
- Ge.tt – share files quickly
- Scribble Maps – custom editing over Google Maps
- Slack – share and collaborate with a virtual shared workspace
- Useful Media Tools
- Screenr – record your computer screen, with or without audio
- ctrlq.org/screenshots – take a screenshot of a website you specify
- PDFescape – a quick and dirty PDF editor
- Online OCR – text recognition for PDFs
- WeTransfer – send really big files
- Adobe Color CC – find the right color and pull colors from inside a file
- Jotti’s malware scan – upload a suspicious file to scan it for viruses
- FreeImages – download and use stock photographs
- PicMonkey – browser-based photo editor
- SumoPaint – browser-based Photoshop-style software
- savefrom.net – save any video or audio to your computer
- Inside – daily summarized news brief emailed to you
- Pocket – manage your bookmarks more effectively
- Corrupt a file – create a corrupted file to send to someone to buy time
- PrintWhatYouLike.com – simplify web pages for printing
- Canva – edit and create graphics for anything you need
- Other Stuff For Your Non-Computer Life
- Autodesk Homestyler – design or remodel your home in 3D
- Random.org – pure random number generation
- noteflight – all-in-one browser-based music notation software
- Meetup – connect with people in real life with shared interests
- GetHuman or FastCustomer – automate the customer service phone queue
- Shyp – a service that will pick up and deliver anything you need shipped
- Kitestring – a service that will contact friends if you don’t respond after a specified time
- Managing A Website
- NameChk – check the availability of a web handle
- peek – allow others to give a 5-minute evaluation of your website
- Google Fonts – open-source fonts to use
- iwantmyname – search for domain names you can use
- GTmetrix – analyze your site’s speed and make it faster
- disposableWebPage – create a webpage that lasts for 90 days
- dead link checker – check if a site has a broken link
- pancake.io – use a Dropbox or Git account to make a simple website
- woorank – find out how a site looks from a marketing perspective
Really Useful Browser Plugins & Extensions
- AdBlock Plus – one of the most effective ad blockers
- NoScript – will stop all scripts from running on a web page, requiring you to manually turn them on
- Grammarly – looks for spelling and grammar mistakes and automatically fixes it
- OneTab – consolidates a bunch of tabs into a list for easier processing
- Google Similar Pages – finds related pages to the one you’re browsing with
- Hola – free and simple VPN for browsing anonymously
- MightyText – allows you to send text messages on your phone from your computer
- PushBullet – display notifications on any of your devices
- Project Naptha – text recognition for images
Really Useful Apps
- Mobile devices
- Uber/Lyft – take a ridesharing taxi to wherever you need to go
- Circle of 6 – have up to six people you can contact instantly in an emergency
- Android-specific
- By turning on Google Now, it will remember where you’ve parked your car
- PCs
- Ninite – automatically update software that you use
- PortableApps – run many free portable applications from cloud storage or from a flash drive
- Macs
- DeTune – transfer all of your iPhone and iPad songs onto your computer, even if they were deleted from iTunes
