What Software Speeds Up Your Day The Most

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Lifehacker has a post up asking readers about sw they use that speeds up their day most.

The comments have largely degenerated into a list of people's favorite SW (I am not sure how Firefox makes you any more productive than IE - and I am a loyal FF user)

So I thought I would throw the question out to the community and modify it somewhat: What software helps make you more productive on a daily basis?

Here's mine:

1 Allnetic Working Time Tracker - I do a lot of hourly billing this keeps track of my time for all projects and generates very good reports
2 Copernic desktop search. It's free and keeps me from losing resumes.
3. Exel - my goto sw for heavy sourcing/id/recruiting work. I like the ability to colour code and sort by a variety of columns.
4 Outlook with Xobni add in. I have had a love hate relationship with Outlook over the years but the 2007 version has finally added some functionality that helps w productivity. The Xobni add in allows lightning fast searches and displays contacts phone number as well as interesting stats about your email traffic.

4 Comments

Comment by Bill Vick on May 9, 2008 at 10:03am: To paraphrase Will Rodgers "I never met a piece of software I didn't like". Since I'm Mac based, and like everybody else facing an avalanche of email, twits, social connects and rss feeds I use the following.

Quicksilver - so much more than just a search and launch tool
Mail - not as robust as Outlook but with the right plugins and rules it manages my email. I'm communicating more and more with Twitter and Skype.
Flock - built on top of Firefox and supports most of the FF plugins. I particularly like the ScribeFire plugin for blog posting
Skype - my workhorse tele and video tool I make most of my outbound and inbound calls using Skype as well as for video interviews and coaching
iClip - a clipboard tool to store text, graphics, etc.
NetNewsWire - powerful RSS reader. I have close to 1,200 feeds I follow and NetNewsWire makes it manageable.
iCal - a workhorse calendar that rules my life and nudges me to get things done. Did I mention I'm a GTD fanatic?

Comment by Anthony J. Meaney on May 9, 2008 at 4:40pm: Bill - do you find that GTD works well with the recruiting process? I ask because I read an article on how someone organized their outlook based on GTD and it wasn't really helpful for my recruiting activities I found. But then again I haven't read enough GTD stuff to really get the whole concept.

Oh and is Netnewswire Mac only?

Jennifer - glad we can help; I hope some others join in with their recommendations.

Comment by Bill Vick on May 9, 2008 at 5:26pm: Anthony - I find GTD is a way to structure my time and I view it almost as part of a lifestyle and beyond something like Outlook or Mail. It’s the way you think about and work with tasks, goals, time and more.

Netnewswire is now owned by NewsGator and the quote on their site states "NetNewsWire is the premier desktop RSS reader for Mac OS X. According to some statistics, it’s the most popular desktop RSS reader on any platform, even though it’s Mac-only."

Comment by Anthony J. Meaney on May 9, 2008 at 8:18pm: I guess I will have to learn some of this GTD stuff I keep reading about.

I think I use Newsgator's other product - FeedDemon

What Software Speeds Up Your Day The Most

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