Are you a digital designer, content hunter, news gatherer, or web developer looking for tools to streamline your work, save you time, make you more effective? Well we’ve got the digs on the goods, read on to see if some of these resources will make you smile and say “I’m so glad I found that!”
Feedly: Organizes your favorite sites RSS feed into a fun, magazine-like start page. based on Google Reader and Twitter.
Pixus: Cross platform Adobe Air application that allows you to measure exact pixels of anything on your computer screen.
Note: At the time of writing this post I could not find Pixel Window as it used to be called Pixel Perfect. This is similar to Pixus but less bulky. It does require Adobe Air and is a wonderful little app.
Color Pix: ColorPix is a neat little app that will let you grab the color values and screen coordinates at any pixel on your screen. ColorPix automatically translates any screen color into RGB, HEX, HSB and CMYK color values, and comes with a zoom-able magnifier built in! Multiple instances of the app can be launched as well. (Shown above in screenshot of my desktop)
ColourLovers: Allows one to create color palettes, patterns and more! Download options include ASE for Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files that can be added to your program’s color swatches.
Drop Box: A cross-platform online backup solution that automatically syncs with your computer. In addition to having a place to back up files, dropbox has many other uses.
- Public and/or privately shared files for team collaboration.
- Syncing important documents between multiple computers like a desktop pc and a laptop.
Fonts consume system resources and degrade performance, especially the decorative or dingbat fonts. Luckily there are font managers available to help utilize your font collection on a per need basis.
Nexusfont: Windows based font manager that’s a must have if you like to collect fonts.
Fonty Python Linux based font manager that’s available for installation from most package managers.
Free Stock Image Resources
Social Media Management
Hootsuite: The ultimate social media app! Hootsuite allows one person or a team of people to manage multiple twitter accounts, 1 facebook fan page and 1 facebook profile. The paid version allows multiple facebook profiles. Here are just *some* of it’s many features:
Manage Followers
See who’s following you and who you’re following, see their Klout score and manage your Lists. Easily gather your most important followers into a List of their own.
WordPress Integration
View, manage, schedule and post directly to your WordPress blog from HootSuite.
Message Drafts
Save what you’re writing for later or simply save messages that you use often.
Customize Urls
Add custom link parameters for tracking clicks and gathering information on your audience.
File Uploads
Upload images and files right into your messages. The files are instantly converted into super-short Owly links for space saving and easy sharing.
Schedule Tweets
Provide rich, nourishing content to your followers at any time of day using the HootSuite tweet scheduler. Pre-schedule anything you like, from radio programming to birthday well-wishes. Or, tweet live!
Twitter Lists
Now you can create customizable streams for your friends, groups or topics of interest! Add users through their @username or drag and drop them from other streams! Hoot!
Quick Search
Located directly on the dashboard, click the search bar to see current trending topics, to search keywords, or monitor your brand. Like what you see? Save the search as a stream!
Print and Export Stats
Now you can take your link stats with you, export CSV data to your favorit data crunching program or just print off the graphs for maximum portability.
Secure Login
Credentials are now more secure than ever with all login information passing via encryption from your browser and through our servers.
View Threaded Conversations
Know what Tweet your followers are replying to with our threaded conversation.
Ping.fm Integration
Update all of your social networks with a single update! HootSuite with Ping.FM allows you to update your Facebook, WordPress, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.
Embed Streams
Want to feed the chatter from a customized Twitter stream somewhere else? Now you can grab code from HootSuite to easily embed Twitter search streams in your blog or website!
Feed Your RSS
Like to feed your blog or website through your social media streams? Tis easy! Automatically feed your RSS to your stream with HootSuite!
Auto Refresh
Keep on top of new tweets, automatically. The auto refresh feature continuously updates your Twitter streams.
Notifications and Alerts
Know exactly when you get new tweets with our flashing title notification and optional audio alert!
View User Info
Easily view users’ details without being taken to a separate window! Click on their username or avatar to view an in-screen popup to view their detailed bio, follow them, or add them to one of your groups.
Clickable Hashtags
Check out what others are saying about a #topic with clickable hashtags.
Report Spam
Keep spammers off Twitter by clicking their username and the “Report Spammer” link on their bio popup.
