Early last week DIYPlanner had a post on "What five items for enhancing your productivity and/or creativity can you not be without?" I hit me that this meme might be really helpful for prolurker readers, and for me when I read what y'all do to keep your productivity up. SO here are my top tools and a bit of explanation on why they make the list. p.s. I use a paper planner so there is no calendar program on this list.

General tools

• ActiveWords - ActiveWords has become such an integral part of what I do that I forgot to add it to the original draft of this list, I simply forget that it is there. ActiveWords acts as a cross-software spell checker, and a quick key program. I have key combinations set-up to then expand into full phrases or coding across programs. This is particularly useful when I'm writing up research. Repeated word phrases can be quick-keyed to cutdown on typing. There is a free trial version and I'm sure that if you try it you will buy it.
• Concetta Mindmap - one of several good mindmapping tools available. I find myself using this more and more to pull together what I need to do and what I'm thinking about. I'm not sure there is an end to what can be worked through with a mindmap. Check for academic pricing.
• CountDown Clock - keeping me on task...sometimes it's a problem in that I get sucked into what I'm doing and lose all track of time. CountDown lets me set a time limit on what you are doing and then tells you the time has expired with a message you set.
• eWallet - Remembers all of those things I don't have space for in my head - passwords, connection info for the blogs and email accounts, software license numbers, etc. Oh and it runs on palm and many cell phones too.
• GoBinder - I'm still learning this one but I see lots of value in using it for my students. I plan to have my semester plan for I101 programmed in beginning in the fall, so students can download the file directly into their GoBinder.
• Mobimate WorldMate - I first found this program when I was using a palm, now it is desktop too. WorldMate helps me schedule conference trips and keeps me on-time when I travel. It is an annual subscription but it's not very expensive if you just have the desktop version.
• UltraRecall - My digital electronic brain. I use the program as both a planning tool and an archive. I set-up my academic goals for submissions, conference, etc. a year or more in advance (depending on when conferences are announced and CFPs are issued). I archive each completed year for posterity, I have individual activities archived elsewhere so this file isn't my primary dossier. The file structure from my UR installation is shown on the right, just to give you an idea what can be done with the program. If you aren't already using a PIM or if you aren't happy with the one you have, I recommned you give UltraRecall a testdrive.
• VIP Simple To Do List - VIP is my GTD trusted location. I enter everything I have to do into VIP and set-up goals for completion. Things that don't have a current due date are entered as due on my 100th b'day. Mostly this is a sort order thing in that activities without dates are sorted before the current date rather then after, so my 100th b'day is way after today. Oh and the "Simple" version of the program is very inexpensive.

Academic recordkeeping tools

• FileMaker Pro - A recordkeeping and research tool. I'm still learning my way around it but have found it very useful in keeping my professional activities stored for monthly and annual reports.
• Movable Type - Allows me to keep my online CV up-to-date. I hacked together a pretty cool page to create a dynamic CV that I'm very proud of and will be improving as time allows.
• Scanner and tools - Indispensable, I use it to scan in dossier type stuff, conference programs, letters, etc. Also use it to manage my IRB forms so I can keep on top of my active work.

Research Tools

• ATLAS.ti - I have a older version of the program. After quals I have resolved that I will upgrade the program and attend a training workshop to really learn to use it.
• Concordance - Concordance is a nice simple program for doing word frequencies. I use it quite a bit when I'm doing research, helps me build the story of the data even if the results don't appear in the final paper. The company offers a 30-day free trial for personal evaluation.
• Detagger - Was a great find. It allows me to strip as much or as little HTML from pages as I need removed. Often I want to retain some of the coding as part of the study of performance, though rarely do I need all of it for analysis. Detagger gives me a lot of flexibility when doing research. I can convert picture and font tags to text then remove all remaining html to get down to the data I want. The company offers a 30-day free trial for personal evaluation.
• InfoRapid Search and Replace - I use the search most, have used the replace to cleanup old html documents in my archives. InfoRapid Search is not as powerful as Google Desktop but it doesn't have all the privacy issues either, that I like.
• Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count - LIWC is a great analysis tool. Like Concordance I use LIWC to find the story in my research. Usually I work with the default dictionaries but I am slowly building a "teen" dictonary to use as needed. Play with this tool and I'm sure you will be hooked.
• Microsoft Excel - My analysis tool of choice. What can I say I'm pretty good at programming, so I save lots of time doing data analysis in Excel.
• Microsoft Word - Where would any of us be without Word?
• Reference Manager - I keep so much in RefMgr, citations, full text of blog posts and articles, to-read-lists, it's an amazing tool. Plus it has cite-while-you-write which is wonderfully powerful.
• RocketPost - Is a powerful tool for updating and managing blogs. I have RocketPost set-up to be used with both of my blogs. It's one of those tools I use throughout the day on every computer with which I interact.
• SnagIT - SnagIT lets me grab clean screenshots for papers, and avatars for research. I seem to use it a lot to post pictures to the blogs as well as adding new desktops to the computers. It's a very handy tool I recommend it. I used it to grab the section of a screen shot from UtlraRecall you see with this post. All nice and neat.
• WinHTTrack - HTTrack is a free website archiver and offline browser. I use it to grab research materials and archive them for processing. HTTrack is the best program I have used, others for which I have paid cash didn't do as good a job in archiving and took up incredible amounts of resources while doing their work.
• WinZIP - Great for packing files for archive or for distribution among collaborators. I've tried other programs and keep coming back to WinZIP.

Ok I'm tagging three of you to get this ball rolling - David Brake, Angela Thomas, and A Learner's Space.

p.s. One of the nice things about doing a list like this periodically is you find out which of your programs have updates available. LOL Several of these were updated or plans were made to update for those that I must buy a-new.

Posted by prolurkr at March 5, 2006 02:15 PM

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