Increase Your Productivity with Software
I love software and I personally work with a lot of different programs. Right now I have 47 different titles pinned to my Quick launch menu. Some of these saves me a lot of time every day.
Today I’ll cover a few of my favorites. I am guessing you heard about some of them, but I hope you’ll find something that can boost your daily productivity when working with selling your software.
And if you have some tips about software that saves you time, please do let us know by posting a comment below.
1. Snagit
Snagit is really The screen capture tool. I have tried many different and none comes close to Snagit’s functionality both when capturing, editing or sharing my images.
One of my absolute favorites to work with and also a huge time saver. I use Snagit for virtually everything in my business and personal life. Right now I am planning a work/vacation trip to Hong Kong and Thailand. I use it to grab and store information about the hotels, plan the different stops, copy maps online and then add annotations and stamps to clarify parts of the screen captures.
For work I use Snagit extensively, and this may sound over the top but I work with two monitors and my second monitor is basically used as my Snagit Editor monitor.If you try it I am pretty sure you’ll soon realize that it helps a lot. If you look at this website most of the graphic work is done with Snagit.
Check out: Snagit screen capture software.
When on Mac I use Voila for the same purposes. Check out: Voila Screen Capture for Mac.
2. Outlook
I am guessing no further introduction is needed. I also use Gmail for certain things but it’s hard to beat the time-saving functionality Outlook brings when I use the email templates (now called Quick Parts). If you are using Microsoft Office and is not using Quick Parts you are wasting time. You find a good tutorial on how to use Quick Parts here. You will not regret it.
3. Google Desktop
I do most work on Vista OS and I am sorry Microsoft, but your search functionality is not very good (the exception is the new faster search in Outlook). Google Desktop search saves me bundles of time locating critical files when working. Check out Google Desktop and save some time.
4. Camtasia Studio
If Snagit is the ultimate sceen capture tool, then Camtasia is The screen recording tool. In our organization we use Camtasia extensively to create demos and reviews of software as well as tutorials for our staff. To not need to explain the same systems to our new staff over and over again is a huge time-saver. Check out Camtasia Studio screen recorder.
5. Firefox
I used to be a die hard explorer user up until I tried Firefox. Firefox in itself is faster than Explorer so there’s a bit of a time saver there, and when I add using a few add-ons to firefox the productivity goes way up. Check out Firefox. I have also tested both Google Chrome and Opera, and although they are fast, Firefox outperforms them based on all available add-ons.
6. Bonus tip: SuperStamps
When I write articles or want to add professional graphic content to my work quickly, easily and make it look real good, I use SuperStamps. It’s a collection of 654 graphic images that can be used directly from inside Snagit. Check out SuperStamps Snagit Stamps.
I have a few more excellent software titles but I will save them for a future article. I hope you enjoyed this article and that you got something out of it.
Please post your comments, ideas about software that saves time for you below.
PETER GILLBERG is the owner of www.SoftwareCasa.com and responsible for millions of dollars in software sales. He also owns a consulting business for software publishers, teaching them how to implement online marketing and sales strategies. You can reach Peter by visiting his website: www.SoftwareMarketingSecrets.com
Hi Peter, thanks for the tips! I use Snagit with SuperStamps all the time, it’s a real time saver! Love the Stamps in the new release!
I’ll look into Google Desktop.
Thanks, Eva
For FireFox, one useful addon for web designer is “Firebug”. Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can immediately edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page
Using Snagit and Camtasia to record my screen while doing the steps from a user manual for a software program helps me remember instructions very well, so it saves me time from having to go back and read them again.
The applications save me the most time are Macro Scheduler and Type Pilot.
Hi there,
what I can really suggest to everyone working with more than one monitor is Ultramon.
It saves a lot of your time as you can just click on the swithbutton and the window moves to the other monitor. Furthermore the software icons are fixed on the dependent task bar – so you don’t have to move around a lot with your mouse.
special hint for “time saving” of loading time of your website: smush it; this is feature of a add on of firefox: firebug. It checks the images of your single sites and you can decide to smush them and upload them (with savings up to 80%) again in your CMS. This improves the performance of your website!
I’m working as a freelancer and one of my clients is Daisho Blacksmith. They have develeoped a real cool Outlook alternative – especially designed for freelancers with a lot of great functions.
What I really enjoy is running it from my USB stick (as I have a couple of clients and work on different computers). So no further installation is necessary for Windows, Mac, Linux (only one licens necessary). I like time saving features in their contactmanagement (use masters for contacts who work for same company), projectmanagement (transform milestones to tasks with a click), time management (calender and planning are linked) and email (run all accounts in one window) … and so on.
I’m really conviced about it.