“Increase Your Presence with Tech Tools,” NCSL 2013 Recommended Tools and Services

Jill Duffy | @jilleduffy

EMAIL SaneBox SaneBox is one of the best tools for managing . It creates a new folder in your email where it puts incoming messages that are not important—but you can train it to better understand what you think is important or not. It has many other features as you get deeper into the program, but its core service alone is phenomenal.

AwayFind AwayFind, used especially when on the road, acts as a gate between your email inbox and you, that lets through only message you want to see. AwayFind alerts you of new incoming that you deem important by text message, phone call, IM, or through the AwayFind mobile app. There's also a service that lets you set up a free web page with a form where people can be told to contact you quickly if they have something very important to tell you but they aren't on your list of important people in AwayFind.

Xobni (for Outlook) and Smartr Contacts (for , iOS, Android) It's "inbox" spelled backwards, and it's used for contact management. It automatically extracts information about contacts from their emails into your Xobni address book. It also shows you the person's profile picture, so you can see faces, as well as a snapshot of your history of communication with that person.

VIP Inbox (iOS), Priority Inbox (Gmail/Android) The VIP Inbox and Priority Inbox are features in the iPhone email app and Gmail, respectively. These features are included—they don't cost anything to use. They essentially let you see incoming from important people more quickly, without those messages getting lost in the jumble of unimportant mail. See my tips article on using the VIP Inbox on iOS.

TASK-MANAGEMENT AwesomeNote AwesomeNote is a to-do app with color-coded folders, integration with and , and a great set of mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Galaxy Note. It has reminders, so you can get audio and visual alerts of tasks when they're due (or before they're due). It also has a nice list-making function with check boxes.

Starred items are personal favorites. Asana is a task-management app, but it's also project management software, so you can use it by yourself, or you can use it with a group of people. You enter into it tasks you need to complete, or tasks that other people need to complete. You can assign tasks to others, add deadlines, add priority levels, and more. It's a freemium product, and the free version actually has a lot to offer, including support for up to 15 people.

Any.do Any.do is a to-do app that has one really neat feature for people who have a hard time sticking to using their task-management list: It can remind you once a day, preferably in the morning, to review all the tasks that are upcoming. It helps you develop a habit of reviewing your day before it happens.

Remember the Milk is one of the most well-known to-do apps. It works simply and efficiently. It's available on all the major platforms (Web, iOS, Android, BlackBerry). It can connect to Evernote, Google , Outlook, and Gmail. Solid and simple.

Spreadsheets If you're super concerned about privacy, you should use a method that does not sync (meaning, you're data is not available on your home computer, office computer, and smartphone) and therefore does not give any company access to your information. (Okay, so most companies vow they won't look at your data, but leaks and hacks happen, and they are way less likely to happen if you don't sync your data; on the other hand, you lose a lot of convenience by taking your data offline). I recommend using spreadsheets rather than paper and pen. Electronic files let you save your completed to-dos, so you have a searchable record, and they're much easier to edit if your prioritize or deadlines change, for example.

SMARTPHONE & TABLET File-Syncing Service(s) A file-syncing service makes your files available to you from anywhere. Examples of file-syncing services include , Google Drive, , SugarSync (those are my three favorites), iDrive, Cubby, CX.com, etc. There are dozens and dozens of them. I highly recommend using one even if you don't use it on your smartphone or tablet. Just syncing between two or more computers is helpful, as is keeping the data available online in cases when you need it unexpectedly.

Calendar/Scheduling Apps You need a calendar or scheduling app, and you should pick one and stick to it. I like because it syncs to any other calendar or interface I want to use, including the iPhone Calendar app, and other task-management apps. You don't have to use Google Calendar, but

Starred items are personal favorites. whatever you pick, stick to it, use it, and make sure it's on your smartphone. If your smartphone goes with you everywhere, then your reminders of upcoming meetings, appointments, events, and deadlines will be with you, too.

OfficeTime (iOS) OfficeTime is small business software used for tracking time spent on projects, and it's very good at creating reports and invoices of work you've done. It has a timer that literally tracks how much time you spend on the task at hand. It's highly recommended if you work in billable hours. It also has software for Windows PCs.

GoToMyPC GoToMyPC is remote-access software, meaning you can make your iPad or Android tablet literally be your office (or home) computer—your tablet screen will be the desktop of your computer. It's indispensable if there are on your computer that you can't reasonably reach from your tablet in other ways.

PRESENTATIONS Prezi Prezi is an alternative to PowerPoint, and its most notable feature is it works like a giant whiteboard, rather than a sequential list of slides, which zoom in and out of, and navigate like a map while showing your presentation. It also includes tools for collaborating.

SlideRocket This alternative to PowerPoint includes a bunch of features for tracking what happens when people in your organization actually open and look through your slide deck.

VisualBee VisualBee can't save anyone from giving a boring presentation, but it can help the artistically- challenged spruce up the look of their slides. The plug-in tool applies graphical styles, and finds images that you can use based on keywords in your deck. It requires some hand-picking to get good results, though, but it's extra useful if you're just not very adept with making slides look nice or finding images.

SOCIAL MEDIA LinkedIn LinkedIn is valuable for contact management as much as for networking. It's an extremely valuable search tool for finding contacts who work in specific organizations or industries. It's

Starred items are personal favorites. also a great place to highlight what you've accomplished across your career, and have record of it.

Twitter Whether you use for social interaction, to get a message out, or other reason—there's more value in the social network than just that. Twitter makes it easy for other people to find you and send you a message you in 140 characters or less. Wouldn't you prefer some of your unsolicited messages stay short and tight, and not go to your email inbox?

TweetDeck If you use Twitter and extensively, TweetDeck is perhaps the simplest tool for helping manage that work, both outgoing and incoming. You can set up custom alerts and also schedule tweets and status updates at different times and dates, which is especially helpful during highly busy and productive times, and when traveling.

Cloze Cloze is in some sense a contact-management app, in that it helps you keep an eye on what the most important people in your circles are saying across their different online social networks. Cloze will show you, for example, a summary of all the tweets, Facebook status updates, and personal email communication from your boss, your closest colleague, your partner, your assistant, etc., on a given day

HootSuite HootSuite is probably the most advanced of all the social networking aggregator apps. With a paid account, you can measure and track how effective your social network campaigns have been. It's quite rigorous and definitely a service worth using if you are truly investing your career through social media outreach.

Facebook Business Tools Facebook has some tools limited to business accounts that you can use to dig up information about different market segments. They're all free to use. You just have to sign up for a Facebook business account. You can find out, say, how many Facebook users "like" Obama and live in Florida. Or how many Obama likers live and Florida and are female between the ages of 18 and 25. It's handy.

Custom Landing Page (or personal domain) If you don't have your own website, you can still have what's called a landing page. It's like a personal website for people who don't have time for personal websites. Think of it almost like an online business card. Some services that are good include Re.vu, About.me, Flavors.me, and Jux.

Starred items are personal favorites.