10 Tools and Extensions You Probably Don’t Use, But Should!

These days, it seems like we’re constantly being hit by endless tasks and information, demanding clients and the never-ending requirement of staying up-to-date on technologies, tools and trends. Most of us have to constantly multi-task, jumping from emails to Skype conversations, analysing data, checking social medias, spending valuable time with clients and every now and then trying to squeeze in a bit of work.

If you’re a family man, then you probably know the feeling of working unusual hours, throughout the night, to get tasks done. That peaceful time at night, when the kids are asleep and there are no distractions.

Having the right tools and work methodologies makes the difference between you chasing your own tail, to working efficiently and being productive. With that in mind, these following tools might interest you as by adding them to your arsenal of tools, you’ll probably be able to achieve better results while saving a lot of time. Some of these tools are more useful than others, but all of them will improve your efficiency, allowing you to be more productive.

1. Rapportive

Rapportive is a great chrome extension for people that are constantly on social networks. It is a free tool that lets you combine your email provider with your social media accounts, allowing you to follow your clients’ mentions, posts and tweets. If you’re a Linkedin active user, you can connect with people without leaving your email account. Basically Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.

2. Ghostery

This is less of a productivity tool, but one that I had to add to the list. This tool allows you to see who is tracking your digital footprint and lets you understand which company trackers are slowing down your browsing experience. If used correctly, this tool can be an asset for marketers as it allows you to spy on your competitor’s tags and find out what type of networks they are advertising on. By adding the Ghostery extension to your browser you can see the tags of websites or landing pages you are visiting.

3) Resolution Test

This is another useful Chrome extension that allows developers to test web pages in different screen resolutions, with an option to define your own resolutions. It includes a list of commonly used resolutions and lets you switch sizes with the click of a mouse.

4) Joxi

I came across this tool a few years ago and I must say it’s a life-saver. Joxi is a free tool for capturing images of your screen. Instead of taking screen shots, saving them on your computer and then sending them by email to your clients, Joxi is a great alternative. It allows you to save your screen shots on their servers or save it to your local computer. Once you’ve taken a screen shot, it automatically gives you a link that you can then send to your clients. Their free version contains ads, but if you don’t want the clutter, you can simply upgrade for $10 a year.

5) Wappalyzer

Ever landed on a website and wondered if the site is WordPress based or developed on Joomla.

Wappalyzer is a browser extension that uncovers the technologies used on websites. It detects content management systems, eCommerce platforms, web servers, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools and many more.

6) OneTab

OneTab is a Chrome and Firefox extension that reduces your tab clutter and speeds up your computer. It basically converts all your tabs into a tab-list, allowing you to access them easily with a click. According to OneTab, you will save 95% of memory that is used by open tabs, by combining them together.

7) StayFocusd

This is a cool tool for those of you who just can’t stay focused. StayFocusd increases your productivity by limiting the amount of time you can spend on time-consuming websites. It basically lets you customise the amount of time you want to allocate to spending on a site, like Facebook, and then blocks that site once you’ve reached your limit.

8)  Slack

If you aren’t already using this chat tool, start!

You can integrate Slack with all of your apps and tools like Google Hangouts, Trello, GitHub, Giphy, etc. The app offers the standard chat and direct messaging features but also allows you to break projects, topics or teams out into individual channels, share files and coordinate all your notifications within a central, searchable place.

9) Social Analytics

Sometimes you can tell you’re reading an article with an inaccurate share count. Other times, there’s no share count at all. Social Analytics automatically lets you discover how many shares any given piece of content has on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Not only is it a great tool to see how your own posts are doing, but it also helps you keep an eye on how overinflated the share counts are on your competitor’s website.

10) Any.do

This last tool helps you remember everything you need to do. You can drag & drop to plan your agenda, keep your to-dos in sync and add reminders to keep track of your tasks. This is not a project management tool, but a pretty good tool for freelancers to keep track of what tasks are important.

Bonus – Tineye

We always save the best for last.

Ever been on a site, looked at a picture and wondered from where you could purchase it. Tineye is a reverse image search tool. You simply copy and paste the image url of the picture you want into their search box and their algorithm does the rest. It scans the web and tells you from which image banks you can purchase the picture.