Everybody’s is writing these days. Whether it’s articles, theses, reports or even blogs. Sooner or later you are going to get stuck when you are looking for the right words. Luckily once again the web can be your friend. There are many tools out there that will help you to find the correct word. One of the better blogs out there Lifehacker has done some of the work already for you and have created a list of tools that you can use.

Have you found language tools online that you use regularly? Why not let us know?

Diarmuid

It can sometimes be hard to find a web 2.0 tool that you can use or even to get an idea of the range of tools that are out there. You may have online needs that younever knew you had. Why not have a look at SEOmoz’s web 2.0 awards.

This is a listing of 175 web 2.0 sites in 41 different categories. So you’re sure to find a site that will meet your needs or maybe even find a need for a site.

I thought that a bit more thought could be given to the categories used, for example while there was an category for Collaborative Writing and Word Processing there was no obvious category for Spreadsheets and other office replacements. The closest category Iwas able to find was Organization. Not too intuitive, but this is only a minor quibble.

Diarmuid

Ever felt you wanted to keep an eye on developments on a web page but had no way of tracking it? Well know you have.

Page 2RSS

This service allows you monitor web sites that do not publish feeds. It will check any web page for updates and deliver them to your favorite RSS aggregator.

You can add a button to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar that will create Page2RSS feed for the page you are currently viewing. This is an easy and convenient way for you to create feeds for pages you are surfing.

Why not try it on your favourite pages.

Stewart

Remember the milk is an online task management tool thats allows you to prioritize and keep track of tasks. You can also get reminders of due recent tasks in different ways e.g e-mail and sms. This tool can be useful for project work and pre exam revision. Since its available online, you can add and update tasks from anywhere.

Also worth checking out is the Dynamic Periodic Table. This is an interactive online version of the periodic table. Clicking on an element retrieves information on the element from wikipedia and you can quickly and easily get visual information on such topics as hardness, electronegativity or thermal conductivity

Etain

In an earlier post we highlighted delicious as a way for keeping track of websites while you are on the move. However nothing ever stands still especially on the web and we thought we’d have a look and see what else is out there.

Ma.gnolia offers similar features to delicious but also claims to make the social networking aspect of bookmarking more effective. The service allows you to range pages and once you bookmark a site will Ma.gnolia  make a copy of the text content on the web page so you can go back at a later stage to make sure you read what you thought you read.

Furl This once again offers a similar range of features to delicious and ma.gnolia. It will back up a copy of the web page and will allow you to update the copy when the webpage changes if you want to. You can also save a clipping with the book mark. This is a quoted portion of the page that is separately displayed and can be used for summarizing the page or identifying the most important part of it.

Of course no web based service type can ever be mentioned without Google and bookmarking is no different. Google offers Google Bookmarks as its bookmarking tool. Its ok as far as it goes but seems to ignore the social aspect of bookmarking, which to me is a drawback. You never know what other people have found on the web.

These are just a few of an ever increasing list of bookmarking sites. If you try these and you don’t like them, here’s a list of 500 bookmarking sites that you can invesigate.

These days as you move from home , to work or out in public you may find yourself using more than one computer. What do you do if all the computers you use don’t have the software you want to use?

The answer sometimes can be portable Applications. “A portable application, or portable app for short,” according to Wikipedia, “is a software program that does not require any kind of formal installation onto a computer’s permanent storage device to be executed, and can be stored on a removable storage device such as a CD-ROM, USB flash drive, flash card, or even a floppy disk, enabling it to be used on multiple computers.”

Not everything is available as a portable app, but quite a lot is and more and more is being made available all the time.

You can get a flavour of what is available by looking at sites such portableapps.com, mojopac, pendriveapps or FreeSMUG

Diarmuid

Looking for new software, but don’t have the money? You can now get software for free that will tackle most of your computing needs. Whether its an Office alternative, an email programme or a graphics program, someone out there has developed a  program that will do the job for you.PC magazine has just published a list of 157 of the best free software out there. Some of these will work through your browser and some you can install on your computer. Have a look, you may find the ideal program for your needs

FotoFlexer is another in an ever expanding list of web 2.0 photo editing tools. This service has a nice interface and quite a detailed range of capabilities. It wouldn’t replace Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or Paint.NET but for quick photo editing it’s ideal.

Writewith is a new text editor available on the web. It offers many of the features that other editor also offers. In addition its claims that “you can upload documents, share with other people, chat, assign tasks, and track everybody’s actions with a comprehensive history”.

If you need to extract text from a pdf file, PDFTextOnline might be the tool for you. It is totally web based and converts PDF text quickly and accurately. It also handles all fonts and languages (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and more)

Google is always creating new products and new features for existing products. It has just released a new feature for Google Documents that allows you to create a form, using Google spreadsheet, and send it by email to your chosen target group. They won’t need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page.

All responses are then added to to your spreadsheet and you can manipulate the responses as you would any spreadsheet.

Google has even created a Google Docs forms gadget, which you can add to your iGoogle homepage, that allows you to create forms quickly and also helps you keep a close eye on your responses.

This might save you some time if you are surveying a large group of people by email and it is free as well.

Diarmuid

If you need to back up files from your pc to an external hard drive on a regular basis you may find it somewhat of a chore.

Microsoft have now released SyncToy v2.0 as a beta and to quote the download site ” Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.”

Its free and easy to use so there’s no excuse to give it a try.

Diarmuid