I’ve been boring – not a lot of surfing this month, except for utilitarian sites for indie authors (ePubCheck, anyone?).
But there were a few buried in my bookmarks worth passing on.
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Indie Bound
This is a different sort of on-line bookstore, one that I tripped over only recently.
- They support local, independent bookstores, and encourage you to use them.
- They support indie authors and carry their books in stock.
However, because of their bias toward indie stores, they only carry indie authors’ print editions.
If you like to champion the underdog, and you like buying print editions of books, then you might like this alternative to Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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Zach King
Pure fun. He makes short short videos and most of them are worth a chuckle or two….
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Mail Bird
A very nice looking email program that isn’t web-based. And it’s free. It also pulls everything in – every email address you have, your calender, contacts, social links, tasks, the lot. In other words, it looks a lot like Microsoft Outlook, so if you’re allergic to Microsoft (some people are), this might be a good alternative for you.
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ToDoist
I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this one before now (or have I?). Talking about Mailbird reminded me.
I’ve been using this web-based task manager for nearly four months now, and it’s keeping my life on the rails in a way that Microsoft Outlook Tasks (which I used to love and adore) simply couldn’t keep up with, as it wasn’t web-based and synchronizing between devices was a disaster.
I am now a ToDoist “Master” – I use it that much. (You earn Karma points depending on how many tasks you complete, and lose them if you let tasks slip for more than two days – it’s a fun psychological reinforcement).
If you have more things to do during the day that don’t have a set time, than you have actual events with a start time, then keeping yourself organized via a calendar (and there’s a slew of those on-line, too), probably doesn’t work well for you. It didn’t for me.
A really good task manager will help, and believe me, I’ve been looking for one for years, something that would talk to every electronic device I owned, and keep them all synchronized. ToDoist is it. I bought the professional version after I earned a free month of the pro edition and was totally sold.
There is a fully functional free edition, too, but it won’t let you save notes to your task. If you don’t keep copious notes about projects, you’ll find the free one perfectly adequate.
Do watch the how-to videos, too. They’re really helpful in figuring out how to get the most out of ToDoist.
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Cool Painter – Spazuk
SPAZUK fire painter. OK, the guy paints with fire. Just watch.
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