Jott.com: No More Texting and Driving
by Beth on January 26, 2010
in Beth Favorite, Low-Cost, Mac, PC, Worth Paying For
Come on… be honest. Some of you still text and drive, right? Jott.com is the solution. Just dial a number on your phone, and a chipper voice asks, “Who do you want to Jott?” Say the name of a contact (or yourself), and Jott will take your message and convert it to text, plus attach the audio for the recipient’s listening pleasure. One of the attendees to my presentation called it “automated nagging.”
Jott has been one of my Beth Favorites for a couple of years now. It used to be free, which was crazy, and now they charge a very reasonable $3.95 a month for their most basic service. Well worth it. It integrates with all kinds of things — social media, great to-do list services, etc. Love it.
Jott.com | Voice-to-Text Notes, To Dos & Reminders.
Poll Everywhere: Free Audience Response System
Monday I’m speaking for the Western Association of Chamber Executives, and during our webinar dress rehearsal, the coordinators told me about Poll Everywhere.
Poll Everywhere is a free/low-cost replacement for the very expensive audience polling devices. Instead of handing out devices that connect to a man behind the curtain who creates a chart of results for the audience to see, a speaker can ask the audience to text their choice of responses from a poll he’s displaying, and the results are instantly communicated to a dynamic PowerPoint slide he can show. The system integrates with Twitter, and people can vote from the web as well.
It’s free for up to 30 responses, and darn cheap after that. Plus there’s no long-term commitment, so you can go to the highest level for a one-time event then go back to a free account.
Text Message (SMS) Polls and Voting, Audience Response System | Poll Everywhere.
*** Click here for more tools about surveys…
LogMeIn: A free (and reliable) remote desktop tool
by Beth on November 5, 2009
in Beth Favorite, Free, Low-Cost, Mac, PC, Web-Based, Worth Paying For
I’m in Orlando this week, teaching a series of sessions on Free and Low-Cost Social Media Tools. Ordinarily I remote in to my computer at the office using Live Mesh from Microsoft, but the software is misbehaving.
So I returned to an old standby, LogMeIn. I abandoned LogMeIn because it didn’t have all the cool features that Live Mesh does, most notably that I can store the files I need on the road in Live Mesh folders, so when I update them on either computer, all copies of the files are updated. Plus, Live Mesh lets you drag and drop files across the computers, and LogMeIn makes you upgrade to the Pro version for that.
But I just tried LogMeIn again, and I am impressed. I can’t do the file sharing, but now LogMeIn allows me to copy something on one computer and paste it to the other, so I can copy a whole file to transfer. Plus, I use multiple monitors on my desktop, and LogMeIn lets me switch between them with the click of a button.
The biggest thing I like about it today is that it works, and, of course, it’s free. The professional version is quite reasonably priced as well ($70 a year for one computer), plus they have other services such as backup.
LogMeIn – Remote Access and Desktop Control Software for Your Computer.
