I always enjoy the tools and gadget sessions at Internet Librarian and CIL that Barbara Fullerton helps put together. They are very fast paced and packed full of wonderfully useful information. At CIL 2008, she teamed up with Roger Skalbeck, a law librarian at Georgetown University Law Library, to put together a review of some great tools for managing information and solving common problems encountered by web users.
Here’s the list of problems. You can find the solutions and links to them on Roger’s CIL wiki page. An amplified list of these and related tools is here.
Read an RSS feed without a reader |
Get color ideas for a website |
Conduct an online demonstration on a remote computer |
Make links, RSS feeds, etc. available to all your web visitors |
Manipulate PDF files without Adobe Acrobat |
Check the performance of your website if images and Javascript are turned off |
Create an RSS feed if a website doesn’t have it |
Find which Web 2.0 services people are using |
Check DLLs, find what they are for, see if they are a danger to your PC |
Install scripts to run WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and similar services |
Search a fixed set of websites |
Check how your website appears in different browsers without needing to install them on your PC |
Obtain screenshots |
Obtain new colors or fonts for a website |
Track when web pages are updated |
Post to multiple blogs with one tool |
Create a quick slideshow |
Organize and cite research and create a bibliography for free |
Make your own videos and play them on your own media player |
Play YouTube videos offline |
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and CIL 2008 Blog Coordinator