Ten Tech Tools to Boost Your Productivity

Like free conference calling, there are premium file-sending features (see http://www.sendthisfile.com/enterprise.jsp). For basic free service, though, you can't go wrong with this website.

7) Radmin

You've heard of GoToMyPC, the Web-based service that allows you to tap into your office or home computer when you're somewhere else? It works great, but it costs $14.95 a month and some of us need a service like that only occasionally.

Of course, there's always pcAnywhere, the long-standing application that accomplishes the same thing once you've installed and tested the software on two (remote and host) computers. There are just two problems with this solution. First, it costs $200 and, second, it's made by Symantec, the maker of various "Norton" products.

Isn't that a good thing? Not necessarily. In recent years, Symantec software has become unusually invasive. Once installed on your computer, Symantec products tend to take over, running processes in the background you never even asked for.

So what's the solution? Try Radmin, or Remote Administrator v2.2 (http://www.radmin.com/). For just a one-time licensing fee of $35, you get simple but effective remote access to your main machine — either for file transfers or full-blown remote (as-if-you-were-sitting-in-front-of-it) computing. Combine Radmin with an EVDO card and you can operate your primary system from just about anywhere.

8) Google Desktop

Google is truly amazing when you think about it. There's no less than a billion-gazillion pieces of data on the Internet and Google will find the piece you want in mere seconds. What if you could apply the same technology to your own hard drive?

You can, of course, and Google makes it possible with Google Desktop (http://desktop.google.com/). We're not suggesting that you don't need to employ a carefully-designed filing system to organize all your data, graphic and e-mail files, but even the best of systems hides a file or two now and then.

Once you've let Google Desktop (a free beta product) index your hard drive, it will quickly search out all references to the files you want and pinpoint the locations on your drive. In fact, after typing in the subject or filename you need, Google will simultaneously check both your hard drive and the Internet. And don't let its beta status bother you; it's been around for well over a year and claims many happy users.

9) MailWasher

Spam — it invokes a string of expletives from most of us. In fact, there may be no single intrusion to efficiency greater than junk e-mail because it's so hard to prevent and its removal is often so labor-intensive. The problem, of course, is that "auto-pilot" spam blockers always sweep a few legitimate e-mails out with the garbage.

If we want to be sure we see all the important e-mails that come to us while minimizing the time we waste eradicating spam, we need not a spam blocker, exactly, but a mail "washer" — software that will let us see all our e-mail, automatically segregate the spam from the good stuff, and then let us annihilate the offending messages with a single click.

What we've just described is MailWasher (http://www.firetrust.com/). It doesn't delete anything without your prior approval, and it doesn't keep spam from coming back repeatedly. It just makes it oh so simple to get rid of it and move on to more important things.

10) Belarc Advisor

We've all seen those "system tools" that give you a quick read of your computer system — the specifications of your processor, hard drives, RAM and so on. Belarc Advisors (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html) does all of that, but it also does something that will come in exceedingly handy at some time and place when you least suspect the need for it: It catalogues all of your software licenses.

Remember the last time you installed a Windows Office Suite product, for example, and were asked for a 25-alphanumeric-character code that was conveniently printed on a label affixed to the CD case in which the software was packaged — that is, until you lost it?

No worries. Just run Belarc and retrieve all your codes (plus more hardware specs than you ever wanted) so you can properly safeguard them for future use, as when installing upgrades to your software.

And did I mention that it's free?

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We're willing to bet that at least one of the above 10 tech tools will boost your productivity. Take some time to experiment — a few well-spent minutes could save you many hours.

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DAVID DRUCKER is a financial advisor who speaks, writes and consults with other advisors as president of Drucker Knowledge Systems. See his newsletters, www.practicelifecycle.com and www.virtualofficenews.com, for more information.