www.linoit.com

Lino It is Online Stickies. Face it; using sticky notes is simply more fun than writing on a boring legal pad. This is a Web 2.0 take on those old-fashioned, canary-yellow sticky notes. Using drag and drop features, you can organize ideas, plot your story, arrange talking points, even post pictures and videos, all on a virtual board. You could also manage to-do lists, or remind yourself of future appointments, all made simple by the calendar structure of the site. You can share this board with colleagues, friends, family, or choose to keep it private. Others can even subscribe to an RSS feed of your virtual stickies. The site has user-friendly, intuitive use, and yes, you can even choose the color stickies you want to use.

Cost: FREE

Oddpodz Review: This isn’t for people who thrive on organization. It’s for those of us surrounded by notes on scrap paper and distracted by shiny objects. And hey, we like it that way. Thumbs up for LinoIt for making organization less dull.

www.switchpod.com

Tired of writing? Try talking. Do a podcast. Switchpod makes podcasting easy, doing for podcasts what platforms like Blogger and WordPress have done for blogging. Podcasts are audio media files distributed through the Internet. Since people often listen to podcasts on their digital music players, you can create a form of “portable media.” An innovative way of getting your ideas out there, you could record a weekly address, a music program, a lecture, or just tell jokes. Users can visit your Switchpod page to download and listen to your content. Switchpod hosts up to 450mb for free, with options of buying more space for a monthly fee.

Cost: FREE

Oddpodz Review: People like fresh and interesting ways of consuming media, and a podcast is another opportunity to reach your customers or get your brand out there.

www.tagcrowd.com
TagCrowd is a tool that creates a custom text cloud of your website, writing, or any text. A text cloud is a visual representation of the word content. Words are given a weight based how frequently they appear in the text. Most-used words appear larger & bolder while lesser-used words appear smaller, creating a picture of the text. The website suggests the following uses:

- as topic summaries for speeches and written works
- as blog tool or website analysis for search engine optimization (SEO)
- for visual analysis of survey data
- as brand clouds that let companies see how they are perceived by the world
- for data mining a text corpus
- for helping writers and students reflect on their work
- as name tags for conferences, cocktail parties or wherever new collaborations start
- as resumes in a single glance
- as visual poetry

Cost: FREE

Oddpodz Review: TagCrowd can be what you need to re-visualize your work. You are seeing your words in a fresh way. This is great tool for visual learners.

http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/

FontStruct is a free font-building tool that lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes.  There is no software to download; you simply begin buliding your font in the browser.  Once you’re done building, FontStruct generates high-quality TrueType fonts, ready to use in any Mac or Windows application.

Cost: FREE

Contact page: http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/contact

www.skrbl.com

Skrbl is free online whiteboarding. You can write, draw, or just scribble out your ideas. You can give out the URL of your Skrbl board and collaborate live with others, functioning as an online meeting space. All of these features are FREE.

Skrbl also offers a paid account with more functionality. With Team Skrbl, you can co-browse the internet, highlight text for others to read, and even chat by video or phone online, incorporating your Skype ID. A Team Skrbl account is $10 a month, allowing up to five users.

Cost: FREE

Oddpodz Review: Skrbl is way of getting the ideas out, making the old-fashioned whiteboard new again. Once they’re out there, the next step is up to you. With cool collaborative features, taking your ideas to the next step can be a group process.

www.good-tutorials.com

Good-Tutorials is the largest source of tutorials on the web today. It has been featured on numerous TV channels and magazines, such as the BBC or PC World, and has been linked to by thousands of sites, blogs and forums.

This website offers free tutorials on CSS, Flash, HTML, Illustrator, Java, Java Script, Photoshop and more. The tutorials are straightforward and are updated frequently. Do you need to “create a beautiful website from scratch’? You can browse or search by keywords. Are you a genius in creating 3D designs with Photoshop? You can post your tutorial and get feedback from other users.

Cost: FREE

Building a presentation, creating a multi-media work product or delivering a speech and need some tunes? But don’t have a budget and don’t want to spend time in the pen for violating copyright laws, here are some sites that offer no-cost, royalty free music.

www.akmmusic.com
www.musicmediatracks.com
www.royaltyfreemusic.com
www.stock20.com

www.thebrain.com

Digitize your mind with PersonalBrain. This FREE personal tool lets you create and share a context-rich information environment that reflects the way you think. The FREE personal version provides a dynamic mind mapping software that lets you link your ideas, files and web pages. Files and folders are incapable of expressing the mutli-dimensional relationships and concepts that give your information intelligence and meaning. This tool changes that.

Download and try all the features for 30 days. Register and upgrade to get the ultimate performance or keep using the free edition as long as you want. There is only one download for all editions. The Pro Edition features are available for 30 days. After 30 days if an upgrade to Pro or Core has not been activated, the program automatically changes to the Free Edition as you can use that as long as you like.

Connections and relationships within your information make the difference between static content and actionable knowledge. For instance, sales personnel need to see how decision makers are connected to close a deal. Business managers need to see how brands and products fit into their industry landscape to make decisions. IT managers need to see relationships between their servers and applications to support user communities effectively. People need to understand the context of their information before taking action.

There are a million and one uses and applications for PersonalBrain. The company lists the top 12 for individual users here. Some include the following:

Brainstorming and Mind Mapping
Everyone knows how to brainstorm and many people are familiar with the concept of mind mapping where you branch out your ideas in a visual diagram. PersonalBrain takes brainstorming and mind mapping to the next level. Each concept you think of can be quickly captured with PersonalBrain and easily built upon. You can create a new Brain for each topic you need to think about and branch everything out continuously. Links between different ideas are easily handled and you can keep on growing it until you run out of ideas – you’ll never run out of space in your Brain.

Innovation and Strategic Planning
Creating a new strategy or product line can be both complex and rewarding. Building your business plan using PersonalBrain gives you a head start by letting you easily analyze all aspects of your new venture. For example, you can do SWOT analysis by creating Thoughts for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. PersonalBrain lets you quickly map out all key aspects and easily understand it all, letting you focus on new innovations and strategy.

Presenting and Capturing Your Vision
PersonalBrain’s flexible linkages and connections can capture your vision and imagination. Use your Brain to reflect on your own ideas and share your vision with others (like business prospects) PersonalBrain is an evocative presentation tool that gets your audiences’ attention for public speaking, complex ideas and business presentations.

Cost: Zero

Oddpodz review: I love this and am going to commit to mastering it.

Colr – Free Color Palettes
www.colr.org/

Colr was inspired by “those paint color cards in hardware stores”.  The tool is simple–upload any image–the banner on your site for example–and Colr will extract its color palette and html code.  Useful for website design and improving the visual appeal of your site, Colr is a FREE tool.
Cost: FREE

SoundSnap – Free Sound Effects

www.soundsnap.com

SoundSnap has a library of over 100,000 high-quality sound effects for use in your presentations, short films, or wherever you think you could use an audio file.  These files are free for you to use and are professionally recorded.  SoundSnap offers 5 free downloads per month with a basic membership.  Additionally, if you need more sound files, they offer a pro-membership which offers more downloads per month or even per year.

Cost: FREE

Oddpodz Review: Audio is intrinsic to our presentations, websites, and film clips.  Using professionally-made sound effects can improve each of these, taking them to the next level.  It can also just add a bit of entertainment to what you’re presenting.  With SoundSnap, it’s easy to download these files and start using them for free.