Are you the guy that everyone calls for technical tips and tricks? I am. It’s a huge honor, isn’t it? Except when it’s pain, right? I mean, how many times can you tell your mom to reboot her computer?
My hidden rage aside, I realized today that I generally only have a few tools in my tech toolkit and that I’m usually able to solve most of my friends’, family’s, and church’s problems with those few tricks.
Today, for example, a friend of mine called and asked how to download a YouTube video. I quickly directed him to KeepVid.com. Problem solved. It was this brief episode of tech support that opened my eyes to my invisible tech toolkit. And that made me wonder:
What tools are in your tech toolkit?
Now, before we get flooded with a lot of “I love X app” comments, let me explain. I’m not talking about apps that you actively use every day, like Evernote or Photoshop or whatever. I’m talking about the apps and sites that get pulled out of your kit to solve problems only when needed. Sometimes, a tool can turn into an every day app, like Dropbox. A few years ago, before Dropbox was huge, my school had a huge outbreak of an annoying virus that spread through USB drives. Our tech support department tried to block us from using our drives, so we had no way to take our work home with us each day. Enter Dropbox.
I found this amazing app that would sync all of my files from my work PC to my Mac at home with almost no effort. It was incredible! Plus, I got 250 MB added to my account each time I set up a coworker with the app. (I think I gained a gig and a half by doing that!) But now, Dropbox is an essential, daily-use program, no longer a rarely used “save the day” tool.
But there are others. Like TeamViewer.
TeamViewer is an app that allows you to remotely control a computer without all of the trouble of checking IP addresses and such. Just add a computer to your “buddy list,” and you’ll always be seconds away from remote access. This is what I did for my brother when he bought his first Mac. I haven’t used it a ton, but twice, I had to do some major tech support for him and TeamViewer was instantly ready to go.
So, how about you?
Let’s expand our tech toolkits! What are some of your toolkit tricks, tips, or magical apps that you call on in a moment of need?
Jonathan Gardner says
I use iTeleport a lot, so far mostly to control my MacBook Pro and iMac when I am out and about, but since they recently added remote desktop between Macs I’ll probably use it more. I don’t know how many dozens of people I’ve pointed to VLC upon hearing “help, my video won’t play!”; it’s worked every time. As I video guy, I also use Handbrake & MPEG Streamclip as handy ‘Swiss army knife’ type tools.
Phil Schneider says
I love Handbrake & VLC! I have MPEG Streamclip installed, but I don’t think I’ve really ever needed it. I’m going to look up iTeleport and see if it might replace TeamViewer for me, which I like but must admit that the iPhone app is a bit clunky.
Jonathan Gardner says
Yeah I have iTeleport on my iPhone, but the screen is too small to really use it. It works great on my iPad 2 though!
Phil Schneider says
Cool. I might be getting an iPad for work soon, so that might when I decide which app to go with.
Teller says
PDF: Not everyone I know gets access to cracked versions of Adobe Pro and such. The suite of tools web2pdfcovert.com (PDF any web page), PDFmerge.com, Splitpdf.com, PDFunlock.com have been real valuable when not at home or recommending. You don’t have to create an account most importantly.
Jpegmini.com – I don’t know how it’s possible. This will drastically reduce the size of pics without sacrificing quality. Pretty great
Phil Schneider says
That’s a lot of neat PDF tools. I’ve mostly use Adobe and PDF Key Pro.
I think I’ve used JpegMini once, I think. It was a fairly decent.
Great suggestions, Teller.