I hope you are all enjoying the Christmas and New Year break. I thought I’d pop in with one last blog post for 2013. Thanks for reading in 2013, I hope you’ll continue to enjoy my posts in 2014.
Here’s the best three cool tools I reviewed this year. All of them are tools that I still use on a regular basis, they are keepers. Oh and there’s an extra one that I think deserves a special mention as although I started using it in 2012 I still use it everyday.
1. Written Kitten
Written Kitten is a tool that I can’t imagine living without. I found it earlier this year whilst looking for cat related stuff and was hooked immediately. I am sitting writing this blog post using Written Kitten now.
What is it? Written Kitten helps you beat procrastination when you are writing. Every 100 words you write you get shown a picture of a cat. The pictures are drawn from Flickr so the variety changes over time.
Even if you don’t like cats it’s a good way to mark your achievements. You can set the counter to reward you for longer wordcounts too.
I’ve been using it for everything from blogging to writing lessons for We Teach Social. It’s great.
Find out more here – Beat Bloggers Block with Written Kitten
2. Vine
I know, I know, this isn’t just a tool it’s a social network but I love it. The first time I tried it I knew it was going to be a hit.
Vine allows you to create six second videos from your iPhone. The killer feature is the interface. You can create multiple shots easily. All you need to do is hold your finger on the screen for the duration of the shot,l as soon as you remove your finger it stops shooting. This means you can easily tell a story within six seconds. I’m yet to make one I’m really proud of but this one did win me a prize from ESB at the Dublin Web Summit.
Instagram have added video to their app too, you can shoot 15 seconds with Instagram but I like keeping my video stuff on Vine. Hopefully it will fight off the competition in 2014.
3. Phonto
When you are on the move and don’t have a computer to hand mobile photo editing apps are a must. I featured Skitch as an app of the year last year and I still use it regularly on my phone. The one thing I don’t like about Skitch is the text. You don’t have a choice of fonts so everything comes out looking a bit samey. That’s why Photo rules. It adds text to images via your mobile phone or tablet. There are a huge range of fonts, styles and colours to play with. You can quite easily create a quality text covered image without the need to use editing software.
Find out more here – Add Text To Photos On The Go With Phonto
4. Bonus PicMonkey
I adore PicMonkey and use it every day without fail. It helps you create fun images for use on social media or print. The more I play with it the more new features I find. I’ve even upgraded to premium which is reasonably inexpensive at $33 per year.
What is it?
It’s an online photo editor. It allows you to add text, filters and other bits and pieces to your photos, you can create collages or . You can create avatars, Facebook cover photos or just nice images to share on your social media sites. It’s completely free to use although there are some nice extras if you sign up for premium.
If you use the free version you don’t even have to sign up for an account. It’s just brilliant in every way.
Find out more here – Quick Photo editing with PicMonkey
If you enjoy reading this blog please consider nominating it for Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2013.
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