Blogging, Cloud Computing, Digital Marketing, Web 2.0

My Favorite Internet Tools, Software & Apps

May 20, 2014
Mahesh Mohan
8 min read
Minterest Home » marketing. » Blogging » My Favorite Internet Tools, Software & Apps
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Windows 8.1

Image Credit: Flickr – @maheshone

Here is a list of all my favorite Internet Tools, Software and and Applications. I’ve featured only my personal favorites but you can check out my Web Directory for a more comprehensive list. I’ll make sure that the following list is always up-to-date.

Web Browser

  • Google Chrome – It’s my preferred browser because of its intuitive design, password manager, cross-platform syncing, auto-fill forms, apps and extensions.
  • Google Chrome Extensions – List of my favorite Google Chrome extensions.

Chrome: Productivity Extensions — SEO Extensions — New Tab Extensions

E-mail

  • Google Mail – Gmail is my preferred email service due to its powerful features like labels, filters, search, e-mail forwarding, plus addressing, multiple accounts, etc.
  • Outlook.com – I love Outlook.com for its unique design and features like email alias, Skype integration, and social media connections.
  • Mailbox – Mailbox app is the best thing that happened to email after Gmail and it’s my preferred email app for mobile.
  • Outlook – It’s my preferred desktop email client – thanks to its iCloud integration.
  • Google Apps – To manage custom email addresses.
  • Windows Live Admin Center – To manage custom email addresses (but no longer supported by Microsoft – so no new sign ups).

Instant Messaging

  • Skype – For free VoIP calls and cheap phone calls.
  • Google Hangouts – Since it’s integrated with Gmail.
  • WhatsApp – As an alternative to text messaging – thanks to its read receipts feature.

Cloud Storage

  • Microsoft OneDrive – I love OneDrive because of its rich interface, awesome apps, and tight integration with Windows 8.
  • Picasa Web – To archive photos as it’s got a lot of storage.
  • Dropbox – I love Dropbox for its simplicity, cross-platform support, and its one-click sharing feature.

Read: OneDrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. Cloud Drive vs. Box vs. Mega

Productivity

  • iCloud – I love iCloud for its Contacts, Calendar, Notes, and Reminder.
  • OneNote – It’s my preferred planner app – to stay organized.
  • Evernote – It’s my favorite note-taker app (read 30+ Evernote Tips).
  • Pocket – It’s my preferred read later app.
  • Sunrise Calendar – It’s the awesomest calendar app (for web, desktop & mobile) that integrates with Google Calendar, iCloud, Exchange, Evernote, Facebook, etc.
  • Todoist – It’s my favorite to-do app (read Todoist Review) and is the best Google Tasks alternative.

Suites

  • Office 365 (Premium) – My favorite office suite.
  • Office Online – Office.com is the online version of Microsoft Office suite (yup, it’s free!).
  • Google Drive – I like Google Drive for its sharing and collaborative feature.
  • iWork – Sometimes – on mobile – it’s more useful than Microsoft Office.

Read: My Favorite iOS (iPhone & iPad) Apps

Web 2.0

My favorite social networks – to connect, to collaborate, to showcase, to discover, to question, to answer, and to share.

Read: Over 60 Web 2.0 Sites To Get Instant Backlinks To Your Blog

Social Media Tools

  • IFTTT – To connect different apps.
  • Buffer – It’s the easiest way to share to all our social networks in one-click.
  • TweetDeck – My favorite Twitter client.

News

Read: 25 Content Discovery Tools To Find Great Social Media Content

Photo Sharing

  • Flickr – My favorite photo sharing service.
  • Imgur – It’s the best place to find Internet memes.
  • Photosynth – It’s an awesome app by Microsoft that creates 3D images from 2D photos.
  • Photobucket – I use Photobucket primarily when I want to embed images in a forum.

Photo Editing

  • Adobe Photoshop – My preferred photo editing application.
  • Google+ Photo Editor – I like Google+ Photo Editor for its auto enhancement feature.
  • Awesome Screenshot – It’s the best screen capture extension for Google Chrome.
  • Canva – It’s the best way to create professional designs for web and print.
  • PicMonkey – It’s a free online photo editing that’s perfect for quick touch ups.

Word Processing

  • Word – My preferred word processor application.
  • Google Docs – I like Docs because of its real-time collaboration and editing feature.
  • Pages for iCloud – It’s my favorite word processor app on mobile as it shows word count.

Music / Movies

  • iTunes – I love iTunes because it acts as a hub between a PC and the iOS ecosystem.
  • VLC Player – I like VLC player because it plays almost everything. Otherwise, my favorite media player is Windows Media Player.

Money

Utilities / Other Tools

  • InstaCalc – It’s a real-time shareable online calculator.
  • Excel – My favorite spreadsheet application.
  • Pastebin – To anonymously share text online.
  • Hide My Ass – A free proxy server to surf the web anonymously.
  • Down For Everyone Or Just Me – To check if the website is down or not.
  • Screenr – A web-based screen recorder.
  • Screenfly – To test websites at different screen resolutions.
  • FileZilla – It’s my favorite FTP client.
  • uTorrent – My favorite BitTorrent client.
  • TeamViewer – It’s my preferred remote control/remote access software.
  • eFax – For free internet fax.
  • Bitly – It’s my favorite URL shortening service.
  • LastPass – A free password manager.
  • Google Forms – An easy to use tool to create web forms, surveys, quiz, plan events, etc.
  • Google Bookmarks – A free online bookmarking service by Google.

Read: Over 101 Google Products You Probably Don’t Know

Domain Names

  • GoDaddy – For domain registrations.
  • DomainTools – For domain name whois lookup.
  • Pool – To backorder expiring domain names for free.
  • DropCatch – An alternative to Pool.com.

Web Hosting

  • Eleven 2 – Affordable web hosting for beginners ($59.40/year).
  • HostGator – Perfect for hosting unlimited websites ($119.40/year).
  • InMotion Hosting – Reliable web hosting for small businesses ($131.88/year).
  • Digital Ocean – Affordable VPS web hosting ($5/month).

CDN

  • Google PageSpeed Service – Google PageSpeed Service fetches content from our servers and delivers pages to the users from the Google cloud after optimization.
  • Photon by WordPress – It’s a free image acceleration service by WordPress.com.

Read: Web Hosting Comparison – Top 25 Web Hosting Companies

Blogging

  • WordPress – My preferred Content Management System (CMS) as it can be customized the way we want.
  • Disqus – To manage the comments.

WordPress Plugins

Read: Over 30 Awesome WordPress Plugins To Supercharge Your Blog

WordPress Themes

  • StudioPress (Premium) – Genesis by StudioPress is my preferred WordPress framework and I also love their professionally designed WordPress skins.
  • Themeforest (Premium) – It’s perhaps the largest marketplace for premium website templates (HTML5, WordPress, PSD, Tumblr, etc.).
  • WordPress (Free) – It’s the largest directory of free WordPress themes.

Read: Top 15 “Cherry Picked” Premium WordPress Theme Marketplaces

Webmaster

Publishing

Website Performance

My favorite tools to analyze the performance of a webpage. They also suggests ways to make the pages faster.

Read: 7 Tools To Check The Performance Of A Web Page

Internet Marketing

My favorite Internet marketing tools – for web analytics, competitor analysis, keyword research.

Read: Top 30 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools

Advertising

  • Bing Ads – To buy pay-per-click ads on the Yahoo Bing Network.
  • BuySellAds – To buy banner ads on other websites and blogs.
  • DoubleClick – To manage website ad inventory.
  • Facebook Ads – To buy Facebook ad inventory.
  • Google AdWords – To buy pay-per-click ads on Google and their display network.

Read: Over 30 Advertising Programs To Make Money Blogging

E-mail Marketing

Read: 101 Websites For Anyone And Everyone To Make Money Online

Outsourcing

  • Elance – To outsource almost anything.
  • Fiverr – To outsource micro-jobs.
  • 99designs – To outsource design stuff.

Read: Web Directory – Blogging, Digital Marketing, and Webmaster Resources

Quotable Quotes

Read: My Favorite Tech & Marketing Blogs

*Still thinking about what’s left here*

First Published: May 12, 2014; Last Updated: Wednesday, June 18, 2014

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Mahesh Mohan

Hey there, I’m Mahesh (@maheshone) — Your friendly neighborhood blogger and an organic marketing evangelist. I write about tech, marketing, and everything in between that truly excites me.

Outside of that, I’m equally passionate about the financial markets, and also spend A LOT of time doing random things.

Also, the Chief Everything Officer (@Infirn Labs). Say hi: [email protected]

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Meet The Blogger

Mahesh Mohan

Hey there, I’m Mahesh (@maheshone) — Your friendly neighborhood blogger and an organic marketing evangelist. I write about tech, marketing, and everything in between that truly excites me.

Outside of that, I’m equally passionate about the financial markets, and also spend A LOT of time doing random things.

Also, the Chief Everything Officer (@Infirn Labs). Say hi: [email protected]

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