Cool Little Tools, Vol. 1
In my travels online, I’ve come across some helpful tools and resources that have made my job as a designer, academic, and human being just a little bit easier. In the interest of aggregation, I thought I'd share some of them here on BlogLESS.
Caveats
Now, we’ve all got way too many tools in our lives—software, email, and now things like Twitter and delicious, so this may seem like a whole lot more from a couple of guys who proclaim the virtue of less. I’ll try to counter that by saying these are “little” tools: simple, one-shot smart bombs for solving specific problems — nothing new to learn, no lifelong commitments to maintenance. (Alton Brown would probably shoot me for pitching unitaskers, but, whatever. Software is different.)
Moo.com Minicards
First up, we’ve got these lovely MiniCards from UK-based Moo.com. An acquaintance of mine handed these out as party invitations and I was very impressed with the product. Send Moo up to 100 photos and they’ll randomly print them along with up to 6 lines of text on the back.
Their stock is high quality with a matte laminate finish—really nice stuff. Best of all, they are just big enough. Not too small to get lost, but not so big that it’s a waste of material. Less is better.
Doodle
Next is this handy little website, Doodle. Essentially, it’s a lightweight polling service you can use to schedule a meeting or make any kind of decision amongst a group of people (like where to go to lunch). Set up the poll, email it to your cohorts, and Doodle collects and displays people’s preferences in a clean and easy to read grid. It even gives you a summary of the most likely or most popular choices within your group.
Doodle is minimal and smart; practically a 37 signals app. It’s a great alternative to flooding inboxes with meeting spam and chatter.
Comments on this post
1.
I like these. Especiallly with tools like eVites where people are going more digital, cards like those from Moo will have a major cool factor.
2.
@Diwant, good point. Also, I always feel vaguely slighted by eVites; as if the person was just way too busy to invite me personally. People: If I wanted you to show up somewhere, I’m not sure I’d bet that access to my friends’ hysterical wisecrackin’ RSVPs were going to make up for the fact that I invited you with a form email.