A Gaggle of Gadgets

I had another great opportunity this year at NCTIES to attend a session with Leslie Fisher on tech gadgets. For me it seems to make a great start to my conference happenings when I get to have the ADD-Geek moment and get it out of the way first thing.

As usual we had a packed house in the session room and there were people sitting in the aisles, standing along the walls and sitting on the credenzas in the back of the room. I don't know but I think that Leslie seems to be a big draw at the NCTIES conferences, "I'm Just Sayin."

Since I am unfortunately not on the Mac bandwagon I usually tune out when talk turns in that direction. Maybe someday I will be there it just has not happened yet, so I will review some of the PC related items shared in the session.

Rock Melt seemed to be a great tool for the Social Media conscious person. It allows you to round up all of your frequently visited sites, whether Facebook, Twitter, etc. and bring into one location. Almost like you would have in an RSS feed.

We talked about Google Voice in that it allows you to create one telephone number that will route all of your other ones to. So if you have a cell phone, house phone, fax number, another cell phone, a business number you can route them all to that one number. You also have lots of additional features similar to your home telephone but without the hassle of the phone company.

EventBrite allows you to Publish, Promote, Manage events. You can find events in your area or where you are going to be.

Primary Pad which is what use to be called Etherpad, so for those of you that are familiar with the product will easily be able to use this new website.

Don't forget about Twitter and the fact that you can create Widgets that you can embed onto your website. Whether it is your personal page, blog, wiki or even your school so that you can event.

Evernote allows you capture everything, all of your notes, sites, information and puts it into one area so that you can find it fast.

Dropbox allows you to utilize cloud storage for your resource materials and provides you with access to them anywhere you have an Internet connection.

uStream allows you to broadcast yourself over the Internet with the need of very little equipment. All you need is a webcam and a microphone and you are ready to go.

Weebly allows you to create websites on the fly, with or without the need of a domain. They offer premade design templates. Drag and drop capabilities. Auto creates your CSS. Can setup multiple pages on the fly, has an education version that offers security.

Mozy is a cloud based storage site. You get 2GB free then $5 for more. Amazon is also offering their own version as well.

Pogoplug is a piece of hardware that is cloud based, best description is a cloud storage. Load it to the pogoplug and then upload to the Cloud, works similar to dropbox.

It was a great session and I always enjoy the opportunity to hear her speak and she has many more resources that she shares for both PC and Mac and if you have the chance to check out her sight here is the link to her sight http://www.lesliefisher.com/