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50 Tech Tips for the Poverty Law Community

Submitted by gwen on Mon, 09/06/2010 - 1:27pm.

Online Reference Guide to 50 Tech Tips...and Growing!

Desktop Utilities

  1. Clipboard magic - Free Windows clipboard enhancement utility
  2. Copernic - Powerful desktop search utility.
  3. Google Desktop - Free enhanced desktop search and more
  4. WebDrive - Easy remote access to your office files (via secure ssh connection)

Web Sites and Web-Based Services

  1. BackFlip - Save and share important things you see on the Web. Backflip also has organization and search functions and other nifty tools.
  2. Basecamp - Modestly priced web-based project management software. Try it out for free.
  3. Campfire - A web-based group chat tool that lets you set up password-protected chat rooms. Free for up to four users.
  4. DimDim - Free web conferencing software which allows users to show presentations, applications and desktops to any other person over the internet.
  5. ESnips - Allows you to cut information out of a website and store it online. Currently offers 1GB free storage.
  6. Foxmarks - If you use Firefox on more than one computer, you'll want Foxmarks. Install Foxmarks on each computer, and it will work silently in the background to keep your bookmarks synchronized. As a bonus, log in to my.foxmarks.com from any computer anywhere to access your bookmarks.
  7. FreeConference.com - Free conference call services
  8. Get Human - A website devoted to helping consumers get support from a live person. The website has blogs, tips, a database, and a contribution area to help get through phone systems.
  9. Gliffy - Free web-based software which allows you to create and share diagrams online.
  10. GotVoice - Voicemail transferred to your email
  11. Hermish - Tools to check your web pages for accessibility.
  12. LegalMeetings Web Conferencing offers on-line meetings, conferences and trainings. These are available for free to any active meeting host in the LSC funded Legal Meetings. LegalMeetings currently uses GotoMeeting for its web conferencing software.
  13. Meeting Wizard - A free, full featured, easy to use on-line program for scheduling meetings and phone conferences for any number of people. You can either propose different dates and times, or announce a specific time for a meeting. Your invitation is emailed to the people you indicate and you are informed of their responses and availability. Meeting Wizard will propose the most appropriate time for your meeting when most people and all of the participants you have indicated as critical can attend.
  14. Meetomatic - A simple meeting scheduling application.
  15. Net Snippets - A tool to help gather, annotate and share research. Three versions are available: free, standard, and enterprise.
  16. Portello - A WYSIWYG editor which makes it easy to edit web pages.
  17. Poverty Law Surveys - Free online surveys for the poverty law community. For more info and resources, see section in LStech Resource Center.
  18. Presenter’s University - Tips to "spice up" your presentations
  19. Screencast-o-matic - Free screencasts
  20. TaDa Lists - Simple, shareable, free online "to do" lists. Part of the Basecamp project management suite.
  21. Team Viewer - Free desktop sharing utility
  22. TechSoup - Resources and content aimed at non-profits
  23. WebXACT - A free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues.
  24. Wiki - Use a wiki to easily capture program knowledge
    • Pika Software - Low-cost wiki hosting for the poverty law community (use MediaWiki)
    • JotSpot - Low-cost feature rich wiki hosting (Google bought this and they are not taking new clients currently.)
    • PBwiki - Free wiki hosting (upgradeable for more storage space, broader design options and other "premium" features)
    • Confluence - Free for nonprofits and easy to use
    • Wikis and Internet Tools - NTAP training module on wikis
    • FYI: Wikis: ABA Legal Technology Resource Center’s information page on wikis
    • Doku Wiki – PHP based Wiki. No database required.

  25. Woot! - an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. They do one item a day and that is it.
  26. Writeboard - An online collaborative tool that allows versioning and comparisons.
  27. Writely - An online document collaboration site. Allows you to upload from word and publish to web.
  28. YouSendIt - Online storage for large files that can't be received due to file size limits. File limit is 1 GB and the file is saved for seven days.

Search Engines

  1. Clusty - Organizes search results into folders, grouping similar items together
  2. Google search tips:
    • Search within a website - "site:www.lawtechnology.org scanners"
    • Get definitions - "define:precocious"
    • Get FAA information - "ORD airport"
    • Get maps from Google, Yahoo! & Mapquest simultaneously
    • Use Google to get instant calculations, conversions and stock prices, to track FedEx and UPS packages, to look up patents and information from the yellow pages
  3. Google US Government Search - offers a single location for searching across U.S. government information, and for keeping up to date on government news.
  4. Google Custom Search Engine Tool - allows you to customize which websites to search.
  5. Rollyo - A web searching utility which allows you to customize which websites to search. You can create a list of websites to search and search only those sites.
  6. Vivisimo - A web search engine which organizes the results of other engines into groups or clusters.
  7. ZabaSearch - Free people and public information search engine

Office Suite Tools

  1. Adobe Acrobat/PDF Tools:
  2. Google Tools:
  3. Microsoft Excel tips
  4. Microsoft Outlook tips:
    • Outlook accepts shortcuts:
      • 4d (for 4 days from now) or 4w (for 4 weeks from now)
      • 115p (for 1:15 PM)
      • Formulas: 3/14 + 12d (converts to Mon 3/26/2007)
      • Natural language - type Christmas in the date field and Outlook knows it's Dec 25.
      • It also knows three weeks from tomorrow, although 3w + 1 is less typing
      • Shortcuts work in the snooze field - just type a number for the number of minutes, or add a d if you want to snooze it for days.
    • Flags - Use flags to follow-up on incoming an outgoing email.
    • Folders - Create nested folders within your inbox to help organize your email. (To create a folder, right click on Inbox, then select New). You can also drag the folders you create to Favorite Folders on the navigation pane so they are easy to get to and to see unread emails.
    • Rules - Create rules that will automatically deliver new messages to the correct folders. (To get to rules, click the file folder on the toolbar.)
    • View in Groups - group related email messages together using Outlook's "grouping" function (found in the View menu)
    • Shared Calendars - Share your calendar with others, then get others to share their calendars with you. (To share, right click on the calendar folder, select Properties, then look at permissions. You can let people only look at your calendar, or you can give them various levels of editing rights.) Outlook also allows you to view multiple calendars at once if they are shared with you.
    • Canned emails - Use Outlook’s signature function to send standardized emails. (Under the Tools menu, select Options, the Mail Format, and then Signatures. Once you are here, select New. You can type an entire message that you often send out and store it.)
    • Work Offline - If you are using your laptop to connect Outlook to Exchange Server, you can select Cached Mode so that you can work offline. It stores a copy of all of your emails on your laptop and uploads your work once you reconnect.
    • Deleting Old Email Addresses: Outlook stores email addresses and anticipates to whom we are sending to save us time. When someone changes email addresses, or you want to send it to them at work instead of home, however, Outlook will offer the address it has already used. To get rid of a previously stored address, just scroll down the list until it is highlighted, then hit delete.
  5. Microsoft Word tips:
  6. OpenOffice.Org 2 - Free office suite alternative; very similar to Microsoft Office.
  7. Vista and Office 2007 previews: PowerPoint | PDF

Legal Research, News & RSS

  1. American Fact Finder provides demographic information in the form of maps, tables, and reports from a variety of Census Bureau sources.
  2. <City-Data.com – demographic information about American cities
  3. Credit and Valuation Web Sites:
  4. DataPlace by KnowledgePlex is similar to American Fact Finder; however, DataPlace not only gives you demographic data but also provides tools and guides to assist you in analyzing, interpreting, and applying the data.
  5. Feeddigest.com - A parser, regenerator, and syndicator for, and of, RSS and Atom feeds.
  6. Google Directory of News Readers
  7. Google News
  8. intraVnews - Feed reader & RSS aggregator for Outlook
  9. Law Crawler - owned by FindLaw - is a search engine, which searches only law sites.
  10. LawReview - Free site offering Full Text Search of Law Journals on the Internet.
  11. Legal Services RSS Feed Project
  12. Librarians' Internet Index - Librarians' Internet Index (LII) is a publicly - funded website to find the best of the web. They have tens of thousands of entries, also maintained by librarians, and organized into 14 main topics and nearly 300 related topics.
  13. Maine’s Volunteer Lawyers Project makes CLASP’s family law policy feeds available on its website for pro bono attorneys.
  14. Meta-Index for U.S. Legal Research. - It encapsulates, in one place, several searchable indexes for U.S. law.
  15. myFeedz - myFeedz uses artificial intelligence techniques to show you personalized news about topics you are interested in.
  16. Netvibes - build your web starter page with RSS feeds and nifty widgets
  17. Open Directory Project - the largest, most comprehensive human - edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
  18. RobertNiles.com - A general view of resources for finding statistical data on the web. This site contains a good list of links to government statistical databases as well as general descriptions of some of the technical terminology that is used.
  19. Snopes.com - Find out the real truth about some of those internet rumors and urban legends.
  20. Ten Minute Mentor - Free, ongoing collection of short instructional presentations for the busy lawyer.
  21. Wikipedia - "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"

Free Apps

  1. Autoruns - free download from Microsoft that allows you to find and disable all programs and services that run on startup/boot of your computer.
  2. Adobe Photoshop Express - Free web version of the Photoshop
  3. Belarc - Free PC audit. Allows you to see what applications are running on your computer. Helpful in troubleshooting, getting new software, patches, updates, ect.
  4. Calgoo - Offers desktop integration with your Google Calendar, meaning, most significantly, that you don't need to be online to view or schedule upcoming events.
  5. Dia - A free diagram creation program.
  6. Driver Detective - scans your computer and makes driver update recommendations
  7. Google Talk - Free instant messaging and talk (VOIP) service.
  8. iespell - Iespell is a spell checker which can be used online. Free for personal use.
  9. Jabber - A customizable open source IM (instant messaging) protocol with many clients
  10. Mozilla Firefox - free web browser alternative to IE; with lots of extensions. Worried about support? Try Firefox's volunteer live chat.

    Here are some of our favorite extensions:

    • Fasterfox - speed up Firefox considerably
    • TinyURL Button - brings the http://tinyurl.com functionality into your browser. It takes a long URL as input, and gives you a short URL to use in it's place.
    • SearchBox Addon - add more than just Google to the Firefox search box. Many of the most popular search engines to choose from.
    • Launchy - Launchy will enable you to open links and mailto's with external applications. Especially useful for easily opening IE only sites.
    • IE Tab - Lets you view same page in Mozilla as IE
    • Firebug - works within Firefox to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page
    • Tabinita - In Firefoxhitting Tab will send your cursor onto the next form field. Tabinta overrides this behavior and instead inserts the Tab character.
    • Fireshot - Creates screenshots of web pages
  11. OpenFire and Spark - open source instant messaging server
  12. Portable Apps - Free, open source program that allows you to carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer.
  13. SANDRA - Sandra Lite is free software to help you diagnose your computers and improve their performance. You can find out about anything on your computer using their tests.
  14. Snagit - Helps you make presentations and screenshots.
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