10 Tools to Kick Ass With in 2010

Since 2010 (pronounced ‘twenty-ten’) is here, I wanted to share ten tools I’m going to use this year to kick ass. Just like Michael Arrington’s annual list, these are web services or gadgets that I love right now.

Let’s get right to it:

1. Wordy

Do you bad write sometime? Me too. Actually, I write beautifully and proofread poorly. So, Wordy to the rescue: these guys will copy-edit any text within about ten minutes.

2. Evernote

All my technohipster friends seem to love this service so I’ve decided to give it a try. With Evernote you can easily create and store notes about all those weird projects floating around in your head. I think Tim Ferris uses it and that guy only works four hours a week, two hours of which are spent hitting on Shira Lazar.

3. iPhone

The iPhone is still my most powerful weapon for 2010 (lord that sounds nerdy). Until Apple releases their much anticipated tablet device I don’t see my usage dropping much.

4. FreshBooks

Being a free agent the last few months I’ve had to actually invoice a few people. FreshBooks makes that about as easy as possible. Bonus: If you only invoice a few clients you can use their service completely free of charge.

5. Seesmic Desktop

As far as social applications go, Seesmic Desktop is still my favourite. I’ve tried using the native Windows client but it still needs some work so I’m typically on the Adobe Air version.

6. oDesk

Tired of asking your friends to do your programming or search engine optimization (SEO) for you? Well, you should be–that shit is annoying. Instead, hook up with oDesk and find yourself a remote worker bee. They can handle just about any task. Bonus: You can spy on them in a ‘Big Brother’-like way thanks to the monitoring software each oDesker uses to track their hours.

7. SocialToo

Now that social platforms have become a major time suck, you really need to optimise some of their maintenance. That’s where SocialToo comes in. This service helps me easily manage my Twitter followers and more. I use this for every Twitter account I help maintain–at this point that’s well over a dozen.

8. foursquare/Gowalla

Yes, I like these location based apps, what can I say? I’m going to continue using both to see where this space is headed. Are you telling me you haven’t worked out free deals for your mayorships yet? I know I certainly have.

9. Mint

For me one fun thing about having a lot of money is watching it bounce around virtually. Mint offers me the prettiest way to enjoy such a thing. It’s the dashboard into my financial life where I can track all my accounts and my stocks. Bonus: The Mint iPhone app is full of win.

10. Paper

Finally, we have paper. No, I’m not talking about some cleverly named web app (it would be called Papr). I’m talking about the old fashioned paper–dead trees, baby. I’m finding my computer increasingly more distracting these days. Between the emails, tweets and everything else sometimes it becomes hard to focus, to really problem solve. So I’m hoping in 2010 to get a lot more time away from the screen, sketching and plotting on paper like the ole’ days.

What tools are you using this year to kick ass? Let me know in the comments.

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