From a Sourcing Researcher - a Few of My Top Tools (right now....)

For my day job I am constantly testing out new sites, new tools and more, to see how sourcing life can be made easier. It’s really a great part of my job, because I get to look at products that not only help me find people, but also keep me organized and on top of things! So here’s my list – and this is my list as of Tuesday, October 7th of tools to try.

Xobni (www.xobni.com)– This plugin for Outlook is fabulous for giving you a snapshot of the people you interact with, the last documents you’ve exchanged and conversations you’ve had. It has saved me so much time as compared to hunting through Outlook with keywords. All contact information is displayed and even if my contact is online right at that moment. Hugely helpful.

Twitter (www.twitter.com)– I’ve been a fan of Twitter for a while now, it’s been great for branding the company I work for, the blogs I write for and most importantly, to find people. If you need information, it’s a quick and easy way to get feedback from your peers.

Tweetlater (www.tweetlater.com) – when you know you’ll have announcements throughout a section of time, go ahead and enter on Tweetlater. It keeps you from inundating your followers all at once, yet keeps them apprised of your events and appearances, nice tool to assist you with your corporate branding.

Digsby (www.digsby.com) – networking management – hits it all – IM, Email, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I prefer this site to Flock and others, even with it’s growing pains. Although there is one “contender” for being my alternate favorite. Why? See my next favorite.

iGoogle – you can set this “desktop” up to track all your social networking sites, LinkedIn, Google Docs, Reader, Gmail, Bookmarks, Alerts and more. When you just need one stop shopping, iGoogle offers it. And it’s what YOU make of it. So if an add-on isn’t what you needed, take it off!

Chrome – I love this browser for search. I made it my default when it first rolled out so I could try it, fully expecting to return to IE. I don’t think I’ll be going back. I know Google will roll out even more functionality – but if you’re a Google addict (which could be said of me), you’ll appreciate searching from the address bar, the tabs, the shortcuts, the display of your most recently viewed pages, the bookmarks bar and more!

What’s on your list? I’m always looking for new tools to evaluate – send them to me at http://www.twitter.com/sourcerkelly.

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Permalink Reply by Regina Farr on October 7, 2008 at 10:29am

Great post Kelly.

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Permalink Reply by Amitai Givertz on October 7, 2008 at 10:34am

Kelly, my picks change from week-to-week depending on what I’m up to. Here’s what I’m using today:

1. TwitterSearch is great for finding all sorts of interesting Twits. Knock yourself and get fancy-schmancy with some "smooth operators"

2. Broadlook Technologies’ Contact Capture is really cool for building-out lists, importing into your contact manager and so on. Best of all – it’s free!

3. FeedMySearch helps you create an RSS feed from your Google searches – oddly missing from Google’s basic functionality -- I guess you can do it now w/ Chrome, right?

Great post – thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Susan Kang Nam on October 7, 2008 at 10:50am

This is a great list. Thank you. I'll definitely check it out. Best ~ Susan

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Permalink Reply by Kelly Dingee on October 7, 2008 at 11:52am

I can't speak to Broadlook - but have used TwitterSearch - depends on what you want to get. I love my AIRS XRay and FlipSearch for digging into Twitter, but you can create some fab rss feeds from TwitterSearch, especially if you take advantage of the advanced search.

FeedMySearch I have tried as well - but I'm a consistency girl. And that site has been inconsistent for me, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I'll give it another go in a couple of months.

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Permalink Reply by Dana McLee on October 7, 2008 at 4:23pm

Excellent post and thank you for sharing Kelly.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Weidner on October 7, 2008 at 8:07pm

Kelly,
Thanks for the tools update.
Xobni (inbox spelled backwards) I installed it about a month ago and used it every day now novelty has worn off and I "minimized" it on the right side so I don't use as often. Or maybe it organized me so well I don't even realize how well that I never notice I need it any more It's that good. Time will tell. But your post did remind me of it.

Twitter - UGH I've been vehemently opposed to twitter since it's inception but after reading your post again I feel as if I'm left out:-( So I will have to set up an account and check it out to see for myself. I've never even used it but just had a deeprooted feeling it was a bad idea to update people on every occurance in my daily life. Or read about others predictable lives for that matter. But I will check it out...

Teetlater - Hmm sounds like a twitter knock off I'll give it a looksee also

Digsby - Never heard of it

iGoogle installed it and it took 8 hours to catalog my desktop and then everytime I did search for something it locked up my system or made it unbearably slow - Uninstalled it two days later. But that was release 1.0 so who knows maybe I'll give it another try. Oh and yes my HDD is fairly big 100 Gigs and it's almost full so I understand why it took so long but...

Chrome Loved it loved it loved it. Especially because when one tab crashed they all don't crash but when I realized it's not roboform compatible I stopped using it. I have over 100 user names and passwords to Social networking, administrator logins, ATS, etc etc etc that I just wasn't willing to move over to Chrome without an import feature. Then to sychronize the two if I ever were to switch off from IE to Chrome again forget it I'll wait for the roboform combatibility update. Also I think the top URL bar in Chrome is a little squished against the top of the page/screen. In IE I have all these toolbars, Links, Google search bar, Roboform bar, etc which center the page more. Granted I see less of the page but that's what the scroll button on the mouse is for.

Off the top of my head some of the tools we use are;
Mailtester.com
advance email verifier
indeed.com

these are great places to find tools
mashable.com
tradevibes.com

Jeff Weidner
HTC Research Corp
jeffweidnerlinkedin@gmail.com 11,500 + on linkedin