Last updated on September 24th, 2020
This is The German Beaver’s Tool Box.
These are the tools I use almost every day to make my life easier and be more productive.
I also recommend them as useful digital tools for small businesses and when you are writing blogs.
CONTENTS
1. Image Editing Tools
Generating compelling images and screenshots for websites, blogs and social media profile can be time consuming. These tools help to get these task done faster and more efficiently.
Canva is my go to tool to edit images and save them in the right format and dimensions.
I also use it to create graphic overlays and add text to images.
The paid version allows you to automatically generate the image for different platforms and dimenions, such as Pinterest, facebook, LinkedIn and others.
It also comes with an extensive library of photos, graphic elements and fonts.
I use this small, 100% free tool to reduce the file size of PNG and JPG images.
From their website: “This online image optimizer uses a smart combination of the best optimization and lossy compression algorithms to shrink JPEG and PNG images to the minimum possible size while keeping the required level of quality.”
To me ColorZilla is the best tool to capture HEX codes right from websites.
It comes as a handy Chrome browser extension.
What I find most useful is the color history to easily access previously used HEX color codes.
My favorite tool to highlight people or objects.
It removes the background of your image and saves it as a transparent PNG file.
This then lets you place the new image onto your background of choice.
To quickly generate and design buttons I use the tool from ClickMinded
Da Button Factory is a simple button design tool that helps you create high-converting call-to-action (CTA) buttons for your website, blog post, social media post, or email.
And the best thing is: it is free.
A super handy tool to quickly take screenshots, edit and save them is Awesome Screenshot.
it comes as a useful Chrome extension. It also has basic screen recording features. Awesome Screenshot’s Chrome extension is 100% free.
2. Video Editing Tools
We already know that video gets more attention than images but it can be quite time consuming and takes much more effort to produce good video content.
Check out these useful tools. They are real assets in my digital tools portfolio.
To record my screen I use the pro the version of Screencast-o-matic. I consider it as one of the most convenient and user friendly tool.
The free version has some restrictions and the videos come with a watermark.
It works great to record mp4 files or create gif files.
The editor lets you trim the videos right after recording.
Video can be downloaded or stored online.
Similar to removing a backgrund from an mage you can do this with your video clips as well, for free with uncreen.com.
The cool thing: For short clips it basically replaces a green screen studio.
Upgrade to pro for removal of watermark and HD video downloads.
3. Writing
If you run a website or a blog, a significant amount of time goes into copywriting or at least proofreading of content you receive from your team.
The following tools make this process faster and more efficient:
Grammarly helps me every day to sort out grammar issues and fine tune my writing.
It comes as a free Chrome extension and Desktop App.
The free version covers “Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation” but if you are constantly writing you may want to go for Pro which fixes your texts when it comes to:
Fluency, Readability, Word choice and crawls the web for Plagiarism detection
To quickly count characters and words I usually use the free online tool https://wordcounter.net/
It also gives you a score for readability and the reading time.
To translate longer texts there is indeed a better option than Google Translate. It is DeepL!
I use it for most translations from German to English and vice versa. Other languages are supported as well of course.
4. Meeting Scheduling
Calendly is still one of these small but effective no brainer tools out there.
I use it to let clients or even colleagues choose a preferred time slot to meet.
It now also comes with a Zoom integration.
5. Password Manager
6. SEO Checker Tools
Domain Authority Checker
coming soon
Keyword Analysis
coming soon
VPN
coming soon
7. QR Code Generator
coming soon
8. WordPress Schemes
coming soon