Your Nerdy Best Friend

A 2012 survey found that more than half of us spend 10-20 minutes on hold every week, which adds up to 13 hours a year and 43 days in a lifetime. How irritating is that? You can save time and sanity by using a service that will sit on hold for you.

Lucyphone

Just search for the company you’d like to contact using the Lucyphone apps or website, and the site will call them for you and then give you a call when they finally get a human on the line.

GetHuman

You can also visit the very helpful GetHuman site, which lists the phone numbers and secret pathways to a live operator. GetHuman also works with Lucyphone for the callback service, plus it connects you directly with live chat systems and offers the best email address for getting results.

TalkTo

TalkTo is an almost unnerving site. You can find any business — and I mean any business — even my old freelance writing biz was listed — and send a text or online question. Somehow, some way, TalkTo finds someone to answer your question. Then you can get the response via email, text or online. TalkTo operators act as conduits, and it’s a little strange because the TalkTo rep — not the company — will respond, but they do it in first person as if the company was talking directly to you. Still, it’s an amazing way to find out if your local bakery has red velvet cupcakes without picking up the phone.

I’m so proud of Anne Lupkoski, the certification chair for the Central Canada Division of the International Association of Administrative Professionals. She asked for my recommendations to create an online booklet with testimonials. I advised that she use PowerPoint to create a PDF and upload it to Issuu, a site that turns your documents into online magazines. Voila! A masterpiece is born.

Bonus tool! Check out how Anne used a Tagxedo word cloud on page 51 to capture the spirit of the certification.

I’m infatuated with drag-and-drop online and app tools that help you create posters and more without having the software.

For an instant poster, try the Phoster app (iOS), which lets you add your own pictures and text to their templates for printable and shareable posters for events, ads and more. As of this writing, their templates were pretty rigid, but they can be great for a quick sign. You can also use Checkthis, a site and app that create “social posters” you can share online. I also like an app called Over, which lets you artfully arrange words over a picture for a modern poster look.

A hidden online template resource comes from printing sites, such as Brother Creative Center, Tweak, MyCreativeShop and the ubiquitous Vistaprint. All have a plethora of designs you can personalize online. Brother offers the service for free in hopes that you’ll use a Brother printer to print it. Tweak is free, but the PDF download has very robust and obtrusive watermarks, so the only thing you can do with it is print it through Tweak.

Like Tweak, Vistaprint lets you design for free and download a watermarked PDF (for which they charge you $1.99). I’d definitely go for Tweak over Vistaprint since the latter’s designs are incredibly generic and definitely not a step up for your professional look. MyCreativeShop also wants you to print with them, but they charge 20 bucks a month for their design software so you can download high-quality documents and use them how you wish. Both include access to a large library of stock photography, which helps you avoid the cost of buying images.

Do you sometimes find yourself in need of a quick headline or word graphic with a little flair, but you don’t necessarily want to download a new font that you’ll only use once?

Don’t worry! It’s Jing to the rescue again. My favorite solution for this challenge is to visit Dafont.com, a repository of approximately a kabillion fonts. Then I enter the phrase I want to capture in a graphic, then use Jing to cut it out and save. Then I have a graphic I can use in a Word doc, on the web or anywhere else. This also solves the challenge of using an unusual font that would convert into something vanilla like Arial if you shared it in a document that others open.

Another hint… if you want more than a black-and-white graphic, go ahead and download the font, format the word the way you want, then do the screencapture from your own document. And if you want to do more with screencaptures, try Snagit, Jing’s awesome big brother.

Watch this 64-second video to see how it’s done!

We’ve been working hard around the site lately, adding cool features to make the site more helpful and efficient. Take a look at the newest features and how we use them.

Is your Gmail inbox a big mess? Use these apps and addons to take control and get through your emails.

I’ve written before about how much I love PowToon, a clever online tool that lets you create an animated infographic-type video to demo your product, promote your event or simply amuse your colleagues. Another way to liven up electronic communication is to create an animated cartoon. My two favorite tools in this category are GoAnimate and XtraNormal.

I’ve played around with both tools several times, and they’re really cool. You pick everything from the background to the characters to the expressions on their faces and the way they point at each other. You type the dialog and pick the funny robotic voice of your actors — or even record your own voices for a more personalized video. A short piece without a lot of fancy touches might take you less than half an hour to create, or you could probably spend hours on the little details.

Both GoAnimate and XtraNormal have free-ish plans, which means you can play around with some very basic templates before shelling out any money. If you’re going to use the videos for your business, you’ll need to consider the subscription levels for professional use, which start at about $25/month.

Here is the first Xtranormal video I ever saw, “I’m Training for an Ironman.” It’s still makes me laugh every time.

Warning! It has, well, colorful language and is probably not safe for work. But my husband just finished his first Half Ironman event, so now this video is even funnier.

You can also add a little twist to your marketing with a fun cartoon. ToonDoo has templates and characters that you can drag and drop into a variety of cartoon formats. You can even put several cartoons together into a flippable cartoon book that reminds me of Issuu, my favorite magazine maker (see a sample here).

How DO you pronounce Ziesenis?

Thanks to Kevin MacLeod for the awesome soundtrack!

Whuda thunk that technology startups would seek to make teleconferencing more fun? The new options for meeting people via phone are very cool indeed. Instead of the traditional phone number and PIN code, the new systems connect with the web, smart devices and your computer with just a click of a button rather than a series of pound signs and access codes.

One shiny new tool is Speek. Go to their app or the site, and you’re prompted to create a private URL for your teleconferences. Then send that link to your invitees, and they can connect through devices or computers. The system will even call out to participants at their desktops or dial a phone for them through a device.

On your Speek site, you can watch the interactions, mute and unmute callers and invite more attendees. You can also drop files into the web interface to share with others. Speek even offers to create a Dropbox folder for your account that will save the shared documents.

UberConference is similar to Speek with a limit of five participants, but you can earn spots for up to 17 by spreading the word. When people call in, they show up on your own UberConference web page, and from there you can share files, record the session, mute or unmute participants and more. When people speak, their icons (or pictures if they’ve hooked up their accounts) pop to the top of the screen.

If you pay for the UberConference pro version, the system will actually call participants for you at the appointed time. And iOS and Android apps let you take all the features on the go with you.

If you’re not ready for web-based audio conferencing, there’s always the reliable free conference call companies such as the appropriately named FreeConferenceCall.com. I’ve long relied on sites like FreeConferenceCall.com for a free phone number and PIN that I can share for teleconferences. Up to 96 attendees can join in by dialing a regular old U.S. phone number. The attendees incur regular charges for making a long-distance call, and no one has to pay any extra. Because so many people have flat-rate plans for calling or lots of minutes through their business accounts, there’s no need to feel guilty for not offering a toll-free number.

Podio is one of the tech tools that is making it impossible for me to finish the chapter on Project Management Tools for Release Your Inner Nerd. Here’s why: