Cool Free Websites and Apps

Symbaloo - Generic webmix Description: Symbaloo allows you to organize all of your websites in one place. It is free and its biggest advantage over some other solutions it that it is based on a visual organization. Your preferences are stored in a cloud so you can seamlessly switch between your devices. The following short video provides a quick overview of how this service works. Creating an account: It essentially works as a bookmarking service. You can share your bookmarks with anyone by making them public or share them with a select group of users. The first thing you will want to do is create a free account, which is very simple, you only need to fill out four fields.   Symbaloo - Creating an account Creating a webmix using quick start: Once you sign up, you can start creating your webmixes, you even have an option to select the quickstart option, where Symbaloo will let you create a webmix using some favorite websites in less than a minute. The...

Coursera - Welcome Screen Description: Over 4 million people from all around the world have already used Coursera to study anything from History of Rock, Songwriting, Financial Markets, Nanotechnology to Optimization of Antibiotics. There are currently 393 courses available to choose from offered by leading scholars from 83 different universities including, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia University, Princeton, Technical University of Denmark, University of Melbourne or The Hong Kong University of Technology. New courses are added frequently and are now also offered in various other languages including English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese and Italian, with the vast majority of  Coursera  courses offered in English today. There are various ways in which you can browse through the courses, you can view those that are upcoming or view them by their specific thematic grouping and choose one or more of the following categories: Coursera - List of Topical Categories of C...

Bookboon Overview Description: Bookboon is one of a few different websites that provide free eBooks and textbooks. I have previously used  Bookboon  for travel guides (though I did not see any on the website today) and textbooks. It is a very nice site if you are looking for a simple book on something. Many choices are available, especially for those who are interested in business. Whether you want to learn how to write better, learn how to work with Excel or Access, brush up on your Statistics skills or become more entrepreneurial,  Bookboon  has something for you. The free version of each book contains some limited advertisements, however you have the option to download a book without the advertisement, however this is no longer free. They currently have books published in English, German, Swedish and Danish. If you would like to become an author, they seem to be very open to this as well. Check out  Bookboon , I am confident you will find a book that wi...

Remember The Milk Description: Remember The Milk is an online to-do list and task manager. It can be synced with various other programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and Evernote. You can sign up for an account or simply log-in with your Facebook or Google account (I tried to log in with my google account and was not successful so I actually chose to sign up). Once you log in, you will see a screen that looks something like this: Remember The Milk - Screen with Tasks I would say that one of the benefits of  Remember The Milk  is the fact that you have different sections for personal, study and work tasks. You can create tasks, assign due dates, whether the task repeats etc. as you can with many other services. After just recently playing with Trello however, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with  Remember The Milk . I think it is functional and a great free task manager, however I would have to admit that when it comes to the desig...

Description: Trello can be used to organize anything from simple to-do lists to research projects or event planning. You can work on your own or collaborate with others. Additionally you can access these lists from all of your devices so waiting in line for your Starbucks coffee just became very productive. It is incredibly flexible, it allows you to create text or picture based "cards" that are behind the organization. Below you can see a sample board that someone has created. Trello - Example of a Board The  Trello  cards can then be organized, labeled, color coded... The front of the card provides a summary of the event. Trello - Card Front Side The back of the card provides all of the details and notes necessary for you to learn more about what is happening or needs to happen. Trello - Card Back Side Once you sign up, this is what the welcome board looks like. This board will explain to you how to use  Trello  and you can then set up your own boar...

Poll Everywhere - How does Poll Everywhere Work? Description:   Poll Everywhere allows you to poll your audience LIVE through texts, tweets, or the web. One of the strengths of this service is that you can actually create open-ended questions as well. This short video shows you an overview of  Poll Everywhere . The audience's responses can be embedded right into your PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. There are various different plans available depending on your needs. There is a free option where you can create an unlimited number of polls but you can only poll up to 40 people per question. Also what you can do with the data is a little limited, however it is a great free option if you want to just do a few simple things. Additionally there are various different plans offered for corporate and educational settings that come with increased functionality such as moderating the answers so that inappropriate or redundant answers are not shown for your open ended que...

Description: Padlet (formerly known as Wallwisher) is a web-based tool that allows you to build a wall of thoughts. It is a simple, yet powerful website with unlimited possibilities. You can build a private wall to organize your own thoughts or maybe create a visual list of goals or you can create a public one and share it with the world or even embed it on your website.  Padlet  allows you to create walls using different templates and you can add various multimedia. You can even use  Padlet  for real time collaboration with others. There are so many possibilities, I am sure you will love it. Padlet - Travel Bucket List Example Padlet  is very easy to use and very intuitive. One of its strengths is also in the various ways you can share what you create. The following is the screen shot of the sharing options, which all come with the free account: Padlet Sharing Options Others have used  Padlet  to plan events, to organize their Christmas s...