50 Tech Tips Webinar

Hello Everyone! 

Yesterday, we had a great webinar, “50 Tech Tips You Should Absolutely Know” as part of the LSNTAP/PBN Community Training Series. 

The presenters were:
Patrick Noonan, Minnesota Legal Services Coalition
Kate Bladow, Techno.la
Tony Lu, Pro Bono Net
Travis August, Pro Bono Net

The presenters covered a ton of really cool apps and software that could definitely make your day a lot easier and more fun to boot. Since so many tips were offered, I’m just going to highlight a few of my favorites and the full slideshow is embedded at the bottom for your viewing pleasure. 


Jing is a personal favorite of mine. It’s a really light-weight app that let’s you take pictures or videos of a specific part of your screen. It’s incredibly intuitive, easy to use, and best of all, it’s free. 

What the Font lets you figure out the name of some mysterious font. Really useful if you’re looking to do some work that requires precise typography like making business cards or creating a letterhead. 

Flickr's Advanced Search lets you find pictures that you can use for free without committing copyright infringement. Also the Creative Commons Searchallows you to do pretty much the same thing. Really useful if you want to find pictures to include in blog posts and articles. 

Doodle, Tungle, and WhenIsGood are all online schedulers that will let you schedule meetings with ease because no one likes the 40 e-mail long chains that try to find the best time for everyone.

Gazelle is a site that will buy your old and used electronics and if they can’t sell them, then they’ll recycle it for you. In my eyes, this is win-win as it takes out the hassle of finding buyers for old tech and helps out the environment at the same time.

Go Animate is a website that will let you make some basic cartoons easily. If the occasion ever arises that you need to make an animation, this site should definitely be your first stop. 

MaryFi will turn any computer with Internet access into a wireless hotspot. In other words, it’s router software for your computer. I don’t know too much about how it performs, but if you’re in a bind, then this tip is worth checking out.

Tony talked a bit about using plain text and rich text formatting (RTF) as an alternative to programs like Microsoft Word. I found what he had to say about it pretty interesting so it is definitely something I’m going to be looking into more in-depth sometime soon. Look for a blog post about it within the next few weeks. 

Thank you to all the presenters for sharing your tips!

Austin