5 FREE websites you NEED to know about

Lovely Charts

http://www.lovelycharts.com

This is a MUST have for anyone who needs to organize their life, a project, or their office. All you have to do is register (for free, of course) and begin your new chart. It allows you to drag elements that are already defined for you onto a grid and link them. The grid is MASSIVE & you can zoom in, out, or move it around to your heart’s desire.

If you’re a perfectionist it gives you the ability to align & arrange to create a perfect flow chart. Not only this, but you can click the “create & click” button (it’s the one with the big knot) and simply click an element and drag to the element you want it to connect to. Boom. It’s connected. You can copy, cut & paste (don’t try keyboard shortcuts though), even SAVE your project for later use, all from the menu at the top of the page, and then when your project is all finished, export it as a jpg or png to print off and tack to the wall.

Things to be aware of: You can’t save more than one project with the free subscription, but if you really like it, skip getting a latte one day (ok, maybe a LITTLE more than 1 latte PRICE: $5), and you’re good for a year! You can also print, link your projects together, and link with others. So, win-win.

Colour Lovers

http://www.colourlovers.com

This is an excellent source for anyone trying to get an idea for color trends, palettes or patterns. Whether you are repainting the house or designing a website or ad campaign for someone, the palette options here are incredible and endless.

If you want to create a new palette, all you have to do is click on “Palettes” in the main menu and click “Create New” in the menu below that. Simple. It has a the option to use a simple color picker or you can use hexidecimal code, RGB, HSV or CMYK. It even has the ability to pick from a plethora of patterns and give them complex palette colors.

Check me out on Colour Lovers

Pandora Radio

http://www.pandora.com
If you’ve spent any amount of time with me, you know how much I love this site. Any website that can ask you for a band you like, and after you tell it, gives you hours of music that you LOVE has got something going on. You can create multiple “stations” with music you like, mix a few bands into one station, and listen to hours of CD-Quality music, with NO commercials & no lame DJ.

If it happens that you DON’T like a song the radio plays, you can skip it, or give it a thumbs down. The thumbs down & thumbs up “guides” Pandora to pick the music you like. It’s just to amazing for words.

Things to be aware of: Pandora DOESN’T like to be minimized, but you can use tabbed browsing and have it in the background playing…practically unnoticeable. If you really get into your work, after about two hour you might notice the music stop playing. No worries. click back over to Pandora and a window is there saying, “Are you still listening?” Click yes, and you’re back in business.

Check me out on Pandora!

LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com
I know, I know, It seems like there are TOO many social networking sites now. Who could forget when MySpace (does anyone over 13 use that anymore?) & Facebook began to explode with popularity (each currently having over 200 million users)? All kinds of new social networking sites have sprung from the woodworks, but LinkedIn is one worthy of investing time & effort.

LinkedIn is basically an online Resume that can be found by 35 million people & businesses in the same fashion as Monster.com. LinkedIn, however has a few features that Monster.com does not have:

Pulls BLOG Feeds. When you give it your blog url, it automatically pulls your blog titles to let people looking at your profile know what you’re working on.

Kudos, fine sir! You can recommend friends & co-workers, get recommended BY friends & co-workers, and even give “kudos” which is basically like writing a reference for a person. (You will find the more kudos you WRITE, the more that are written about you)

Show thyself approved. You can link to multiple websites that you’ve created including your portfolio, your blog, your company’s website…the list is endless really. This is a great feature because it lets potential employers see multiple facets of your life: work, play, & passion.

Know how much you lack. Your completion percentage is posted on your page, so you know how much more you lack to have a complete LinkedIn resume.

User-specified address. One thing that stands out above Monster.com & Facebook, is the ability to use your name as your LinkedIn public profile url. For instance, http://www.linkedin.com/in/chaseadams is my url, so it’s really easy for potential employers to find you.

There’s a really great article in MacLife (May 2009, no. 28) about how to put together a stellar LinkedIn resume (p89), and I was going to link to it on their site, but it was hard to find, so head over to your local Barnes & Noble, pick up a copy, and get linked in.

*If you become a member, or already are one, click here to add me to your network.

Twitter

http://www.twitter.com
I wish the “IF I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that…” age old adage was true about Twitter. This one wouldn’t have made the list because I just assumed it was like Facebook, in that everyone know what it was. Boy was I wrong.

I joined it last year, and didn’t really do much with it, but in the past month I have heard more “tweeting” about Twitter than you could imagine. I have at least 2 people a day ask me what it is, and is it worth it. And my answer: Absolutely

Here’s the beauty of twitter. It’s simple. It’s fast. You can write whatever you want about whatever you want from your computer, your phone, your iPod Touch, and be done with it in a matter of seconds.

Twitter is what I would consider a “micro-blog”, the ability to write about your life, in not so many words, and keep everyone up-to-date. You can add links to photos, websites, other social networking sites, and do so by creating what are known as “tiny-urls”.

All you need to start tweeting, as every other site mentioned here, is an e-mail address.

Things to be aware of: You only have 140 characters to capture what your life is like RIGHT now. So I use an Adobe AIR (download here) program called, DestroyTwitter (download here). It allows you to see your friends tweets & your tweets on your desktop, and shorten URLs, shorten your tweet (tweetshrink) & upload pictures (twitpic)

Also: You can link your facebook to your twitter so that your twitter updates also update your facebook status…it’s a HUGE timesaver! E-Mail me to find out how!

Follow We Are Clouds or Chase Adams on twitter!