It’s that time. Back to school and an opportunity to suss out the tools for maximizing productivity. Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Google’s “Web Apps Guru” recommends the following apps for Chrome users:
From the release:
1. StayFocusd – StayFocusd is a productivity extension that helps you focus on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites. You can restrict entire sites or just parts of them for as long or short of a time as necessary.
2. Todo.ly – Todo.ly is an intuitive and easy to use online to-do list and task manager. It helps you get organized and get things done by organizing your tasks into projects and subprojects, adding customized icons and labels, and assigning due dates to your tasks.
3. Read Later Fast – This app lets you save pages to read later – online or offline, and fast. All you have to do is right click and save the page for later to avoid having too many open tabs on your browser.
4. Write Space – Write Space is a customizable, full-screen text editor that lives in your browser. It is designed to minimize the distractions that come between you and your writing. This app also auto saves your work and works offline.
5. StudyStack – StudyStack helps students memorize anything with millions of flashcards that have already been added to the site or the ability to create your own. There are dozens of flashcard categories including foreign languages, math, LSAT and GRE.
6. Graph.tk – An app for math majors, Graph.tk is an app that brings the graphing capabilities of your calculator to the browser. It’s easy to use and good for plotting graphs based on equations.
7. WordReference – For anyone taking a foreign language course or studying abroad, this extension gets you the translations you need in a fast and easy way. Since it’s an extension and placed right next to the address bar, you don’t even have to leave the site you’re on for a quick translation.
BONUS APP: Panic Button – Ok, this app won’t help you pass your class, but it might just come in handy during class. Use the panic button to hide all your tabs at once and restore them later. You can even set up the panic button to open up a pre-made Google Doc of class notes…not that we condone this sort of behavior.
Panic Button
About Kathy Ishizuka