If you’ve been here for a while, you’ll know I love new tools and apps that make life easier, more fun or shake things up. Here are five I’m enjoying at the moment that you might not have heard of.
- Descript: This one is for the podcasts and video makers! Descript is an editor with a difference – you can go through and edit the transcription, and it will edit it in the recording. So I can remove a fluff or a section that hasn’t worked by simply searching the transcription and deleting the words. In the paid version, you can even use the dub ai to add in words or replace ones.
- Speechify: Are you more of a listener than a reader? Speechify is an app for scanning a document, which it will then read out to you. You can choose the voice too (er, including Gwyneth Paltrow).
- Flick (referral link): One of my clients, workflow and visibility strategist Laura Parker, introduced me to Flick last year and it’s been so useful for hashtags. You type in your hashtag of interest, and it shares all the similar ones, along with how popular they are. You can then save them into collections so you can copy and paste them into your Instagram/social posts. You can even get stats on how well your posts ranked on that hashtag after.
- Screely: Want a mockup of a browser page you’re on? Screely is a Chrome plugin that will do just that. I find it really useful for grabbing course pages for sales pages, because the template it’s popped in is really clean and simple.
- Too Good To Go: Ok, this one isn’t business-y, but hey, this is the Freelance Lifestyle, we can have a sprinkling of apps that make life easier. Or tastier, in this case. Too Good To Go is a way to reduce food waste and get a bag of yummy surprises. Every day, the app releases a variety of surprise bags from places like Greggs, Costa, or your local BP (which in our area means their M&S food!). You don’t know what will be in the bag, but it’ll be significantly cheaper than full price. You then have a set time to pick it up, usually at the end of the day. It’s food they’d otherwise have had to throw out, and you get a Ready, Steady, Cook challenge (as someone recently called it) in a bag.