Website criteria for this list
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
In today's video, I wanna share with you seven helpful websites to help you be more productive, help you save time.
In some cases, they can even help you save money.
So today we're not looking at applications; we're looking at websites that require no sign in, no email address, nothing for you to install.
These are places where you can just get in, get out, and get on with the rest of your day.
Time and Date Calculations
So let's get started with website number one, and that is TimeAndDate.com.
TimeAndDate.com obviously is going to give you the accurate time and time zones across virtually every area on the earth.
But there are two particular areas that I use this website for, on a regular basis.
Number one is their calculators section.
For example, there is a date-to-date calculator.
Let’s say I'm managing a project, and I want to know how many days are left between now and the end of that project.
All I need to do is come here and select today, or I can select any other date from this calendar if I want to.
Then over here, let's say that I know that I need this project to be finished by February 19th.
I could give an estimate in terms of the number of weeks or the number of days between these two, but if I want to be more precise, I just need to hit this calculate duration.
Now I know it's exactly 79 days from today until this date, February 19th.
It also gives me a few alternate time units here, such as 11 weeks and two days if I need to know how many weeks are out as well.
Another calculator I use quite often is the add and subtract calculator.
For example, I’ll hit today, and in this case, maybe I want to know exactly how many days it is, maybe not 120, right?
These are maybe some more common values, but let’s say 67 days from now.
I’m going to hit calculate and, oh, perfect, it's Sunday, February 7th.
I can get very, very precise with those calculations.
Easy Polls
Let's move on to website number two, which has to do with polling.
How often have you wanted to quickly ask a question to either a small group of people, such as your family, or friends, or your work team?
Maybe you want to share something on social media but don't want to restrict it to just a particular platform.
That's where Polls.io comes in.
As soon as you get to the polls.io website, you can immediately start creating your quiz or your question here.
So I'm gonna say, what is your favorite app?
I asked that one earlier, and down below, I can add some options here, maybe Trello, Asana.
It’s remembered some of the things that I put in just a few moments ago.
Here I've got my very simple poll.
I’m going to say, create this poll, and it’s going to bring me to this page.
All I need to do is copy this link.
I can either copy it up here in the URL, or I can hit the share button and copy this link as well.
I can choose to embed it or share it directly to some popular social media platforms.
But in most cases, what I find is most helpful is just to copy that link.
I can copy it to the clipboard, and now people can start to vote on this poll.
I could send it in a text message.
I can send it anywhere that I like, and I don't have to come back here and log in anywhere to see the results.
All I need to do is remember this URL or copy this URL and remember it for later.
If I say vote, I'm gonna say maybe monday.com is my favorite at the moment.
I’m going to hit submit, and immediately I can start to see those results come in.
Background Sound & White Noise
Now, the next one on our list has to do with productive focus.
Perhaps you are working in a very noisy environment and want to be able to drown out the other noises around you.
Whether that's a noisy office or perhaps you're working remotely from home, and you don't want to hear your kids, or the pet, or maybe your partner who is very loud on their zoom call in the room next door.
That's where Noises.online comes into play.
A very, very simple website.
You can see a variety of different icons here, which represent soundscapes you can enable just with a click.
You can also combine various ones together as well.
For example, if I click on brook, you can hear a little rumbling brook going by.
You can almost envision that you're camping or maybe fishing by a small river.
If I want to combine that, I can combine it with a bonfire.
Here, we get some crackling.
It sounds like a pretty large fire.
Yeah, that is certainly a bonfire.
If I want less fire, all I need to do is click this a few times, and each click should reduce the level or the sound of that.
As I'm combining these noises, I can really customize what I want.
You'll also notice in the top right-hand corner, they always have a pick of the week, and this one is called cafeteria.
If I select that, it sounds a little bit like a noisy cafeteria or maybe a coffee shop.
You see they've actually combined a coffee house with cocktail voices.
So you've got some of that banter in the background combined with that coffee shop ambience.
If you really enjoy these sounds, all you need to do to favorite yours is hit this pin.
What it’s going to do is give you a unique URL.
You can bookmark it into your browser.
If there’s a particular sound or sound combination that you like, you don't even have to come back to the website necessarily and create it again.
You can just copy this, save it somewhere, or bookmark it to your browser, and use it in the future.
Focused Writing
Now, the next website on our list is something that is very, very dangerous.
So proceed with caution.
It's actually called The Most Dangerous Writing App.
And I think that is very true.
This is an app that I've actually used quite frequently over the last several years.
Let me explain how it works.
Sometimes we get into a bit of a writer's block or a writer's funk.
I know for myself, I'm very much a perfectionist.
So when I need to write something that's more of a long format, something that's gonna be several paragraphs in length, like a blog post, for example, I can start by writing the first one or two sentences.
Then I stare at those two sentences and I overanalyze.
I say, how could I say this differently?
Meanwhile, I should really just be dumping out all of my thoughts and try to write as much as I can, 'cause I can always come back and edit, and rearrange that.
So if you ever have those problems or that type of difficulty, then The Most Dangerous Writing App may be for you.
Yes, don't stop writing, or all progress will be lost.
Here’s how it works.
You can either choose to do it with a prompt or without.
The prompt is gonna give you a sort of a beginning sentence.
This is really more designed for someone who is writing fiction.
So in most cases, you're gonna wanna use this if you're writing anything business-related, a blog post, maybe marketing content, or maybe you just want to use this for brainstorming ideas.
But before we get started, make sure you choose if you want to look at the amount of time that you are writing or the amount of words.
If we click on this little link, we can either choose the number of minutes that we would like to continually write, or we can choose the number of words.
In this example, I'll just use something very simple, like 75 words.
Now that I've chosen my session length, I'm gonna click this button, start writing without prompt.
The nice thing is that it gives me a nice big blank canvas.
I don't have ads, I don't have distractions.
Like I said before, I don't have to even sign in to use this app.
As I start writing, everything is looking good.
But if I pause, you'll see what's going to happen.
It’s gonna start to fade a little bit.
Eventually, if I don't keep writing, it's all going to vanish.
There's about a five-second timeframe between when you stop typing and when everything is going to go away.
And yes, when I click this box, nothing is there.
I can start again, but everything that I just wrote is gone.
So, if I start again, if I start again and I pause, and I pause and I see the fading, I can, no, no, I'm not done.
I'm not done.
I want to keep writing again.
But if I pause for too long, once again, everything is going to vanish and it is all gone.
Once you've hit that limit, whether it's a minute length or whether it's a number of words, then it’s there for good.
You can go and copy and paste this into a word processor or wherever else that you would like to do it.
But this has actually been very, very helpful, both from a brainstorming point of view and also when I just need to get my thoughts out and not worry about it, right?
You can always come back and edit it later.
A great tool if you ever get stuck with your writing.
Amazon Deal Finder
Now, next up on our list is not only going to save you time, but it's designed to help save you money.
This is called CamelCamelCamel.
Yeah, it's probably a name of a website that you're not going to forget anytime soon.
What it has to do with is following and tracking prices on Amazon to make sure that you are getting the best deal, or at least be confident that you're getting a very good deal as you are shopping online.
So here in the search bar, you can either type in or copy and paste a URL from Amazon.
But I'm just gonna click on this popular products for this quick example.
Here, it's gonna show me a list of products that are popular on Amazon right now.
Let's take a look at these Sony noise-canceling headphones.
It's telling me that it's a good deal.
Well, why is that the case?
Right now they're on for $229.
But below I can see that the list price is $349.
The average price of these headphones on Amazon has been $304, so yeah, that's a pretty good discount.
If that's the average price that this has been listed, and now I can get them for $229, that does seem like a good deal.
You can click on these products and go into even more deeper history.
For anyone who loves charts like myself, here you can see the full price history of these particular headphones.
Yeah, you can see that for much of its time, it’s hovered around that $350 mark.
But you can see all these dips, right?
All these peaks where the sale prices have gone on, where maybe there's been a black Friday or a special sale.
In fact, you can see Black Friday was just a few days before this particular recording.
That was probably the lowest price ever at $221.
If I get it today at $229, I'm pretty confident that I am getting a very good deal.
Better yet, without signing up, you can enter in any email address and choose what price drop you are looking for.
If I click on this, it gives me a couple of helpful presets.
If I want to wait until it's closer to $218 or any price drop from now, or I can just type in any number into this field and hit track.
It will send me an email alert as soon as that price gets to that point.
Not only helping you to save time, but helping you to save money as well.
Remove Image Background
Then the next website I wanna share with you today has to do with images, and in particular with removing a background.
This one’s really easy to remember.
It's Remove.bg.
Yes, the B-G stands for background.
How many times have you had a picture of yourself or someone else, or maybe a product, but you didn’t like the background image?
You wanted to put something else in the background, or maybe you just wanted to keep it plain, just like you see here in this particular example.
With Remove.bg, you don't have to log in, you don't have to sign up.
You can quickly and easily do this for yourself in just seconds.
All you need to do is select this upload image button, and I'm gonna go and select my headshot here, which you can see, I've got a dark background here from the studio where I took this picture.
All it's gonna do is remove that background in a matter of seconds.
I didn't have to select the area.
I didn't have to trace anything, and look at the results.
I think that's pretty fantastic.
I'm sure you've come across some programs where there's some ugly shadowing or some things that are clipped between maybe the face and the clothing or something funny going on around the hair.
But if I toggle between the original and removing the background, it's almost seamless.
This is almost perfect.
Now I can go and take this and put this where I want.
If I want to go further, I can click this edit button and choose other backgrounds to put behind it.
It has a few defaults, but of course, you can select your own photo to put in the background.
Or maybe you want to keep it simple and just add a particular color to it.
In this case, I'm gonna select yellow, nice and bright.
Maybe I'm promoting something in particular.
This is the branding for the client that I'm working with.
I can add that to the background of my photo as well.
So quick and easy, nothing to download, nothing to install.
Remove.bg and sticking with pictures.
Professional Stock Images
I wanna share with you where I get many of my stock photos absolutely free.
For me, I like to go to pexels.com.
Now there's an awful lot of places that you can go online to get free stock images.
But what I love about pexels.com is that I just find that the quality of these pictures is so much better.
I'm gonna click on tech here, just to show you some examples of some of their technology photos.
I’m sure that you've come across some free stock image websites, and many of the pictures just look like they're coming from amateurs, right?
Like they don’t look very professional.
These are great photos that you can use for social media.
You can use them for your marketing.
You can use them for your branding.
Keep in mind, some of these images may have been used hundreds, if not thousands of times by other users.
You may have come across that already, but let's say I kind of like what this is doing.
If I click on it, on top of that, if I scroll down now, I'm getting a bunch of other images, either from the same photographer, or things that are similar or related to this particular image.
Great quality images and things that you can start to use right away.
Now I'd love to know which websites help you on a daily basis.
Be sure to share them with me and with others in the comments down below.
If you would like to know the 10 apps that I use every single day, be sure to click on the video here to the left.
Thank you so much for watching today's video.
Make sure you subscribe right here to this Simpletivity channel.
Remember being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
