The first of the programs we are going to talk about is Microsoft To-Do. This completely free software is very useful for keeping a to-do list with everything that needs to be done, both within the newsroom and in our day-to-day lives. We also use it to share lists with each other so that we all have them synchronized and we can complete these tasks together.
➡️Download Microsoft To-Do.
VirtualBox
Testing operating systems, Windows “beta” updates, and all kinds of programs is not good for the health of our computer. Therefore, another must-have that we have in our day to day are virtual machines. To manage them we make use of the well-known program VirtualBox, a completely free hypervisor where we always have a version of Windows Insider, and a Linux, and on which we test all the programs. When this machine starts to go bad, we button and new account and our main system is never affected by the experiments.
➡️Download VirtualBox.
FastStone Photo Resizer
A free program, very unknown, but without which we could not work. We use this program mainly for resize images that we upload to the web, at the same time that we convert them to JPEG and reduce their size without losing quality. It also allows you to rename images in batches (very useful when doing tutorials) and even add watermarks to photos. That said, a tool that, to process images, is perfect.
➡️Download FastStone Photo Resizer.
ShareX
A very important part of our work is screenshots. This free and open source program has everything we need to be able to work. It is a very complete piece of software that allows us to take screenshots of the entire screen, a window, or a region of the desktop, and add arrows, elements, and even censor parts of it on the fly. The only drawback is that its settings menu is strange and chaotic. But otherwise, it is one of the best programs for this purpose.
➡️Download ShareX.
google meet
Videoconferences are an essential part of the day-to-day teleworking. There are things that are explained much faster in a voice call than by messages in the chat. And, for this reason, we usually resort to this tool a lot. In seconds we have created our own private room to meet, talk about the issues to be discussed, and continue with the day.
➡️Enter Google Meet.
Google Docs
Some time ago we bet on LibreOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Office. However, The Document Foundation’s suite leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to dealing with DOCX files and, above all, collaborative work. For this reason, we finally decided to bet on Google Docs for writing reports and documents and managing the day-to-day workflow. We all have access to the documents, and we can edit them in real time at the same time.
➡️Open Google Drive.
Visual Studio Code
Sometimes we need to open text files to edit them, or test certain code snippets before sharing them with you. And, for this, the best program we can find is Visual Studio Code. This is a plain text editor, with programming IDE functions, with which we can open any file, read it and edit it at will. Also, if you like to experiment with programming, it is one of the best IDEs you can find.
➡️Download Visual Studio Code.
Autorun Organizer – Rubén Velasco’s recommendation
Personally, I like my computer to start up quickly, and have as few programs open as possible. And that’s something that Autorun Organizer allows me to do. Although Windows has its own panel for enabling and disabling programs that run at startup, some tools, and many processes, don’t appear on this list. Thanks to this free program I can control everything that runs automatically when I turn on my PC. And not only that, but I can delay the start of certain programs or processes to avoid bottlenecks and make the PC run much smoother.
➡️Download Autorun Organizer.
Mega Privacy – David Onieva’s recommendation
Storage is something very important in our day to day, since we work with a large number of documents and photos. In the first instance I save the files I work with on the local drives of the PC, but it is important for me to have a backup copy of all my work in the cloud. Mainly because of the storage space it provides for free and the privacy it boasts, I use Mega’s service through the Mega Privacy client. Personally, it gives me better security to protect everything I keep here than Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive.
➡️Download the Mega Privacy app.
Rambox – The recommendation of Ignacio Sala
Because of my work, I spend many hours in front of the computer. I was looking for an application that would allow me to access a large number of platforms from a single platform in order to reduce the number of tabs in the browser. I found the solution in Rambox. Rambox is an application that allows us to group different services such as Gmail, Telegram, Gmail, Slack, Google Drive, Pocket, Instagram, Outlook, Google Meet and many others into a single one. In this way, I do not need to interact with my mobile phone when I receive a notification or have to consult any information using a new browser tab. Rambox is a free application that we can download through its website.
➡️Download Rambox
