BitsofKate.com

I just wanted to quickly share the awesomeness that is Feedly, OneSuite and WiseStamp.

I know that there are a ton of similar (and perhaps better) tools/sites that exist and these are probably old news but I stumbled upon these three this week and they made me happy.  So for those who are not familiar and could perhaps benefit from them, here you go:

Feedly: I found this as a Firefox Add On which helps me view my Google Reader items in a much easier and nicer way.  I've since made it my homepage so that when I sign on each day, I can not only gather all of the information I want to but tweet it out and share them in an easy fashion.  A more detailed video explaining the benefits is as follows.  (Her accent also doesn't hurt to listen to!)

OneSuite:  I was searching for free fax-to-email numbers but didn't feel like paying a big monthly subscription fee since I don't think I'll need it much.  I did want the option for people to be able to fax items to me since I work for myself and discovered OneSuite where many local numbers are available and to receive faxes, you just pay a $1 a month.  If you want to upgrade to send faxes, you can upgrade later for $2.95 a month.  Since I have a scanner, I don't foresee me having to fax anything in the near future but it's great to have the option to easily upgrade if needed.  The only gripe I have is that in order to sign up for OneSuite, you must buy credits ($10 minimum) first for their overall site/features.  I highly doubt the $10 will then pay for 10 months going forward but either way, you can't beat $1 a month for your own fax number.

WiseStamp:  I had been using the BlankCanvas Gmail Signature add-on for Firefox for some time in order to have an HTML-rich email signature within Gmail.  It worked flawlessly until recently.  After installing an update, it simply stopped working and despite troubleshooting several times, I gave up.  I'm glad I did!  I discovered WiseStamp which blows BlankCanvas out of the water. 

It allows you to put little social network icons so that people can easily connect with you on those sites.  It also can embed the latest blog post linked title from whatever blog you wish to add.  You can top it off with any image you'd like as well..  Why Gmail still doesn't have the ability to insert such signatures is beyond me but WiseStamp takes good care of that in the meantime.

Again, I know none of these are brand new sites/tools but they are to me and I had to share the benefits.