Let’s get right into it, shall we? These are software and Web-based tools that will make you a more productive, effective marketer. They’re practical things that will save you time and help you manage information overload, not make you a more persuasive writer.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Here’s another article listing TweetDeck, an obscure FTP client, and an RSS reader I’ll never use. Next!”

Well, you are wrong. You’re wrong because I’m hardcore. I eat new apps and services for breakfast. My ADD is Level 18 with hundreds of hit points. So, here are some awesome apps and sites you probably don’t know about. Be warned: Your mind will be blown. Also, your friendly local IT people will probably hate you for installing (or wanting to install, as the case may be) some of this stuff. Not that it’ll damage your computer or anything, it’ll just increase their workload somewhat. I refer you to what my friends at Gartner were talking about a few years ago: The consumerization of IT, aka IT exists to serve the needs of the business, and you are the business.

Item  #1: Stardock’s Fences (Free, with a little catch)

Does your Windows desktop look like this?

If you answered “Yes,” then you need to do yourself a favor and install Fences. It’s free, and will help you group your icons and documents, to find what you need faster. As seen here:

You’ll only have to put up with one inconvenience: You need Stardock’s Impulse service to run Fences, and about once a week it will pop up a little message about a sale Stardock might be having. Considering Fences is free and I’m benefiting so much from it, I consider the sales messages a small price to pay.

Item #2: Copernic Desktop Search ($49.95 US)

This is another tool to help you manage information overload. If you’ve ever tried to search for an email in Outlook and waited, waited, waited for it to find something, this is for you. If you’ve ever had to find a document on your computer, or worse, on your corporate file server, it’s for you. Copernic creates an index of every word in all the emails and documents on your computer, and it uses it to quickly find anything you’re looking for. For example, a search through my Outlook inbox for the word “event” took two minutes to complete. Copernic had the answer right after I hit enter to search. I don’t even try to keep track of where files are on the network anymore—I use Copernic to search for words within those documents, which ultimately leads me to where the document is stored. You can even preview the document before opening it to ensure it’s the correct one.

By the end of the year, Copernic will have saved me from countless hours of lost productivity. Pull the trigger and buy this.

Item #3: Techmeme (Free)

People are frequently in awe of my amazingly deep and comprehensive knowledge of what is happening in the consumer technology and social media space. Really. I could tell you that I spend ten hours a day scanning obscure tech blogs, or that I have intricate filters set up in Google Reader . . . or I could just give up the ghost and point you to Techmeme (not pronounced tek-me-me). The site tracks a few hundred influential news sites for any stories that appear to be going viral. How many inbound links is a story getting? How many comments? The most popular and widespread stories make their way onto Techmeme.

Yes, it’s true that you’re not getting the news first here, but it does save you from having to spend hours a day scanning dozens of sites.

Item #4: Evernote (Free, paid option provides more features)

How do you take notes? Well, stop it, it’s not good enough. Evernote is a note-taking app on the kind of steroids that steroids take. Sure you can take notes with it, but it’s what Evernote does with those notes that is so remarkable. First, Evernote will sync your notes to cloud storage. From there, you can access your notes from its website using a web-based version of the program. You can also download Evernote’s apps on all the major mobile platforms as well as on Windows and Mac.

In other words, you can access your notes bloody everywhere! But wait! Evernote indexes your notes so you can search them super-easily (just like Copernic, above) and (this is my favorite thing ever) if you save a picture in your notes, Evernote will OCR the document for words—making it possible for you to conduct searches based on words in your picture’s notes!

What are your amazing apps or services?

Okay, that’s enough of spilling my secrets. Do you use any amazing apps or sites? I’d love to hear about them.