you're only as sharp as your dullest tool... ok maybe not, but good tools are essential to running an efficient business and realizing all of your brilliant ideas more adroitly. here you'll find a few of my favorites.

the aiga

i am a proud card carrying member. i love the way their site works, with the kind of “stream of consciousness” layout. also, they make many fantastic benefits available to members.

producteev

producteev is an excellent productivity tool. make sure to download the app for mac. it’s a very smooth and flowing way to keep track of those pesky to-dos.

harvest time tracking

when estimating how long a project will take, it’s good to actually know how long it will take. enter harvest. no more saying, “uhhhh, maybe 10 hrs?” also, it has a desktop widget and an iphone app (maybe other apps and widgets too for devices that we don’t use) and the harvest server syncs all of them. sweet!

drop box

online file service that integrates seamlessly into the mac finder and pc file browsing apparatus (i assume on the pc thing. let me know if i’m wrong). syncs files and folders between your online account and your local machine. small free accounts are available as well as large paid ones.

cloud app

this thing is awesome. automatically uploads screenshots to yer cloud when you make them and automatically pastes a short url to your clipboard for easy sharing. also, with a simple keystroke, send any file in your finder, song in your itunes, photo from iphoto and more stuff like that to the cloud. and the same thing happens with the short url. oh yeah, it does fonts from fontbook too.

transmit

essentially finderizes your ftp directories, or ftperizes your finder. whichever way you want to look at it. and so much more. they offer a 7 day free trial. you really should download it and try it if you do anything kind of ftp uploading at all.

carl dc-250 paper cutter

this thing is awesome. i do some printmaking and what not, so i’m often having to trim down large sheets into smaller ones. i was using an exacto knife + cutting mat to do so at first, because the smallest sheet i can get of the paper that i like is 22″ on the shortest side and i didn’t want to break down and pay for a cutter that could handle it. well cutting sheets that big with an exacto is ridiculous, so i finally bought the thing and i am so glad i did. it’s effortless. slide paper in, lock down track, slide blade across and done; perfectly straight, clean cut.