I am so pumped about the information that is on this site. Tess - I also say thank you for starting this string!

To those of you who use Google Calendar, I have a quick question. Do clients have to then keep a separate calendar in order to collaborate with you? For instance, if they have Outlook or Lotus - would they need to go to 2 different calendars? If so, do they mind?

Thanks tons ya'll!!

Pam

Great resources to be shared here--I love it, and again, thanks to my fellow VA's for your networking expertise!

For the first time ever, a new lawyer I am working with wants me to keep track of his calendar. I was wondering what type of software there might be, hopefully free, that we could use. So, I came to the forum did a search and, Ta da! It looks like the google calendar will be perfect. Thanks once again for some great information that saved me having to search any further.

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Virtual Bankruptcy Paralegal
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Client Spot http://www.myclientspot.com, client project management platform

Originally Posted by Pam Blackm

To those of you who use Google Calendar, I have a quick question. Do clients have to then keep a separate calendar in order to collaborate with you? For instance, if they have Outlook or Lotus - would they need to go to 2 different calendars? If so, do they mind? Thanks tons ya'll!! Pam

I just set my google calendar up. The client wouldn't necessarily need a separate calendar. You can set it up so you "share" the calendar. You can keep it private with a special link so only you and the client can see it. I'm not sure how this feature would work with multiple clients, I haven't tried that yet. Client Spot might work best for that.

Kathleen Kindred

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Virtual Bankruptcy Paralegal
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I just went and signed up for Client Spot per recommendation of VBSVirtual above. It is awesome!! I'm loving playing with it! Thanks for the info!!

So many tools I never heard of. Thank you ladies

Here's a techie site "computerhope.com". Its great for when you have a
day when your computer doesn't want to work no matter what you do.
I learned this in my A + Certification training and find it very helpful.
Jo-Carole

Jo-Carole -

I just checked out that site and posted a question. It seems to be really cool - plus everything seems to be very easy!?! Thank you so much for sharing!
Pam

Pam, you're very welcome, glad to help out a little bit. Thanks
Jo-Carole

Here are some more of my favorite sites!
http://www.twitter.com - A great way to find clients through social networking.
http://www.twitwall.com - When something is to long for a tweet but too short for a blog post. I used a combination of twitwall and twitter to find new clients.
http://www.tweetbeep.com - Works like google alerts for twitter.

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DeAnna Troupe's VA Service
http://www.deannatroupe.com

This is great information. Ive been looking for a decent calendar to use and Ive just set it up and it looks just what I need.

I would love to print out these great resources but I don't see any way to do that here without copying and paste everything. Am I missing seeing that? Thanks!
Jo-Carole

Okay, here are my five...

1) Audacity - great sound editing tool
2) Basecamp - project collaboration tool - I'd be lost without it!
3) Facebook - a great way to connect informally with clients & fellow VAs!
4. Business Balls - jam packed with useful info & links
5. DocStoc - Tons of useful templates

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"Instead of looking for things that have gone wrong and trying to fix them...Look for things that went right and try to build on them" Tom Peters

Ok, so I need to come up with 3 more... but for right now, here are my 2 favorites:

www.simplynoise.com
www.pandora.com

for those of you who have dogs/kids/misc sounds that are distracting (aka our snoring pugs), www.simplynoise.com is GREAT! They have pink noise, white noise, and brown/red noise (my personal favorite). As for Pandora - it's... pretty much the best music mixer I've ever seen. It's like your favorite IPod songs, but better! Pandora will recommend songs to you by other bands that you may not have heard before, but might like based on other songs you have said that you do like! AMAZING! You can input anything from Mozart to Coldplay and it'll find something you're sure to like. If you don't, just click the thumbs down and it'll not only stop playing that song, but you won't ever hear it again (or anything like it). Check 'em out!

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NuTech VA
www.NuTechVA.com

Jocarole - The easiest way that I found to keep this information available is to click on the links, which most of the VA's here have already hyperlinked as a courtesy (or copy/paste into a separate browser) and then bookmark under a labeled folder. Then just back click into this site or move to the VAF tab in your browser.

5 Fav Free Sites: www.Yahoo.com - for email that I use for junk when I sign up for something that I don't want to be on a 3rd party email list. I keep 2 junk emails there. The first is for junk with some priority like newsletters and a second that I use for total junk that I only browse once in a while to clean out.

www.echosign.com - courtesy of a suggestion here - using this successfully to send signed contracts via the web, paperless and fax-free.
www.logmein.com - I have used this with clients but if I want to get out of my office, which has no windows I'll take the laptop and sit outside and work.
www.timeanddate.com: I use this for time conversion when one of my clients is scheduling a teleclass. I like to provide times for each time zone, including some international zones in the teleclass invitation so folks don't have to figure it out for themselves. It also has clocks and calendars that are useful.

Spybot - I run this for spyware search and destroy...

This is a great thread...I've picked up a few good ones this weekend that are very useful! Thank you, all!

Jan

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