At the recent Nevada Interactive Media Summit, Colin Loretz and I presented a rapid fire round of the top 50 applications and websites we use to collaborate on projects and run our day-to-day business.

Colin and I have a few things in common not the least being we work together on Vivanista, but we are both entrepreneurs wearing constantly changing hats. Colin is a web developer, designer and recently opened a co-working space and development company of his own. I would consider myself a marketer, but I dabble in code, video, content/publishing, social media and have found some amazing tools to help me along the way. There are so many new tools online that it is hard to keep track – we’ve distilled our favorites into this presentation.

In what seemed to be a quick fifty minutes, Colin and I took turns sharing our favorite fifty applications. We broke things up into relevant categories and took turns explaining what each provided and how we personally use them. We covered everything from collaborating on projects, creating stunning presentations, sharing files effortlessly, monitoring finances, and managing endless to-do lists in the hustle and bustle of our wired lives.

The tools we shared during this session shed light on the many innovative, web-based and even free solutions for organizations and individuals of any size in building a company or non-profit organization, managing a classroom, schoolwork or family life. I have included the slides and a breakdown of each of the applications below.

Project Management

• Basecamp provides simple project management for you and your clients.
• ActionMethod is visual way to organize a project into basic steps such as actions, references, events, backburners and more.
• Harvest provides time tracking, invoicing, expense management and allows you to keep track of your accounts receivable and revenue.

Communication

• Skype is software that enables the world’s conversations. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users.
• Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.
• Campaign Monitor is email marketing software for designers and their clients.
• iChat is a rich instant messaging application that works with your AIM or MobileMe account and makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using text and video, whether they’re on a Mac or a PC.*

Presentations

• 280slides lets you create presentations on the web and its features are most comparable to Keynote on the Mac.
• Slidshare lets you share your presentation files on the web and allows for comments, sharing and embedding on blogs.

Audio/Video

• ScreenFlow provides all the elements needed to create professional-looking product demonstrations of software applications, including games. $99
• iMovie Maybe you want to throw together a few video clips. Maybe you have more time and want to fine-tune every edit. Or maybe you just want to flip through clips the way you flip through album covers in iTunes. iMovie lets you do it all — then share it all. $79 for iLife package.
• Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size.
• Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder you can use Audacity to Record live audio, Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files, Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together, and hange the speed or pitch of a recording.

To-do

• Teux Deux is an application that is as simple as they come. Manage items on a day to day basis and see what is coming up for the week.
• TaDaList allows you to create to-do lists and share them with others.
• Toodledo is most complex to-do system listed here but it is the the most appropriate for anyone following the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method.

Surveys & Forms

• Wufoo is an Internet application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. Free version available.
• SurveyMonkey is an online survey tool that enables people of all experience levels to create their own surveys quickly and easily. Free for 10 questions.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

• Highrise gives you what you need to track your leads, contacts and deals. Highrise prepares you for your next call, email, meeting, pitch or sale.
• Salesforce is much more robust than Highrise and can quite literally help you run every function of your business online thanks to Apps available on the Salefsorce.com AppExchange. Salesforce gives you a 360-view of your company from leads, accounts & contacts, dollar opportunities, contracts and even allows you to manage documents, customer support and cases.

Google

• Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.
• Google Calendars Never forget another event. Get event reminders via email or have text messages sent right to your mobile phone.
• Google Docs Create and edit web-based documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Store documents online and access them from any computer.
• Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline.
• Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, new, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
• Google Apps for Your Domain-  Help your business reduce IT costs and improve the way employees work together.
• Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email, free US long distance, low rates on international calls, and many calling.

Publishing

• WordPress was originally created as a blogging platform but it’s features have grown to make it customizable for building websites that are easy to manage and maintain.
• ExpressionEngine is also a blogging platform that can be used for web development. Whether you need a blog or a website, ExpressionEngine can help power it and make it easy for users to maintain and publish new content.

Social Media

• Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.
• TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.
• Tweetie – twitter client for macs and iPhone.
• Hoot suite professional online twitter client.

Miscellaneous

• Foursquare on your phone gives you & your friends new ways of exploring your city. Earn points & unlock badges for discovering new things
• 1Password is available on the Mac and iPhone. It works with all internet browsers to allow you to save passwords and login information that are protected under a single, secure master password.
• Readability allows you to simplify content on the web for easier reading. -
• Bit.ly allows you to shorten web URLs and track the traffic that uses that link.
• Divvy lets you setup resources and assets to be reserved or scheduled my groups or individuals. For instance, sharing a conference room, video projector or even a person’s time.
• RescueTime is for the productivity nazis. It tracks what applications you’re using, idle time and more to help you identify where your time is being spent and where you might be able to recover hours worth of productive time in a week.

File Sharing

• Snagit screen capture sofware allows you to create an image of all or part of what you see you see on your computer monitor.
• Scribd On Scribd, you can quickly and easily turn nearly any file—including PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel—into a Web document and share it with the world.
• Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Show off your favorite photos and videos to the world
• Acrobat.com is the swiss-army knife of web applications. It is a set of online tools you can use to create and collaboratively edit documents, communicate in real time and simplify working with others.
• Dropbox makes online backup and file syncing very easy and seamless, across both Mac and PC and even the iPhone.
• Evernote lets you save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use.

Finance

• Mint is a free way to manager your money. It syncs securely with your bank accounts, credit cards and other assets/liabilities so that you can make informed decisions in budgeting, saving and investing. Mint will even help you find money. If it notices that using a different credit card or moving to a different kind of savings account will save or make you more money, it will let you know.
• Freshbooks allows you to create and manage online invoices.
• BallPark lets freelancers and companies create online estimates, invoices and centralize conversations with clients all in one place.
• Invoice Machine is a simple way to create and manage invoices online.