- Hello everyone, Scott
Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more
done and enjoy less stress. And in today's video, I wanna share with you seven
helpful websites to help you be more productive, help you save time. And in some cases, even
help you save money. So today we're not
looking at applications, we're looking at websites
that require no sign in, no email address, nothing
for you to install. These are places where
you can just get in, get out, and get on, with
the rest of your day. So let's get started
with website number one, and that is TimeAndDate.com. Now TimeAndDate.com obviously
is going to give you the accurate time and time zones across virtually every area on the earth. But there are two particular areas that I use this website
for, on a regular basis. Number one is their
calculators section here. So here for example, there
is a date-to-date calculator. So, let's say for example, I'm managing a project, and
I wanna know how many days are left between now and
the end of that project. All I need to do is come
here and select today, or I can select any other
date from this calendar if I want to. And then over here, let's say that I know
that I need this project to be finished by February 19th. Now I could give an estimate
in terms of the number of weeks or the number of days between these two, but if I wanna be more precise, I just need to hit this
calculate duration. And now I know it's
exactly 79 days from today until this date February 19th. It also gives me a few
alternate time units here such as 11 weeks and two days, if I need to know how many
weeks are out as well. There's another calculator
that I use quite often, and that is the add and
subtract calculator. So for example, again,
I'm just gonna hit today. And in this case, maybe
I wanna know exactly, how many days is it, maybe not 120, right? These are maybe some
more common values here, but let's say 67 days from now. I'm gonna hit calculate and oh, perfect. It's Sunday, February 7th. I can get very, very precise
with those calculations. Let's move on to website number two. And this has to do with polling. How often have you wanted
to quickly ask a question to either a small group of people, such as your family, or
friends, or your work team, or maybe you wanna share
something on social media, but you don't wanna restrict it to just a particular platform. Well, that's where Polls.io comes in. And as soon as you get here
to the polls.io website, immediately you can
start creating your quiz or your question here. So I'm gonna say, what
is your favorite app? I asked that one earlier
here, and down below, I can add some options
here, maybe Trello, Asana, it's remembered some of
the things that I put in just a few moments ago. And so here I've got my very simple poll. I'm gonna say, create this
poll and what it's gonna do, it's gonna bring me to this page. And all I need to do is copy this link. I can either copy it up here in the URL, or I can hit the share button
and copy this link as well. I can choose to embed
it or share it directly to some popular social media platforms. But in most cases, what
I find is most helpful is just to copy that link. I can copy it to the clipboard
and now people can start to vote on this poll. I could send it in a text message. I can send it anywhere that I like, and I don't have to come
back here and log in anywhere to see the results. All I need to do is remember
this URL or copy this URL and remember it for later. So if I say vote, I'm gonna say maybe monday.com
is my favorite at the moment. I'm gonna hit submit, and immediately I can start to see those results come in. Now, the next one on our list has to do with productive focus. Perhaps you are working in
a very noisy environment and you wanna be able to drown out the other noises around you. Whether that's a noisy office or perhaps you're working
remotely from home, and you don't wanna be able
to hear your kids, or the pet, or maybe your partner who is
very loud on their zoom call in the room next door to you. So that's where Noises.online
comes into play. A very, very simple website. You can see a variety
of different icons here, which represents soundscapes, which you can enable just with a click. You can also combine various
ones together as well. So for example, if I click on brook, here you can see a little
rumbling brook going by here. You can almost envision
that you're camping or maybe fishing by a small river here. And if I wanna combine that, I can combine that with a bonfire here. Its here, we get some crackling here. It sounds like a pretty large fire. Yeah, that is certainly a bonfire. Now, if I want less fire, all I need to do is click this a few times and each click should reduce
the level or the sound of that. So as I'm combining these noises, I can really customize what I want. Now you'll also notice in
the top right-hand corner, they always have a pick of the week, and this one is called cafeteria. So if I select that, sounds a little bit like a noisy cafeteria
or maybe a coffee shop, you see they've actually
combined a coffee house with cocktail voices. So you've got some of that
banter in the background combined with that coffee
shop ambience here. Now, if you really enjoy these sounds, all you need to do to favorite
yours is to hit this pin and what it's going to do, it's gonna give you a unique URL here. And what you can do at this
point is actually bookmark it into your browser. So if there's a particular sound or sound combination that you like, you don't even have to come
back to the website necessarily and create it again. You can just copy this, save it somewhere, or bookmark it to your browser,
and use it in the future. Now, the next website on our list is something that is very, very dangerous. So proceed with caution. it's actually called The
Most Dangerous Writing App. And I think that is very true. This is an app that I've
actually used quite frequently over the last several years. So let me explain how it works. Sometimes we get into a
bit of a writer's block or a writer's funk. I know for myself, I'm
very much a perfectionist. So when I need to write something that's more of a long format, something that's gonna be
several paragraphs in length, like a blog post for example, I can start by writing the
first one or two sentences. And then I stare at those two
sentences and I over analyze. And I say, how could I
say this differently? Meanwhile, I should
really just be dumping out all of my thoughts and try
to write as much as I can, 'cause I can always come back
and edit, and rearrange that. So if you ever have those problems or that type of difficulty, then The Most Dangerous
Writing App may be for you. Yes, don't stop writing or
all progress will be lost. So here's how it works. You can either choose to do
it with a prompt or without. The prompt is gonna give you like sort of a beginning sentence. This is really more designed for someone who is writing fiction. So in most cases, you're
gonna wanna use this. If you're writing anything
business-related, a blog post, maybe a marketing content, or maybe you just wanna use
this for brainstorming ideas. But before we get started,
make sure you choose if you want to look at the amount of time that you are writing,
or the amount of words. So if we click on this little link here, we can either choose the amount of minutes that we would like to continually write, or we can choose the amount of words. So in this example, I'll just
use something very simple, like 75 words here. Now that I've chosen my session length, I'm gonna click this button, start writing without prompt. Now the nice thing is that it gives me a nice big blank canvas. I don't have ads, I
don't have distractions. And like I said before, I don't have to even
sign in to use this app. So as I start writing, everything is looking good. But if I pause, you'll
see, what's gonna happen is that it's gonna start
to fade a little bit. And then eventually if
I don't keep writing, it's all going to vanish. There's about roughly
a five-second timeframe between when you stop typing and when everything is going to go away. And yes, when I click this
box, nothing is there. I can start again but everything
that I just wrote has away. So, if I start again, if I start again and I pause, and I pause and I see the fading, I can, no, no, I'm not done. I'm not done. I want to, I can keep writing again. But if I pause for too long, once again, everything is going to
vanish and it is all gone. Now, once you've hit that limit, whether it's a minute length or whether it's a number of words, well, then it's there for good. And you can go and copy and
paste this into a word processor or wherever else that
you would like to do it. But this has actually
been very, very helpful, both from a brainstorming point of view. And also when I just need
to get my thoughts out and not worry about it, right? You can always come
back and edit it later. A great tool if you ever
get stuck with your writing. Now, next up on our list is
not only gonna save you time, but it's designed to help save you money. And this is called CamelCamelCamel. Yeah. It's probably a name of a website that you're not gonna
forget any time soon. What it has to do with, is
following and tracking prices on Amazon to make sure that
you are getting the best deal or at least be confident that you're getting a very good deal as you are shopping online. So here in the search bar, you can either type in or copy
and paste a URL from Amazon. But I'm just gonna click
on this popular products for this quick example. So here it's gonna show
me a list of products that are popular on Amazon right now. And let's take a look at these Sony noise canceling headphones. It's telling me that it's a good deal. Well, why is that the case? Right now they're on a for $229, but below I can see that
the list price is 349. And the average price of
these headphones on Amazon has been 304 so yeah, that's
a pretty good discount. If that's the average price
that this has been listed and now I can get them for 229, that does seem like a good deal. Now you can click on these
products and go into even more deeper history here. And for anyone who loves
charts like myself, here you can see the full price history of these particular headphones. So yeah, you can see that
for much of its time. It's hovered around that $350 mark, but you can see all these dips, right? All these peaks where the
sale prices have gone on, where maybe there's been a
black Friday or a special sale. In fact, you can see black
Friday was just a few days before this particular recording. And that was probably the
lowest price ever at 221. If I get it today at 229, I'm pretty confident that I
am getting a very good deal, but better yet, without signing up, you can enter in any email address and choose what price
drop you are looking for. So if I click on this, it gives me a couple of helpful presets. If I wanna wait until it's closer to 218 or any price drop from now, or
I can just type in any number into this field and hit track, and it will send me an email
alert as soon as that price gets to that point. So not only helping you to save time, but helping you to save money as well. Then the next website I
wanna share with you today has to do with images and in particular with
removing a background. And this one's really easy
to remember, it's Remove.bg. Yes the B-G stands for background. How many times have you
had a picture of yourself or someone else, or maybe a product, but you didn't like background image. You wanted to put something
else in the background, or maybe you just wanted to keep it plain, just like you see here in
this particular example. Well Remove.bg you don't have to log in, you don't have to sign up. You can quickly and easily
do this for yourself in just seconds. So all you need to do is select
this upload image button, and I'm gonna go and
select my headshot here, which you can see, I've
got a dark background here from the studio where I took this picture. All it's gonna do is
remove that background in a matter of seconds. I didn't have to select the area. I didn't have to trace anything,
and look at the results. I think that's pretty fantastic. I'm sure you've come across some programs where there's some ugly shadowing or some things that are clipped between maybe the face and the clothing or something funny going
on around the hair here. But if I toggle between the original and removing the background,
it's almost seamless. This is almost perfect. And now I can go and take this
and put this where I want. Now, if I wanna go further, I can click this edit button and I can choose other
backgrounds to put behind it. It has a few defaults here, but of course you can
select your own photo to put in the background, or maybe you wanna keep it simple and just add a particular color to it. So in this case, I'm gonna
select yellow, nice and bright. Maybe I'm promoting
something in particular. And this is the branding for the client that I'm working with. I can add that to the background
of my photo here as well. So quick and easy, nothing to
download nothing to install, Remove.bg and sticking with pictures. I wanna share with you where
I get many of my stock photos absolutely free. And for me, I like to go to pexels.com. Now there's an awful lot of
places that you can go online to get free stock images. But what I love about
pexels.com is that I just find that the quality of these
pictures are so much better. I'm gonna click on tech here, just to show you some examples
of some of their technology photos here, and I'm sure
that you've come across some free stock images websites, and many of the pictures
just look like they're coming from amateurs, right? Like they don't look very professional. These are great photos that
you can use for social media. You can use for your marketing. You can use for your branding. Now, keep in mind, some of these images may have been used hundreds, if not thousands of times by other users. And you may have come across that already, but let's say I kind of like
what this is doing here. If I click on it, on top of
that, if I scroll down now, I'm getting a bunch of other images, either from this same photographer, or things that are similar or related to this particular image. So great quality images and things that you can
start to use right away. Now I'd love to know
which websites help you on a daily basis. Be sure to share them
with me and with others in the comments down below. And if you would like to know the 10 apps that I use every single day, be sure to click on the
video here to the left. Thank you so much for
watching today's video. Make sure you subscribe right here to this Simpletivity channel. And remember being productive
does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
