If you’re looking for a list of the most useful and free online tools for writing, especially when it comes to research or just staying productive online, you’ve come to the right place. Here are my picks for the best tools on the Web for anyone who is looking to boost their productivity, organize your thought process, keep track of multiple sources of research, or simply optimize your current workflow. Use these resources together in whatever way suits your particular needs.
Taking Notes
- stu.dicio.us: Take notes and share them with friends online.
- MyStickies: Place yellow sticky notes on web pages to share with others; collaborate and edit on the fly.
- Fifty Ways to Take Notes: A fantastic list of fifty different note-taking applications.
- Google Notebook: An easy way to organize your notes; integrates with many other Google applications, such as GMail.
- Yahoo Notepad: A simple yet powerful way to organize your notes.
Research and Study Web Tools
- Quizlet: Free online flashcards for learning vocabulary.
- Wikipedia: You can find information on literally millions of different topics at Wikipedia. Note: be sure to check the primary resources listed at the end of every article on Wikipedia; you’ll need those in order to cite sources correctly.
- SpellJax: Check your spelling online with SpellJax, an Ajax-powered spell checker.
- OttoBib: Make a bibliography for your research papers easily with OttoBib – just plug in the ISBN number.
- EasyBib: Free automatic bibliography composer.
- Yahoo Answers: Ask the Web community for help on any question at Yahoo Answers. Note: take these answers with a grain of salt; there’s both good and bad to be had here.
- SparkNotes: Free online study guides on a wide variety of subjects, anything from famous literary works of the past century to present day.
- Yahoo Education: You can use Yahoo Education as a jumping off point for many resources, including a thesaurus, Grey’s Anatomy, and a Spanish dictionary.
- Zotero: Zotero is a free Firefox extension that helps you collect, manage, and cite your research sources online.
- CiteuLike: A free online service to help you organize your academic papers.
- Google Scholar: A simple way to search for scholarly literature on any subject you can think of.
- Diigo: Collect, share,and interact on information from anywhere on the Web.
- Cheat Sheets: An amazing array of cheat sheets on subjects from .NET to physics.
Writing Web Tools
- Mind Mapping Resources: Get those creative brainstorming sessions down on paper so you can make something of them.
- The Best Writing Tools on the Web: If you’re looking for tools to help you with your writing, the Web is a great place to start. Here are just a few of the incredibly useful writing tools you can find on the Web.
- Zoho: A free online office suite, similar to Microsoft Word.
- Writers Resources: A gargantuan list of resources for writers on the Web, from editing to reference and everything else in between.