I know everyone loves free stuff, especially when it makes you work and life easier. I have a couple tools that I use on a daily (sometimes more) basis that I think are worth sharing.

For those of you that host your own websites, blogs, podcasts, etc you’ll probably want to skip to the next paragraph. For those of you still reading, free quality storage for streaming audio/video, pictures, etc. I’m speaking of Ourmedia.org and archive.org. I’m not sure why they’ve set-up the way they do, but to use one you must register on both. Other than that little difficulty I’ve no problems with this at all (using over 2 months). We are hosting video and audio for our main service, and audio only options for our men’s bible study and student ministry. I like this free option much better than the Google Video, youtube, etc options out there for two main reasons. The first one is ease I can have all my audio options (WMA, RM, MP3) and video (WMA) all on the same site, secondly there is no linking of your videos to other similar videos that may be innapropriate. Thirdly, I know two main reasons, is the user interface and upload tool are super easy and straight-forward.

The other free tool I use is logmein.com. While they do have pay options I haven’t had the need for the additional services that these offer. As the name hints LogMeIn allows you to remote control a desktop from any browser. While there are many tools out there this super easy to use for those non-techies that are wanting remote computer access. Most everyone can remember the simple name, their email address and passoword, and withing a couple keystrokes have full screen remote control of their desktop. Much easier to setup and train than VPN, and matches all the needs my people have had.