Following on from Part 1 of our essential online tools, this is the 2nd half of the list of resources that we use on a daily basis for making the tasks of blogging and running an online shop that little bit quicker, easier and more efficient.

Picasa – If you have a gmail account, you automatically get 1GB of online space to store photos… for free. We tend to use it to store high res cut out photos for journalists. We simply put the images in a folder and send an email containing the link to the folder. Sending emails with large image files attached take a long time to leave your outbox and arrive at their destination (if they arrive at all!). (**now developed into Google Photos**)

PicMonkey – Started by people from the now defunct Picnik, PicMonkey is an online image editing tool. We tend to use Photoshop for most of our photographs but PicMonkey has some fun and simple-to-use tools. Perfect if you’re a complete beginner too!

Pinterest – Only a year ago we’d all have been saying “What’s Pinterest?” Today it’s the most addictive thing since… Facebook! We use it for inspiration, a reminders board and a marketing tool for our own shop stock.

Smush.it – A Yahoo tool that after a recent taste test, I’ve switched to using JpegMini (see part 1 of Our Essential Online Tools) as it makes image files smaller. (**now deprecated**)

Strong Password Generator – never use the word “password” as your password ever again!

Thesaurus.com – There was always a well-thumbed copy of Roget’s Thesaurus on our bookshelf when I was young. Now I regularly use this 21st century version. There’s nothing worse than using the same old adjectives when blog writing… I’ve banned the word “nice” from ever being used!

TweetDeck – The most easy-to-use desktop Twitter client I’ve found. When not using TweetDeck, I use Twhirl…

Twhirl – This for me is better than TweetDeck when I need to be logged into more than one of my Twitter personae simultaneously. (Did you know our Weimaraner Fudge has his own Twitter account?!) (**now deprecated**)

Twilert – A useful little Twitter tool that alerts you of “tweets containing your brand, product, service… well any keyword you like really!”. Any time someone, somewhere in the Twittersphere says “H is for Home”, we get an alert. (**no longer a free service**)

Twitpic – I used Twitpic exclusively until the rumours about them claiming copyright over users’ images. I migrated to yfrog (see below) and, even though the copyright issue was quickly sorted out, we’ve not really used it since. (**now deprecated**)

Twuffer – A great, easy to use Twitter scheduling tool. This is my favoured option for sending or re-sending “generic” tweets as you can line up any number of tweets!

Vertical Response – We’ve been using Vertical Response to send our email newsletters ever since we started up 5 years ago. It wasn’t that user friendly to begin with, but, if you’re clueless about HTML, their WYSIWYG email builder is really easy to use. They also have lots of free online learning resources including webinars.

WiseStamp – WiseStamp helps you to create a snazzy looking email signature with icons & links to your social media accounts. You can even have multiple signatures – business & personal. We use WiseStamp in conjunction with our Gmail account (see “Mail” in part 1 of Our Essential Online Tools). WiseStamp currently works with Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer and supports Gmail, Yahoo! mail, Hotmail, AOL mail, Thunderbird and Outlook.com.

WordPress – The granddaddy of all tools! WordPress is the platform I use to build, design, run & maintain our blog. It’s easy to use, there’s a great online manual (called the Codex) and help forums. Need your blog to do something amazing and technical that you have no idea how to implement? There’s bound to be a free plugin already designed to do just that!

yfrog – I take a fair few photos on my iPhone when we’re out & about to post on Twitter. Some are of our shop stock but there are lots of random shots of Fudge and food – as our yfrog photo stream will attest! (**now deprecated**)

Do you use any of these? What can’t-live-without tools do you use that you think should be added to this list?

[Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. Please see our disclosure statement for more info.]