Microsoft Excel has long been known as one of the best office tools for organizing information and analyzing data. It has long been a staple of every business, big or small, and continues to be one of the most popular tools that companies use to balance their budgets, keep track of expenses and profits, and a whole slew of other important data related functions related to not only organizing relevant business data, but also presenting it to others. Excel also offers a variety of great templates that conveniently help you organize the data you need to store, present or calculate, and many of them can come in very handy to small business owners who don’t have time to waste or workers to spare.

Here are 15 excellent Excel templates that will help any small business owner keep track of expenditures, income and all other budget-related data.

1) Business Budget Template is one of the more basic, but still very effective ones for organizing your company’s budget. Enter all expenses and income by category to know at all times how you are doing financially and whether you need to make any adjustments.

2) Rolling Business Budget and Forecast Template is a  more developed template for financial professionals. You can use it to get real results for income statements and balance sheets and then compare them to things like budget targets, expense restrictions and financial results from recent years or months.

3) Startup Budget Template – if you are not yet a small business owner, but are considering it, this template will help you evaluate how much money you will need to get your business off the ground.

4) Expense Budget Template is a template that focuses on giving you a detailed breakdown of your company’s spending habits. The template is programmed to calculate total budget differences once you have inputted your expenses.

5) Budget Summary Report Template will enable small finance teams to keep very good books no matter how complex their budget. It helps to provide a very clear and accurate picture of how your business is doing at the end of every month.

6) Cash Flow Budget Report Template – If you are looking for a simple template that will clearly show you where your money is coming from and where it is going to, this is an excellent one. It covers cash flow trends for both operations and financing.

7) Annual Operating Budget Services enables service companies to create a budget plan for the full fiscal year in a very detailed manner.

8) Annual Operating Budget Manufacturing is another template for helping business to create an annual operating budget, but this one is tailor-made for manufacturing companies instead.

9) Targeted Budgeting Tool is a template for the marketing department. It helps you construct return-on-marketing-investment (ROMI) indices for each type of marketing and advertising that you are working on so that you can see how much income is being produced by the money that you are investing into promotion yourself.

10) Capital Budgeting Template can help companies to analyze and justify significant business investments. If you want to be better informed before making big decision about how to spend your money and what to invest in, this is a good tool for you.

11) Business Trip Budget Template is a template that will help you plan out and record all of the costs of your business trips including travel fares, hotels, dining, transportation and anything else that goes into making a business trip successful.

12) Event Budget Template – if you are planning some type of promotion or party for your company, this template will help you see whether it was worth it by helping you compare the costs of the event with the money that was made from it.

13) Training Budget Template enables you to keep track of quarterly training costs so that you can see how much money you will need to set aside each year for training purposes.

14) Marketing Budget Template will help you to forecast the size of your marketing budget and keep a tab on all other financial aspects related to promotions and marketing.

15) Channel Marketing Budget Template can help you to decide how much you want to spend on marketing. It looks at pricing and discounting scenarios, revenue, and sales forecasts to help you make a plan for how much money you need to set aside for marketing purposes.

These great budget management Microsoft Excel templates can make your budgeting easier and less time consuming, so that you can focus more attention on other important aspects of the business.

Being a teacher today is not an easy job. It was almost certain that with the rise of technology some parts of the traditional educational system would change, and they have. In today’s digital world, teachers need to constantly engage their students to attract their attention since they are spending more time on mobile phones, tablets and are generally not interested in classical lectures. It is harder than ever, and teachers need to struggle to keep the students’ attention during lectures, because old methods of teaching are simply not interesting any more.

The reason this is happening is because students nowadays rather spend time using gadgets and software tools than writing and reading in a traditional way, and what is more important, they love the new technologies. Since they can get an answer to any question with a single tap on their phones, listening and paying attention to the same old classes can be exhausting.

As an answer to the students’ needs and wishes, teachers need to adapt to these changes, to find new and interactive ways of teaching that students will find amusing and stimulating. If teachers want to remain memorable and pass on valuable knowledge to their students, they need to modify their lectures to make them engaging and effective. And that can be done easily.

Here we present a list of 21 tools that will help teachers create more interesting lectures.

1. Animoto: helps teachers easily create amazing video lectures that students will love. It is convenient for the classroom or any other presentation meeting.
2. Socrative: An Interactive tool that teachers can use to get in touch with their students, prepare educational exercises, track progress or give grades. This tool is also ideal for making polls and quizzes.
3. Prezi: A very neat presentation tool that helps you create, edit and share your unique and visually stunning presentations. If you are too busy to make presentations, there are multiple Prezi templates you can reuse.
4. Quizlet: It allows teachers to work in a collaborative classroom, and make interactive games and educational tools that will make the students feel special. It is very simple to use, you can create your own content or you can use one of 125 million study sets.
5. Go!Animate: is a video creation tool that can help you easily create custom, fun, personal or professional animation videos that will hold your students’ attention. It enables you to create videos in a safe online environment, to limit the video distribution to specific student groups, and to moderate the video before it becomes visible to the group.
6. TED-Ed: is an online lessons repository where teachers can create their own animated video lessons and help students by providing them with a more interactive way of learning.
7. ThingLink: is a web-based tool that helps teachers create interactive and compelling lesson materials that will make students more engaged and eager to learn.
8. Poll Everywhere: is a tool for creating interactive polls and it is especially effective with flipped clasrooms, multi-location or large classrooms.
9. Piktochart: is a powerful tool for creating infographics that can captivate the students’ even more. It also has pre-made templates to use if you are too busy to create templates from scratch.
10. TeacherTube: Enables teachers to create and share their lesson materials such as videos, audio recordings and photographs.
11. Dipity: is a timeline creation tool which is especially convenient for history teachers.
12. Padlet: is an online school backpack you can use to create a welcome board where students can introduce themselves, or to create a whole lesson which you can share with a restricted number of users. The process of sharing or restricting access and editing text is similar to working in Google Drive, but interface is more school-friendly.
13. Office Mix: is an add-on for PowerPoint, perfect for teachers who want to make interactive presentations by adding polls, questions, simulations, and much more.
14. KaHoot: is a tool for creating educational games which can be a fun way to assess students’ knowledge and encourage them to learn.
15. PlayPosit: is a tool for embedding questions and comments in Youtube videos for students to answer as they watch.
16. Powtoon: is an animation maker that helps teachers make fun and interactive presentations.
17. Storyboard: is a digital storytelling tool ideal for school projects that involve creating storyboards.
18. Wordle: is a tool for creating stunning word clouds which can be a great addition to language lessons in particular.
19. Popplet: is a true student helper with all those brainstorming and mindmapping options it offers.
20. Remind: is a very convenient tool for students and teachers as it gives them an option to communicate with each other without obtaining anyone’s phone number.
21. Wufoo : is an online tool for building forms on the go, perfect for busy teachers. There are more than 300 templates to choose from.

We are sure that as a teacher you will find these tools an excellent asset for upgrading your school lectures. Online tools have become an integral part of educational technology, and their presence in our daily lives can only increase.

Just remember what classes looked like 15 years ago and see what they are like now. Informational technology is evolving, improving, becoming smarter, unique, and so are the people. We are certain that this is a positive and promising trend, and we will just have to wait to see how the educational technology will be helping teachers 15 years from now.

Have you already heard of the term millennial? Maybe you haven’t, even though you are a part of it – the generation of those born between 1982 and 2004, in the era of digital. That’s why millennials are often closely related to technology and social media. Technology is a part of every aspect of their lives, both personal and business.

Given the fact that millennials rely on technology so much, they certainly benefit from the fact that over the years numerous tech tools have been created for practically every task you can imagine. Whether you need a tool for teachers, students or for personal finance, you can find a wide range of suitable programs. With so many tools on the market, tools for investment make quite a portion of them.

Millennials interested in stock market also use technology for their money investing activities. So here are some tools that can help millennials in investment monitoring.

Personal Finance Investment Advisor

SigFig gives you advice on money investing and it is claimed to be the best option for do-it yourself investors. It helps you find the most suitable portfolio for you, and it makes investment monitoring effortless.

Money Manager Tool

Mint helps you master your finance management. It manages all your investment accounts and compares your portfolio with market benchmarks so you can invest your money wisely.

Social Media Tool for Traders

StockTwits is a number one social network for investors. It gives you fresh news from the stock market  and the latest trade tips. As a millennial, you probably love social media because you can easily catch up on the latest trends.

Document Management Tool

PDF to Excel online tool enables editing your finance data locked in PDF. Whether it is a native or scanned PDF, you can turn your stock charts and other financial documents in Excel spreadsheet where you will be able to edit your finance data.

Stock Screener Tool

Stock Screener is a must-have tool for finding stocks and checking out their prices. You can choose the industry, sales revenue, profit margin, and other share data necessary to find the best stock for your needs.

What kind of investment tool do you use?

Although there are many education technology tools that teachers use, and a vast number of them is tailored for any imaginable occasion, most teachers still don’t want to leave MS Office behind. It is widely known that PowerPoint and Word are the most popular programs among teachers because they can use them for research papers, essays, lesson presentations and handouts. However, a widespread use of Excel cannot be ignored. Some people think that Excel is only for accountants and auditors but the truth is, even teachers can use it. For instance, Excel charts can be very well employed into daily activities of one teacher. There are different types of Excel charts and each of them has different purpose in the classroom.

Anchor Chart

Anchor chart is not a default Excel chart you can add in your spreadsheet but there are tons of Excel templates of anchor charts in Excel. Anchor charts are actually a powerful learning tool that help teachers not to lose track of the lesson and to help students remember the most important things. Anchor charts are usually printed out and displayed in the classroom for future revision and they can be used for all subjects.

Treemap Chart

These kind of charts can be used by students to present their family teachers or they can help language teachers with vocabulary lessons. Generally, they can help to any kind of writing.

Pie Chart

These charts are one of the most popular because of their visual look. They are usually colorful and represent the percentage. In elementary classroom it is especially convenient to use the pie charts when learning kids math basics and fractions.

Flow Chart

There is no default flow chart you can just insert into Excel spreadsheet but you can learn how to create a flow chart in Excel here. Flow charts are explanatory charts that give step-by-step guide to the students. Teachers can use them to further explain complex processes in physics, biology, history etc. Flow charts improve students’ organization skills and the learning process.

Bonus chart for busy teachers: Learn how to create bullet charts in Excel. Bullet charts are also necessary for teachers but not available in Excel. In other words, you need to make them by yourself.

The post Types of Excel Charts Used in the Classroom appeared first on PCE Blog.

Being cross-platform files as they are, both PDF and JPEG are very popular. They can be open on any computer, no matter what operating system in question. It is highly recommended to use PDF files, when you deal with text documents or documents with vector images. Otherwise, you can use JPEG format. JPEG files take less space comparing to other image formats, but their quality suffers as well. Anyway, JPEG files are good to use then you need to upload images to a website or when you deal with non-textual documents. If you want to extract an image from your PDF and use it elsewhere, just save PDF as JPEG and edit JPEG file with any image editor.

How can I convert PDF to JPEG

Here we will present three different ways to convert PDF to JPEG, for every situation. When you at home, you can use your desktop computer and the program PDF Converter Elite to convert a PDF to JPEG, when you are on a business trip with your laptop and you don’t have the required program installed on it, you can use online tool and lastly, use mobile app when you are on the go and need urgently to convert a PDF.

1. Desktop: For this first way to save PDF as JPEG, you will need to download PDF Converter Elite. Once you’ve installed PCE on your desktop computer, run the program and click the Open file to locate a PDF. The next step is to click on Image button and from the right side panel, choose one of three selection options. You can select the area, the whole file or specific pages only. In the mage format section, choose .jpg as the Output file. Finally, click the Convert button.

Advantage: there is a set of options you can adjust, such as image dimension, scale and image quality. You don’t need to have internet connection.

Disadvantage: if you are far away from your computer, you won’t have access to this program.

2. Online: Tools that don’t require any installation are very convenient, especially for simpler files and conversions. If you don’t have too much space on your computer, to download a desktop program or you take a lightweight laptop with you on a business trip, this online PDF to JPEG solution will come in handy.

Advantage: You don’t need to have a program installed on your machine. You can use it on any computer.

Disadvantage: You don’t have an option to set up the image quality, size and scale. You need internet connection.

3. Mobile: If you prefer mobile apps and if you enjoy using your mobile phone for business-like activities, try PDF to JPG app that has pretty much the same functionality as previous two solutions.

Advantage: It’s pretty remotely, you can use it anywhere as long as you bring a phone with you.

Disadvantage: You need to have internet and if your phone is out of memory you won’t be able to install the app.

As you can see, all these options have some advantages and disadvantages. Lastly, it’s up to you what solution you will choose, depending on the gadgets you possess and the situation you are in.

The post Three Ways to Save PDF As JPEG appeared first on PCE Blog.

Microsoft Paint has existed for 32 years and recently it was rumored that it will be killed in the next Windows update. Windows denied those rumors and it turned out MS Paint will still be available but moved to Windows store. There won’t be new versions for sure, at least not in the near future. Since existence of MS Paint was put in question, it is better you get familiar with its alternatives.

Here is a list of free MS Paint alternatives:

Gimp is an open source software that can be used on Windows, Linux, Mac (10.6 and newer) and it other less known operating systems. It supports different file formats such as tiff, jpeg, gif, png, psd, bpm and others. Gimp is perfect solution for photo retouching, cloning objects, enhancing the quality of the photo.

Photoscape is an easy tool for photo editing and enhancing. The tool can remove red eyes, crop, filter or add objects or text, resize the photo or adjust colors. It even has a possibility to merge multiple photos in one or to create an animated gif from multiple photos. What is interesting, the tool has an option to find a similar face online, by using the existing photo.

MyPaint doesn’t look so attractive when you visit their website, but the tool itself is functional. It works on both Linux and Windows. The tool has three main settings categories, painting tools, brushes and the paint mode which you can change. For the start you can choose what kind of painting tool you want to use, such as ellipses and circles, connected lines, inking or freehand. Then you choose the brush and the paint mode

Krita is another tool that you can use for editing images. It has a very easy interface and you can even customize the side working panels, by choosing the features you use the most. Krita has a brush stabilizer that is especially convenient for users with shaky hands. It also has pop-up palette which makes choosing colors and brushes very easy.

Pinta makes your painting even easier- it has over 35 available adjustments and effects that will make your images look just the way you need. Pinta works in a way it offers multiple layers in order to group elements of the image for easier editing.

These are some of the most used Paint alternatives, have you tried any? Shoot in the comments what is your favourite painting tool and for what purpose do you use it.

The post Microsoft Paint Alternatives appeared first on PCE Blog.

SlideShare is the world’s largest and leading online community for hosting, discovering and sharing presentations. It is safe to say that SlideShare has become a must-have tool in every presenter’s toolbox today. Business professionals, teachers, public speakers and students alike often use it to find inspiration and ideas, learn or present their own work here. However, SlideShare is not the only website that specializes in hosting and sharing presentations. There are other great, high-quality sites, SlideShare alternatives that let you upload, host and create or discover great presentations and slideshows shared by other presenters.

1. AuthorStream –  a free platform for uploading, hosting and sharing PowerPoint presentations online. It has a pretty large user base and helps you discover great presentations in various categories. Some of the categories are business and finance, education, product manuals, science, technology, and many others.

2. Moovly  – With Moovly you can create, change and freely share your videos with no hustle. The Moovly library includes thousands of videos and images you can download without any limit. It’s one of the best online video animation software you can find online.

3. Slide Online lets you freely upload, view and share your PPT and PDF presentations with everyone. As an online-based platform, you can share everything directly to social networks such as Facebook and  Google+ or embed code to your WordPress blog. A perfect tool for business, sales, marketing or educational presentations.

4. PowerShow – yet another community for hosting, sharing and viewing PowerPoint presentations online. It converts uploaded PowerPoint slides to multimedia Flash slideshows while preserving all types of embedded effects, photos and live links to YouTube videos. Everyone can publicly share and view personal and educational presentations for free. PowerShow additionally allows its users to earn money with their presentations by marking them as “pay to view” and setting a price for viewing them.

5. Prezi – a virtual whiteboard for transforming presentations into compelling stories and visually flowing lessons. Prezi is perfect for creating impressive resumes (called Presumes) and portfolios that will undoubtedly help opportunity and job seekers to stand out from the crowd.

6. Projeqt – create and share dynamic presentations from scratch or by converting old static slides. Simply upload PowerPoint, PDF or multiple image files at once and create a dynamic and portable online Projeqt with no coding required. Created Projeqts can be embedded and shared anywhere.

7. Reel – present your ideas online and get feedback. The app allows you to upload your slides as documents in the PDF, PPT or DOC file formats or as images (JPG, PNG, GIF), describe them, and share.

How Do You Like These SlideShare Alternatives so far?

8. SlideBoom – an easy to use online slide hosting service. This service allows you to upload, convert PowerPoint presentations and slideshows to Flash and share them online. You can also search for presentations in more than 30 categories and 100 different languages.

9. SlideRocket – an online tool for creating, sharing and managing presentations. It allows you to import your existing PowerPoint presentations or create SlideRockets from scratch.

10. SlideServe – one more way to take your PowerPoint presentations online and share them privately or publicly with others. You can email presentations hosted on SlideServe or embed them to blogs and social networking sites.

11. Emaze is an online presentation tool for professionals. It is not free but affordable, $9 per month. For that price you can make your private presentation and download it so you can have an offline version. You can also download it as a PDF or a video.

12. SpeakerDeck – upload your PDF slides and turn them into online presentations. Once uploaded to the site, presentations can be described, added to an appropriate category, and shared with the rest of the world. You can share a link to your presentation, embed it on a website or blog, or simply share with Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

13. VCASMO – a multimedia presentation solution for business presentations, academic teaching, seminars and training, photo-video slideshows and more.

14. Zentation –  create online presentations by combining video and slides. It is a handy solution for creating webcasts, webinars, training, e-learning and other virtual events. You can publicly share Zentations that you create and browse other shared presentations.

The post 14 Alternatives to SlideShare for Top-Notch Presenters appeared first on PCE Blog.

Pinterest is one of the most popular photo-sharing websites that allows users to create their own image  Pinterest boards where they can “pin” images they like. People usually start by creating different boards for different categories of their interest spheres: art, food & drink, geek, design, technology, travel, etc. Then they start filling each of their boards with photos, illustrations or videos that belong in that group, either by adding visuals they created or browsing the Internet to find good content, or by repinning images they like on other Pinterest users’ boards.

If you’ve ever used or just seen a Pinterest account, you know that many of these pins are light, humorous aspects of a topic or interest sphere. So, one would think that serious, intellectual content for CPAs and accountants-to-be doesn’t belong to such a fun-sharing portal. You’d be surprised!

Pinterest hosts many Pinterest boards designed for accountants, bankers and other finance professionals, but also those who are just entering this exciting field. Pins in the CPA and accounting category are there to:

– Motivate
– Provide money-saving tips and other frugal advice
– Offer sympathy to CPA exam takers
– Point us to quality articles on the topic
– Present helpful infographics for accountants (job-hunting tips, average salaries, etc.)
– Point us to good test-prep websites
– Make us laugh when we feel like crying
– Show us beautiful locations and fun things to do after passing the CPA exam

Without much ado, let’s take a look at some of the best Pinterest boards created by individuals who want to share their accounting experiences, thoughts and good tips with others. The boards are separated into categories, so it will be easier for you to find them and start following them. Let us know in the comment section if there’s another great Pinterest board to follow!

CPA:

https://www.pinterest.com/alextoth/cpa/

http://www.pinterest.com/smchapman21/cpa/

http://www.pinterest.com/mzzpink53/cpa/

http://www.pinterest.com/natzann/cpa-to-be/

http://www.pinterest.com/pdfconverter/accountancy-cpa-taxes/

https://www.pinterest.com/AshleyNguyen7/taxes-cpa-accounting-humor/

http://www.pinterest.com/lormaneducation/cpa-corner/

CPA Exam:

http://www.pinterest.com/ckratz1/places-to-go-after-i-pass-the-cpa-exam/

http://www.pinterest.com/missjones513/cpa-examaccounting/

http://www.pinterest.com/mandiv77/career-moves-getting-ready-for-the-cpa-exam/

http://www.pinterest.com/laurencarr33/cpa-exam-motivation-board/

https://www.pinterest.com/rogercpareview/2017-cpa-exam-changes/

https://www.pinterest.com/kendallreith/cpa-exam/

https://www.pinterest.com/mollycdowd/cpa-exam/

Accounting /CPA Humor:

http://www.pinterest.com/AshleyNguyen7/taxes-cpa-accounting-humor/

http://www.pinterest.com/happyhoney03/cpa-humor/

http://www.pinterest.com/francisncompany/cpa-humor/

http://www.pinterest.com/collegefrog/accounting-humor/

http://www.pinterest.com/dmkrueg/accounting-humor/

Accounting

https://www.pinterest.com/mommaia06/accounting/

http://www.pinterest.com/3sisters4/accounting/

http://www.pinterest.com/nessastamps/accounting-nerd/

http://www.pinterest.com/bamcadams/finance-accounting-things/

http://www.pinterest.com/nicraven/accounting/

https://www.pinterest.com/ANA51412/accounting/

http://www.pinterest.com/mariamcgilton/accounting/

If you want to find similar boards, pins and pinners, simply search Pinterest database. For example, if you are interested in exploring what Pinterest has to offer regarding “accounting jobs,” all you need to do is type these two words in the search in the upper left corner of the page and conduct a search (click on the search icon):

Pinterest will return related pins, boards, and pinners which you can search, like, repin, follow and connect with other accounting and financial pinners. Maybe you can even land your very first accounting job through Pinterest!

Similarly, you can search for anything you want: CPA exam tips, accounting humor, taxes preparation, etc. Pinterest makes your search even easier by offering you suggestions. When you type in “CPA”, you’ll see several options appearing in the drop-down menu: CPA study, CPA funny, CPA exam and similar helpful suggestions you can choose from. Happy pinning!

The post 25 Must-Follow Pinterest Boards for CPAs and Accountants appeared first on PCE Blog.

If you’re in the process of looking for a job, there’s a good chance that you are struggling with putting together all of the elements you are going to need to create a strong job application.

Not only do you have to create a resume that is informative, well-presented and unique, but you are also probably spending a lot of time thinking about and writing cover letters, seeking out letters of recommendation, sprucing up your portfolios and whatever else you need to make a good case for yourself when applying for a position.

One of the most important aspects of this preparation process is to make sure that all of your materials look great and are presented in the best possible way. If you are student fresh out of college and looking for your first real place of employment, then you probably don’t have a lot of money to spend on productivity apps and software that can help you to create these documents.

Do you want to know the best part? There are free alternatives- google extensions.

For example, you can use the Google Docs suite instead of Microsoft Office to create resumes and cover letters. And on top of that, there is a bunch of great Google extensions for Docs that can help you create professional-looking and compelling job application documents even when you are working with no budget at all.

Here are some great Google extensions to check out if you are looking for tools to make your job applications shine in order to get you your dream job.

Template Gallery

Just like Microsoft Office offers a lot of great template for getting started when creating professional resumes, CVs and cover letters, Google also offers some great chrome extensions for creating a CV. This template gallery offers a huge variety of fantastically designed templates that can get you started when trying to put together a neat and professional-looking job application.

ProWritingAid

If your writing skills are not up to par with the skills presented in your resume and you don’t want your mediocre writing to ruin your chances of getting a job, this is a great tool to use. It allows you to improve your writing by showing you mistakes that you make. It helps you to avoid redundancies and clichés in your writing while helping you to brush up on grammatical mistakes and much more.

Thesaurus

This is yet another tool to improve your writing, especially when putting together a cover letter. It’s a great way to find new words to use by finding synonyms for words that you tend to overuse in your writing.

Sticky Notes

Sticky Notes is a fantastic note-taking add-on to use when researching other CVs and cover letters. We all spend time on the Internet searching for great examples of resumes and cover letters, looking for new ideas to make our applications better. This tool lets you take notes while doing your online research and keep your new ideas organized and saved so that you can have them to look at when trying to put together your own material.

Consistency Checker

This tool is great for long documents that you need to check for writing consistency, but really, it’s effective for documents of any size. Make sure that all of the hyphenations, abbreviations and other style-related characteristics of your documents are consistent before submitting them to potential employers.

Abbreviation List

Anyone using a lot of abbreviations in their job applications owes it to themselves to check out this tool. It scans your document for abbreviations and generates a list of abbreviations used so that you can make sure that they are consistent throughout your entire documents. Consistency is important when trying to put together serious and professional job applications.

PDFMerge

If you want to wrap your job application up into one package that’s efficient and easy to read, you might want to consider using this add-on. It can take your cover latter, resume, portfolio and all other documents and create one master document out of them all. It’s a good idea to upload all of your materials, including scanned diplomas, resumes, references, letters of recommendation, etc. to Google Drive so that you have them all in one place. From there, you can use this tool to merge all of the documents you need into one, smart, professional presentation.

The post 7 Great Google Extensions to Use When Applying for Jobs appeared first on PCE Blog.

Running a small business by yourself is no small task, and small business owners need all the help they can get. Thankfully, organizing your business does not have to be that hard if you are a Microsoft Office user.

There is a huge amount of free Microsoft templates for 2013 Office suite that can make running and organizing your business a much easier process. Here are 25 great Microsoft templates to check out if you need some help keeping all of your business-related data in order.

1) Meeting Agenda Template

This is a great template for Microsoft Word that allows you to effortlessly plan out the agenda of a business meeting. You can quickly note all of the topics that you need to discuss at the meeting and share the agenda with everyone who will be in attendance so that they can prepare for the meeting ahead of time.

2) Invoice Template

If you are looking for Microsoft templates to make an invoice that is very basic but still very well designed and professional in its appearance, this is a great option. This custom Excel template will allow you to send invoices to customers and clients and keep track of all of your expenses and income in a very orderly fashion.

3) Company Memorandum Template

Do you need to send official announcements to your co-workers or clients? This is a great Word template for issuing announcements company-wide in a neat and effective way. Include all of the basic information that goes with the announcement (date, who is sending the announcement, etc), and input your message.

4) Time Management Template

This is a great tool that you can use to keep your daily tasks straight and to help your small team of workers organize themselves better. Use this Excel template to prioritize your tasks and keep all of your daily work responsibilities on schedule.

5) Task Planner Template

You will probably be looking to achieve many of your company projects and goals in phases. This excellent Word template allows you to plan your project out in a calendar setting and focus on meeting all of the goals that you have set for yourself and your company chronologically.

6) Progress Report Template

This is one of the most convenient Microsoft templates for presenting the progress your company has made to the team or even to potential investors and partners. Give background information about your business goals and then present your results using great looking charts and graphs. It’s a PowerPoint template, which means it’s perfect for presentations.

7) Corporate Calendar Template

Never miss an appointment again with this excellent calendar template. One of the great things about this Excel template is that it automatically adjusts if you set up meetings and appointments that run over or under the time allotted for each in the template.

8) Business Brochure Template

Do you need a sleek and professional looking brochure template to present your business to others? This PowerPoint template is perfect for educating people about your business. It’s perfect for pitching your business ideas to potential clients and investors and it’s just as good for creating introductions to your business for new employees.

9) Net-Worth Template

This Microsoft template gives you a clear and easy way to tally up your net-worth, taking into consideration your income, investments, properties, and anything else that adds or takes away from your net-worth. The Excel template is very easy to use – simply input the data where specified and receive a colorful and easy-to-follow presentation of your total net-worth.

10) Expense Report Template

All small business owners want to run a tight ship, and a big part of that is knowing where your money is being spent. This great Excel template will allow you to enter all of your expenses into a spreadsheet chronologically and tally up the costs. It’s great to use for business trip expenses, equipment and maintenance costs, or salaries.

11) Business Report Template

This Word template has multiple uses. It is a neatly designed template that can be used to send out company-wide announcements, status reports, or a number of different memorandums.

12) Business Trip Checklist Template

It’s easy to forget something at home when taking off for a business trip. Allow yourself to focus on your company tasks instead of worrying whether you brought the right amount of socks or toothpaste with you by using this business trip checklist template that will ensure that you’ve packed everything you need before you board the plane.

13) Business Card Template

Business cards are a must for any serious small business owner. This template allows you to design and print your personalized business cards easily and then hand them out whenever you are making new contacts and spreading the word about your company.

14) Employee of the Month Certificate Template

Building company morale is a very important part of running a successful small business. This is one of diploma-like Microsoft templates that makes it easy for you to personalize and print out a certificate to honor one of your employees each month and show them that they are appreciated.

15) Quick Business Pitch Template

A fantastic template called “Elevator Speech” which guides you in an effort to create a quick and effective sales pitch when you have a minimal amount of time to get your point across. The Word template includes guides for creating a 12 second, 30 second and 3 minute pitch.

16) Company Meeting Presentation Template

Company meeting presentation template allows you to keep your employees up to date with the performance and insights of the company. There are many different features that slides are including such as various agendas, different success factors, performance overview, organizational, profit and goals review, meeting summaries and much more.

17) Company Newsletter Template

Company newsletters provide a good way to keep all of your employees in the loop and let them know what the company has been up to recently. This professional Word template allows you to create a great looking newsletter that can later be emailed or printed and distributed to all of your co-workers.

18) Income and Expense Tracking Template

This is a yearly profit and loss statement for Excel that allows you to effectively keep an eye on your company money. Not only can you input all of the information for each month into a spreadsheet, but you will also get line graphs made automatically to help you visualize the data.

19) Business Presentation Template

If you need to create a professional presentation of your business goals or accomplishments, but you don’t have time to make one from scratch, this is a fantastic PowerPoint template to use. It’s well-designed and professional looking, letting you easily create a great presentation by simply entering in the data you want to show and highlight.

20) Fax Cover Template

Anyone who needs to send a fax can use this Word template to quickly send a professional looking fax message to clients.

21) Equipment Rental Agreement Template

If you ever need to rent equipment for your company or you are renting out equipment to others, this template provides you a professional form for getting all of the necessary information down before performing the transaction.

22) Invitation note card

If you are looking for Microsoft templates to print your own, custom-made, party invitations, this is the right choice. With interesting and dynamic color-changeable tan and brown dots and stripes, everyone will be impressed. Dimensions are 4.25 x 5.5 inches when folded so the template can be used as an informal note card as well.

23) Inventory of home contents

This template keeps an inventory of your important and precious data safe. You can store different valuables like serial and model numbers, retail and purchase prices, confidential information and more in a secure location.

24) Purchase Order Template

Here is a handy template to have when sending out orders that your clients have purchased for you. The Word template provides a ready-made form; all you need to do is fill in the necessary purchase and shipping information for the order.

25) Payroll Calculator

This amazing calculator is a perfect tool to use for your employees as it can generate, in seconds, pay stubs using its own code. You only need to insert their valuables and click on the Generate button. After pay stubs have been calculated you can easily print them.

These Microsoft templates can help you take control of all your paperwork and organize yourself and your company better. Running a small business is all about multitasking and MS Office templates such as these can give you a head start and simplify just about every process related to running your business.

Binders Image Credit

The post 25 Microsoft Templates for Running your Small Business Effortlessly appeared first on PCE Blog.

Halloween is just around the corner and you haven’t even started your preparations? That’s very unlikely, since there are pumpkins, spiders, black cats and “boo’s” in all forms, colors and shapes scaring us from almost every window shop, and reminding us that it’s time to get ready for what’s probably the most entertaining holiday in a year. However, if due to a hectic schedule you really are behind with the Halloween warm-up, and don’t really know where to start your search for original Halloween costumes, home decorations, gifts and food, don’t get scared yet!

Thinking about you, we went straight to one of the best sources of creative ideas on the Web – Pinterest, and did some research for you. We hope our collection of 13 inspirational pinboards with all things Halloween will come handy. Everything you need for this year’s horrendously fun October 31 is waiting for you in there!

1) Halloween Costume Ideas

A fabulous source of Halloween costumes inspirations and ideas! Ranging from toddlers, infants, teenagers and grownups, this board has something for every taste imaginable.

2) Halloween Stuff  abounds with all sorts of pins, but their food pins will probably interest you the most. From meatball mummies and spooky smile cookies, to green witch fingers and graveyard pudding cups, this board has everything you need for a hideous but yummy Halloween dinner.

3) Halloween Craft Ideas is excellent for fun family projects as it is geared more towards crafts and ideas for kids and made by kids.

4) Halloween Costume Ideas is all about “creative Halloween costumes for kids and adults, groups and individuals, couples and families!” Searching through this pinboard, you’ll certainly come up with an original idea for a costume.

5) Halloween Food, Decor, Crafts & More: Brace yourself for a wild ride through incredible crafts, decor and food ideas. It might be difficult to choose only a few, because many of them look so good!

6) Hallloween Ideas, Decorations, Costumes is another pinboard oriented towards Halloween costumes, with very useful photos of close-ups.

7) Halloween 

From makeup tutorials, creepy-looking cooking recipes, costuming your pet into a real Halloween monster and everything in between, follow this board immediately.

8) Halloween party, gifts, snacks, cards and more  is a very big collection of Halloween ideas for parties, gifts, trick-or-treating, printables, and decorations.

9) Cool and Scary Halloween ideas is packed with ideas for scary Halloween costumes, masks and home decor, but also particularly nice tips for decorating your garden and front yard.

10) Halloween Make Up Ideas  is a specialized collection of “face” ideas. If you’re looking for mask and makeup tips, you’ll probably find what you’re looking for here.

11) Halloween Masks and Make-up simply overflows with ideas for make-up and masks.

12) Halloween by Baby Center  is a rich treasure trove of ideas for parents, and especially for baby costumes.

13) Halloween Treats, favor bags, and more DIY: And finally, the lucky number 13 goes to this pinboard that will make it difficult to move away from the screen and actually start with preparations!

Hopefully you’ll find something spookily original, or originally spooky, among the amazing Halloween photos and suggestions you’ve seen. If you fall in love with the photos of one or more boards so much that you want to keep them as they are, learn how to convert entire boards into PDF albums!

This way you’ll be able to view your favorite Halloween pictures, tips and DIYs even when you are not online, plus you’ll actually have a nice album which you can even use as a gift to your friends and family.

Trick or Treat!

The post Top Pinterest Boards to Find Ideas for Halloween Costumes appeared first on PCE Blog.

It is safe to say that small businesses and technology go hand in hand. In order to raise productivity, efficiency, grow the revenue of your business and improve expenses and performance, you should embrace technology and what it has to offer. It is important to follow the trends of technology as it has been changing every year.

According to Insight statistics from February 2017, 41% of small businesses have a plan to spend more on technology, especially for Internet of things. It is believed that in 2015 they spent 50% more on technology. Many business cannot work without wireless and mobile technology. Cloud solutions have also become inevitable part of every small business.

To help you keep up with the latest technology we compiled a list of essential technology your business should have in 2018.

Cybersecurity

Your business data may be at risk of cyber attacks if you rely on unsecured technology. According to Information Management, 58% of businesses experienced data breach at least once during the last year. We live in a world where information has become more valuable than gold. Losing you clients and business data in general can leave a bad reputation and not to mention losing profit. With the rise of Internet of things and the increased usage of online tools, cyber attacks have become easy to accomplish. The year 2018 will be a true challenge when it comes to protecting your sensitive data against cyber attacks and responding to security breaches. It is predicted that there will be new types of cyber attacks but also new ways of cyber defence and threat remediation that businesses can use.

Businesses should invest in cybersecurity technology but also provide their staff with appropriate training programs. Using outsourcing cybersecurity is also a good idea- working with professionals who will assess all the potential risks and come up with a right solution.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence will have a significant role in protecting businesses against cyber attacks but also improving your business model and relationship with the clients, and enhancing business analytics. In the recent infographics about 2018 tech trends for small businesses, almost 60% businesses are reportedly collecting data with the aim to build a strategy for artificial intelligence. With artificial intelligence, businesses can collect data that will help their growth.

Some researches show that more than 70% of businesses with up to 100 employees rely on the cloud. 90% of business with up to 500 employees also rely on cloud. It is only a matter of time when small businesses will implement artificial intelligence in the cloud systems. This will result in enhanced data processing and analysis of customer behaviour in cloud applications.

Machine learning

In 2018, machine learning will have a huge impact on the rise of sales and customer support models according to some experts. Companies will be able to track and organize calls and responses in order to categorize data in the most efficient way.

This process can refine big data and recognize vulnerabilities and possible dangers. Machine learning and Blockchain seem to be the most popular developments of 2017 and will definitely continue to rise in 2018. It can give retail industry a detailed insight into consumers’ behaviour.

Internet of things

By 2020 there will be about thirty billion objects that are called internet of things. The global market of internet of things will reach $7.1 trillion in the years to come. Research shows that around 20% more companies plan to use or invest in internet of things in 2018. Internet of things have a pragmatic role in every small business, for instance, to monitor assets or physical security, to manage electricity and power usage.

Augmented reality

Another technology that can change the way you look at business is augmented reality. The data is dynamically manipulated in a way information gets a new level of engagement. Businesses can have a totally new, enhanced way of communication, among colleagues and consumers and the workplace in general, thanks to augmented reality business applications.   Augmented reality can be easily applied to retail industry, construction,healthcare, sport and many other industries. On the other hand, augmented reality can bring a totally different experience to customers and buyers and has a positive impact on the customer retention.

New trends in marketing

Thanks to new technology email marketing can become more personalized, and small businesses can focus on local advertising and cross-channel marketing, as well as video content. Customers don’t react any more to impersonal calls and emails and generic content. Businesses should have an aim to personalize and customize content for every customer. Thanks to artificial intelligence, businesses can have better email marketing and CRM tools.

Mobile banking

With the rise of mobile apps and mobile technology in general, mobile payments have also become a trend, especially among millenials. Small businesses should meet the requirements and implement mobile payments systems. By 2020 there will be two billion users of mobile banking. Companies should make those payments easier with the help of mobile technology. But with mobile payments there will be more cyber attacks. Businesses should find technology that will protect their customers’ mobile banking accounts from attacks.

All these listed technologies can bring new opportunities to your business and different ways to meet the needs of your existing and new customers. The sooner you start learning about new technologies, the sooner you will be able to improve your business.

The post Checklist of Essential Small Business Technology in 2018 appeared first on PCE Blog.

School is coming and so are the assignments. Whether you are a student or a teacher, you are probably aware that you will have less free time once the school starts. That’s why we have prepared for you a list of essential school tools that help you finish your tasks quicker and enjoy the evenings almost like you are on a holiday.

Essential Online Tools for Students

Many school tools can be used both by students or teachers. Here is a list of tools and applications that can be of great help to every student. Each tool listed below has a different purpose and it’s up to you which school tools you will choose to use for your school activities.

Collect files, photos, links, make notes

Middlespot is the tool for keeping links, notes, files, docs, photos, videos, bookmarks on your desktop and organize school stuff the way you want. If you want to keep everything at your fingertips Middlespot is the right choice for you. You can drag and drop your school materials such as pictures, documents, links, videos etc. It also has a feature to take notes and make a to-do list. You can turn your computer into a school workspace and share it with your classmates.

Price: Completely free to use

How to use it: sign in with Gmail, click on Make a desktop, enter the name of your personalized url. Check out if you want to make your desktop private or public. You can start with an empty desktop or Google Drive. Add content to your desktop, reorder them the way you want and share your content with your school friends.

Noti.st is a bit different from other note taking tools and collectors because you can use it as a portfolio. If you need to present something in front of a classroom or to apply for a scholarship or school audition, you can use Noti.st to be noticed.

Price: there is a free and a paid option. To use this tool for free you need to register. You can make 5 presentations per year. There two paid options, monthly and annually, and you can create as many presentations as you like.

How to use it: click to create a presentation, set url url, add your slides and links. When you are done, share the link with others.

Booksnap views online links that are related to the image of a textbook or a course material that you snapped with a camera. If you want to collect materials for the subject you are studying, you can use this tool to take photo of the school textbook and find relevant resources. It is the easiest way to combine school books with Internet resources, with a few snaps you collect a bunch of materials for studying.

Price: Free

How to use it: snap an image of a textbook page and view online links related to the topic.

Stay productive and organized

StudySmart is not a tool but a mobile app that helps you manage your studies and track down your exams in a smart way. Set starting date for learning, exam date, free days and so on. The app will show you the recommended hours to study per day and track your progress, with daily updates. Every record you insert can be updated or deleted. This is one of the school tools that you need if you feel hard to stay productive.

Price: Free

How to use it: Make a list of subjects and define how many days will you spend for each one. Add the exam date, free days and the starting date.

Revision Buddies is a self-assessment learning tool for productive learning. It offers a modern approach to studying with more interactive and engaging learning process. There are thousands of questions and detailed answers written by teachers to provide you with insights to the most relevant facts that you need to know for your exams.

Price: The complete collection costs about $12 per year, but if you want to choose only particular subjects, one subject is $3 per year.

How to use it: You need to register and make a purchase first and then login and do the rest.

Brainstorming with other students

Time to Toast is a tool for creating timelines. It can be useful for history and social subjects, when you have to memorize a lot of events and dates. It can also be used when studying grammar and verb tenses. You can use this tool to have a brainstorming session with your peers or to revise on your own.

Price: Free

How to use it: choose a plan, and fill in the details. Add up to 40 events to your timeline, the title of the event is limited to 255 characters and the description 500.

Mind mapping

SpiderScribe is one of the school tools that is good for mind mapping and brainstorming. With this tool you can organize your ideas, take notes, keep files, mark calendar events etc. in a form of mind maps. You can also collaborate with others and share your maps online.

Price: the cheapest plan is $5 per month but there is a free trial

How to use it: simply add different elements such as text, images, calendar events, geographic locations etc.

Keep learning

Study has over 22,000 video lessons and other resources for studying. No matter what subject do you need to study, here you will definitely find what you need. It has school materials in different forms: courses, articles, videos, quizzes, lessons, and you can also search topics by subject.

Price: not free but there is a free trial

How to use it: browse courses on different topic and choose the course you want to take.

Troovit is not so for learning but for showing what you have learned so far. If you are a successful student, you can use this tool to make a portfolio of your works and present your skills. You can also use it to make summary of each lesson and revise it.

Price: Free

How to use it:  need to sign in via Google or Facebook, add connections, explore topics, create collections.

Flipgrid is for sharing your knowledge and making discussions with your school peers or teachers. You can record short videos by yourself and your friends can reply to your videos. Educators are 100% in control with video moderation, access controls, and much more.

Price: Free for teachers, students need to take a flip code from their educator.

How to use it: Students record different kind of videos up to 5 minutes, and other students can reply and discuss.

School Tools for Teachers

Being a teacher requires much work, energy and devotion. You have to be patient with your students, and always ready to help them. Thanks to different school tools for teachers, you can prepare lessons quicker, lose less time on managing school documents, and make your students more interactive in the classroom.

Online collaboration tools for education

GoFormative is a time saver because it handles classroom data for you. Teachers use it to track students, to have a look at their performance for every assignment. The tool has more than thousands of pre-made formatives to save you additional time. Even if you want to use your own materials you can upload documents in the tool, add places for your students to respond and to customize questions if necessary. GoFormative can be used for any grade, on any device, for any subject.

Price: Free for students and teachers

How to use it: You can upload your own file or make a form from scratch. Create and edit questions, preview them and view responses.

Piazza connects students and teachers in and out of the classroom. Students get help from teachers and teachers easily create interactive class. You can use Piazza to have a better picture of the difficulty level of your lectures. Students give you anonymous feedback and ask questions about the subject. As a result, you as a teacher know what the questions students are struggling the most and how to better use the time in the classroom.

Price: Free

How to use it: Ask. Answer. Explore. Whenever.

With Pear Deck every student takes part in the lesson on his or her own screen. This tool is particularly interesting because students can give a voice anonymously and they can all give answers at the same time. Only a teacher can see students’ response. If you have shy students in your classroom Pear Deck will be of great help.

Price: Free and paid options

How to use it: You can use it as a Google Slide add-on. Access the Slide library to choose a template question or create your own.    

Kaizena is a feedback tool for Google Docs that every teacher needs. It implements your voice comments into the document which is a way faster than typing or writing feedback comments. You can save any video or a web page as a lesson and add it as a comment when reviewing a student’s work. You can record your own voice or text comments as well.  With Kaizena you can explore built-in lessons that were used or added by your colleagues.

Price: Free

How to use it: Select some text on the document you want to comment. Click on Voice message to record it.

Manage school documents efficiently

Picmonkey can be your next photo editor. If you need graphics for your lessons this tool can help you crop old photos, add text, make collage, cards and much more. It’s an all-in-one photo editor, perfect for busy teachers. You can even create posters or make a lot of different versions of one photo.

Price: free trial for one week

How to use it: upload your photo or use design from the template gallery.  Click on Erase, Effects or Basic tab and choose different photo editing options.

You need PDF to Word Converter tool to edit old school materials that were saved in PDF. Even if you have a paper copy, you can scan it and extract text from a scanned PDF. This tool saves time and you won’t spend hours managing documents.

Price: Free

How to use it: Upload a PDF, enter email address and click Start. Soon you will receive an email with the download link to your file

Similar to previous one, PDF to PPT Converter helps you with school presentations. If you want to make changes to your lesson sheets and other PowerPoint slides you can use this tool to convert PDF document to PowerPoint.

Price: Free

How to use it: the same process as the tool above, the only difference is in the output file you get.

Plickers is a mobile app that teachers can use to manage assignment papers. Just scan students’ cards and check their work. The data is saved in your account on Plickers website and you can access it anytime. There are different sizes of cards you can use and print for your students.

Price: Free

How to use it: print cards and give them to students. When they write answers to the questions, scan the cards and evaluate their answers.

Smart Lesson planning

Students love quizzes, they make learning fun and interactive. If you haven’t tried any quiz maker so far, try Quizizz. It can be a part of your lesson plan toolbox, because you can create quizzes on different topics and use them for lessons revisions. This quiz maker stands out from other because students can take part in quizzes on any device and progress independently. There are millions of quizzes to choose from or you can make your own.

Price:  Free

How to use it: You can search for quizzes and view them without signing up, but if you want to play you need to sign up for free.

Kahoot is a very popular tool among teachers. In case you haven’t heard about it, Kahoot is your true help in the classroom. Students can answer to the questions on their own devices and questions are displayed on a shared screen. Whenever subject you are preparing for the next lesson, you can create questions and ask students to take part in the game. Moreover, there are millions of existing kahoots you can use for your lessons if you are too busy with other school tasks.

Price: Free for students and teachers

How to use it: Create learning games, in a multiple choice form. Set up the format and the number of questions and add videos, images and diagrams.

Teachem is a web encyclopedia or repository of different school subjects and lessons. You can use it to find supporting materials for the lessons. Teachem offers free educational videos on various subjects you can use in the classroom as a part of the lesson.

Price: Free

How to use it: you can browse subjects on different categories, and view courses without signing up.

Go Class is a classroom management tool that you can use to design a lesson plan, to add photos, text, videos to it, and to have a framework for every other lesson plan. Go Class lets you share your lesson plan with students on their own devices. It also has annotation feature which works as a virtual chalkboard. With a shared whiteboard, students can be called in front of the chalkboard to take part in discussions. Each shared exercise is stored on all student accounts for future reference.

Price: There are free and paid options

How to use it: Select My Courses tab and then Create course option.

Edmodo is the perfect place to find your next lesson. It is a paperless classroom that connects teachers with students and parents. If you are too busy to create your own lesson plan you can even browse and find a lesson plan among 650 million resources.

Price: Free

How to use it: Browse already made resources or make your own lesson plan.

School tools for your classroom

With all that lesson planning, spending hours at school and checking students’ assignment papers, it is hard to find time for additional learning. Every teacher should stay up to date with arising trends in educational technology. With help of these school tools you can be more creative and improve the way you engage with students.

Newsela is an instructional content platform that empowers teachers to personalize instructions. This tool helps every teacher solve reading engagement of students. With Newsela teachers help students improve their general knowledge.

Price: Free

How to use it: Browse content on certain topics and share them with students

Diigo is a platform to collect, organize, annotate and share learning and teaching resources with your colleagues and students. You can archive web pages, post sticky notes and much more. It helps you keep all your lesson materials in one place, which you can use in the classroom or share with your students.

Price: Free

How to use it: Browse content on certain topics and share them with students

Zeemaps is a tool for creating maps. This is an interesting way to present your lesson and engage your students. It can be used for geography and history classes primarily, but also for other similar subjects.

Price: There is a free version with some limits

How to use it: upload your spreadsheet to create a map from it, or create a map by filling in the form.  

The post Top School Tools to Check out This Fall (for Students and Teachers) appeared first on PCE Blog.

An image is worth a thousand words – you have probably heard this at least a thousand times. But the truth is that it really is so. No matter if you have a website or blog, or prepare materials and presentations for school, college, students, business, or for any other purpose, your documents and presentations simply look better and more professional with compelling, high quality images and graphics. Simply put – people like photos. Knowing this, we compiled a list of useful and free web applications that can help you to quickly create, modify and transform your images into dazzling works of art which will impress your teachers, students, colleagues, business associates, bosses, or simply amuse friends on social networks.

Create images, slideshows, photo collages, photo books and more

It’s never been easier to be an artist than today when there are tons of available online applications that can help you to create and present your photos, graphics and other imagery in creative and electrifying ways.

1. Photovisi is an easy to use and free online photo collage maker. First you pick among the many designs, add your photos, and customize the collage by dragging around items. Finished photo collages can be printed or downloaded.

2. Picture2Life, as its name implies, brings your pics to life by allowing you to turn them into collages and animated gifs. Some of the coolest features of the app include the ability to create collages using one of 20 available different countries as the basis of the collage. It is an awesome way to present your pictures from a recent trip to that country, for example. The best part is that Picture2Life works handsomely with photo sharing, hosting and blogging websites such as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger, ImageShack, and many more.

3. Photo Collage is another great web application that you can use to create online photo collages, photo animations and photo slideshows.

4. Picaboo bring smiles to the faces of your loved ones by allowing you to easily transform your digital photos into photo books, cards, calendars, gift certificates, yearbooks, prints and more. If you prefer desktop tools, a downloadable version of Picaboo is available.

5. Cool Text is a free online graphics generator. You can use it to quickly create a logo for your website even if you have no web design skills at all. Just choose one of available logo styles and fill out a simple form to design your logo: insert the desired logo text, choose the font, text size, color, and one of available image file formats – png and gif, with or without transparency, jpg, psd or xcf. Once you are satisfied with how your logo looks, click on the button to render it and that`s it.

6. Hohli Online Charts Builder is a simple web tool for making charts. It is based on the Google charts API and is easy to use: select your chart type, add data, pick the size, colors, add a title and preview your chart. Tweak it until you`re happy with it.

7. Free Clipart Library is a perfect place where you can find free vector illustrations. There are more than two thousands of illustrations you can use to create images. The tool is mostly used for creating logos or any kind of business graphics. 

8. Funnywow is a website to create funny pictures online and add funny photo effects to your images.

9. Funny.Pho.to allows you to create photo collages from your photos. Apply funny photo effects, create realistic photo montages and add cute frames to your photos. You can also easily create e-cards by adding text to the picture.

10. Fun Photo Box is another tool for creating funny pictures online. Simply upload your photos and apply hundreds of professionally designed photo effects. It also allows you to create romantic greeting cards with personal photos or animations. If you would like a makeover, go ahead and put your face in a hole and become a superstar.

Online Photo Editors

Making a perfect snapshot is difficult if you are not a professional photographer and don’t have professional equipment. Fortunately, there are software solutions like Adobe Photoshop which lets you significantly improve your photos. However, Photoshop is not cheap and if you don’t use it to its full potential, getting it is hardly a justifiable purchase. But there are pretty powerful and free online solutions which can help you to enhance your images and photos and dazzle everyone with them without having to install anything on your personal computer.

11. Pixlr is a powerful free online image and photo editor. You can use it to create an image online from scratch or to open and edit images from your computer, URL or library like Pixlr, Facebook, or any other library. It is a great tool for everyone who wants to manage their images in the browser. Registration is not required for using this editor.

12. Fotor  is a free online photo editor offering some really neat features like the ability to create lifelike photos made with HDR, beauty retouching (think: your free online Photoshop!), creatives for holiday photo cards, and so on. As a matter of fact, they are constantly adding new features and goodies.

13. LunaPic is a handy editor of pictures for Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Users can upload images from their computer or open from the web with a URL of the image. As a matter of fact, you can open images from your account on Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket. Available editing options include drawing directly on the image, adding border and text to image, rotating, resizing or cropping images, and more.

14. Pixenate is a fast and easy photo editor which lets you enhance your images right from the web. Pixenate provides tools to improve your photos in multiple ways. You can quickly normalize photos by improving the color balance or smoothing facial lines, fill light, whiten teeth, change the brightness, saturation and hue of your photos.  Additionally, you can add multiple fun effects to your photos like text, speech bubbles, rounded corners and even sprinkle some snowflakes. You can also surround your photos with a soft dark halo, create a heart-shaped cutout of your sweetheart, make your photos look like Andy Warhol-like pop-up posters or artistic oil paintings. Once you`re satisfied with your image, you can save it to your computer or upload it to Flickr.

15. FotoFlexer is another great and very advanced online image editor that allows you to add stunning photo effects to your pics. Users can edit pictures from their computers or from Facebook, Picasa, Flickr SmugMug, Phanfare, Photobucket and other photo sharing sites.

16. Free Online Photo Editor also enables its users to enhance their photos in their browsers. Edited photos can be saved online, downloaded or printed.

17. Phixr is one more easy-to-use and free online photo editor which directly supports Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and many more.

18. Picmod is a picture editing and sharing website.

19. BeFunky will help you to transform your pictures into exceptional artwork in just a few clicks. The site offers tons of effects and features that you can use to make your pictures look like oil paintings, pop art or vintage Polaroids.

20. Glitter Photo is a nifty online tool that allows you to add glitter, text and several effects to your photos, all for free. The most notable effects include stamps, bubbles, animations, trims and backgrounds.  Not only that, but you can also resize and crop uploaded photos.

21. PicFont lets you simply and quickly insert text into pictures, add comments and shape them online.

22. ImageChef allows you to drop your photos into fun frames, create a cover image for your Facebook Timeline, create word mosaics, and sketchpads.

Resize images

Sometimes when you want to share your beautiful images with others by emailing or sharing them online, you may experience problems due to their size. They are simply too big sometimes. To ensure smooth uploading and emailing, you will need to shrink them. There are a number of handy and free online image and photo resizers that can help you to fix the size of your pics in no time at all.

23. Picresize lets you easily resize and crop your images online.  You can also use the tool to add special effects to your images: rotate, sharpen, grayscale. There are two resize modes: a normal and one for quick fixes.  The best part is that the tool allows you to batch resize and crop your images. It is a very handy feature when you need to change the size of multiple pictures quickly.

24. Resize Your Image allows you to resize your image or photo online in three simple steps: upload, use buttons and arrows to set the desired size, resize and download it.

25. Resizr  is another free online image resizer and cropper. It has many useful features, but is easy to use. Resizr will help you to convert, crop, rotate or edit your image quickly.

Online Image Converters

Online format converters can be extremely convenient utilities. They let you convert between formats without having to install any software on your local machine. Let us take a look at some of the best free tools for changing image file formats.

26. Photo2Text allows users to convert an image to a text file of the original image.

27. Image to PDF is an online PDF creation tool. You can upload any image from your computer and have it quickly converted into PDF. The converted image will be sent to a specified email address. The tool supports all image file formats, including the most popular – jpg, png, and gif.

28. Text-Image.com is a free web-based image to HTML converter.

29. Picascii offers an easy way to create ascii art. The tool converts a picture into ASCII TEXT and HTML. It supports gif, jpeg and png image formats.

30. Share As Image allows you to highlight text anywhere on the web and quickly transform it into an image. It is especially useful for creating quoted images for sharing on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

31. Map2Pic is an online application that enables you to take screenshots from Google maps and save them as image files. Snapshots can be saved in png or jpg image formats.

32. Convert Hub is a free online graphic and image conversion tool. You can use this online utility to convert between multiple image file formats like ico, png, gif, jpg, bmp, ps, eps, tiff, and more. It is a great tool to make favicon.ico as well, which is the shortcut icon for your blog or site.

33. Image to Favicon.ico is a free online tool to convert an image, logo or photo into *.ICO icon format. Supported input image formats are jpg, gif, png, tiff and bmp.

The post 33 Tools to Create, Edit and Convert Images Online appeared first on PCE Blog.

SlideShare is the world’s largest and leading online community for hosting, discovering and sharing presentations. It is safe to say that SlideShare has become a must-have tool in every presenter’s toolbox today. Business professionals, teachers, public speakers and students alike often use it to find inspiration and ideas, learn or present their own work here. However, SlideShare is not the only website that specializes in hosting and sharing presentations. There are other great, high-quality sites, SlideShare alternatives that let you upload, host and create or discover great presentations and slideshows shared by other presenters.

1. AuthorStream –  a free platform for uploading, hosting and sharing PowerPoint presentations online. It has a pretty large user base and helps you discover great presentations in various categories. Some of the categories are business and finance, education, product manuals, science, technology, and many others.

2. Moovly  – With Moovly you can create, change and freely share your videos with no hustle. The Moovly library includes thousands of videos and images you can download without any limit. It’s one of the best online video animation software you can find online.

3. Slide Online lets you freely upload, view and share your PPT and PDF presentations with everyone. As an online-based platform, you can share everything directly to social networks such as Facebook and  Google+ or embed code to your WordPress blog. A perfect tool for business, sales, marketing or educational presentations.

4. PowerShow – yet another community for hosting, sharing and viewing PowerPoint presentations online. It converts uploaded PowerPoint slides to multimedia Flash slideshows while preserving all types of embedded effects, photos and live links to YouTube videos. Everyone can publicly share and view personal and educational presentations for free. PowerShow additionally allows its users to earn money with their presentations by marking them as “pay to view” and setting a price for viewing them.

5. Prezi – a virtual whiteboard for transforming presentations into compelling stories and visually flowing lessons. Prezi is perfect for creating impressive resumes (called Presumes) and portfolios that will undoubtedly help opportunity and job seekers to stand out from the crowd.

6. Projeqt – create and share dynamic presentations from scratch or by converting old static slides. Simply upload PowerPoint, PDF or multiple image files at once and create a dynamic and portable online Projeqt with no coding required. Created Projeqts can be embedded and shared anywhere.

7. Reel – present your ideas online and get feedback. The app allows you to upload your slides as documents in the PDF, PPT or DOC file formats or as images (JPG, PNG, GIF), describe them, and share.

How Do You Like These SlideShare Alternatives so far?

8. SlideBoom – an easy to use online slide hosting service. This service allows you to upload, convert PowerPoint presentations and slideshows to Flash and share them online. You can also search for presentations in more than 30 categories and 100 different languages.

9. SlideRocket – an online tool for creating, sharing and managing presentations. It allows you to import your existing PowerPoint presentations or create SlideRockets from scratch.

10. SlideServe – one more way to take your PowerPoint presentations online and share them privately or publicly with others. You can email presentations hosted on SlideServe or embed them to blogs and social networking sites.

11. Emaze is an online presentation tool for professionals. It is not free but affordable, $9 per month. For that price you can make your private presentation and download it so you can have an offline version. You can also download it as a PDF or a video.

12. SpeakerDeck – upload your PDF slides and turn them into online presentations. Once uploaded to the site, presentations can be described, added to an appropriate category, and shared with the rest of the world. You can share a link to your presentation, embed it on a website or blog, or simply share with Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

13. VCASMO – a multimedia presentation solution for business presentations, academic teaching, seminars and training, photo-video slideshows and more.

14. Zentation –  create online presentations by combining video and slides. It is a handy solution for creating webcasts, webinars, training, e-learning and other virtual events. You can publicly share Zentations that you create and browse other shared presentations.

The post 14 Alternatives to SlideShare for Top-Notch Presenters appeared first on PCE Blog.

Every startup is hard and usually it requires much preparation. Often you are on your own or with just a few people to help you with all the work. And even when you finalize your startup idea, create a business plan and website, there’s still much work to do. If you have just started your business and you don’t have a big team and resources to operate daily chores, here is an ultimate list of startup tools to help you with every possible challenge. 

PDF conversion tools

Dealing with business documents can be tough especially if these are in PDF form that is hard to edit. Thanks to PDF Converter online tools you can easily convert PDF files to editable file formats, merge multiple PDFs into one or split one big PDF into smaller documents. Everything is free and no email is required. You can even convert scanned PDF files.

Data visualization tools

If you need to make graphics for your company blog or website, to create a business card, leaflets, brochures and you still haven’t hired a skilled graphic designer, you can use some of data visualization tools for that purpose. There are different data visualization tools such as Visual.ly,Plotly that have tons of pre-made templates you can repurpose to create infographics, cover photos etc.

Webinar tool to organize product demo

Whether you sell products or services, you will probably want to attract more customers and that can be hard at the start. If you want to stand out from your competitors, you may consider offering product demo trainings to your customers. Thanks to webinar tools you can easily organize trainings for new users and it will pay off for sure.

User experience tool

Even if you created your product and website, there is still room for improvement. At early stage of every startup business, you should try using a user experience tool. With limited resources it will be easier to use such tool to test user experience than to hire a UI designer. 

Project development tool

Every startup business starts with a small team. But small team doesn’t necessarily mean that the number of projects will be low as well. Assuming that your small team has much work to do, it would be better to use project development/tracking tools such as Asana and Trello to centralize all the work.

Accounting tool 

If you don’t have enough budget to hire an accountant, you can turn to any of these accounting tools for help: Expensify, Xero, Quickbooks, Waveapps. These tools are good enough for every startup business that doesn’t have much experience in managing revenues and money flow. 

Social media tools

If your startup is not present on social media, it doesn’t exist. Even if you are sure that the industry your startup belong to doesn’t have much potential on social media, you need to have accounts on at least Facebook and Twitter. Posting twice or three times per week is good for a start and if you don’t want to think of social media every day, just use social media tools such as Buffer or Hootsuite. These tools are like organizers and calendar, just prepare the posts and copies, set up the dates and that’s it. 

Email marketing campaign tool 

Email marketing is not dead. No matter what is your startup you can use email marketing tools when you want to reach out to your existing customers or potential leads. You don’t need an army of people that will send the emails, just use Mailchimp, Drip or similar email marketing tools to run email campaigns. 

Survey tools 

After some time when you have a decent amount of users and clients, you can run surveys that will help you conclude what you can do better in the future. Survey tool like Survey pal can help you with technical side of things, you just need to think about the questions for the survey.  

Stock images 

If you still don’t have an in-house designer or there is too much work, stock images can be the first aid kit for every startup. Even if you don’t have a budget for stock images, you can find a lot of free images. There are websites such as Pixabay and Unsplash that store images on all topics and queries.

Recruiting tool

From working late hours to finish all the daily tasks, to setting up new goals for your startup business, you may not have time to recruit new people. Luckily there are recruiting tools that can do some job for you. 

Cloud storage tool

Google Drive and Dropbox are a must for every startup business. Not only will you be able to access your documents wherever you are, but also other team members will have easy access to them. Not to mention that you can all be synchronized and up-to date with the changes.  

Writing tools

Whether it is website content, articles for the blog, guest posts, ebook materials, you need to use writing tools that will automatically point out grammar and spelling mistakes. Plagiarism checker tools also belong to this category, as you know how bad for SEO can be to have plagiarised content. 

Seo tools

Speaking of SEO, you need good SEO tools to track ranking, discover new keywords and spy on competitors. If you don’t have budget for Ahrefs, you can also try free tools such as Ubersuggest or SEMrush. These tools will help you fix all SEO errors and improve your website. As a result, the better ranking will increase your chances for success.

Live chat tools

Once you have a lot of customers, you need to think to keep them. The first tool to help you with that is live chat tool. Implement live chat so your customers can always reach out to you for help. Make them wanna stay and use your product or services.

Wireframing tool 

If you are still in the first phase of startup business and you haven’t finished your website or shopping cart page, you can use wireframe tools to sketch some ideas. Wireframing tools are the best way to show to your website developer what do you want and expect from your new website.

The post Must Have Tools for Your Startup appeared first on PCE Blog.

An image is worth a thousand words – you have probably heard this at least a thousand times. But the truth is that it really is so. No matter if you have a website or blog, or prepare materials and presentations for school, college, students, business, or for any other purpose, your documents and presentations simply look better and more professional with compelling, high quality images and graphics. Simply put – people like photos. Knowing this, we compiled a list of useful and free web applications that can help you to quickly create, modify and transform your images into dazzling works of art which will impress your teachers, students, colleagues, business associates, bosses, or simply amuse friends on social networks.

Create images, slideshows, photo collages, photo books and more

It’s never been easier to be an artist than today when there are tons of available online applications that can help you to create and present your photos, graphics and other imagery in creative and electrifying ways.

1. Photovisi is an easy to use and free online photo collage maker. First you pick among the many designs, add your photos, and customize the collage by dragging around items. Finished photo collages can be printed or downloaded.

2. Picture2Life, as its name implies, brings your pics to life by allowing you to turn them into collages and animated gifs. Some of the coolest features of the app include the ability to create collages using one of 20 available different countries as the basis of the collage. It is an awesome way to present your pictures from a recent trip to that country, for example. The best part is that Picture2Life works handsomely with photo sharing, hosting and blogging websites such as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger, ImageShack, and many more.

3. Photo Collage is another great web application that you can use to create online photo collages, photo animations and photo slideshows.

4. Picaboo bring smiles to the faces of your loved ones by allowing you to easily transform your digital photos into photo books, cards, calendars, gift certificates, yearbooks, prints and more. If you prefer desktop tools, a downloadable version of Picaboo is available.

5. Cool Text is a free online graphics generator. You can use it to quickly create a logo for your website even if you have no web design skills at all. Just choose one of available logo styles and fill out a simple form to design your logo: insert the desired logo text, choose the font, text size, color, and one of available image file formats – png and gif, with or without transparency, jpg, psd or xcf. Once you are satisfied with how your logo looks, click on the button to render it and that`s it.

6. Hohli Online Charts Builder is a simple web tool for making charts. It is based on the Google charts API and is easy to use: select your chart type, add data, pick the size, colors, add a title and preview your chart. Tweak it until you`re happy with it.

7. Free Clipart Library is a perfect place where you can find free vector illustrations. There are more than two thousands of illustrations you can use to create images. The tool is mostly used for creating logos or any kind of business graphics. 

8. Funnywow is a website to create funny pictures online and add funny photo effects to your images.

9. Funny.Pho.to allows you to create photo collages from your photos. Apply funny photo effects, create realistic photo montages and add cute frames to your photos. You can also easily create e-cards by adding text to the picture.

10. Fun Photo Box is another tool for creating funny pictures online. Simply upload your photos and apply hundreds of professionally designed photo effects. It also allows you to create romantic greeting cards with personal photos or animations. If you would like a makeover, go ahead and put your face in a hole and become a superstar.

Online Photo Editors

Making a perfect snapshot is difficult if you are not a professional photographer and don’t have professional equipment. Fortunately, there are software solutions like Adobe Photoshop which lets you significantly improve your photos. However, Photoshop is not cheap and if you don’t use it to its full potential, getting it is hardly a justifiable purchase. But there are pretty powerful and free online solutions which can help you to enhance your images and photos and dazzle everyone with them without having to install anything on your personal computer.

11. Pixlr is a powerful free online image and photo editor. You can use it to create an image online from scratch or to open and edit images from your computer, URL or library like Pixlr, Facebook, or any other library. It is a great tool for everyone who wants to manage their images in the browser. Registration is not required for using this editor.

12. Fotor  is a free online photo editor offering some really neat features like the ability to create lifelike photos made with HDR, beauty retouching (think: your free online Photoshop!), creatives for holiday photo cards, and so on. As a matter of fact, they are constantly adding new features and goodies.

13. LunaPic is a handy editor of pictures for Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Users can upload images from their computer or open from the web with a URL of the image. As a matter of fact, you can open images from your account on Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket. Available editing options include drawing directly on the image, adding border and text to image, rotating, resizing or cropping images, and more.

14. Pixenate is a fast and easy photo editor which lets you enhance your images right from the web. Pixenate provides tools to improve your photos in multiple ways. You can quickly normalize photos by improving the color balance or smoothing facial lines, fill light, whiten teeth, change the brightness, saturation and hue of your photos.  Additionally, you can add multiple fun effects to your photos like text, speech bubbles, rounded corners and even sprinkle some snowflakes. You can also surround your photos with a soft dark halo, create a heart-shaped cutout of your sweetheart, make your photos look like Andy Warhol-like pop-up posters or artistic oil paintings. Once you`re satisfied with your image, you can save it to your computer or upload it to Flickr.

15. FotoFlexer is another great and very advanced online image editor that allows you to add stunning photo effects to your pics. Users can edit pictures from their computers or from Facebook, Picasa, Flickr SmugMug, Phanfare, Photobucket and other photo sharing sites.

16. Free Online Photo Editor also enables its users to enhance their photos in their browsers. Edited photos can be saved online, downloaded or printed.

17. Phixr is one more easy-to-use and free online photo editor which directly supports Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and many more.

18. Picmod is a picture editing and sharing website.

19. BeFunky will help you to transform your pictures into exceptional artwork in just a few clicks. The site offers tons of effects and features that you can use to make your pictures look like oil paintings, pop art or vintage Polaroids.

20. Glitter Photo is a nifty online tool that allows you to add glitter, text and several effects to your photos, all for free. The most notable effects include stamps, bubbles, animations, trims and backgrounds.  Not only that, but you can also resize and crop uploaded photos.

21. PicFont lets you simply and quickly insert text into pictures, add comments and shape them online.

22. ImageChef allows you to drop your photos into fun frames, create a cover image for your Facebook Timeline, create word mosaics, and sketchpads.

Resize images

Sometimes when you want to share your beautiful images with others by emailing or sharing them online, you may experience problems due to their size. They are simply too big sometimes. To ensure smooth uploading and emailing, you will need to shrink them. There are a number of handy and free online image and photo resizers that can help you to fix the size of your pics in no time at all.

23. Picresize lets you easily resize and crop your images online.  You can also use the tool to add special effects to your images: rotate, sharpen, grayscale. There are two resize modes: a normal and one for quick fixes.  The best part is that the tool allows you to batch resize and crop your images. It is a very handy feature when you need to change the size of multiple pictures quickly.

24. Resize Your Image allows you to resize your image or photo online in three simple steps: upload, use buttons and arrows to set the desired size, resize and download it.

25. Resizr  is another free online image resizer and cropper. It has many useful features, but is easy to use. Resizr will help you to convert, crop, rotate or edit your image quickly.

Online Image Converters

Online format converters can be extremely convenient utilities. They let you convert between formats without having to install any software on your local machine. Let us take a look at some of the best free tools for changing image file formats.

26. Photo2Text allows users to convert an image to a text file of the original image.

27. PDF to JPG is an online PDF conversion tool that converts PDF files to JPG. You can upload any PDF from your computer or the cloud and have it quickly converted into JPG. It is totally free and secure, you can use it without email address and registration.

28. Text-Image.com is a free web-based image to HTML converter.

29. Picascii offers an easy way to create ascii art. The tool converts a picture into ASCII TEXT and HTML. It supports gif, jpeg and png image formats.

30. Share As Image allows you to highlight text anywhere on the web and quickly transform it into an image. It is especially useful for creating quoted images for sharing on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

31. Map2Pic is an online application that enables you to take screenshots from Google maps and save them as image files. Snapshots can be saved in png or jpg image formats.

32. Convert Hub is a free online graphic and image conversion tool. You can use this online utility to convert between multiple image file formats like ico, png, gif, jpg, bmp, ps, eps, tiff, and more. It is a great tool to make favicon.ico as well, which is the shortcut icon for your blog or site.

33. Image to Favicon.ico is a free online tool to convert an image, logo or photo into *.ICO icon format. Supported input image formats are jpg, gif, png, tiff and bmp.

The post 33 Tools to Create, Edit and Convert Images Online appeared first on PCE Blog.