AudioPen is a voice recording tool that transforms my rambling thoughts into coherent, well-structured text. I recommended it last year, but it’s worth resharing since it’s now available as an app on both iOS and Android. The free version allows you to record voice notes up to 3 minutes long and save up to 10 processed notes, all without needing a credit card. The prime version offers more features, including the ability to record up to 15 minutes, save unlimited notes, and adjust the writing style. I continue to use AudioPen regularly for summarizing calls, capturing ideas, and drafting newsletter posts. — CD

Difftext.com is an online tool that quickly finds the differences between two blocks of text. You can copy and paste text or drag in files, and it will highlight the differences in plain text, markdown, or code. There have been many times in the past when I wished I had something like this, so I was very happy when Recomendo reader Spencer Smith shared it. — CD

I've been using the Image downloader - Imageye Chrome extension for the past year, and it has yet to fail me. This extension allows me to quickly and easily browse and bulk download all images from a webpage. The features I find most useful are the ability to filter images by width, height, or URL, and then save images to subfolders while renaming them. Overall, it does exactly what I need efficiently. — CD

If you ever need to find words within words, anagrams.io is a useful website to bookmark. It’s a free anagram sentence generator for English, German, French, and Spanish. — CD 

Scribd is a document hosting service that charges $12 a month to download the files it hosts. Since it makes money offering books I’ve written without paying me royalties, I have no compunction recommending this website that lets you download files that Scribd hosts for free. Note that I am not suggesting you download copyrighted material. I use it to download public domain documents, such as court records. – MF

Sublime is a personal knowledge management tool crafted with soul. I've been allowing myself to digitally hoard all the beautiful words and insightful advice I come across online. Everything you save in Sublime becomes a card, and these cards can be organized into collections. There's also a communal aspect to Sublime; you can follow other users and search public collections for cards to add to your library. I love that it encourages connections, synchronicities, and learning. I imported all of my Readwise book highlights and have been using Sublime as a literary Pinterest. The app is still in beta, and there is a waitlist, but Recomendo readers can skip the line and test it out for free. If you do sign up, here’s my profile — follow me and I’ll follow you back! — CD

I've tried using mind maps and Kanban board tools for brainstorming and organization, but they often become overwhelming. So far, I am very satisfied with the minimalist Card Buddy app, which is incredibly intuitive. I didn’t need to learn anything new to start using it. You can create an infinite canvas, drag around cards, drop in images, and customize the layout, style, and colors. It requires a one-time payment of $20 and is available exclusively on Mac and iOS. — CD 

While reading an article, I came across a link to a court document hosted on Scribd. However, Scribd charges a monthly fee of $12 to access their hosted files. Since I didn't want to subscribe just to read a document that is in the public domain, I used a website called Scribd.vpdfs.com to download the file instead. (You may want to check out the numerous complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau by users who claim that Scribd continued to charge them even after they canceled their subscription.) — MF

I need to transcribe a large number of recorded interviews every month.. I used to be a subscriber to Otter.ai, but it has a limit of 10 uploads per month. I have found a superior replacement, notta.ai, which is cheaper ($8.25 per month) and offers 1,800 minutes (30 hours) of transcription per month, which is more than enough for my needs. Notta's free plan provides 120 minutes, which should be sufficient for most people. I’ve also noticed that Notta is faster and just as accurate as Otter. — MF

If you need to merge, split, compress, or convert PDFs, try ILovePDF. This free site transforms PDFs into various file formats (and vice versa). You can also use it to edit, sign, unlock, encrypt, and repair PDFs. — MF

PowerOutage.us is a near real-time map of power outages in the United States. States are color-coded based on the number of customers experiencing power loss. By clicking on individual states, you can access more detailed information about the specific outages in the counties of that state. — MF

This website is a tool for ranking a list of items such as movies, video games, restaurants, songs, or anything else.  You start by inputting an unordered list of the items you want to rank. Then you click the button, and it displays two items from the list. Click your favorite of the two, and then it displays another pair of things from your list. After several rounds, the site generates a ranked list for you, ordering your items from best to worst. — MF

I’ve been using the new Readwise Reader as a repository for all my digital highlights. As an added bonus for users, there is a Weekly Wisereads newsletter that gives me the most highlighted content across the internet. That goes beyond just articles and includes the most highlighted YouTube video, Twitter thread, PDF or handpicked RSS feeds. The newsletter has also been gifting away free EPUBS by notable authors to add to your Reader. I’m an avid user of my Readwise highlighting app, so I really appreciate reading what everyone else is highlighting and reflecting on. — CD 

A lot of the dots in a QR code are superfluous, meaning that they can be arranged into a picture, and not just randomly. Thus you can make the QR code into a picture. This neat little free website called QArt Coder will generate a QR for a website you give it (say your homepage) using an image you give it (say your portrait), yielding a QR code with a stylized image of you (or say a logo, or totem). Short urls and small high contrast images work best. I’m making stickers from my impressionist QR self-portrait. Hold a phone to it, and it takes you to my home page. — KK

When I travel internationally, some of the websites I use for work and entertainment block connections outside the United States. For the last year, I’ve been using ProtonVPN, which is based in Switzerland and has strict privacy policies (it doesn’t keep logs of the websites you visit). I use ProtonVPN to route my internet service through one of Proton’s U.S. hosts, so all the websites I visit think I’m in Los Angeles no matter where I happen to be. They offer a free version, but I pay $100 a year for higher speed and additional options. — MF

Some computer and software problems can only be solved by getting the expert onto your computer. The way to do that remotely is with TeamViewer. My tech-savvy son acts as my IT-support guy, and so he comes onto my computer, from wherever he is, on his computer. We use TeamViewer which enables this remote connection instantly, easily, securely and for free. (Free for private use. TeamViewer’s income comes from businesses users.) He is able to control my machine remotely. It works like magic, and because we both have it installed, we’ll invoke it without hesitation. (Of course, be sensible about using or installing this powerful tool.) — KK

Think of Setapp like Netflix for Macintosh applications. For a monthly subscription fee, you get access to 210+ curated apps. I’ve recommended Setapp here before, but they have a few new apps I find myself using every day that I want to mention: Rocket Typist, Paste, and TextSniper. Setapp is usually $10 a month, but here’s a link to get a year for $69. — MF

I’ve been a paying subscriber to Setapp for years. It’s a subscription service to over 200 Mac apps. They carefully curate the apps and find ones that are well made and useful. Some of my favorites are CleanMyMac X, Luminar, Downie, CleanShot X, Permute, ClearVPN, World Clock Pro, and CloudMounter. It’s $10 a month, but new users can get their first year for $70. — MF.

I often come across text on my computer that I can’t copy, such as error messages, screenshots, PDFs, or Kindle Cloud reader pages. I bought a $4 optical character recognition utility called TextSniper that lets me grab uncopyable text that’s on my display and save it as plain text to the clipboard. (It also reads QR and barcodes!) I quickly have become dependent on it. (It’s Mac-only.) — MF

I’ve been using CleanMyMac X every day for a few years now. It’s an all-in-one Mac utility and health monitoring system that makes it easy to check my internet speed, see how much storage I have on my hard drives and cloud storage accounts, completely delete applications, scan for malware, and find and zap space-hogging files. The latest version has M1 support, improved navigation, and a quick way to remove unneeded code from Universal binaries. — MF