Business Associations

• Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce
   
• PARO Centre for Women Enterprise
   
• Thunder Bay Business Women's Network
   
• Gillies & Area Business Association

ON-line Associations

Templates

• Avery templates
• Microsoft Office templates

Affordable Clipart:

• www.clipart.com

Create your own photo galleries:

• www.picasaweb.google.com

• Picasa - Find, edit, and share your photos in seconds.  Easily remove red eye and fix photos

FREE Web Tools:

• PDFCreator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/) installs a virtual “printer” on your computer that creates a “.pdf” file whenever you print to it.

• Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/) consists of an online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program. 

• Google Analytics -  has been re-designed to help you learn even more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) –  http://www.webconfs.com/ is a GREAT site that provides lots of detail and tips, and a large collection of tools for evaluating and tuning up a web-site for optimal ranking by search engines. 

• My Committee (http://www.mycommittee.com/) - Set up committees with a private web portal, distribute agendas, minutes, committee documents, track action items, track attendance, keep notes, comments and resolutions.  COST – Free for a single committee, with only 10M storage space, viewing limited to last 3 meetings.  Several upgrade options are available, starting at $ 300 per year.

   

• OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org/index.html) is a free open-source product that was developed to break the monopoly of the Microsoft Office product suite.  It emulates the Microsoft Office look and feel where feasible.   OpenOffice.org can work with Microsoft Office ‘97/2003 file formats.  There is a Microsoft Office plug-in that allows it to read OpenOffice.org default format files.  It includes the following components.

  1.   Writer – A word processor similar to Microsoft Word.  It also includes the ability to export documents in .pdf format, create and edit web pages and has spreadsheet functions available in its tables.

  2.  Calc – A spreadsheet similar in power to Microsoft Excel. 

  3.  Impress – This is a presentation program similar to Microsoft Powerpoint.  It can export directly to an Adobe Flash format (.swf) so the file can be played on any computer with a Flash player installed, as well as to the Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt) file format.  It is apparently a little weak in ready-made presentation designs, but templates are available on the internet.

  4.  Base – A database program similar to Microsoft Access. 

  5.  A drawing utility, an equation editor, a macro recorder, and a programming language.  Extensions are also available to add functionality.