Event Planning Online: 14 Essential Tools

Free tools make planning events easier than ever. From the first stages of planning through post event followup, there are tools for every detail. The following list offers a taste of some of the best resources out there. You can think of it as a toolkit for planning events of all shapes and sizes. Let us know in the comments what your experience is with these tools and what others you’ve found helpful for organizing events in the past.

Discover the Truth About a Site's Online Traffic

You can find the traffic of a popular website (and compare it to another site) by entering the URL into compete.com. Or quantcast. This data is far more accurate than the charts Alexa offers, because most of the sites being measured cooperate. I'm pretty proud of Squidoo hitting the top 100 sites in the US.

For Conservatives Online, Plenty of Commentary But Not Enough News

A number of the conservative movement's prominent online figures are battling to be the right's equivalent of Talking Points Memo or Huffington Post--political organizations that report hard news. Many believe that to truly harness the power of the Web, political organizations must report their own news, rather than comment on reporitng from traditional outlets.

"The left needs Daily Kos, but they also need the Huffington Post," Politics Daily columnist Matt Lewis told Politico. He praised the roles of activists and opinion commentators on the right such as Red State's Erick Erickson, but noted that the conservatives have not yet matched the left's capability for original reporting.