Patrick is an independent, UK-based e-learning consultant specialising in helping organisations develop creative approaches to learning with and without technology. His site is at www.networked-learning.com. 

He writes: "I really enjoyed the exercise of choosing 10 favourite tools, because it reminded me I should use them more, instead of the many distinctly un-favourite tools I'm kind of forced to use..."

Patrick's Top 10 Tools as at 24 July 2007

1. Flock - the browser. Perhaps less revolutionary than it first appears, but it always reminds me what the web is for (to use David Weinberger's words)

2. Google Maps, particularly the satellite pics, because they let me wander endlessly.

3. Bloglines - because it just brings everything that people are saying together very neatly.

4. MindMapper - how do people function without mindmaps? I can't understand it. This isn't the funkiest mapping tool in the world, but it's mapped the contents of my brain for many years and has just about managed to keep up.

5. Skype - no explanation needed.

6. Axure - a neat tool for producing wireframes and basic prototypes. Not rocket science by any means, but a precious tool for conveying to clients what's going on with their sites.

7. Squarespace - my site and blog are created in this. Just really useful for people like me who don't really want to know too much about what's going on "under the hood."

8. Swishmax - another code-hider; kind of Flash for dummies. I'll use Flash as well, but sometimes Swish is just quicker and slicker.

9. Acid - it was interesting seeing Clive Shepherd mention Cubase; I find the high-end DWS packages too over the top, so when I was thinking about what music software to include I thought I'd go down market. I know I'm way too old to be producing dance music but, well, I do, and I do it using Acid.

10. Firefox - because it's my main window on the world.