Over the years, I have experimented with multiple tools to capture thoughts and information for both when I’m in the office or when I’m on mobile. I find that the best applications allow me to capture my thoughts quickly and will enable me to organize the information quickly.

I discovered WorkFlowy a few years ago and used it for a while, but for some reason, I put it aside. A conversation with a friend a couple of months ago about how they are using WorkFlowy effectively brought it back to mind. I find I’m using it extensively now to capture and organize thoughts and information for several big projects I am working on.

Recently, I received this question from a long-time Texas subscriber about getting a security certificate:

Steve,

On July 1, Google will begin marking all sites that have not migrated to HTTPS as “not secure” in its Chrome browser. I want to move my website to HTTPS, but I’m not sure which of the three different SSL Certificates I should purchase: Domain Validation (DV) certificate, Organization Validation (OV) or Extended Validation (EV).

I’m sure that many agents are not even aware of this coming change and the potential negative effects it will have if they do not switch. I could certainly use some help in understanding the different types of certificates and what they do.

Thanks, Joe D.

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I’ve written quite a bit over the last couple of years about why your agency website needs to be secured. Joe’s question again highlighted the importance of this issue because Google is taking a hard-line stance. You can find two previous articles here and here.

Creating engaging visual images for articles and social posts are a great way to capture attention. It is estimated that people can process visual information ten times faster than reading the text in articles.

That’s why over the years I have written several articles about tools to help you create Infographics, Word Cloud graphics, and other visuals that help communicate the core concepts quickly. One of the tools I’ve written a lot about is Canva. If interested, the links to several articles are below:

• Canva’s New Physical Print Option
• Canva’s PowerPoint alternative
• Create Infographics with Canva
• Create Compelling Images with Canva

Canva is a stable and mature product and can be very useful.

The Visme Platform

However, I have been experimenting with a new graphics creation platform over the last few months that has become my new go-to tool for creating visual content. I can create infographics, presentation slides, and images for articles posted on my website. That tool platform is called Visme.