As with any other job, PR experts are always looking for new, innovative ways to streamline their day-to-day activities. Whether it is catching up on the current news, connecting with editors, or tracking the effectiveness of our PR campaigns for our clients, we rely on some of the latest Web 2.0 and desktop applications, as well as a couple of other tools that hold categories of their own.

CNET's Webware has a great list of the 100 top Web apps, 10 each in each of 10 categories, as determined by Webware users and the fans of the products that were finalists in the awards. What I wanted to do is share eight of the most useful tools we use here at BLASTmedia that help us secure national media coverage for our clients. Here they are, in no specific order:

1. Twitter www.twitter.com - an online service that lets you broadcast short messages to your contacts, or "followers." It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place (follow some of us here at BLAST @BlastMedia, @MargieSchaffner, @careyhart, @aHalbers, @HillaryMoney, @LaurenBLAST, @ChantizzleB). This is helpful in our jobs because we can follow editors we work with on a daily basis and get an insight into what they are working on, what they look for, what events they will be attending, etc.

2. Facebook www.facebook.com - a popular social networking service, which gives users a place to make and explore personal profiles and interact with friends. This is helpful in our jobs because we are able to connect with editors who we work with, but also connect our clients with their customers through Facebook groups, profiles, or events.

3. FeedDemon www.feeddemon.com - an application that collects and manages your RSS feeds from your desktop. This is helpful in our jobs because we are able to track things like client coverage, client industry keywords, client competitors' news coverage, etc. Staying on top of what people are saying about clients and their industry is a key part of media relations and helps us with our reactive PR pitching.

4. Woopra www.woopra.com - a comprehensive, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. This is helpful in our jobs because it gives us, as well as our clients, the ability to track the effectiveness of our PR campaigns. Client Web site traffic also helps us figure out where we need to focus more of our time and effort.

5. Google News / Google Alerts www.google.com/news / www.google.com/alerts - a computer-generated news service that aggregates headlines from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide, groups similar stories together and displays them according to each reader's personalized interests. Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (Web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Much like FeedDemon, this is helpful in our jobs because we are able to track coverage, keywords, client competitor coverage, etc, but also what's happening in the world and our clients' industries that we can tie our clients into when making our media outreach.

6. Peter Shankman's HARO: Help A Reporter Out www.helpareporter.com - HARO connects journalists with the sources they require using a social media platform. HARO is already over 36,000 members and growing, and has a growing stable of national journalists using the service on a daily basis. This is helpful in our jobs because, while personal relationships with editors are our best way to deliver national media exposure to clients, we're always on the lookout for tools to help us generate even more media coverage.

7. Adobe ConnectNow www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow - a Web conferencing solution that connects people online to share a meeting. It is a great way to share ideas, discuss details, and complete work together -- all online. This is helpful in our jobs because many times editors want to see our clients' products in action and it is not economical or convenient to meet in person.

8. Pandora www.pandora.com - a music discovery and recommendation online service, creating stations based around a chosen artist or genre. Users can listen to tracks via a simplistic player, and if they like or dislike a song they can vote yes or no on it. This is helpful in our jobs because we love music here at BLAST! A little Oasis, Red Hot Chili Peppers, or Poison playing in the background can liven up any day!

Honorable Mention

TinyUrl www.tinyurl.com - a free service to make posting long URLs easier, and may only be used for actual URLs.

LinkedIn www.linkedin.com - an online network of more than 30 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.

Mozilla Firefox www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox - a free Web browser.

YouTube www.youtube.com - the most well-known video service on the Internet. It lets anyone share videos online, either from their hard drive or recorded using their computer's Web cam.

YouSendIt www.YouSendIt.com - a file-sharing service. It allows receivers to get files by clicking standard URL links.

Photoshop www.photoshop.com - a complete software solution for importing, processing, managing, and showcasing your images, as well as pixel-level editing and compositing

What tools do you use in your work?