This is part of a biweekly series on tools, resources and apps to help PR and media professionals be more productive and effective.

Infogr.am is a simple website that enables you to participate in the infographics craze by creating your own infographics and charts. It doesn't require any prior knowledge of programming or design but still produces visually appealing results.

Once you log in to the site with your Facebook or Twitter credentials, you'll be taken to a page where you can choose to create a new infographic or chart, or access your library of infographics and charts.

Infogr.am offers users a selection of sleek templates to choose from. After choosing one, you can add and customize various types of content, including charts, photos, titles, text and quotes. Charts can be built with data you input in the in-site spreadsheet, or with data that's uploaded to the site.

Below is an infographic generated with Infogra.am to help you get a better feel for what the site can do:

Infogr.am, which is still in beta, isn't without its hiccups, but it's still an incredibly simple, intuitive and impressive tool for building infographics and charts for whatever needs you have.

Another tool for reporters is ProfNet, a service of PR Newswire, has helped journalists and experts connect since 1992. Writers can search the ProfNet Connect database of more than 50,000 profiles; send a ProfNet query by email to thousands of subscribers around the globe; or get timely experts and story ideas by email.