Thing 14

Online Productivity Tools.

This was a fun thing to explore. I tried out the three customized homepages, but PageFlakes gave a message that it was being updated, so I wasn't able to actually view that one, so I really was only able to look at iGoogle and My Yahoo. I much prefer iGoogle. The interface has a clean, mature appearance, and I already use Google for Gmail and other features, such as the calendar, which takes me into the next topic of this post. Google Calendar is actually quite useful and simple to add and update. At work, we recently switched from mail hosted on the system's server to Gmail accounts, and so that also meant a switch from Outlook Calendar to Google Calendar. How NICE to be able to just view and edit the library's staff calendar right from an email account. For the most part, I really like Google Calendar -- it's a breeze to use.

As for the other gadgets mentioned in this Thing, I checked out the lists, but they both required registration, and again, I did not want to register for yet another service. Remember the Milk looked like it could be useful, but my cell phone already has a document/note function on it, so I often use that to create lists if I don't have paper or pencil handy. And I can access my email via my phone, so I will sometimes just email myself reminders, as well. I do prefer the old standby real paper & pencil kinds of notes, too, and often use those the most.

As for the PDF converters listed, I use PDFcreator both at home and at work for converting documents to PDFs. It's free to download, fast and simple to use. I did also check out the link to the Top 10 Productivity Websites listed and saw TinyURL listed at the very top. I've been using this site for years and years, and I love it. So simple to use, and it's a great way to package up a long URL into a tiny one that doesn't take up multiple lines in an email or an IM window.

Because it was listed in the Top 10 site above, I may check out the MyStickies site, even though it requires both registration and download. It sounds like a useful little tool that I wouldn't mind experimenting with -- and it might even be something that will come in handy when browsing websites. I oftentimes bookmark something and forget why (and even though tags would be useful to help me maybe remember why, I will not resort to using them any time soon, for reasons mentioned previously).