#14: Online Productivity Tools

Since I am in love with all things Google, I quite naturally have chosen iGoogle as my start page. I like it okay, but I don't really use it all that often. I have enough Firefox extensions and multiple home pages that every time I open a browser I know pretty much all of this information. I have an extension that alerts me to new Gmail messages, for instance, and one that gives me the weather. I think it's a fun page, but ultimately, not that useful for me.

Now the online calendars, however, are essential for me. I use Google Calendar, and I use it keep track of the different spheres of my life. Google allows you to have multiple calendars in one, so I have one for work, one for appointments, one for bills, etc. I use the one for work and I embed it on my work website so that my online students can see where I am when they are setting up appointments. For a while, my library used Google Calendar to keep track of our leave, study room reservations, and instruction sessions. Now that my institution has switched to Outlook, we are expected to use that calendar instead. But since I have an attachment to Google, I have downloaded a program that syncs my Outlook and Google Calendar to each other. Now I can use Google, but my colleagues can still see my schedule on Outlook--best of both worlds!

I've tinkered around with to-do lists, but I just haven't fully committed. I find myself forgetting they exist, and not checking them for a while. Remember the Milk integrates with Google now, but I still haven't bothered to do anything with it. I suppose this will be one productivity tool that won't be helping my productivity!

What else? We use CutePDF at work all the time. It's great for saving websites without getting all the graphics etc., messed up. I do love Lifehacker--it's a fantastic website for tips and it's in my Google Reader.