I am like a kid in a candy store when it comes to new tools and applications out there. I love to try them all. When push comes to shove though, only a few survive the cut as far as making it to the list of applications I actually use day to day.
Google Calendar - It might not be the prettiest girl at the dance, but boy does she know how to get down with her bad self. Google Calendar has never won points for beauty, but is more functional than anything else out there today. I use this one for just about every date reminder there is, from invoice due dates to birthdays.
MooURL - I probably could close my eyes and pick a link shortener out of a hat and come out with a winner. I won’t lie, I like MooURL.com just because the name makes me giggle.
Gmail - My e-mail situation is kind of oddly setup. I have all my external POP3 e-mail accounts plugged into Gmail, and then connect from Gmail to Thunderbird via IMAP. This way I can easily access my mail via the web or desktop, and a few other perks such as double spam filtering (counting what the server side Spam Assassin does, then put Gmail’s spam filtering on top of that).
Google Docs - Google Docs is one thing I just started using again, not too long ago. I needed to have a few documents easily accessible to me, no mater where I was - and Google Docs made that an easy thing to do.
Instapaper - This awesome site replaced my “read later” bookmark folder in Firefox. Using a simple bookmarklet, you can save any link to read later and the site itself gives you a neat list of links and the ability to “skip” (mark it read) or to mark the link unread. Very simple, and because of that, very effective.
Ping.fm - I use this web site to socialize myself. I can post a message out to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and every other social network under the sun in one go. Great for promoting your work, or just to say hello on all the social networking sites out there.
Google Notebook - This I use a little differently than most. I store a lot of the information from work on this site, such as FAQ’s and hard to find information. That way I have it all in one spot (and it is searchable).
Google Reader - Boy, this is turning into an “I love Google” list, isn’t it? The reason I use Google Reader for all my RSS reading is due to the fact that I can make it “wide view” very easily, and all I need to do to browse the news is scroll down. Don’t need much else for news reading.
I’m always looking for something new to add to the list. I think the major problem is there isn’t anybody doing anything drastically new or different. It is just the different spin on the same idea (no mater what that idea might be). However, I could just be a picky person.
Comments and Feedback