Okay, so we all like convenience, right? Most of us aren’t sitting around wondering how we could make our lives just a little more complicated. Well, for us at Arbenting, we’ve found 7 online tools that we use daily to help keep things, and by things I mean us, more organized, focused, and overall on track. To add a little more convenience to your daily dose of online activity simply gaze at our assembled structural saviors.
1. iGoogle
If you’re like us and use a ton of google services, then you may have already heard of iGoogle. But if you haven’t, then perk up because life’s about to get simpler. igoogle arranges all of your google services plus more on your own personal homepage, built right into the google search engine.
2. Remember the Milk
The best todo list reminder site we’ve found. Remember The Milk allows the user to personalize multiple categories to completely customize the service to suit your various needs. Need to have reminders sent to you via email or your cell phone, done. We know. It’s awesome.
3. Evernote
Speaking of spoilage. How about Digital notebooks. How about as many Digital notebooks as you need or want? Coupled with both an online version as well as a downloadable program, both which can also easily be synchronized with each other, makes Evernote simply wonderful.
4. Gmail
First, let us offer a suggestion. Dump all of your external mail clients and start using Gmail for all of your email needs. It can smoothly access other online mail accounts such as hotmail and yahoo with a little help from Izymail. You can also use Gmail seamlessly with your own domain. Turn on keyboard shortcuts and make good use of tags as well as the archive feature. Download Gmail Notifier for Firefox and add the gmail widget to your igoogle page for access to your email where ever you have access to a computer.
5. Toggl
Time may be on our side, but it’s a pain to always keep track of. Though
Toggl’s changing all of that. This is an extremely easy to use time management system. Allows you to deftly track the amount of time spent on various projects so you don’t have to. This will help you remove the guesswork from time tracking for your clients.
6. Pandora
While working through your various projects, if you like to have music going in the background, as we do, then this is a website you need to know about. Just plug in your favorite artists, albums and songs and let Pandora build a radio station tailor made to suit your preferences. By matching other artists tonalities, styles, rhythmic structures, and much more to your favorites, Pandora will open your music world up wider than you ever imagined.
7. Rescue Time
Rescue Time keeps track of everything you do on your computer so that you know exactly where your time is being spent. If you need to follow your productivity, or want to torture yourself, log on and let the trail be spun. Let’s face it, we can kid ourselves into believing we worked more hours on our computer than we gamed last week, but Rescue Time puts the undeniable truth out there.
Wrap-Up
So, what are some of the online tools that make your life easier?
User Recommended Tools
Live Writer — recommended by Van Blize
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Please tell me how to smoothly access yahoo and hotmail mail with gmail? I’m begging. I know you can forward with Yahoo Plus but Hotmail won’t that I can tell.
Gracie, thanks for asking this, it’s something we should have put into the article originally. Izymail will enable pop access to any of the free email providers which you can then set up at gmail.
Nice collection of helpful sites. I’ve been using “Live Writer” for a while and it’s okay. The best thing is being able to post to many different types of blogs. Great tool for me. Thanks.
Thanks for that link to Izymail but it’s only a trial right? I’m trying to convert the household to Gmail and I have one person with Hotmail and one with Yahoo accounts that they’re not quite ready to let go of. I thought forwarding those accounts to Gmail for awhile would get them acclimated slowly to the new interface but I didn’t want to pay for the privilege for something that would just be temporary anyway, you know? I think I’ll just have to talk them into sending out a blanket email to everyone in their address books informing them of their new Gmail addresses.
Thanks for this article btw, and I’m now checking out Rescue Time which tells me I spend way too much time whining in the comments section of other people’s blogs. ;)
@Gracie — Yes, Izymail is only a trial and after that it’s subscription based but it’s really cheap, especially if you only need it for 1 year. I will say that I’ve never used it myself though so I can’t comment on how useful it actually is. I also still have a yahoo account that I’ve been slowly trying to faze out and am realizing how difficult that is to do.
Isn’t Rescue Time both fascinating and a bit scary?
@Van Blize — Thank you for the Live Writer recommendation, I’ve added it to the list and am going to check it out in the next couple of days when I find time.
I have got to try Evernote and Rescue Time out.
Pandora radio does not work outside of USA.
Great list BTW.
@Nishi — Those are Angie’s two favorites on the list. Both are highly recommended!
@Infonote — It’s great to hear that you enjoyed the list. It’s a shame Pandora doesn’t work outside of the USA.
Thanks for the links. I’ll definitely be checking some of the time management apps!
Andrews last blog post..My Ink Trail — Best of the Web, July 2008
I have only ever used iGoogle, I think I may check out a few of the others you mentioned.
Thanks for a good list. I use just about each one and I’m gonna check out the ones I don’t.