Very, very cool web apps....

Major digression coming up....

I've been busy lately....doing...other stuff. Nothing important really...just trying to get my whole freaking life in order.  I've been on a bit of a relentless (obsessive?) search driven on by the certainty that somewhere...out there...in cyber space, there is THE perfect web app that will help me ORGANIZE everything.  A place to capture these ideas and thoughts and to do's and don't forget's and the tell him/her/them...this/that/or the other thing....blog ideas...things I want to read, watch, listen to, think about, ponder...muse...cook.  Cook?  Did I say cook? Ahhhhh...scratch cook from the list.  

         

Oh...and it has to be free.  I have found so many cool...really cool, very cool, beyond cool...unbelievably cool apps out there.  And I think I've got some sort of a "system" figured out because...alas...even though there are unbelievably cool apps out there...none of them "does it all"....even though they say they do.  I've been reading some of the principles of Getting Things Done....and they make a lot of sense.  But actually doing it is more difficult than reading about doing it. 

As you have probably surmised by now, this post has nothing to do with mercy...or sacrifice...or anything spiritual really...but just a little about some of those cool apps I've been dinking around with.

First of all there is google calendar.  I love google calendar.  You can have an unlimited number of calendars...and they are all COLOR CODED...colors are automatically generated...but you can change to a color of your choosing.  So you could have a calendar for work (green) and a calendar for home (purple)...one for a blog (pink)  or for your family (green) ...or your husband...or spiritual pursuits etc etc etc.  What you enter on the calendar does not necessarily have to be time specific. You can enter "tasks."  Check it out if you have any anal tendencies...like me. 

Another app that I have been using for a while...free....is called reqall.  After you sign up for an account and register your phone number with them, you can add things to your to do list on the fly...via phone.  It is then transcribed and sent to you via email and to your account on the reqall site on the web.  There are all kinds of ways to categorize it there....labels, locations, times....mind boggling.  There are also some other bells and whistles that are available...for $2.99 a month or 25 bucks for the year.  It's come in quite handy...mornings I am hurrying out to my car...late for work and suddenly remembered something I absolutely could not forget.  Sometimes the transcription, which is done electronically...with a touch of human intervention, is amusing.

"What are Emily's plans this weekend" turned into "Water Emily's plants this weekend"

It will also remind you of stuff...if you know the right questions to ask when you call the number.  I haven't used that feature yet. 

Then there is zoho notebook...and scrapbook plus (a firefox extension) that will let you save stuff you find on the web.  And Instapaper and Read Later which also saves stuff from the web that you want to "read later."

So that is what I've been up to for days.  My kids have oft described me as OCD...I think they might have a point.....