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Here comes another edition out of the useful tools series. This time I want to recommend two online services which really work for me. With that I mean, I actually try them and stick to them without thinking after a short while:" Yes, but ...". Of course these tools are more productivty tools. As you might have noticed, Fredrik is cleary responsible for the social network applications on this blog ;-)
The first application I want to recommend is Remember The Milk or just RTM (maybe I have done this before?). It is a task list organizer which is just great. I had some initial problem understanding the way the UI works, since it does some strange DHTML stuff when you are hovering over a task list. That is when you use the mouse. When you take the time to learn some of the keyboard shortcuts you will love this tool even more. The beauty of RTM is that I don't have to be online all the time. I can access a mobile version from my phone or even better send a new task to RTM by sending a text message to Twitter (and yes, I created a Twitter account just for that!) There is also a plugin which allows you to integrate you tasks into Google Calendar. Over time I tried so many different task organizers, but this one really works for me.
The second application I want to recommend is Dropbox. It is basically another online data store. Nothing special really. The reason this tool convinced me is the integration with my Mac. It is just awesome. After installing the Dropbox application on my computer I can see an addtional folder in my finder and I can just drag&drop files into it and they get immediately synchronized to my web storage. I even get feedback whether the synchronization is complete via some nice icons. Of course there is also a web interface to dropbox where you can also the history of each file. This means usng dropbox gives you also some sort of version control for files placed into it. It is also great for any files you want to either just access from the internet or maybe edit from multiple different computers. Dropbox also has the concept of public folders into which you can drop files. This files are then accesible via URLs dropbox creates for you. You can even create online picture albums on Dropbox. The only downer is that the free account only offers you 2 GB. If you want to use more you have to upgrade and pay for more space. There is also no option to just pay what you use for. Instead you have to go to a 5 GB plan right away (I think). Currently I just stick to the free 2 GB and use Dropbox for simple documents.
Anyways, have to run ...
--Hardy