I remember a time where PDAs and smart phones were a sign of status- you were either a business man or a tech geek. Now smartphones and internet enabled phones are as ubiquitous as the air we breath (you like that?). As someone who spends a lot of time on the mobile web (or the web in general), I thought I’d provide a list of some mobile sites that I find useful.
This is for all of use Blackberry (possibly only on Verizon Wireless) users. The Blackberry Web Panel allows you to manage (add/edit/delete and filter) all of the email addresses going to your blackberry device. You can also change PINs if you ever switch devices. I use it to skip sending emails I send to my device, as well as a few filters to make sure I don’t get repeat emails. I strongly recommend taking a look at it if  you have several email addresses forwarding to your Blackberry.
Here is the post on the Google Blog. I’ve wanted this for feature for some time now. All we need is support for GCal and you can kiss desktop applications good by.
A lot of people who use Windows have access to Microsoft Works, Microsoft’s free ‘solution’ to Office. Today my brother asked me how he would convert a Works word processing document (.wps) to a Word document (.doc), since he did his homework using Works but didn’t have access to that at school- they only have Office. I have Works and was going to convert it using that when I noticed GMail gave the option of opening the .wps using GoogleDocs. As it turns out, GoogleDocs supports .wps documents, which you can then convert to .doc by going to File->Download file as->.doc. It’s as simple as that!
While it may not always be an option people go to (since you can save a .wps as a .doc in Works), it is one that is readily available just so long as you have an Internet connection. I feel it’s one of many smaller features Google adds into the products that give the user a whole lot of convenience.
As you might have guessed, I am a huge fan of all things Google. In the last week or so I have come across some great things that make Google easily integrate with other services I use, making it so much better.
These changes will make my life infinitely easier and infinitely more attached to Google. But hey, I gotta organize my online life somehow, right?
Yesterday while changing my status on GMail Chat I noticed something that I can only describe as ‘awesome’. Below my “busy” status messages I saw the AOL Instant Messenger icon accompanied by the text, “Sign into AIM.” Beginning yesterday, according to the Official GMail Blog, Firefox users and English IE7 users have the ability to sign into AIM using the Chat function in GMail. It organizes your buddies alphabetically by status, and any AIM buddies have the AIM icon to the right of their name. The different order is something to get used to, but I can live without the groups if it means GTalk functionality for my AIM screen name.
As someone who accesses a multitude of different computers daily, I’ve got to say this is really convenient. Now my entire buddy list is mobile so if I do need to contact someone, I don’t need to worry about the computer having an AIM client or having to use portable apps. With this I can basically live my life out of a browser.
Of course, I do have one simple request (incidentally, in programming simple requests aren’t usually simple): AIM support in the GTalk desktop application. If that happens, there is a good chance I won’t be using the AIM desktop client anymore. None the less, yet again Google has wowed me.
As a college student I am often bouncing around from PC to PC as I go through my day on campus. This often means when I want to work on a project in between classes, I end up emailing it to myself and keeping it in my inbox. GMail, of-course, lends itself to this quite nicely. With it’s search, star, and label features, as well as close to 3GB of storage, you can make a nice file server out of GMail.
Up until just recently, I have been emailing myself these documents with some fake subject and body text just to make the process faster. However, since you can easily search your mail, there is a better way. What I have been doing recently, and plan to do with past assignments, is in the subject put the name of the project, attach the project and in the body of the email use comma separated key words. For example, if I wrote a PHP program for my Web Dev class that uploaded images and emailed myself the PHP file. The subject would be “Image Uploader” and in the body of the email would be “PHP, Web Dev class, school, project” etc. This makes it infinitely easier to go back later and search for something you may have lost. Later!
Over at College V2, Sean has an ongoing series called What’s Your System, where various people talk about how they stay organized. I have already posted some things on Productivity, but I figure I can talk about what I do.
I rely heavily on my Treo 650 Smartphone. It is a Palm based phone that comes with all the standard Palm software: Calendar, Tasks, Memo Pad and Contacts. The calendar is the most important of the 4. All of my appointments and major assignments are in it. Everything is color coordinated and has a reminder for it. I can’t say how many times the alarm on my Treo has saved me. The tasks are also a nice feature for really important stuff because on their due date they show up on my calendar page. The memos and contacts are kind of self explanatory. Everything also syncs with Outlook, which I use when I am on my computer. The Treo also interfaces with a web-calendar made by Verizon that I can use if I need to. I have also downloaded a nice, free application for my Treo (or any palm based device) called School Work. It’s a cool assignment pad that you can take down your assignments with- it organizes them by day, week and month.
Though I did mention Tasks for Palm above, what I rely on for all my tasks (not just the real important ones), is Remember the Milk. It is a free web based tasks application that allows you to post tasks with notes, due dates, websites, time allocation, etc., as well as the ability to E-Mail yourself tasks. There is also a mobile version of the site that I access via my Treo. It really is a great site that I highly recommend. (hmmm maybe a full write up soon?)
Finally, I always carry a small legal pad with me incase I have to jot a lot of things down. I usually end up transferring those things to my Treo, but the legal pad is good for meeting notes, etc. O yeah- GMail is piviotal in my life as well. I use it for email reminders, as a file server, and a conduit for all of my other email (school, business, personal, professional).
Leave some tips or tricks in the comments if you’d like. Later!
Update: This post is featured on College V2! Thanks Sean!
Lifehaker tells us how to create groups in Gmail.
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