Google Reader is the website I open more than any other. Except maybe Gmail, but that’s always open. Totally doesn’t count. Point is, I use Google Reader a lot. I use it to follow blogs and websites, to keep track of all my favorite people, and much, much more.

Reader’s the center of all my information consumption, but previously wasn’t so good at letting you share that information. If you wanted to bookmark something, or share a cool article with a friend, your options were limited. You’d either star an item, and then come back to it later, or you’d share it – but then only other Google Reader users could see it, and then that was only if you were friends on Google Reader. Which I have, like, three of.

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Tags: bookmarking, feeds, Google, google reader, rss, sharing, social
Categories: Google, Tools

For more and more people these days, our identities are centered online. Whether you have a company, a blog, or just a Facebook page, most of us have some sort of online presence.

The problem arises, however, when we’ve got more than one space online where we’re present. And that’s true for a huge, and rapidly-growing, percentage of people. How do we keep interested people, whether it’s one person or ten million, in the know about all the different places we’re active?

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Tags: browser, business, card.ly, freeware, identity, web browser
Categories: The Web, software

About three weeks ago, I finally got an invite for Google Voice, the new phone-managing service from Google that I’d been itching to try out since before it was even called Google Voice (back then, it was called GrandCentral, and I still wanted it really, really badly).

Google Voice has a ton of great features, and in a lot of ways fundamentally changes the way you’ll use your phone. A lot of things suddenly become easier with Google Voice – checking your voicemail, sending text messages, and more – and they’re all best dealt with through your computer.

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Tags: cell-phone, Google, google voice, mac, mobile, Mobiles, phone, Windows
Categories: Google, The Web, software

Evernote is one of the best applications I’ve ever used, and is a critical part of my work and personal organization. Everything I think, do or see that I want to record goes straight into Evernote – it’s quite the database of my brain at this point.

Everyone, it seems, has covered Evernote in the past, talking about how great it is, how to use it, and all of its wonderful features. You’d think it would have been done to death by now, right?

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Tags: evernote, note taking, notes, Online Services, sort notes
Categories: Desktop Manager, software

I’m a student. I’m also a writer, a researcher, and a number of other things that all seem to involve a ton of research. Particularly that student thing. An increasing number of us, regardless of what we do, rely on the Web to get information, do research, and get work done.

For most of us (at least for me), that research involves the fun little dance of switching between Microsoft Word and the Internet, constantly reading, writing, losing my place, cursing the world, crying uncontrollably, and then getting back to work. But I digress.

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Tags: annotation, internet, notebook, online service, organizer, research, webnotes
Categories: The Web, Tools

I’ve spent the last several months trying to figure out, once and for all, my perfect email system. All my email is in Gmail, but there were certain things I didn’t love about using Gmail – the offline features are hit-or-miss, there’s no reading pane, and a few notably missing keyboard shortcuts caused me some problems.

Other than that, though, Gmail had a ton to offer – integration with my Google Calendar, the ability to send and receive emails from a number of different accounts, and ubiquitous access to my updated email inbox from any computer. (more…)

Tags: Email, gmail, google-mail, mozilla, shortcuts, thunderbird, webmail
Categories: Email