Thing 13 - Online Productivity Tools

Before starting - I've been well aware that since the beginning of September, I've had roughly 15 blogs to do in 15 days in order to meet the 15th deadline. Simply, a blog a day (whether or not I'm exhausted or it's past 11 PM). Now, at last, online productivity tools. And the countdown widget . . . can I load it on the top of my page? (attempted, see above)

I found iGoogle to be the most pleasing customized home page, but not surprisingly, it seemed to already know a lot about me like my metro area, and a few interests (I was already logged in to Blogger edit mode).

At work, have our own library web site, so I'm not looking for any other home page. But I do wonder if any of these personalizations, these widgets, could be made available to users inside the company?

Additionally, this whole 23 things project has ignited a desire to do some non-work related blogging, and I can see making use of many of these tools in my home life/on MY home computer (also a desire).

In the midst of exploring these productivity tools, I decided I'd like to have some non-invasive background music, so I plugged into MPR classical. I was surprised later when I logged into a demo of Backpack that I didn't loose my music, it just played in the background.

Backpack is quite cool. I especially liked the capacity to email myself reminders. I wish my work calendar system could do this. Again, back to the firewall issues at work. I know that with each email revision, we hear that there are more Internet options they are trying to incorporate, and now I think I see some of what they might be, but again, firewall issues probably cause problems.

As for my home life, it might be nice to be able to send or update family to-do lists and planning for the weekend. And especially nice to be able to send it to someone else's iphone (not quite sure that this is available, but worth a try - feature shown on 'remember the milk').

I think for all of the apps I have looked at today, they are most applicable to my home life. I have a huge extended family event coming up in over a year (we're a small family, but spready thinly over the globe), and Basecamp looks like a good tool.