Thing 13. Online Productivity Tools

For this Thing, I started with creating my own homepage. I took a look at Google and at Pageflakes. I entered the same things into each tool to see what I could see. I liked Pageflakes better. It put everything I wanted on one page, thus the name homepage. When I entered the same things into Google, it had a different page for every category I chose. Too much work for a productivity tool. I like seeing it all on the one page. It had my local news and weather on the top and then news from USA Today and CNN elsewhere on the page. It had a scrumptious sounding recipe on the page, a tip of the day concerning seasoning a cast iron skillet, movie listings for my area, and the sudoku game. Perfect and condensed. When I wanted to see the same things on Google, I had to flip through all the tabs. Not productive for me. So, if I were to keep one of these for my homepage, it would be Pageflakes. However, it doesn't really work for me at work, and I don't really use the computer too much at home, so I don't expect it will become my permanent homepage. It was fun to explore, though.

Our library team uses Google calendar. We have one sign-on for the team and we use it to schedule our hours for virtual reference. It is nice for scheduling because you can see who is signed up for what times, pick an open time and sign up. Or you can see who does VR ahead of you, so that if they forget to sign off you can remind them.

To do lists: my outlook calendar works just fine for things I need to do for work and I will continue to use it. As far as my personal life, I will stick with the old fashioned way of jotting it down on a piece of paper. That works for me and it can be recycled when I have completed the list. I would rather not be reminded by my phone when I am out somewhere.

The little white box below is my attempt to put a countdown widget on the blog. Is it me or is it justsayhi.com? Well, I did successfully put the countdown widget on the left side of my blog. However, it still won't countdown. I give up. On the Thing 14...