Most of us spend a lot of time online doing stuff which can easily be done in a jiffy using some popular services and save you loads of time. Most of my friends think that I am using a lot of time doing blogging, social bookmarking, reading news on topic of my interest. In reality, I spend no more than one hour doing all this everyday. I just use the following regularly and get things done.
1. Google Reader and Bloglines - I have been into blogging since 2004 and keep a track of a number of blogs using Google Reader. This saves me from visiting all the blogs (and also from missing some of irregular bloggers who post once in a while), whenever a blog is updated I can see it in Google Reader and depending upon the topic and my interest I go through them. Though if a topic (sometime blogger as well) compels me to post comment I have to visit the blog. Once can easily categorize the blogs in Google Reader for ease of use. I categorize blogs on two basis, key words, and theme. Google Reader being from Google stable provides you with 'labels' so you can categorize (label) a blog into more than one category. I used to be on Bloglines, but Google Reader is far better option considering ease of use and other features.
2. Firefox and its extensions: Browsing with Firefox is a more productive and provides you loads of options compared to IE. This enables me to post bookmarks with just a click to Del.icio.us, Ma.Gnolia, BlueDot and discover some really great and useful sites using StumpleUpon. You can also install GreaseMonkey which gives you options to run third party scripts on a particular webpage in the browser. There are some very cool productive scripts using Gmail and GCalender. Though a word of cautions here, there are a number of extensions which provide no productivity and are more of a nuisance. They also make Firefox slow and unsteady so install extensions carefully. Google Toolbar is one extension you must have.
3. Remember the milk and Google Calender: The key to productivity is having a good habit of creating To Do Lists. Remember the milk and Google Calender give you this facility and loads of feature. Every weekend I spend sometime to create a ToDo List using Remember the milk / Google Calender. My Google Calender is configured to send me an sms (free of any cost and it works on most of Indian Cellphone networks) at specified time to remind me of a particular task . Remember the milk is a very good service and it can be integrated with Google Calender, though you can manage your Todo list using only Google Calender
4. iGoogle, Pageflakes, Netvibes: Startpages are very good tool to start your online journey daily. They gather all the things to one place and you can have a look at most of the things without hoping from one site to another. My iGoogle has Gmail Preview of mails, Wordsmith word of the day, news feed on particular tags, headlines from NYT, CNN, daily jokes, sports tid bits, remember the milk module, google notepad.. you name it and i have it there. So once I open my browser within 10 minutes I am updated.
5. Gmail and Labels: Gmail is one application capable of enhancing your productivity many time, if you can use it properly and know all its features and tweaks. I routed all my emails to Gmail only (including professional ids) and have applied a number of filters and labels. This saves me from checking my mails on different sites. Since I use Outlook for offline email reading, I keep one copy on gmail server, so even if I am traveling or do not have access to my laptop I can check them from any comp. It is also a cushion in case something goes wrong. You need to be a bit thoughtful while choosing Labels, normally I have some labels like M_I_T (Most Important Task), Rpl_Ltr (Reply Later), Useful_Info and so on. Once I read an email, I apply one or another label to it and that helps me in keeping track of these emails and necessary actions.
6. Windows Live Writer: Writing a blog online is real pain. So I use WLW (Window Live Writer) to write my blogs offline. I have configured all my blogs (I mirror post on all) so with one click I can check the spelling, adjust pictures, ping the blogservers... Though there are other offline blogeditors/writers but this comes with unicode support (to type in languages like Hindi, Marathi, Gujarat etc.), this feature is lacking in most of other options (Qumaana my earlier favorite was handicapped on this front). Technorati tags (now an inevitable part of a blog) can easily be added using this. So no need to remember <html> tags or ask you geek friend how to do this and that. It does everything. Though It doesn't support Yahoo 360 Bloggers.. :((. So to overcome this, I type everything in WLW and see it in WebPreview mode and then copy and paste it into Yahoo 360 compose box. It works fine.
7. Google News and Google Blogsearch: Open Google News and you will have access to all the major headlines so you need not go from one online news site to another. And if you are interested in particular topic, you just need to search google news with that keyword. Also if you are regularly searching news on a particular thing, its better to subscribe to customized search RSS feed in your Google Reader (will write about it later as this post is already getting too long..). Most of my friends are surprised when the start blogging and invariably I happen to be the first one to comment.. You just need to search on Google Blogsearch for a particular word (in my case I have four five key words which links all my friends... and whenever they are going online.. a mention to them is inevitable.. guess them..). For example, I keep track on if somebody is writing on Rural Finance, whoever there is an update I get it in my Google Reader. Though I have put some well thought filters to restrict spam or not so useful content.
