Thing 13: Productivity Tools

Well, there were certainly a lot of things to look at in this thing. My initial reaction is that I spent quite a bit of time perusing possibile productivity tools. If I use one or more, my productivity could be increased. Meanwhile, it feels like I spent a lot of time looking at many tools I'll probably never use.


For the start page I chose NetVibes, not one of the choices mentioned. I learned about NetVibes from Michael Stephens in his spring 2008 presentation to Minnesota Health Science Libraries. I like the ability to choose and arrange elements, including e-mail, rss feeds, web searches, image searches, local weather, to do lists, and other highly useful tools on one page. I may use it as my start page at home. At work I use our library inhouse page which contains many databases and resources most relevant to my work. During the course of exploring thing 13 I also updated my iGoogle page, too.


While I found some of the calendar pages interesting and full of possibilities, I'm already managing an electronic calendar at work where I keep my meetings, appointments, and desk time up to date as well as a small datebook where I write my personal appointments. Right now it doesn't seem efficient to add another calendar to the mix. I think I might consider Google calendar when I retire. One tool I'm going to try is a list, Remember the Milk. I did get the countdown calendar to work and added it to the blog.

I took a look at Backpack and was impressed with the possiblities. My next step is to identify a project, either at work or at home, that I want to manage and give it a whirl.