Thing #16: Organization & Productivity on the Web!?!

It's more likely than you think.

Contrary to popular belief, the Internet is not just a place to look at funny cat photos, or rot your brain on YouTube, or pirate torrent legitimately purchase and download music, movies & games.  There are a number of services and apps that are actually designed to help you keep organized and be more productive, and the majority of them are free, to boot!  Check out some of these productivity-boosting technologies after the jump.
Believe it or not, Google is not just a search engine anymore.  In fact, Google pioneered a lot of web-based productivity applications with iGoogle, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and much, much more.  Personally, I have used iGoogle from way back in my undergraduate days at Belmont.  It's a great custom start page, with support for Google and third-party "gadgets" with a whole range of functionality, from to-do lists to RSS readers to weather forecasts.  Plus, it can be customized with a user-created theme, or you can create your own if you don't find anything to suit your tastes.  Here's a look at my iGoogle page, illustrating some of the gadgets I use frequently (with identifying information cropped out) :

I've used Google Calendar to help keep my schedule for a couple of years now, and it is an excellent scheduling tool.  Part of its power is that being web-based, I can access it from anywhere, including my smartphone, my laptop, or any other web-connected device.  Plus, I don't have to install any resource-gobbling software to use it (which is important to me as a PC enthusiast.)  It gives me everything I need: I can set-up tasks, schedule repeating events, and divided up my events into separate calendars.  I've used desktop programs like Outlook in the past, but none are as fluid or intuitive as Google Calendar.

I'm not a big fan of to-do lists, mostly because they just aren't very effective for me.  I find a to-do list a bit stifling, since I feel like I "need" to complete everything on the list before doing anything else, which winds up being more paralyzing than productive.

CutePDF is a nice little tool for converting a document or other printable file into the ubiquitous Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).  While I hadn't used CutePDF before,  I have used similar programs in the past with rather mixed results; some converters produce exact reproductions, while others just produce an indecipherable mess.  For example, the PDF converter built into Google Chrome has always done an excellent job of converting web pages to PDF's, but have had other free converters turns graphics-heavy documents into gobbledegook.  I tested CutePDF with a text-heavy Word document and a graphics-heavy PowerPoint.  Both converted flawlessly.  I can see using CutePDF to turn large files into more portable formats for distributing them to students.