Online apps

Over the weekend, I've switched a good chunk of my organization to the web. I'm using three 37signals apps including Basecamp for project organization, Highrise for contact management and Backpack for an online calendar and general notes.

I've also moved most of my RSS feeds from Safari's built in reader to Google Reader. I really like how Safari handles my RSS needs, but I work on two different computers and keeping them in sync was a pain. It often involved looking through tons of articles I'd already read.

That really turned out to be my motivation to moving everything I can online. I'm often not in the office and I like to have access to it anywhere. This came up this weekend when we were at my parents house for Colton's birthday and I wanted to check my reading but really didn't want to fire up the laptop for fear of work sucking me in. Now with Google Reader, I can check for new articles anywhere. So far I'm pretty happy with it. It posts new articles a little slow for my tastes. I still have the RSS feeds in Safari for now so I can see when one pops up there. It may be an hour or more before the same article shows up in Google.

The other great side effect of this is that I was able to pair down my RSS subscriptions. I had about 95 different feeds. Some didn't update often and some I found I just didn't have time to keep up with anymore. Now I'm down to just 28 and it's cut down tremendously on the time it takes me to get through it all. If I ever went away for the weekend, I might have 300+ articles waiting on me, most of which went unread. This has helped a lot.

Between 37signals and Google, I'm really enjoying this idea of using apps online. So what great web apps am I missing?

Spike

Ironically, I've seen a sudden spike in traffic to this blog. That's really funny to me considering I have been way to busy to post this month.

So what are you telling me? If I shut up, you'll show up?

I do keep this blog updated much more frequently. Starting this week I should be back to updating here regularly. It's been a crazy month.

One thing I want to write in-depth about is 37signals' new product Highrise. I'm in love with it and it's taken my organizational skills to a whole new level.