40Tech is pleased to present a guest post by Michael Carper.

When I began college, I was determined to keep track of all my homework, papers, tests, and scheduled activities. A staple of college scheduling is the syllabus, which lays out the due dates and assigned readings and homework for each class. However, syllabuses are just pieces of paper. I realized that it would be a huge pain to look up daily, from four or five different sources, what the assignments were for that day. I wanted to look at a single source and grasp all the work I had to do for that day, and for that week. More importantly, I wanted to keep in mind upcoming tests and papers several weeks ahead of time, in order to prepare time to work on them.

With this predilection for planning, I looked to my built-in OS calendar, iCal. There were many advantages to using it. I didn’t have to boot up Chrome or worry about web browsing. I could organize by color, assigning one to events, one to assignments, and another to work. I actually put my entire class schedule, as well as ordinary things like “lunch,” into iCal. I put not only due dates, but little reminders when certain benchmarks should be met in prep for those due dates. It was my lifeline.

However, little problems grew to be big annoyances. The most striking was the way iCal handled longer titles. I copied entire reading assignments into iCal. For some single class periods, this could include multiple texts or several page selections. Shorter entries would be completely displayed in the month-long calendar view, which I always used. I didn’t need to see my days broken down in the traditional week-long format, but I did want to see the tests and papers on the horizons. However, in this view, longer entries were simply abridged. There was no indication that an entry was actually much longer than it appeared, since they always stuck to a single line. On several instances, this lack of informative UI actually led to ignored homework assignments, since the entry was actually much longer than appeared and contained more readings than it appeared to. Ironically, in those instances, my calendar made me less prepared.

Fall of my freshman year

There were other little things, as well. Entry of events was very manual; you had to put all details in only their specific field. Once made, you could not edit an event after clicking on it, but instead had to go to its “edit” page. The tethering of iCal to my Mac turned out to be a disadvantage, since I often ended up with hours to spare, homework to do, and no personal computer at my fingertips. I couldn’t sync it in any way with my iPod Touch, either.

So beginning of my junior, I finally took a look at Google Calendar. Since I had been a loyal Gmail user for many years, it only seemed natural. Immediately I noticed where GCal improved over iCal. The most prominent was the ease of creating events. I no longer had to cycle through different boxes to mark the date and time. Instead, I could simply jot down, “meeting 12-1” as an entry name for a certain day, and there it appeared, from the 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM slot. And if I felt like changing it, I could edit the entry title from the pop-up that appeared when I clicked it the first time, unlike iCal.

It wasn’t just the cleaner, more pleasing UI that won me over. Accessing my calendar outside my room was as simple as accessing my email–just log in to Google. I could access it on my iPod as well, albeit not with an official Google app. School events were always announced via email. I could either copy and paste the location and time details from one tab to another, or I could even click “More” in Gmail and create an event based on the email. If viewing an online calendar, such as the one published by my college, I could even import all the events into mine.

December of my junior year

Six months later, I still haven’t taken advantage of everything Google Calendar has to offer, like sharing my calendar with others or inviting them to scheduled meetings. Those two functionalities are so amazingly useful, it’s a pity I’ve only encountered them at places I’ve interned. The rest of my fellow students, unfortunately, are still stuck in the Stone Age, with their paper syllabuses and calendar. Some of them may have progressed to iCal, marking their progress into the Bronze Age. They, and everyone else, should wise up and join those of us with our Google Calendars in the Golden Age.

I will add that I’ve tried the Fantastical Calendar app. Fantastical syncs with iCal or Outlook, but not Google Calendar, so I had to export from Google Calendar to iCal and then sync Fantastical with iCal. It’s UI is very nice. The recognition of event details is more intuitive than Google Calendar’s, expanding its recognition to location details and invitees whose address you have in your Contacts as well. You can read more about it in Evan’s review. My judgment is that although it has the best user interface, the ability of Google Calendar to sync with other Google apps, especially through email, is invaluable. Since I always have a web browser opened anyway, leaving a tab for Google Calendar is hardly cumbersome. $20 is a lot for calendar software, but, in my opinion, is something that would be used everyday. So if I spent less time on Google, Fantastical would be my go-to calendar.

Michael is a student at Wabash College and writer for the Reading Glasses Shopper blog. He realizes that actually the Iron Age, not the Golden Age, followed the Bronze Age.

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

• Springpad Gets Even Better — Again
• Springpad: Easier Than Ever to Save and Organize Everything
• What’s The Deal With Pinterest? Even My Wife Likes (Obsesses Over) It!
• GTD, Producteev, Evernote — Bridged!
• Find Google+ Users By Occupation, Location, Popularity, and More

So, Pinterest… It’s received a lot of coverage in the past year — it’s even received in the realm of 37 million in funding — but I had trouble seeing the appeal. I wasn’t sure the world needed another social bookmarking site. I wasn’t sure the world needed another way to share, well… anything. I admit, most of this feeling had nothing to do with Pinterest, per se, it was really more about social media overwhelm. I’ve seen a ton of social sharing services go up and down over the past few years, and, as much as I love Google+, I think it maxed me out. Besides, you can do things similar to Pinterest using tools like Evernote and Springpad, right? Right?

Then my lovely wife — a person who has no real interest in tech, barely any interest in social networking, and who only got a smartphone because it was free and I “was bugging her about it” — was somehow inspired to try it out. No prompting from me, or anyone else — she came to it entirely on her own. Now… she’s obsessed. Seriously. For example, I see her awake at 3AM and think that she’s feeding the baby, or something — but no. What’s she’s doing is maniacally pinning and re-pinning things to her boards, and often giggling like mad as she does it. There is apparently a lot of funny on Pinterest…

Title Image clipped from Pinterest Comic

Recently, she’s taken to sharing some of that funny with me, and I’ve discovered that a good portion of it is Star Wars based. This confused the hell out of me (though I still shared some of it with you here and here). My wife has no interest in Star Wars. She’s one of the few people who has never even seen the films, and (horrifyingly) will actually say things like “What’s a hansolo?” I still love her, though. She’s that awesome. She’s beginning to make me see value in Pinterest, too. Anything that could inspire my wife to share seriously awesome Star Wars stuffs with me has got to be pretty powerful.

I checked it out a little more thoroughly. I wanted to know what the deal was. Was there a secret sauce? How did it hook her? What I discovered was four things:

Pinterest is incredibly simple.

Pinterest is to sharing fun and useful images what Evernote is to easy, accessible note-taking. It focuses on that one thing, and makes sure that it is the absolute best at it. It doesn’t overwhelm the user.

Pinterest is visual — and good at it.

Everyone loves a good picture and everyone loves a good photo gallery. Funny and beautiful pics have been making the rounds since the internet was able to support them. People like to look at the images they like again and again.  And share them, re-share them, and re-share them again, as well. Pinterest makes this easy, but it also makes it beautiful. The designers have done a fantastic job of taking something that could be overwhelming, both in general and visually, and making it joy to experience.

Like crafty things? This is your home.

There are a ton of cool things to discover on Pinterest, but it really seems to have taken off with the crafty and DIY crowd. This is what ultimately hooked my wife. She loves to see things that people have made, especially if it involves baking or making something cool out of something else. She knows I like that sort of thing as well, and has not only shared some cool Star Wars crafts with me, but also a lot of DIY upcycling and repurposing projects. It’s how I came across Homestyler, actually, which was the topic of my previous post. There is some very cool stuff on Pinterest, and more is pinned every day.

Some of My Wife’s Pins

It connects to the real world. It useful.

Pinterest is more than just a place to store and share images. The images link back to the site you found them on — and if we follow the crafty and DIY point from above, you end up with well-organized, very visual bookmarks back to sites that contain information that you might actually use in your real-world life. This makes Pinterest more than just a random bookmarking service, and more than just an image-sharing service. It makes it a tool that is useful to you both on and offline. It helps you to find, share, save and use things that are of interest to you.

We’ve all heard that “<insert service> makes it easy to collect and organize what interests you on the web.” Pinterest actually does it. My wife is living proof. Anything tech-based that can make her go gaga is definitely worth taking a look at. It’s still in beta, but getting an account happens pretty quickly. I recommend giving Pinterest a try. You’ll probably love it.

What do you think of Pinterest? How do you use it?

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

• Summify Cuts Through the Chatter, Helps You Get The Real Goods From Your Social Streams
• Summify Acquired by Twitter (and Going Bye Bye)
• My Conversion from iCal to Google Calendar
• Springpad Mobile Clipper is the (Near) Seamless Content Clipper You’ve Been Waiting For
• The Top Five Web Apps I Use the Most — What Are Yours?

We’ve written a good bit about email overload, and given a few tips on how to deal with it. These tips include using Gmail to manage all of your accounts (and even how to avoid Gmail’s infamous delay in checking external accounts), and how to turn the managing of your inbox into a game. When it gets down to the nuts and bolts, how do you manage your account?

There are a few schools of thought out there:

• Use labels, such as those offered by Gmail, to tag every message with one or more labels;
• Use folders, as offered by traditional email clients and providers, to place each message into a single, distinct folder;
• Archive all of your messages into one place, and just use the search functionality of your email client to find your messages; or
• A combination of the above methods.

I’ve used labels ever since switching to Gmail years ago, and have several filters set up to automatically label a large percentage of incoming messages. Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if it is really necessary. Gmail’s search capabilities are very powerful, and taking the time to label every message can be time consuming. At the very least, I think I can slim my labels down to a few broad categories.

What method do you use to organize your email? Is it one of the methods listed above, or do you have your own way of doing things?

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• 7 Tips to Protect Your Email from Hackers
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Is your PC’s desktop or downloads folder cluttered with files? If so, and you’re feeling overwhelmed with the thought of getting your system organized, check out DropIt. DropIt is a free program that creates a big icon on your desktop, that can be thought of as a drop zone. When you drop a file onto the icon, actions will be performed on it depending on how you’ve configured DropIt. DropIt can help you quickly move files to the proper place on your PC, without having to manually select a folder for each file.

The filters that you can set up with DropIt are fairly basic, so you would be better off with something like Belvedere on Windows or Hazel on the Mac if you want advanced features for PC organization and cleaning. With DropIt, you can filter a file based on name or file type. For each such file, you can preset DropIt for one of the following options: Move, Copy, Compress, Extract, Open With, Delete, Exclude.

DropIt doesn’t seem to be intended to be a comprehensive organization utility, but does seem ideal for quickly going through your desktop or other folders, and moving files to preset locations. For example, you could quickly go through your desktop, and drop all of your image, video, and audio files onto your DropIt drop zone, and have them moved to your picture, video, or music folders, without taking the time to place each file in the proper location.

Do you have any apps that you use to organize your system? Let us know in the comments.

DropIt [via Cybernet News]

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Less than two months after our last update on Springpad — one of our hottest topics on 40Tech — the tool to save and organize pretty much anything has sent out another press release full of updated goodness. Goodness to the tune of more than 250,000 new users in the month of January alone, 4 million new bookmarks via the Delicious bookmark importer, new saved-search filters, delete and archive support, and an overhaul to what was already one of the better Google Chrome extensions out there.

From the press release:

Faster Ways to Get Organized with Springpad on the Web

• New Filters: Springpad structures the data you save to make it easy for you to search and filter through your items. Search through your recipes or restaurants by cuisine; filter your movies by actor or genre. Once you’ve created your filters, you can easily save them to make the next search faster than ever.
• Delete and Archive Support: Springpad now has a “trash” button on the home screen so you can quickly recover an item you may have archived or inadvertently deleted.

Enhanced Springpad Extension

Springpad’s upgraded Chrome Browser Extension makes it fast and easy to add a note, create a task or look up something without leaving the site you’re browsing. When you use the extension to clip content, the new item is automatically categorized (recipe, movie, restaurant, book, etc.) and you can create or select a notebook for more efficient organization. To install the extension, click here.

Springpad has been moving in leaps and bounds lately, and its progress is impressive. If you’re looking for a tool to help you organize your life on the web, you should check it out. You can get a feel for the product here, check out their massive overhaul update here (with promo video, if you don’t feel like reading), and get all kinds of tips on how best to use Springpad from the Springpad Blog.

How are you liking the new Springpad?

Springpad Ends Record-Breaking Month with Over 250,000 New Subscribers [CEO Jeff Janer’s Springpad]

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

• Springpad: Easier Than Ever to Save and Organize Everything
• My Conversion from iCal to Google Calendar
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• Springpad Adds Custom Notebooks, Shareable Notebook Templates — and Have You Seen the New Friends Stuff Yet? [App of the Week]
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CES 2011 wrapped up about a week past, and from the the look of things, there is some pretty sweet new tech on the horizon. There are tablets, smartphone/laptop combos, tablet/netbook combos, concept cars/bikes, connected TVs, WiFi-connected refrigerators, unifying cloud storage services, and much much more.

After the jump, I’ve listed three of the things I’m most looking forward to, as well as links to a few articles from folks who were at the event. Have a read, be tantalized and amazed — and let us know what you are most excited about in the world of tech and gadgets this year!

Motorola Xoom

There’s a reason this year is being heralded as the year of the tablet — and there’s a reason that this tablet stole the entire show. Motorola’s Xoom tablet was the only one at the show using the new, optimized-for-tablets Android Honeycomb. It’s packing a 10.1 inch display, 1280×800 resolution, 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, and front and rear cameras. It’s ridiculously fast, can take 720p video, and will have 4G capability in the second quarter of the year.

There’s no word on the price of this beauty, but it ought to give the iPad — possibly even the iPad 2 — a serious run for its money. Just the fact that it has all that power, supports Flash, and is on a network other than AT&T (Verizon) might be enough to sway some users. It is unknown whether there will be a WiFi-only version or not, or if anyone outside of Verizon will get a hold of it — but I hope that Motorola would be smart enough not to limit themselves.

Motorola Atrix 4G

Motorola came to win at CES this year, and their smartphone offering is, in a word, awesome! I own an iPhone and an iPad, and I thoroughly enjoy them both, but the geek in me is loving what companies like this are doing with Android. The phone itself is beefy (the dual-core Tegra 2 chip and 1GB of ram make playing 1080p video and Flash a breeze), but the coolest thing about it is the dock — which turns it into a laptop.

Seriously.

The phone just plugs into the back of the 2.4 pound laptop dock, and voila! You get an 11.6 inch screen with a compressed keyboard, a trackpad, and webtop software that lets you surf the full-sized web, even picking up where you left off on the phone. You can also access the phone’s interface, and run its apps in full screen. According to LaptopMag, you can even run Citrix Receiver, which allows you to basically run full Windows right there on the machine.

Very cool!

Real Networks Unifi: One Cloud Service to Rule Them All

Real Networks is coming out with a cloud service to combine all cloud services. Unifi will allow you to aggregate your multimedia files — or whatever files — that are on multiple devices and online services. This would allow you to keep just one central online media and file library to organize, manage, and access all of your stuff. Its incredibly convenient, especially as we are moving more and more to the cloud. The interface looks pretty good, too.

Apparently, Unifi will be open for public beta in a couple of months, and Real Networks plans to offer the standard freemium model: 2GB of storage for free, with paid plans that climb up to 100GB. iOS and Android apps should be available around the same time as the beta lanch, with Windows Mobile 7 and Blackberry apps to follow. It ought to be useful for Google Chrome OS when it finally goes live, as well.

So those are the things that really stood out to me in CES 2011, but there were many, many more — good, bad, and weird. Here are a few links:

cNet: http://ces.cnet.com/best-of-ces/

LaptopMag: http://www.laptopmag.com/mobile-life/best-of-ces-2011.aspx#axzz1B4NBYH9c

enGadget: http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/11/best-of-ces-2011/

What tech are you most looking forward to? Anything you definitely did not like?

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There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding Springpad lately, both here at 40Tech and around the web. For good reason, too. The app’s new features and interface improvements have put it strongly in the running for one of the best save-everything-and-get-organized apps out there. People are loving it! According to CEO Jeff Janer, the new Springpad has seen a huge spike in usage. After playing with it for a while, I can see why.

When I first reviewed Springpad, back in April of this year, I compared it directly to Evernote, and pointed out why some of Springpad’s features were actually superior to our favorite note-taking app. The downside of Springpad was that there was simply too much going on, and that some of the different functions, like the internal apps, didn’t always play seamlessly with one another. Springpad’s development team listened to their users, and the new interface appears to have brought about feelings of peace, harmony, and general bliss amongst the Springpadians.

There have been several major updates to Springpad in the past months, the most notable taking place in September, November, and on Tuesday.

If you’re new to Springpad and don’t want to read my (very large) previous post, or just want a quick overview of some of the new features, watch the video at the bottom of this post.

September: Mobile Alerts, Chrome Extension

September brought about custom reminders and mobile alerts that helped to keep you aware of things on the go, like price drops and coupons for items you saved to your Springpad. It also brought about their most excellent Google Chrome extension.

November: All New Interface, Notebooks and the Board

November saw a huge shift in the interface, paring it down, making it easier to navigate, and generally making it prettier. Along with the new look and feel, better tagging functionality, and bulk editing capability, a lot of potential clutter and confusion was removed by taking all of the internal apps (for GTD, blog planning, and many other things) and giving them their own playground. Users that really wanted to keep the information stored in those apps tied in a neat bundle in the main Springpad app were given the option to port the notes into what is likely the most significant improvement to the service: new, easy to add and use notebooks.

Adding notebooks to Springpad has done a marvelous job of giving you control over how you organize your information. It used to be in one big list, that could be broken down over the large lot of internal apps — which was good in theory, but overwhelming in practice. Now, you have full control over what buckets you want to dump your saved information into, and it is nicely black-boxed in a very clean new interface that looks and feels like a desktop app. To make things even better, each notebook can have it’s own theme, which you can customize with personal images and photos, if you like.

The final hurrah for November was the introduction of the Board. The Board is an awesome use of HTML5, and there is one in every notebook. It gives you a visual approach to organizing your information that works like an old fashioned cork board, or laying out flashcards and sticky notes on a table. For the visual among us, myself included, this was a sweet miracle! The gift that keeps on giving, the Board also automatically adds items with address information to a handy, interactive Google map that can also be moved about. The Board is especially cool on the iPad, which allows you to move the items about with a finger, adding a tactile element that only improves upon the experience.

December: Chrome Web Store, Drag & Drop File Attachments, Keyboard Shortcuts and More

As if all that wasn’t enough, December’s updates brought about several more nice additions to Springpad, including the ability to drag and drop outside files onto the Board as file attachments. This is a fantastic improvement to on the other way to add files to Springpad which is to add a note, then add a ‘note to the note’ that has an attachment. You can even add multiple files at once (10mb/file).

The file-dropping feature only works in Google Chrome, which Springpad has entered into a nice marriage with. The web app was even featured in the launch of the Google Chrome Web Store on Tuesday. Chrome users can now install a shortcut of the Springpad app right into their start page, as well as sign up or login with Google’s OpenID, which allows easy access to the app. Once installed, you can open Springpad in a new tab, as a pinned tab, in full screen (which really makes it feel like a desktop app), and — if you use a Google Chrome developer version — as it’s own application. When combined with the Chrome extension, the installed Springpad is an information saving and organizing powerhouse. In my installation, and I’m not sure if it is a result of the extension or using a developer version of Chrome, I can even save a page to Springpad simply by right clicking and selecting the option from my context menu (if you happen to know which is the proper reason, let me know in the comments).

The final additions in the barrage of new features are keyboard shortcuts, like the ability to Shift+Tab between notebooks (see the complete list below), a search box and alert notifications on the home-screen, and the ability to share private items via a link (public items can already be shared to a gazillion services).

What’s to Come

The single thing that most longtime Springpad users were hoping for would be a desktop app. Unfortunately, that’s still a ways out, but I give Springpad credit for focusing on making their service a hell of a lot more functional on the web side of things first, before committing themselves to a desktop undertaking. According to Jeff, the desktop app will probably come in a windows flavour, first, but he didn’t have a date for me. What he could tell me, thought, was that the web version will make use of HTML5 to enable offline access to Springpad in and around the first quarter of next year. This is something the mobile versions of Springpad already do, and with the new web interface it will likely be almost as good as a desktop app by itself.

Some other pending features include the Board on the iPhone, as well as on Android OS (once it supports tables), and some interesting Facebook and other integrations that will enable you to do things like pull friends’ likes into the recommendation engine and filter them by subject. They are also looking into the possibility of a universal app for Facebook, and potentially, .doc and .PDF scanning.

In just a few months, Springpad has moved in leaps and bounds that blue tights-wearing, red-underwear-on-the-outside super beings might be jealous of. I am thoroughly impressed and actively considering new ways to implement the service into my day to day workflows. I actually did research and planned this post in Springpad. It was a good process. I’m also using it to track potential Christmas gift ideas for family members, and I can see the Board and me becoming great friends — especially if Springpad adds some connectors and other customization features to it in the near future. To be perfectly honest, though, they had me at “HTML5 offline access!”

Click here to view the embedded video.

What do you think of Springpad’s new features? How Will they affect how you use the app?

UPDATE: Springpad just got named one of Time Magazine’s Top 10 iPhone apps of 2010!

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

• Has Your App Store Made You Its B!#&h?
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• Producteev Gets a Massive Upgrade: Android App, Windows Desktop App, and an All Around Makeover

If you’re like me, you let your computer – and particularly your PC’s desktop – become a complete mess before you dive in to tidy it up.  One way to speed up the cleaning process is by filing away all that mess.  If you want a fast way to dump files into predetermined folders, take a look at FileMenu.  FileMenu is simple in concept, but it is like the Swiss Army Knife of file management.

FileMenu allows you to customize the context menu (i.e. the right-click menu) of Windows.  If cleaning up is your primary goal, there are a couple of ways in which FileMenu is most useful.  The simplest way is use to right click on files, and send them right to a folder via the context menu.  You can also use FileMenu’s file filter feature to move a group of files that fit a certain parameter.  For example, you can use the filter to move any file with the word “*forty*” in its name into a folder of your choosing.

FileMenu has other features as well, such as an advanced file renamer, a file splitter, and a file shredder.  For a full list of features, check out the FileMenu website.

FileMenu [via How-To Geek]

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Zomm is one of those neat little gadgets that I’m not sure I would ever buy, might raise an eyebrow at if given it for a gift, but would probably find ridiculously useful if I had one. It does three things:

1. Helps you never forget your phone (or other bluetooth-enabled device you’ve paired to it) by sounding an alarm if you start to walk away from it.
2. Answers phone calls with the touch of a button, improving driving/cell-phone safety.
3. Acts as a personal security alarm that will even dial 911 for you.

The Zomm, which won Best of Innovations at 2010’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show), is keychain-sized, comes in white or black with blue accents, and will fit in the palm of your hand. It costs about $80.00.

Check out the video post on the Zomm below. It’s by super-geek Chris Pirillo, and will, at the very least, remind you of exactly what level of geek you are by comparison. If five minutes of Chris is too much for you to handle, go one video down and check out the Zomm commercial – Chris is funnier, though. Enjoy, and have a fantastic weekend!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Who’s getting the Zomm on your Christmas shopping list?

How Do You Find Lost Gadgets [Lockergnome]

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If you’re like me and have a tendency to lose track of your warranty information, Niggle It is a service with a singular purpose: to help you keep track of the details of all of your agreements, including warranties, business contracts — even those conversations that you have with your mobile carrier’s customer service agents. Niggle It will track anything you feel important enough to be reminded about, be it personal or business related.

You can add electronic copies of your documents to Niggle It by emailing in a scan or a photograph taken with a digital camera. You can also use any mobile phone capable of taking pictures and sending email — or use the iPhone app to create the entire Niggle on the go.

The value of Niggle It is the ability to create reminders based on contract dates, and to add additional information and documents to the file (Niggle) that is dedicated to that one item/contract. You have a dedicated, always on hand back up of the documents you need if something goes wrong, and a tool that is able to remind you to, say, get that last full service in on your car before the warranty runs out — just in case.

Niggle It guarantees that your information is always available from anywhere you can access the internet, and that everything is private and secure, with no personal information ever shared with a third party.

Niggle It is free up to five Niggles, and also includes the following pricing plans:

• Basic: 70 Niggles, 300 MB, 5 MB filesize limit –> $24.95/year
• Household: 200 Niggles, 800 MB, 10 MB filesize limit, and a Tax Deduction report –> $29.95/year

What do you use to track your warranties and contracts? [Niggle It]

UPDATE: The pricing page for Niggle It is somewhat unclear. I assumed it was per month, but it could, in fact, be $25 and $30 per year — much more reasonably priced.

UPDATE 2: The price is yearly — not monthly — and has been corrected.

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

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