Because I have been so busy lately, I have become keenly aware of my need to get organized, to keep a calendar, and to have a system by which I can remind myself about important things that I would otherwise forget. To do this, I use a few web apps that help me be more productive, and one that is just plain fun. So, in no particular order, here are some of the web apps that I use on a regular basis.

This is the fun web app. You can see my “tweets” (as they are called, I didn’t make that up) from my twitter home page, the side bar –> of this blog, or as status updates on my facebook profile. All of these things are updated easily with a text message, instant message through google talk, web interface, or jott.com (which I will talk about later). Twitter is a fun way to share with people what I am doing at the moment and some of the goofy things that I am thinking. And, when I am following other people on twitter I can see what they are up to by getting a text message each time they post something, or by just looking on the website. I chose the later to save on text message rates.

I’m pretty sure that my schedule would be totally screwed up if it weren’t for this little deal. I love it! I can keep several different calendars all in one place, and then lay them on top of each other to see a master calendar of what is going on. I can share my calendar with people (mainly my wife) so that they know what is going on with me. You can schedule something and add a reminder that will be emailed to you, or sent to your phone via text message. Each day I have an email box with my daily agenda. I can add things to my calendar via text message, or through jott.com (I’ll talk about that one soon, I promise), and I can easily access it through my phone. This and Gmail are my brain for the most part.

Obviously this is an email app, the best one out there as far as I can tell. You never delete anything, you just archive it, so that later when you need to find that email again (and you will) you just do a google search of your mailbox and you are good to go. The interface is also the best I have seen.

But, gmail isn’t just for email. I use it as my task list as well. When I need to do something I just email myself about it, then I add the appropriate labels to that email, star it if its an immediate action item, and then keep on rockin. I really like this approach because so often my emails are action items, so this way they are all in one place.

Sandy is my online personal assistant. She is a program of course, not a person, but she is pretty cool. I can email Sandy or send her a message through jott.com (that one’s next). I ask Sandy to remind me about something at a certain time on a certain day, and then at the appointed time, she emails me or texts me the reminder. If I’m writing an email to a friend to set up a meeting and I want Sandy to remind both of us about the meeting the day before I just copy Sandy on the email and tell her when to remind us… and she does. The web interface on the site is also a good way to organize your todo list, if you aren’t already using something else. Of course I use gmail for that, but I throw Sandy into the mix a little bit as well. This might seem like an odd web app, but its definitely worth taking a look at.

I love jott because it powers most of the above apps. To use jott I just make a phone call, say who I want to jott, and leave a message. Then, jott converts my voice message into text and emails it out. I can jott an email to a friend while I’m driving down the road. I can also jott google calendar to add things to my calendar. I can jott Sandy so that she will send me a reminder about something at a certain time. I can jott twitter so that everyone knows that I’m driving in rush hour traffic. And, there are a ton of other applications that jott works with if I ever wanted to try them out.

Wow, that was a lot of stuff! I hope that some of you found a new (web app) best friend here.

Does anyone else use any web apps that are really fun or really useful?