Internet Applications that have me hooked!

Yes, I am one of those few medical students who spend a lot of time on the internet.
Lately I have been bringing in some discipline to my use, with more of it directed to my studies and productivity rather than surfing and whiling away precious time on exploring and searching for new tech toys, new applications and more cool stuff.
It makes me quizzed when I find a lot of my batch mates, colluagues have no clue of what I talk about these tools, so primarily for their benefit I would like to write this down here.
Now without dragging too much on the subject, I am going to begin listing some of the killer applications and tools that I cannot live without having had them so integrated with my work online.

Mozilla Firefox Add-ons:

Allows me to blog my posts straight from the browser.
No need to login to wordpress.
It is quick and very handy tool for blogging.

Clip stuff from any page you browse.
It is very useful it making my notes,
clipping relevant stuff from articles and journals,
or simply picking keywords. After clipping you can just save them online in your clipmarks account and use them anywhere you want to.

Stumble interesting stuff on the internet
all within the areas of your interest.
Share interesting stuff with others if you find them.
It is one of the most popular social bookmarking.

Internet Applications

A web-based todo applications.
Reminders sent at the place of your choice.
SMS, Messenger, Email, Desktop, iGoogle.
Integration various other tools – iPhone, Gmail, iGoogle, IM, and Google Calendars.
I use this to maintain my things to do, especially my daily Reading and study tasks.
It improves productivity and makes you more organised.
I can’t sit in peace as long as I have completed all the entered tasks of the day.

Its a microblog – basically to let others know “what are you upto?”
Still confused? okay to make it simple – it is exactly like the status message you leave on MSN messenger, the shoutout at Friendster or Facebook.
Initially it did not catch my attention, I considered a very silly tool, a complete waste of time and could not think of any productive way I could use this tool.
But then, I am regularly using it and not for sharing my tweets with others, but as a microblog diary for my own personal keep. I tweet stuff I learnt, procedures witnessed, cases seen in the ward, Classes taken, Topics covered. Apart from this its a way of instantly putting in an idea that pops in a mind, as many a times you just loose them in your busy mind. You can tweet from your messenger, from your Phone, tweet sending an SMS (which costs), or has iGoogle integration. Also has a firefox addon.
Digsby (the multi-protocol Instant messenger) also has support for tweet.
I often tweet through Digsby or iGoogle start page.

I use this as my external brain. Just throw in data (image or text) you want to remember and may want to review later. It will take it all. Good search functions allows you to easily relocate the things you put. I use it to put in my personal study notes, images, charts and schematic diagrams I come across that relate to my work. Good articles, facts, essential data, a list of new malay words I learn, and a lot of stuff.
It has a desktop program, and it keeps synchronizing with its online account, thus making it accessible from any computer. Evernote has Windows Mobile and iPhone support, sadly Malaysia still awaits iPhone arrival which I am so badly waiting for.
With iPhone Evernote, you can write in notes right from your palm, and all the stored notes accessible on the go.
And by the way, it has text recognition software, so just scribble in notes and it will recognize them as text. It also recognizes printed text from images and makes them searchable. This come sin handy where I can simply snap the picture of notices, exam time tables on the notice board in the college and put it in to Evernote.

IMified is a unique productivity-focused service that ‘integrates’ lots
of cool applications into your IM client (Gtalk/Jabber, AIM, MSN
Messenger). Simply add IMified as a buddy to your messenger contact
list and you will able to access and use growing number of web
applications (Google Calendar, Basecamp, IMified ToDo’s, IMified
Reminder, etc., WordPress, Twitter, etc.) right from the messenger
window.
I wasn’t so swayed with its integration into IM, but more because IM is more accessible from any handphone, and using IM from my handphone will allow me to interact with the Imified Bot which will enable usage of various applications. (for me twitter, RememberTheMilk and Google Calendar)

Multi-Protocol IM

This is simply one of the best multi-protocol Instant messenger clients I have used. Found it while Stumbling upon sites with StumbleUpon.
It has a very clean and simple interface.
Support for gTalk, MSN messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, AIM and Facebook Chat. It also has support for Social networking feeds like Facebook (check newsfeeds without loging in) and Twitter (I use this very often – updating all my tweets from Digsby).
Highly recommended.

~ by Dr.Zhivago on August 2, 2008.