WebOS

[avram]

One of the things I’ve been fiddling with over the past few months is seeing how many of my computing needs I can offload onto some free or cheap web app that I can access from home or work, on whatever operating system is handy (provided it’s got a modern browser). The ones I’ve been using a lot are:

gMail

Google’s free email service, which I have thoroughly adapted to.

del.icio.us

A social bookmark manager. I’ve stopped using my local bookmarks file for anything but bookmarklets and the stuff I use every damn day. And the ability to subscribe to other users’ bookmarks is a great source of new links.

LiveJournal

Yeah, this counts.

Another I just subscribed to today, but haven’t found a use for yet:

Backpack

A personal information management site. For free, you can get your own little wiki-like site as many as five pages with specialized features for to-do lists and reminders. Lots of cool integration — you can have your reminders sent to you by email or SMS to your phone, or exported to an iCalendar, and each page gets a unique email address you can use to add stuff to it, or even (for paid users) email it files and images. And you can share pages with other Backpack users. The site just went live today, and the servers were really getting hammered for most of the afternoon. They seem to have gotten the problem straightened out by the evening, so you might as well sign up for a free account while there’s still a chance of getting your preferred user name.

A few more I’m not using:

Basecamp

From 37Signals, the same people who made Backpack, this is a project manager aimed at businesses. You can get a free account that lets you manage one project.

Ta-da List

Yet another 37Signals project. A free to-do list manager.

Jotspot

A wiki with simple integrated applications. I think. They don’t let you see the advanced tour till you join, and you’ve got to apply as a beta tester to join. When it goes live it’ll cost $5/user/month, so I’m giving it a miss.

flickr

Probably the most popular web app I’m not using. I’m just not into photo-sharing, and I’m turned off by having to pay for more than whatever the limit is on most recent number of pictures accessible.

Comments

[pnh.livejournal.com]

I'm looking for a web-based calendaring app that synchronizes with both iCal on the Mac and either Outlook or Palm Desktop on the PC. I'd even pay.

[avram]

I’d head over to 43Folders, join the Google Group, and ask there. (Skim over the website first just to get a sense of what sort of community has accreted around it.)

[akicif.livejournal.com]

The one I'm using here (http://countdown.torchbearers.org.uk) does some of that... And it's free.

[Generally, take a look at the tools bundled as "fantastico" by a number of web providers]

[redbird]

I've signed up for backpack as vr (taking your advice to grab my preferred userid while I can).