thing 14) online productivity tools

while these online tools are great, i've tried many of them and just prefer old pen and paper. i like that i can take my small planner to meetings, on the bus, waiting in line at the grocery, etc. until i have a blackberry or iphone, i'm not interested in keeping track of all these online gadgets. here's my personal experience with some:

iGoogle: i tried out using this as my homepage for a while. pros: i could see the weather, get to google maps, and see my horoscope all on one page. but, i don't check most of these daily anyway, so i was constantly searching for gadgets just to fill my page. cons: it loaded slowly, so i eventually took it off my homepage. i searched for gadgets and more often than not they did not work. i wanted a twitter gadget, so i could tweet from this page, and it didn't work (aside: twitter is a tool i quickly grew tired of). my livejournal gadget did not work. and i'm leery of downloading these third party applications...my overall impression of this product was not impressed. but i do think that it could be quite functional for some people.

i recently tried the Google calendar. again, i could only access the calendar while online. i also don't trust that a time change (ahem) or other online disturbance won't funk up my calendar...i didn't like the automatic emails either. while it's possible i may forget my planner at home, i'm pretty well trained to keep it tethered to me wherever i go. i like pen and ink...

the list makers look neat. i looked at joe's goals, a goal tracking page. however, i'm partial to creating my own goal tracking on excel, so i don't need this tool either. great idea though.

i guess i've figured out how to be productive without these tools. but i think that they will appeal to those who are not yet organized and like to be tech innovators. i just find that i waste too much time trying these tools and then reverting back to pen and paper. there's just too much to sift through - and who has time for that?