Organizing My Online Life

A few days ago I shared that I needed to purge myself of some social networking sites that, although useful, I just didn’t have the time or energy to utilize the services in my everyday life. However, I continue to evolve so the previously purged social networks may be useful in the future, except for Friendster because I will never be Filipino.

I often wonder if an entire office can be online and basically free. In order for me to accomplish this I use Google Docs and DocSyncer to sync my Microsoft Office docs with my Google Docs. At this point, my needs are basic but should I require additional “office space” Zoho has it all! And, again anything created in Zoho can be synced with G-Docs using DocSyncer, sounds like a lot but it’s truly a simple process. Finally, for the archaic office, the one still using a fax machine to send documents, I use eFax to send and receive. There is a fee if you want to send or have a local number, and since I do a lot of work with the government the fee is more of a necessity than a want.

What are your reasons for using social bookmarking sites? For me, it’s only to share with others something interesting that I read that may be of value to someone else too. For this I use Digg, del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon. With the toolbar buttons it’s easy to submit to each of the sites. For my personal bookmarking, I continue to use the standard bookmarks tab combined with the Firefox plug in, Foxmarks which syncs my personal bookmarks accessible from any computer. I recently began experimenting with ClipMarks, but with everything that I’ve already mentioned, this service may soon be phased out including Mahalo because in order for me to maintain the “ease” of submitting links it required the installation of the toolbar which I never used and only created clutter.

Do you want to know where I am? Plazes has been a useful tool, though my network is rather modest, I can plaze myself via SMS or a nifty little application called the “Plazer” that sits quietly, available for easy plazing.

My music tastes range from traditional Hawaiian to alternative and I’ll admit it, sappy pop love songs. For the sole iPod in our home we’ve only purchased from iTunes, however Grooveshark offers tracks sometimes for $.29 each. But, during times when I’m lost in my mind I plug in to Jango a social internet radio station that offers a mix of songs based on genre. For those waiting to know if I scrobble, I do, well I did, but it’s become another site that I need to invest more time in.

If you have a secret on free unlimited bandwidth please let me know, otherwise for photos I use both Flickr and Photobucket, though my buckets of photo are all set to private. I’ve also found some fun sharing photos at FFFFOUND, an image bookmarking site. Befunky is a free service that allows me to cartoonize my images otherwise Gimp is an awesome tool that I consistently use.

I have accounts at Blogtv, Kaltura, Operator11, Podcast, Seesmic, but I only utilize them during times when one of you are doing a show or podcast or if Chris Brogan wants to get my attention, I am also in Magnify‘s database as well.

The leaders of the social networking sites; Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn all have my info stored on their servers as well. Facebook has allowed me to connect with many of my brother’s classmates, MySpace has connected me with family and friends around the globe, and LinkedIn is one of those that I need to invest more time in.

There are more, but this is somewhat manageable for me. Any suggestions, replacements, or god forbid additions? Remember, it needs to be easy, accessible and easily accessible!