MS Private Folder

Just in case you missed the link to Microsoft Private Folder before it was removed from the official Microsoft web site … if you follow this link, you can still download it (but I do not know how long the link will continue to exist:-)).

My personal Web 2.0

It is amazing what you can find on the web these days … lots of different “free” applications, Gigabytes of free disk space for mails, files, and pictures … and hundreds of productivity tools on the web 2.0. I spend quite a lot of my spare time to actually check these different offers. Some are really useful (do you know pandora.com?) … some are less than useful (who is actually using writely.com?).

Now to make a long story short – here are my favorite tools:

GMail - ok you probably know this one, but can you imagine … 2.5GB free disk space for emails. The link into their gtalk is impressive, it lets you archive conversations cross email and messenger … convergence of communication

Google Calendar - would be nice if it could sync with my Outlook, but it is still a really nice tool. If you enter an address, you can even look it up on Google Maps.

Google Reader – content syndication is probably going to become one of the big things. It helps me to keep kind of an overview on what is going on in the IT world without having to travel to two thousand web sites. But watch out … if you are on holiday for a week, it becomes a terrible mess!

Flickr – here you can store your pictures and send them to your friends. I usually use it while being on the road, to let my family know where I am. It is also a very useful picture store when you want to post something on your blog.

Pandora – it’s an interface to the music genome project. They calculate a vector based on your favorite song, and then setup a whole channel with music that you will probably like. For me it is not always a perfect fit, but I still get a lot of really surprising suggestions. I think iTunes should buy Pandora some day … I bought so many songs due to a suggestion on Pandora … it is a very good marketing tool for them.

Squidoo – this is the most dodgy name on the internet … and it is always a pain to remember that freaking name, but it is a nice idea. People maintain lenses that focus on a certain topic. So if you have a lens for lets say “Business Intelligence” you collect links to all sorts of information related to that topic. So far I have stayed away from setting up my own lens as it seems to be a lot of maintenance work (most of the lenses I have seen are partially outdated) … but it is still a very interesting concept.

WordPress – ok – you obviously know this one already … it is the engine behind this blog.