My favorite web applications

Through hobbies and life, there are a number of basic tools that you will use on a computer that you will use whether you are a hefty computer nerd or not! As of lately I have discovered a slight style change in tools that I use that has been a world of difference in terms of managing my computer information. Namely, this change is based on using web based tools (ajax'y for those of you technically savvy) instead of local clients. Let me dive right in and give you the list of tools that I have switched to and talk to their counterparts and why I have made the switch!

http://meebo.com

Meebo Chat client. Meebo (http://meebo.com) vs client aim,msn,yahoo,gtalk etc. First off, I use meebo instead of any local chat client that installs on your computer. This free web based chat client consolidates all of your chat accounts and lets you talk to anyone who has aim, msn, yahoo, gtalk etc. You create one parent account under which you give login information to all of your chat programs. When you log in, it automatically connects you to all the various chat programs giving you ONE humongous list of chat buddies. You never have to lose track of someone because they are using some chat client that you may not log into frequently (because you log into all of them at meebo.com)!

http://google.com/a

http://gmail.com

Google Email including full hosting. I now use Google's gmail as opposed to Outlook or any other mail client. Furthermore I use Google's applications to actually host my quoc.org domain email. What's cool about this is that their friendly DNS UI allows me to create emails and email lists and associate them with my domain. It's free and it ties my email directly to the gmail application! Gmail itself is so so cool because it's based on the concept that you don't need to really file your messages in folders, instead just save everything and use their awesome search! In the past I filed emails in Eudora, Outlook pst files and even used console based email programs like pine. I never even look back at those now and if I wanted to, it'd be a big pain. Google has made a fan out of me for email.

http://docs.google.com

Google Docs vs Microsoft Office. Google strikes again as I have kept track of my kitchen remodel and stocks with a couple of pretty simple spreadsheets via Google Docs! The big plus about using google's excel equivalent is that I don't have to store the documents anywhere on my 3+ local computers. Gone are the days that I have to back up those files just as I talked to before with my email. And if I want to work on a document on my laptop, desktop, at a friend's house walla, they are wherever I need them to be!

http://quickenonline.com

Quicken Online vs Microsoft Money or Quicken local. Poor Microsoft, at least for me I use Windows so that I can play World of Warcraft but for all other things, I'm moving to web based applications. This includes the new (not sure how new) Quicken online Ajaxy type application. This last tax season I filed my taxes using Turbotax online and there just happened to be a link for a 1 month free Quicken's online service trial. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here but the theme is once again the same, gone is the day that I'm trying to manage my own data locally on my computer. In this case, quicken connects to 3 of my financial institutions and allows me a consolidated view of my financial profile! Quicken online does a pretty good job at categorizing most of what you spend and for the few things it doesn't know about, like for example checks that you write, you can easily click a drop down for categorization right on the spot. Quicken also will create a pie chart that shows you at a glance most of what your big spending habits are per account or as a whole. My current goal is to become positive in my financial portfolio against my mortgage without considering equity in my house or any retirement funds (too bad quicken can't connect to Van Guard). Who knows if that's a reasonable goal but hey, with quicken online it's a nice picture to have.

You might read this with skepticism about the security of all these web services. I mean, what's going to happen if someone compromises your accounts!? Well, as with anything we do in life there are risks. However, speaking from a computer programmer's point of view my argument is that if you use any of the services I described above locally on your computer or not you have already signed up for the risks exposed in using these web services. Anyways, I'm not here to persuade, just to share what I've already been using!

Quoc