Webupon

Do you remember those zipped-up-3-ring-binder-like things that were all the rage once? From index-card-sized all the way up to legal-sized, they were leather-bound binders that held the busy professional’s entire life: schedule, contacts, credit cards, business cards, notes, disks, and important documents. They were manufactured by companies with impressive-sounding names like DayRunner and FranklinCovey and can still be found lining an aisle of almost every office supply store in America. Many professionals, albeit clad with Blackberry devices and powerful laptop computers capable of running circles around their non-digital counterparts, still swear by these analog life-keepers.

But times may be changing. According to a 2005 Report by Pew Research, more and more professionals may be moving away from using such physical devices and relying, instead, on services that can be found on the internet. Increases in the last 5 years alone in speed, reliability, availability, and cost of internet access has made it more and more beneficial to working professionals to move more and more of their important data online.

So it’s not much of a stretch to say that an online (rather than physical) organizer may soon become the norm for most business professionals, not to mention busy families. But rather than a single, all-encompassing website that provides all of the functions of a physical organizer, professionals and families alike may find it both more cost-effective and relevant to have several sites serve this purpose. From professional contact managers and address books, to web-based calendars, to-do lists, web-clippers, feed readers, payment services that make your checkbook obsolete, online file storage and backup services, and shopping lists that can be collaborated on and shared between an entire family, the digital organizer may finally begin to overpower the more traditional binder in the last, and most important, category: user adoption.

My own physical day-planner sits neglected now on an ignored shelf in my bedroom, possibly reminiscing on days past when it stayed glued to my side, its leather nearly tattered from daily constant use. It might now eye my computer with envy from across the room, where sits amongst my internet bookmarks a folder called simply “Organizer” that contains bookmarks to all of my most important services that I use everyday to keep my life, my finances, and my sanity in order.

In Part 2 of this series, we take a look at some of these services and find out which ones your digital organizer should not be without.