Jott and Drop.io - you’re welcome

I am so easily overwhelmed when presented with too many choices. Take me into Home Depot, and I become vapor-locked by the sheer number of selections.  Choosing a paint color? Forget it! Show me two shades of blue and let me choose between them.  Need a new toilet? Does it flush and have a lid? Sold. I don’t care what it looks like. It’s a toilet. Chinese restaurant menus? Fuggedaboutit. I always order the same thing.
 
So, too, I find myself becoming increasingly overwhelmed with the choices presented by my friend The Internet. I love the possibilities, but am daunted by the innumerable options. I mean, there is a website to help you do everything. Want to blog? Pick one! How did I choose WordPress? I heard good things from other bloggers, but I could have just as easily gone in more than a few other directions. Social media? You can Tweet your minutuae via Twitter, poke your friends on Facebook, make fun of people still using MySpace (that’s so 3 years ago), watch hilarious, disturbing, or educational video clips on YouTube, troll Craigslist to buy used stuff, and find a new job via your LinkedIn profile.  And don’t forget Plaxo and Naymz. No, those are not NFL players or rappers, those are social media sites. Plaxo is for online contact management, and Naymz is for “empowering reputable professionals,” whatever that means.

Throw away that Filofax, girls. Keeping your calendar and contact lists organized is an odious task that is addressed by many helpful websites. I myself have finally settled upon Google calendar for managing the family’s schedule, and the Contacts feature in Gmail. But there are other equally worthy options.
 
Is your head spinning yet? Mine is.
 
I have placed two previous posts in the category of “life-changing gadgets.”  That may be hyperbole, in that my life may not actually have changed as a result of my having used these items.  It’s simply a nod to something I find cool and useful. Something that fills a void, albeit a small void.  And, because you can’t use ‘em if you don’t know about ‘em, please allow me to share with you, reader, two free websites that I use regularly and would really miss if I didn’t have:
 
Drop.io.  You have been wishing for this since way back in the days of floppy disks. It’s just like having a network drive you can access from anywhere! Upload files privately to this website and email the link to yourself or share it with others.  I use it to upload work-related items I may need to access from someplace other than home. Once you set up your drop, you can add things to it via the website, email, fax, you can leave a voice message on it, AND they give you a private telephone conference number that you could invite users to dial in to view and discuss items on the page. You can also electronically fax documents from the site to another fax number.

Jott.  Call Jott, record a voice message to yourself, and Jott converts it to text and sends you an email. Or, it sends it to someone else of your choosing.  (Create “honeydew” items for your honey!) I love this for when I’m driving and can’t write down a to-do item or have some other pressing thought that I know I won’t remember after 10 minutes.  I call Jott, record the message and when I get home, Shazaam!, it’s in my email. It does sometimes misinterpret what I say, however. Today, I heard the song “Time Passages” by Al Stewart and was remembering that it was an old K-Tel album from my childhood. (Dated reference; hollaback if you have fond K-Tel memories!) I wanted to remember to look up that album’s track list online with the thought of downloading the songs, rolling back the years, and revelling in my childhood. I called Jott and said
 
K-Tel Album Time Passages
 
but what it emailed me was
 
Kay Towel(?) album time passages.
 
But still, I know what Kay Towel means. Yeah… I think I went to school with her. She was a quiet girl, kept to herself, didn’t cause any trouble…