Things
Review your to-do list chronological by today, next, scheduled or someday. That someday tab is key for those lofty ideas you have in the shower that you need to store somewhere. You can also manage tasks by project like work, travel, sports team, and family. Gone are the passé paper lists. Things even ups the ante with the ability to repeat tasks, sync with your calendar and delegate to coworkers and teammates. It is on the pricey side, but many users say that it is totally worth it for the workflow. Developed by the amazingly-talented folks at Cultured Code.
Evernote
It’s note-taking made digital. More than just taking notes, Evernote is a place for memory-capture, inspiration boards, and look & feel mock-ups. It is tasked with holding your thoughts with endless possibilities. And that’s a mighty task.
Keep track of conference notes, plan client presentations, organize trips and write stories. According to Evernote, its goal is to give everyone the ability to easily capture any moment, idea, inspiration, or experience whenever they want using whichever device or platform they find most convenient, and then to make all of that information easy to find. Check it out and thank us later. It will be your new saving grace.
Google Reader
We all have our favourite sites, our inspirational sites, industry sites, and guilty-pleasure celebrity gossip sites. Google Reader is perfect for YPs as it allows you to curate your own content and organize it in folders like industry news, local blogs, design, magazines and the like. It is impossible to visit all your noteworthy sites on a daily basis. Since starting with Google Reader, we’ve been hooked and our personal and industry knowledge base has dramatically increased. In ten minutes each morning, I get a quick scan of what’s going on, as well as notable news and competitor information to pass along to clients. It is an invaluable resource – made even more useful by hooking it up to Reeder or NetNewsWire.
Instapaper
The sister application to Google Reader is Instapaper, an app that allows you to save the contents of a page to read them later in a minimalist, clean format. Don’t have time to read a thought-provoking blog post or article? Save it for later and catch up when you have time. Over time, it becomes a repository gem that can fuel future ideas.
Hootsuite
Many YPs are very socially aware and engage in multiple platforms many times a day. The secret is that most use a social media dashboard to manage their interactions. Hootsuite is a reputable and well-known platform that includes features like your analytics, scheduling posts and tweets for a later date/time…or tracking your influence. Manage your RSS feeds, Google +, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all in one place.
Zite
Zite is your new personal magazine of what you define as happening and interesting, and it quickly growing a following. As YPs, we want to know current events, big and bigger ideas and smart opinions that are circulating in our world. And we want to be challenged with experiences that are new and unexpected. With so much information available online today, it’s increasingly difficult and time-consuming to find the content we want. Zite evaluates millions of new stories every day, looking at the type of article, post or data, its key attributes, and how it is shared across the web. Zite uses this information to match stories to your personal interests.
