Thing 13 Productivity Tools

Another Paris pic to start things off, this an evening shot at the Arc de Triomphe. We arrived too late in the day to climb to the top (we did that on another day), but I was struck by the importance of this place. I was not aware, until I arrived, that this is a place of memory and functions in many ways like the Tomb of the Unknowns does in Arlington National Cemetery. It is a place of honor and remembrance. At the same time, I wondered if my grandfather had the chance to see this when he was in France during World War I. It was almost 90 years between our two visits and I have to believe that in the years he was here and in Germany, that he paid a visit to this place. But on to our next Thing.

I have an iGoogle page set up (after experimenting with the others) and really like how it delivers everything I need in one place. I've played around with it quite a bit and now its probably one of the first places I visit when I start work in the morning.

As to calendars, we have one that everyone uses (or is supposed to use) at the University called UMCal. It allows us to share our calendars online, check for conflicts in scheduling meetings, send notes, and do other nice stuff. For example, our room reservations are handled through the calendar so we can check on the availability of a certain space. We still need to actually schedule the room through our building manager, but it works out well when planning for classes and events. This also combines the list making feature found on some of the other tools in this Thing, so I can make "to do" lists and track progress on tasks and projects.

I tried pdf converters a while back and they worked all right, but in the end (after having things lock up on me in a few conversions) I opted for the full Adobe package so that I could take stuff and put it into pdf without any hassles.