I don't know all of those, but the ones I do use -- del.icio.us and Sandy -- are pretty useful to me. I use del.icio.us as way to tagging/voting for items I find interesting. I don't want to need to make a post out of everything (I wouldn't want to work too hard -- it's not healthy, as the Times pointed out) so a bookmark is fine.
as for Sandy, it's a great way to offload remembering stuff without writing it down somewhere and then losing the thing you wrote it down on/in. Send an email with a roughly-formed request to remember something and get back a confirmation. If you send an iCal file, you find that all the items in it have been turned into reminders and imported into your Google calendar. It does give people like me some of the resources of an assistant (the remembering and tracking of tasks and to dos).
A busy guy with an iPhone could benefit from integrating Sandy into their workflow ;-)
If all you have is a nail, the only tool you want looks a lot like a hammer.
Maybe you don't need these tools. I use del.icio.us, because I use a lot of different computers and browsers and I want my bookmarks to follow me around. As far as I can tell I don't need the other ones.
"I should be able to find a way to use all of these in a way that is truly useful"
Wrong way round. Tools do not force tool users to find a way of using them. Tool users see a need for a tool, build one (or have one built), then start using it.
For what it's worth, I've tried and abandoned Sandy, Jott and Tumblr. You are not alone.
I agree with the posters above, but a slightly more generous assessment would be to say that we're all different, we all have different capacities, different goals and different skill sets. That fact that other people find these tools lifesavers probably means it is worth listening to how they use them, but it doesn't go beyond that to implying that you should feel you ought to use them.
Or to put it differently, there are only so many hours in the day. I've personally concluded that I will put a fair bit of effort into making my iTunes library the best it can be in terms of ratings, winnowing out disliked songs, album art and so on. I'll put the bare minimum of effort into getting my photos into iPhoto and tossing the obvious duds. I'll spend zero effort on making movies, DVDs, and on Garage Band. And I'll be part of the tiny minority that continually add material into the service librarything.
Other people, other choices --- if they want their iTunes library to be a random collection of tracks while they obsessively file their photos on Flickr, good for them. They have their priorities, I have mine.
"I should be able to find a way to use all of these in a way that is truly useful:" doesn't that suppose that they are intended to be useful to everyone, at least or especially to everyone who is "supposed to be smart"? Maybe you just don't have the need/want profile one or more of them intended to satisfy. What were your expectations of each of these? Were they realistic expectations? Were they based on claimed features, claimed planned features, expected-to-be planned features? Were they based on real needs/wants, anticipated needs/wants, and so on?
I, as several previous posters, am only a del.icio.us user. I like having it archive my links and I like the tagging classification paradigm. I like sharing links with friends and family, but find I often have to send a link by email, far from "everybody" uses it. I like exploring other users' links, but lament the lack of search tools to help find other users with similar interests to mind (like at LibraryThing). I won't complain too loudly, it has served purposes for free (not even advertising to watch), but I've been disappointed; it had potential, but it ceased to develop (as far as I can tell) after it was bought by Yahoo! For its (Yahoo!'s) lack of ambition to realize this potential, it may be challenged by Facebook (of all things!). Even the WSJ is proposing a Facebook app, to "see what your friends are reading in the Wall Street Journal."
How do you like Netvibes, Meebo, and Twitter? Are you LinkedIn, Facebook, or both (complementary uses)?
I don't know all of those, but the ones I do use -- del.icio.us and Sandy -- are pretty useful to me. I use del.icio.us as way to tagging/voting for items I find interesting. I don't want to need to make a post out of everything (I wouldn't want to work too hard -- it's not healthy, as the Times pointed out) so a bookmark is fine.
as for Sandy, it's a great way to offload remembering stuff without writing it down somewhere and then losing the thing you wrote it down on/in. Send an email with a roughly-formed request to remember something and get back a confirmation. If you send an iCal file, you find that all the items in it have been turned into reminders and imported into your Google calendar. It does give people like me some of the resources of an assistant (the remembering and tracking of tasks and to dos).
A busy guy with an iPhone could benefit from integrating Sandy into their workflow ;-)
Posted by: paul | April 07, 2008 at 10:05 PM
Assume you are smart. Perhaps it's a meaningful critique that these services cannot all be used in a way that is truly useful.
Posted by: jerry | April 07, 2008 at 10:18 PM
If all you have is a nail, the only tool you want looks a lot like a hammer.
Maybe you don't need these tools. I use del.icio.us, because I use a lot of different computers and browsers and I want my bookmarks to follow me around. As far as I can tell I don't need the other ones.
Posted by: matt wilbert | April 08, 2008 at 05:07 AM
It is possible to spend so much time mastering tools that you never actually do anything.
Posted by: programmer | April 08, 2008 at 06:28 AM
What jerry Said.
Assume you are smart. Which of those tools is superfluous, given the others? Which is a "second-best solution"?
Now, which would you invest in if you were a VC firm leader?
Sequence, and re-analyze. If you get the same answer. drop the bottom tool, or find its replacement.
Posted by: Ken Houghton | April 08, 2008 at 08:12 AM
"I should be able to find a way to use all of these in a way that is truly useful"
Wrong way round. Tools do not force tool users to find a way of using them. Tool users see a need for a tool, build one (or have one built), then start using it.
For what it's worth, I've tried and abandoned Sandy, Jott and Tumblr. You are not alone.
Posted by: jim | April 08, 2008 at 01:34 PM
I agree with the posters above, but a slightly more generous assessment would be to say that we're all different, we all have different capacities, different goals and different skill sets. That fact that other people find these tools lifesavers probably means it is worth listening to how they use them, but it doesn't go beyond that to implying that you should feel you ought to use them.
Or to put it differently, there are only so many hours in the day. I've personally concluded that I will put a fair bit of effort into making my iTunes library the best it can be in terms of ratings, winnowing out disliked songs, album art and so on. I'll put the bare minimum of effort into getting my photos into iPhoto and tossing the obvious duds. I'll spend zero effort on making movies, DVDs, and on Garage Band. And I'll be part of the tiny minority that continually add material into the service librarything.
Other people, other choices --- if they want their iTunes library to be a random collection of tracks while they obsessively file their photos on Flickr, good for them. They have their priorities, I have mine.
Posted by: Maynard Handley | April 08, 2008 at 01:54 PM
Don't forget Google Notebook, which seems to be highly similar to Evernote.
Check out Lifehacker.com for some posts covering all those tools, or even a quick Wikipedia will give you a short description of their capabilities.
Most technology is a solution searching for a problem...
Posted by: Chris | April 09, 2008 at 08:57 AM
"I should be able to find a way to use all of these in a way that is truly useful:" doesn't that suppose that they are intended to be useful to everyone, at least or especially to everyone who is "supposed to be smart"? Maybe you just don't have the need/want profile one or more of them intended to satisfy. What were your expectations of each of these? Were they realistic expectations? Were they based on claimed features, claimed planned features, expected-to-be planned features? Were they based on real needs/wants, anticipated needs/wants, and so on?
I, as several previous posters, am only a del.icio.us user. I like having it archive my links and I like the tagging classification paradigm. I like sharing links with friends and family, but find I often have to send a link by email, far from "everybody" uses it. I like exploring other users' links, but lament the lack of search tools to help find other users with similar interests to mind (like at LibraryThing). I won't complain too loudly, it has served purposes for free (not even advertising to watch), but I've been disappointed; it had potential, but it ceased to develop (as far as I can tell) after it was bought by Yahoo! For its (Yahoo!'s) lack of ambition to realize this potential, it may be challenged by Facebook (of all things!). Even the WSJ is proposing a Facebook app, to "see what your friends are reading in the Wall Street Journal."
How do you like Netvibes, Meebo, and Twitter? Are you LinkedIn, Facebook, or both (complementary uses)?
Posted by: Maurice Lanselle | April 09, 2008 at 02:34 PM
I'm not telling you what I'm reading on Craigslist.
Posted by: jerry | April 09, 2008 at 02:45 PM