Get organised using the Web: iVillage

Get organised using the Web

We've got 10 handy ways the Web can save time and help keep you organised.

1. Clear out and sell on
Experts remind us that if we haven't used it or worn it for a year, it's time to get rid of it. Since one woman's junk is another woman's treasure, don't throw it out - auction it! And besides, online auctions are fun. Why not try out iVillage's online auctions? QXL and Amazon are also popular sites.

2. Thank you cards
If your family and friends have email access, try sending an eCard instead of a written thank you note. My children love making the electronic cards (complete with music and animation) and their cousins love receiving them. Check out iVillage eCards. Webshots and Hallmark are also popular sites.

3. Your portfolio for investments
Whether you trade in shares online or not, many sites give you free instant access to stock quotes for a portfolio of your choosing. This portfolio can include a combination of shares you own (and even record your purchase price and date) and shares you want to follow.

The free sites, however, make use of cookie technology to remember who you are, and thus give you instant access (no clicking needed) to the data you want. Try The Motley Fool, or if you want to pay a fee for some serious trading, checkout Sharepeople.com.

4. Organise a party
The old-fashioned way involved ordering invitations, addressing them, buying stamps, making a trip to the post office (boring!), mailing them, waiting for the phone to ring, writing down the RSVPs, then calling back those people who hadn't responded.

Sound like a lot of unnecessary work? Try the Web way. You can create an email invitation and send to your list with a simple click of the mouse. But wait, there's more: these sites also track RSVPs. Evite.com offers their service for free.

5. Birthday and anniversary reminders
There are three free email reminder services that give me an electronic head start on all my important dates. The largest of these is but also looks good. has a birthday reminder service listed under My Etoys - and they even send gift suggestions along with the reminder.

6. Calendaring
For co-ordinating or publishing meeting times and events among groups, try a free online calendar. Each free calendars offers different features, so be sure to rank your needs (email reminders, group scheduling, synchronisation with other calendars, recurring events) before choosing.

Yahoo! Calendar offers email reminders, a to do list, synchronisation with PIMs (Palm Pilots or Microsoft Outlook) and calendar publishing (to share with a group), but it does not offer automatic scheduling among group members.

Netcenter Calendar allows you to add national events to your calendar in areas of personal interest such as music, sports or movies. Group calendaring not available.

offers superior group scheduling features that include meeting confirmation by email, simplified email meeting scheduling and automatic rescheduling of meetings on everyone’s calendar. Other features include PIM synchronisation and email reminders of recurring events.

7. Plan a car journey
I love online mapping. Where else can I get customised door-to-door or city-to-city directions for anywhere in the country? Simply enter your starting and destination address, and choose from a few options (fastest or shortest route? Include or exclude motorways?). The result is a printable, zoomable map with details of driving distance, journey duration and exact directions. The AA online is a good example.

8. Organise your email
You don’t want to clog your business account with personal messages or run the risk of important family messages getting lost in a deluge of low-priority ones. Why don’t you get a second (or third) free Web-based email account to organise your incoming communications? I subscribe to a lot of free electronic newsletters (such as those offered by iVillage) and enjoy reading them after my day’s work is done, so I have a separate email account for newsletters. All these free email accounts are capable of reading HTML mail, and many of today’s most interesting newsletters are available in HTML format. Here are a few places you can pick up a free Web-based email account: TescoNet, Hotmail and Yahoo.

9. Get customised news
Cut through the clutter by getting specific news delivered right to your electronic doorstep. Whether you need to keep your fingers on the pulse of the Middle East or the latest catwalk sensations, check out guardianunlimited and BBC Online.

Excite News offers a highly customisable news-clipping service. Select which publications and topics to track and, as NewsTracker delivers the articles, you can refine the scope of its search by identifying which articles you liked and which were off track. In addition to customised news clipping, Yahoo! News offers email alerts to let you know when news is happening in your area of interest.

10. Back up important data files In order to figure out how often to back up your important data files, ask yourself how many days of work you're willing to lose. One month? One week? One day?

A daily Internet back-up system keeps each of my daily back-ups forever. Yes, there is a fee, but my data is important.

The leader in this field is @Backup.

Why not chat to other iVillagers on the Computer Ideas And Solutions message board. Take a look at some of the LIVE discussions taking place on the message board right now: