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The onslaught continues on two different fronts that make Facebook and Digg seem quiet in comarison:

Social: Twitter led me to Twitterlocal led me to Friendfeed.

Passive: Techmeme led me to Techsted led me to Linkriver.

Those are six neverending fountains of news. Seriously - the info firehose has turned into a broken dam. I will be seeking an umbrella soon.

It’s a Sunday. This made me chuckle:

I’ve been testing out a bunch of online services to try to keep somewhat organized. Some of them are to-do list managers, some are calendar applications, some are more like freeform-note applications with crazy parsers built in that figure out what you really mean.

After a bunch of accounts, tests, and residual fallout, which included (the unfortunately named) I Want Sandy, Stikkit, and Plaxo, here is what’s left that works for me, at least:

Remember The Milk - this is a great to-do list organizer. You organize them into groups, which appear as tabs across the top. You can prioritize the items by color, and the application can remind you of due-dates via email or SMS. Add to that a handy list of keyboard shortcuts, and keeping track of your to-do items is a snap.

Google Calendar - the old standby. Great collaboration with other people’s calendars and other web apps (like RTM!). It can also remind you of upcoming events by email or SMS, and can both subscribe to and export as iCal files for easy integration into other applications. Adding new events is ridiculously easy.

Jott - This is the newest one for me. It can also be used to organize to-do’s, but it best used as a phone-based reminder/note-to-self service. You call an 800 number, tell it to whom or what application you would like to address, and after the tone, speak your mind. Jott uses a voice-to-text engine to transcribe your words - it will then send your message by either email, SMS, or web service to whomever or whatever you choose. It integrates with a ridiculous number of services such as RTM, Google Calendar, Wordpress, etc.

Basecamp - The tried and true project management suite - this makes it a breeze to collaborate with a team of people and clients. It takes care of passing along and versioning related files, messages, milestones, timelines and contact information.

Between those four webapps, I can trudge in a relatively straight line no matter what insanity a week might toss in my direction.

…except thank you, and curse you, to Sara, and two days later to Andy for reminding me to click the link…

This is the list of software that has made life just a little bit easier lately:

Wordpress 2.5 - well duh, you’re here. Wordpress just keeps getting better and better. One of the best managed projects on the net. http://wordpress.org/

Media Monkey - I’m using it to organize a ridiculous collection of mp3s. It does a fantastic job of renaming, retagging, and sorting out the minutiae of an eclectic collection. http://mediamonkey.com/

Exact Audio Copy - this is a hard-core CD-ripper - it will work harder to produce a faithful copy of a CD track than any other ripper out there. Grabs track info via freedb.org and uses the LAME encoder to enable one-click identify/rip/compress. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Digsby - it’s an IM client that supports all the major services, like Pidgin or Trillian, but also checks your email for you and keeps tabs on your favorite social networks, without the bloat. http://digsby.com/