Time Tracking with Chrometa

As our lives continue to move online, keeping track of everything is quickly becoming difficult.  Between screen names, work email, home email, and multiple phone numbers, important contact information gets split up between many devices and websites.

How will Soocial save me time?

Soocial (pronounced “social”) syncs my desktop, mobile, and gmail address books in one place on the web. If I update a contact, that change flows through all of my devices. If I lose my phone — no big deal, I’ll just sync my new phone with the app.
Services like Plaxo have been around for ages, but they were designed for the pre-smartphone era. Amsterdam-based Soocial is everything Plaxo should have been; it’s simple and it just works.  Soocial provides contact syncing and reconciliation of contacts wherever they may exist, including a long list of mobile phones.  It works similarly to MobileMe, with a focus on accuracy over speed.  Changes are bi-directional and synchronization happens over the air, never again will have outdated contacts or redundant information in 3 locations.

Another strength of Soocial is its backup feature.  If you somehow manage to completely wreck your contact list, restoring it to its previous state is only a click away. All in all, Soocial brings a compelling app with a Cupertino-esque user experience.  You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Soocial offers both free and paid versions.  For those with lots of contacts, the cost is negligible ($4/month or $39/year).

Get Soocial and save time at soocial.com

The recent release of Microsoft Office 2010 isn’t the only news on the productivity suite scene.  Last week, Microsoft launched Office Web Apps, bringing near desktop-quality versions of Word, Excel PowerPoint and OneNote to your browser.

The best part about Office Web Apps is that it’s FREE.

An alternative to Google Docs and Zoho

Office Web Apps offers superior support for advanced document formatting than Google Docs or Zoho.  In fact, you can open nearly any document in Office Web Apps and expect it to look just like you would expect in the desktop version.  Also, Microsoft provides integration with SkyDrive, meaning you have 25GB to store files, making Google’s 1GB offering look paltry.

So should you save be ready to quit the desktop version of Office in favor of the free web-based one?  The short answer is not quite yet.  There are still a few key differences between the two versions.  First, while Web Apps can open most documents without a hitch, editing is a different story.  For sophisticated formatting and graphics, Web Apps is limiting.  Second, as with any cloud application, you are at mercy of the provider, in this case, Microsoft.  If their servers are compromised there is little you can do but hope your data is safe.

Despite the web version’s shortcomings compared to it’s big brother, Microsoft is taking a big step in the right direction by making an otherwise expensive software suite more accessible to everyone.  It’s tough to argue with free.

For more details on Office Web Apps, check out Lifehacker’s writeup comparing it with Google Docs.