Mgmt Tools (off subject)

This is a little off topic, but I get asked the question a lot about why the LinkedIn link is on the blog or about what tools I use to help me manage connections and information.  There are a lot out there, but I have stuck with three for the past few years.  I was about to add a fourth (Spinvox) which takes your voicemails, translates them to text, and e-mails them to you, but it doesn’t work with my phone service right now.

1. LinkedIn – This is a great professional version of Friendster or MySpace.  It allows you to post your profile and link to connections of yours.  It takes the whole concept of Six Degrees of Separation and makes it real.  I was skeptical at first, but I jumped in and uploaded my Outlook contacts.  When I found out that 50 of my friends already used the tool, I was hooked.  I introduced the tool to one friend, and within a month, he had 5,000 of his contacts “LinkedIn”.  It has been great for networking and reconnecting.  And, There was a recent article in Business 2.0 that talked about LinkedIn finally getting over the 3M active user hump.
2. Plaxo – I am sure I don’t use this to the fullest, but it allows me to post my electronic business card and send automatic updates.  If two people have signed up for Plaxo, the service automatically updates your Outlook (or other service) with any changes to the person’s card.  With all the job changes (internal and external) these days, this is very helpful.
3. Google desktop – Although I am a fairly organized person, I can’t keep up with everything these days.  Not to mention that what seems like a good typology one day may not make sense a month from now or during a fire drill.  So I use Google’s desktop tool which indexes your hard drive and allows you to keyword search every file you have and all the websites you have visited.  It is great.

So much for the digression, but I recommend all the tools.