We generate a lot of data every day. Some of it is content we create and some of it gets sent to us. share a list of online utility tools that I use to manage all this data.

I come from a manufacturing engineering background so I'm still in the habit of looking for ways to systematize and save time. I've also lost a hard drive before and have gone through the pain of changing computers.  These tools take advantage of "cloud computing" for the most part. In some ways each of these tools allow me to work more efficiently.

Note: This post got really long so I have decided to publish it in two parts. Tomorrow I'll publish part two about social networking automation. Here goes:

Five online utility tools:

Browser: Firefox and/or Flock. I may have to jump into Internet Explorer from time to time when a site requires it, but either Firefox or Flock (which is based on Firefox, see my article on Flock here) is running on my PC at all times. Two words: Tabbed browsing. Make sure you have Firefox set up to open new windows as a new tab and your task bar will stay much neater. Check out this article on fifteen other ways to get the most from Firefox.

Email: Gmail. Even if you use a local email client like Outlook, you owe it to yourself to set up a free Gmail account. Instead of retrieving your mail directly from your ISP, let Gmail fetch it and then set Outlook to fetch it from Google. Gmail also has virtually unlimited storage too.

I really like Gmail's interface and the label system (as opposed to a folder system), but even if you like Outlook better you can use Gmail for its spam filtering. I just don't get spam. Every once in a while a new rash of spam gets through for a few days, but the filter is constantly "learning" and before long it starts to catch the newest wave successfully. One less thing to take up my time.

Gmail backup. I only found this program recently. If you are like me and don't use a local email client such as Outlook, you really must back up Gmail. They don't call it "Beta" for nothing. I've never lost any data from Gmail, but they have been known to lose email from time to time. Gmail Backup does what it says. You pick a folder to put it in and it will pull down all your messages into a format that can be read locally. It even gets put in year and month folders. If you're using a local client you have a backup already.

FoxMarks. There are lots of account logins and passwords to keep up with in the world of social networking. Foxmarks is a Firefox add-on that syncs the bookmarks and passwords that you collect in Firefox to a secure spot in the cloud. Really handy if you have more than one PC in the house or a home PC and a work PC.

Create bookmarks and passwords on one machine and Foxmarks can be set to sync on shutdown. When you get to the other machine you have the same set of bookmarks and passwords. There are other alternatives to this utility, but Foxmarks has served me well so far.

Google Notebook. Yes, another Google product. I've used Google Notebook, the Firefox add-on for a couple of years to keep up with web clippings and info that I collect doing research on this or that. If you already use Google Notebook, heads up! They are stopping development so we will probably have to be looking for an alternative.

Rocket Dock. This one will not appeal to everybody and it's technically not an "online tool", but it's just too cool to leave out. If you use a Windows PC check out Rocket Dock. It's a configurable program launcher that has some similarity to the Mac OS. I used to have a bunch of program icons cluttering my desktop along with documents. Now I keep the programs in Rocket Dock and everything on my desktop is some type of document or folder.

Most of these are fairly main stream, but maybe at least one of those was news to you.

Feel free to share the tools that make your life easier in the comments.

Brett