First, an admission: I’m a LifeHacker fan. Huge fan. It’s one of the sites I make sure to hit every day, because they’re going to have something there I find interesting, even if I don’t end up using it.  Today, they point to an article at NextPath on top web tools for college students. It’s a pretty good starter list that focuses on things that will make it easier to find and store information, and to communicate with your fellow hard-working students. The list does a good job of recognizing the reality of a lot of college students–that collaboration is a part of life. They suggest some of the Google tools, and they’re a good start, but I think that there are tools that might just serve your needs more completely.

First, if you want to keep track of information for various classes and projects, you should look at Microsoft OneNote, a product that has improved with each iteration. The article recommends http://www.google.com/notebook/, and it can have some advantages, especially if you find yourself logging in from many different computers. Of course, it’s also free, but if you buy Microsoft Office Home and Student, you get OneNote at a very low price bundled in with other key office productivity applications.

If you want to keep a group of people organized, I can’t say enough about Airset. I first learned about Airset through a Tom Regan column in the Christian Science Monitor. Carol and I tried it and it seems that it can go a long way towards helping us keep our schedules from bump-drafting us into the wall. In addition to the calendar, there are lists, blogs, and contact books that could be perfect for classes or oranizations for which a lot of collaboration is required. The developers seem like good folks, too, who are receptive to ideas on how to make the site better and easier to use for high-demand families and groups.

I am continually amazed at how good the tools are for gathering, organizing, and using information. As Vista becomes more widespread–and with the coming of the next generation Macintosh operating system–I think we’ll see a lot more applications designed to make working in a group more effective and far more efficient.

Categories: General computing, Software