A very public crime scene.

280daily lets you archive your life in private, 280-character diary entries — just enough to get the gist without the pressure to mimic Jane Austen.

Since not every day is a winner (“Had frozen yogurt again…”), you can mark specific entries as “days of note” so they stand out from the crowd. The site comes with helpful features like an entry search engine, photo attachments, and the ability to export your musings to a PDF, spreadsheet, or even hardcover book.

If you find yourself in love with the service, upgrade to a pro account ($3 a month) for the ability to submit updates via email, adjust your character limits, and receive text-message reminders.

After all, it would be a crime to let a day go by unchronicled.

The one service to do just that: VoteIt.

Offering three types of custom polling methods — consensus, multiple choice, and yea or nay — the new site brings democracy to questions as small as where to eat dinner and as large as naming the best movie of all time.

Ballots can be private (accessible via email invite only) or open to the public by sharing the link on Facebook and Twitter. Also available: Head into the proverbial danger zone and let participants add their own options.

When the dust settles, the survey creator can close the vote, which automatically sends a message to the participants with the final tally.

Four more words worth noting: “Let’s agree to disagree.”

Then Toyota mastered it with kanban, a billboard-style process to visually organize and prioritize production by dividing activities into three categories: undone, in progress, and completed.

Task manager kanban2go adapts that system for your to-do lists with a simple drag and drop schematic that makes completing projects, errands, and chores a visual, actionable exercise.

Start as many boards as you want, and tie together projects of a similar type with tags (home, work, Fifty Shades of Grey fan fiction, etc.). Google Calendar sync and Evernote backup provide invaluable support from apps you’re already using.

If you need to collaborate with others, invite them to join the board (the site’s charming instructional video shows the benefit in this). And the whole thing is optimized for desktop, mobile, and tablet usage, so you can start projects and track accomplishments from all frontiers.

It’s probably the only time billboards won’t obstruct your view.

But what happens when you come across a picture of something you actually want? Like in real life?

That’s where Fancy has upped the ante. Like Pinterest, Fancy features members’ collections of unique Internet finds. Users can “fancy” things other people have added either online or with an array of stylish apps.

But Fancy adds a key piece to the puzzle: a buy button. Some items are purchasable right on the site; some link to the site where they are available. Still others (like this house built under a boulder in Portugal) aren’t for sale at all – but Fancy has booking information for a nearby hotel if you want to see it in person.

Browse by category to see the day’s most popular stuff, or dive into the sale bin, where you’ll find notable Fancy-only deals from places like ThinkGeek and Audiocubes.

FYI, the dog up there isn’t for sale — but his trench coat is.

Fancy, indeed.

Goals and rocket-powered rollerskates.
For those with the drive sans the death wish, Gonna Try is a safe nudge in the right direction. The homepage asks you to complete one simple statement: “I’m gonna try to _____________ by ______.”

Define your goal and the date that you’d like to accomplish it by, on, or until. Then choose from a list of tools you will use to assist you – everything from exercise apps like Fitocracy to the basic motivation of “being public about it.”

Scroll to the bottom and sign the “pledge” that you will return to record your results. The site will send a reminder but otherwise butt out – because Gonna Try isn’t primarily concerned with success or failure. What the site cares about most is helping people take the first step, which is making a “noble attempt.”

And if Wile E. Coyote taught us anything, it’s that the enjoyment is in the challenge.

Better question: Why are you making all these “friends” if you never speak to them?

Mingly hooks up with your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to put important info about your friends — birthdays, new jobs, relocations, and relationship changes — in a place where you will never miss it: your email.

As a Gmail plugin, Mingly adds an expandable dashboard right into your mailbox where you can see any updates your contacts have made plus receive and send direct messages from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If you don’t use Gmail, you can still opt in to receive what might be your most informative daily email (besides this one, of course) — a roundup of any notable events in your friends’ lives along with reminders to keep in touch with old friends and introduce yourself to new ones.

Little effort, big results. That’s our kind of website.

Unfortunately we have no one to tell it to because we haven’t memorized a phone number since 2003.

Made just for such occasions is a service called Postable, which should, if we do this correctly, build a virtual Rolodex for use during all future mishaps.

First, the site generates a unique URL for you to disseminate to your contacts however you please – be it directly by email or through social media. The link takes recipients to a form asking for their phone number, mailing address, and birthday.

As people respond, their entries are beautifully formatted and organized, complete with a link to a map of their address, a section to add notes, and the ability to export your contacts to a spreadsheet (wedding planning?) or print it on labels.

Meaning the only thing you need to memorize is Postable’s website. (Okay, you can just bookmark it.)

It wasn’t a total success.

Next year we’ll use Capsule, a one-stop shop for party planning and archiving that only includes the people you want.

Each event you create receives a custom email address for group planning (“Who’s bringing the hummus?”) and phone number for on-the-fly texts (“No one let Chris go swimming, he just ate lunch!”). This way even your Facebook-less buddies can get in on the action.

Anyone you’ve invited to the party can download the CapsuleCam app, which automatically uploads every photo you take during the event to a shared group album – meaning you can stop pestering people to email you their pictures the next day.

If only it would stop Aunt Marie from pestering us about wearing sunblock.

. . . you say to yourself while signing up for Pinterest.

Whether you belong to one or ten social networks, you should know about Bliss Control. Building on the popularity of Notification Control, developers Ben Lang and Alex Wolkov took the one-stop settings shop idea and expanded it to cover every possible setting on 13 different sites.

First choose the site (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.), then choose the setting you want to change (profile photo, bio, email settings, etc.). Bliss Control will generate a link that will take you directly to the appropriate page – no digging necessary.

The tool can even point you to a site’s “delete account” button.

Just in case you got a little overzealous with that Path account.

At least that’s what using Joe’s Goals has taught us.

The site helps you catalogue recurring goals in weeklong chunks. Completing positive tasks (eating breakfast) increases your score while negative ones (eating a Diet Coke for breakfast) decreases it. You can weight certain goals so harder activities like cleaning the house earn you extra credit.

There is a handy logbook for optional notes, and everything’s sortable by tag for quick clarification or prioritization, so maintaining your checklists doesn’t feel like just another chore.

Though if you want to count it, we won’t judge.

In real life, no such luck.

If your mailbox overfloweth, try PaperKarma. The mobile app for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone allows you to unsubscribe from all forms of junk mail by simply taking a picture of it.

In our trial run, we found it works best with catalogues and unsolicited offers from well-known companies (credit cards, magazines, etc.). Just open the app, take a picture of the offending item, and click “submit.” You’ll receive a confirmation within 24 hours that you’ve been successfully unsubscribed.

Of course, it takes a few weeks for the change to kick in (marketers don’t give up that easily). But for this kind of simplicity we’re happy to wait it out.

Q: What has one capital letter; two non-consecutive numbers; #, !, $, %, or &; and a minimum of eight characters?

A: Sorry, you were wrong three times so now you’re locked out.

Visual Hashing is a simple plug-in for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. It turns every site’s password entry space into a bar made up of four colors which change with every key you press.

Type your capital Zs and exclamation points correctly and you will see the same four hues each time. As you speedily log in, it’s a quick visual cue as to whether or not you’ve entered the password correctly.

So you have nothing to feel insecure about.

Or something like that.

In any event, that song was onto something. And curating an Internet-wide wish list is easy with Wantworthy’s handy bookmarklet, which adds items from any web shop to your dream haul with a simple click.

Categorize picks by type and add them to a collection: “Basics,” “Favorites,” and our personal favorite, “When I’m Rich.”

You can also add to your anthology from Want Worthy’s selection of Monthly Picks like the Splurge and Save, which features nearly identical items form opposite ends of the price spectrum.

The hardest choice? Deciding what to actually buy.

But like that other song says, “Shoppin‘ ain’t easy.”

Also known as One Size Larger Pants season, Constant Sugar High season, and Awkward Glances from Co-workers season.

So this time around we’re shooting for moderation with the help of RoutineTap. It’s an incredibly versatile progress-tracking site offering customizable daily questions and answers that automatically generate charts and graphs to quantify your entire life.

In our case, we set up measures to track cookie consumption (in the hope that 43 boxes will last a whole year), weight gained, and hours lying awake in bed at night.

The less cookie-obsessed can use RoutineTap to curb, encourage, or simply track everything from spending habits to hours in the gym. Set up multiple questionnaires to see the correlation of your habits, like the effect of four cocktails on your Facebook activity.

The important thing to remember is to not try to steal our Thin Mints — we know exactly how many we have left.

See also: ouch.

Here with a much-needed remedy is Manilla, a blissfully free service that wrangles all of your bills into one place and keeps track of due dates so you don’t have to.

The site pulls your accounts – including credit cards, cell phones, utilities, and loans – into a clean, easy-to-use interface that shows you what’s due when. Electronic copies of your bills are available for viewing, and Manilla even archives them for future reference.

And since the service only requires one password (which uses bank-level protection), gone are the days of logging into a dozen different sites just to check in on your finances.

The kicker? Manilla even tracks rewards programs (you know, the ones you’ve totally lost track of) as well as deal sites like LivingSocial and Groupon to assemble a comprehensive list of your coupons.

Which is the definition of convenience.

Unless you’re trying to do it with a bunch of passwords you’ve forgotten.

We’ve been test-driving a solution for just that problem called Dashlane, a free download that uses one super strong master password to store the sign up information for every site you visit.

Upon returning, you’re automatically logged in. When registering for new sites, it can even generate and save random passwords so you don’t have to.

The service works for all types of sites, from email and social networks to bills and banking. But where Dashlane really shines is shopping: It keeps multiple credit cards on file, stores screenshots of purchased items, and records how much you’ve spent per card.

Dashlane is still in beta, but since we love you so much, we’ve secured invites for Netted subscribers. You don’t even need a secret password.

Sadly, we totally get it.

But all those whims add up, spreading your personal information faster than a Bieber tweet. So it’s probably time to take stock of who knows your what and why.

My Permissions is basically a collection of bookmarks to all the apps permission pages buried deep in your social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more.

The idea isn’t to purge your accounts of all their sharing ability (Princess and Mr. Ed still need their dinner, after all); it’s simply a reminder to check in and make sure your intel is going only to places you want it to go.

Because it’s all fun and games until someone loses a social security number.

So let’s not wait 363 days to do it again.

Our resolution: Break up 2012 into a bunch of intermittent countdowns – and do it on our phones.

For iPhone there’s Timenotes, a $0.99 app that tracks the days, hours, and minutes remaining before an important event. Creating an entry is simple and straightforward; the only flourish is an optional pop-up reminder for up to two days prior.

Android users can download the Days Left Widget, which lets you pin windows to your wallpaper in three different sizes. Important entries can get prime real estate on your home screen, while lesser ones (like ho-hum Tax Day) can be relegated to screens one or two swipes over.

Both Timenotes and the Days Left Widget can be used to track days since an event as well as days to, which is handy for monitoring resolutions. For example, it’s been three days since we counted down to anything.

We’re already slacking.

And then progress in the note-taking department kind of stopped.

Two plucky tech guys out of Ann Arbor are attempting to change that with Fetchnotes. The service works two ways: If you’re at your computer, go to the site and jot down your thought. If you’re on the go, send a text message to your account (even easier if your phone has voice-to-text).

With a Twitter-like functionality, Fetchnotes compiles and categorizes your jottings according to hashtags (think #giftlist, #todo, #hookedupwithatholidayparty). Notes with similar tags are lumped together for easy organization.

Right now, the site is in beta. Deep beta. So deep that the group functionality (using Twitter-reminiscent @ mentions to loop in other list participants) isn’t finished yet. Nevertheless, we’ve secured invite codes for Netted readers so you can watch as Fetchnotes continues to get even more awesome.

Write it down: You heard it here first.

Really complicated.

Hatch, a new social coordination app, is streamlining the process of getting you and your pals in the same place at the same time.

Create an entry with the basic details: who and what (e.g you and your college buddies having happy hour drinks). Once a plan is hatched, the app distributes invites via email or text message; your mates (well, the cool ones) respond to let you know “they’re in.”

You can include a time and place to get things started; your friends have the ability to make suggestions and put ideas up for a vote. Once the details are set (don’t worry, you can edit them any time), users can save the date to their calendars.

And just like that, a great plan is born.

Our doctor also tells us we’ve been shaking too many sticks.

With Matcha, we get recommendations tailored to our taste culled directly from our Hulu and Netflix playlists as well as our friends’ Facebook likes. So instead of just following the generic ratings board (Two and a Half Men, really?), we can stream bespoke entertainment without wasting precious couch time.

You can sort content by the what’s newest, most popular, highly recommended (based on what programs you mark with a thumbs-up), or what your friends are watching. Once you’ve found what you’d like to stream, Matcha provides links to begin watching immediately.

So you can stick a fork in watching lame movies and TV: It’s done.

And when the sun set on that GIF-bearing page, hearts everywhere broke.

Finally, Gimme Bar (the self-proclaimed “5th greatest invention of all time”) is here to offer stability in an instable cyber world, archiving any piece of content from the Web – forever.

Click the Gimme Bar bookmarklet and a thin bar pops up at the bottom of the page showing your public and private folders. Drag and drop photos and links, and poof: They’re saved. Highlight a portion of text or scroll over a video and you are offered the option to stash that away, too.

Collections are archived back at your Gimme Bar account, all easily accessible with the help of handy thumbnails and a search feature. The service even lets you back up accounts you already have (including Delicious and Twitter).

All the power feels like witnessing the dawn of a new age of the Internet.

So instead of business cards, we use Contxts. When your newest acquaintance texts your username to 50500, they’ll get a reply with the contact information you’ve uploaded. Besides your name, email address and phone number, it also includes a link to your profile with your employer and official title.

And if you have an iPhone, the Contxts app will add all your new best friend’s complete information to its contacts list. You can also send it via email, phone number or username from within the app. Or, if it’s too loud to explain everything, hold your iPhone sideways and it’ll show your username and the number to text.

Because we can’t always remember to carry cards, and because not all of us are quite as recognizable as Siegfried or Roy.

The next time you only have a couple of ingredients lying around the pantry, try FoodPair. You can search by ingredients or filter by personal restrictions for recipes you can make right now.

In fact, if you’re a vegan looking for a spinach-based salad recipe crafted by either Jaime Oliver or Martha Stewart with 6-10 total ingredients, that is oddly specific of you—but totally reasonable on FoodPair. And when you sign up, it remembers your important filters for you. With a single click, you can even add recipes to your “My Recipes” section, where they become sort of your personal online cookbook.

The only thing left to do is grab our trusty Swiss Army Knife and attempt to perfect our trademark 7-Seasoned Danger Stew. Only this time around, we might go easy on the eraser shavings.

Protocol.by is the latest offering from MIT’s famed Media Lab and the Harvard Berkman Center that can make your life better. The idea is simple: you select from a list of ways to reach you, rank them, and viola, you have a Protocol. It tells people how you’d prefer to be reached so you don’t get a phone call when you’d really, really prefer just to text.

You can add comments to let them know that you’ll be available to gchat, say, between ten and two. Once you have everything set up, Protocol.by gives you the code to embed your Protocol in your webpage. And sign up fast to get a good customized address (Protocol.by/YourNameHere) to share your protocol with others.

Our only complaint is that they don’t have carrier pigeon on their list. Let this count as your notice.

Unlike Professor S., you can make things happen humanely at the same time by using a very simple countdown timer called itsAlmo.st. Every countdown you dream up generates a unique URL you can share with your friends to coordinate activity.

Besides turning synchronizing into a minute task, setting up a string of countdowns in one session is infinitesimally difficult when you click the “New Countdown” button. The “My Countdowns” option traps all your new ones in case you entangle the wrong links while spreading countdowns among your networks.

Or, use them as a personal reminder system, but don’t forget to keep them open until the physical alarm begins waving at the top of your browser. Most of ours are just time limits to make sure we don’t waste too much time wondering why people ever let Schrödinger adopt their cats in the first place.

In order to reclaim our cooking supremacy, we’ve started using Recipefy. Besides keeping track of our best recipes and exploring new favorites, we’re making great progress toward proving that the microwave is a cooking tool–not an oven replacement.

What sets Recipefy apart from other recipe organizers is the built-in social component. Sure, it’s a breeze to upload and write your own recipes, but it’s also super simple to share your recipes with your friends and find cooks to follow for new dishes.

Joining is easy: you can connect using your Facebook, Twitter, or Google accounts (or start a new one). Once set up, you can import your existing friends from there for an instant social-snacker network. After that, just upload your recipes, find new ones, and get cooking.

Of course, the better you get at cooking, the easier it will be to explain why mis en place means more than “fold the lid halfway back.”

With TwitDo you can announce your tasks and their status with a hashtag. TwitDo collects all your tasks at twit.do/[your Twitter handle] so you can review statuses at your leisure.

And if you’re worried you’re spamming your followers, or burying your witticisms, it’s easy to tweet at dedicated TwitDo accounts instead. Tweeting at the accounts @4todo, @4done and @4undo adds a new task, finishes a task or undoes your new task, respectively. It’s a simple way to tally up everything you need to do—even while you’re procrastinating on Twitter—so there’s no need to learn, open or sync another program.

So shout it from the mountaintops or just quietly mumble from behind your monitor, “I’m finally going to be productive today!” Then retweet another comedian.

But everything has had a silver lining since we signed up for Otixo. By syncing cloud services like Google Docs, Dropbox and MobileMe there, you can easily search and find any file you’ve uploaded from one central location.

Once you’ve found the files, you can delete them or share them across platforms and services without complicated downloads and uploads—right from the Otixo dashboard. It even generates links so you can share files with friends, family and coworkers for thirty days.

With the time we save on a daily basis, we can pull our head out of The Cloud and go to bed or take a drive downtown when we’re sick and tired and there’s not a soul around.

But for all the people with human kids, RedRover on Android and iDevices will help you easily find the nearest petting zoos and open patches of grass. By adding fellow parents as friends on the app, you can view your upcoming activities and schedule play dates.

Running late? Dropped Timmy’s ice cream down the well? Ran out of Chia Pet seeds? It has a Twitter-like feed that allows you to share breaking kid news with other parents who need to know.

It also curates activity suggestions from local experts, so there’s an instantaneous solution when the kids enter their “I’m bored” broken-record-phase. Best of all, it has a location-based list of nearby emergency rooms, just in case.

It’s a beautiful and convenient way to keep your kids social and active. It certainly beats letting them stay in front of the TV, idly chewing their cuds.

But to our great relief, we found HQ: To Do & Task Lists for iDevices and Astrid for Android devices. HQ brings beautiful graphic design to the table (and by table we mean tablet), while Astrid is a powerhouse of customization and flexibility.

Astrid’s robust site features everything you would expect from web-based to do lists like keyboard shortcuts and email reminders, but with a social twist. When you share your tasks with collaborators, your helpers will get an email and access to the shared list.

Of course, the Android app has all the same features. Besides synching up with all your tasks on Astrid’s website, it can also sync up with Google Tasks.

Or, for the iOS addicts, HQ: To Do & Task Lists lets you assign colors to lists and objectives so it’s easier to find what you’re looking for. It’s extremely fast and simple: selecting items takes no more than a tap and sorting items is just a swipe.

We’ve put new items on the top of to do list: reevaluate our favorite things to do.

To finally get yourself online, try Magnt. The free service makes all of your contact information available on one universally accessible page and as a downloadable V-Card.

Setting up a page is quick, painless and free. You can include as much or as little contact information as you’d like, and even include your social media accounts like your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and latest Tumblr posts.

Concerned about aesthetics? You can personalize the look of your site with a gallery of customizable themes and layouts. Pro account pages are also optimized to look incredibly sleek while being viewed on a mobile device.

Most features are free, but signing up for a Pro account will get you a custom domain name and custom email address for a truly professional touch. They usually go for $9 per month of $99 per year, but since we love you, Netted readers can purchase Pro accounts for $5 per month or $50 per year. Just enter the promo code “netted” at checkout.

The good news is we can use our old business cards to finally fashion that dress Lady Gaga has been asking about for months.

Sure, not everyone can be speed reading champ, but for everyone else trying to read a little faster, we recommend ShortMail. It’s a new Twitter/Email mashup that keeps notes short (less than 500 characters!), to the point, and easy to read.

After logging in with Twitter, Shortmail will add “@shortmail.com” to your Twitter handle and remind recipients to keep replies under 500 letters, too. Like Twitter, a helpful counter keeps track when you’re close to your limit.

It’s easy to import both Gmail and Twitter contacts to Shortmail. Once you do, you can have public chats reminiscent of Twitter or just use it as your shortest, fastest email account.

We can’t decide whether it’s like a longer Twitter or a shorter email. We’re also having trouble determining whether the glass is half empty or half full, and whether to wax on or wax off. But we hired a pretty tough speed reading coach to help.

Luckily, Notational Velocity and Resoph Notes are designed specifically for people who love taking notes, but hate paper. Notational is designed for Mac computers and Resoph adds note-taking excellence to Windows.

As the name implies, Notational Velocity is strictly for speed. There are no navigational buttons, just a bar to enter new notes and search through old ones. It’s pretty much the Ferrari of note taking: sleek, shiny and way too fast.

Resoph adds a little complexity with a tagging system and a number of keyboard shortcuts. The layout is still very simple, but you can easily sort all of your notes into virtual folders by just adding a word or two.

Both automatically sync at all times or export notes you need in a matter of seconds. They also sync up with Simplenote, so you can take your important notes with you everywhere.

Our database of illustrious notes now runs the gamut on everything from apps we love to times where we can sneak in an Angry Birds level or two.

That’s when we knew it was time to sign up for SaneBox. They’ll automatically set up a series of labels in your email account and instantly sort your messages as you receive them.



The basic labels include @SaneBox (the emails you should read right now) and @SaneLater (the emails you should save for later). The SaneBox algorithms will sort every email automatically and can easily be trained to respond differently by just changing the email’s label.

Once you’ve mastered the basics, they offer much more detailed sorting options. Enabling their other labels will do everything from sift out bulk emails and newsletters to preventing emails from specific addresses from ever showing up in your inbox again.

It’s a Gmail priority inbox, but on steroids, and for every inbox. In an improvement on normal labeling, SaneBox’s complex algorithm learns from its mistakes to become more effective with use. It can even sync with your social media accounts to give higher priority to the people you talk with most.

The service costs $4.95 per month after the month-long test trial, but Netted readers can get an extra three free months by signing up here.

However useful you find SaneBox, we do advise that you reply to those “flamethrower recall” emails quickly. We’re guessing they’re pretty urgent.

Whimventory strives to make sure you get what you want with their universal wishlist. The well designed service makes it easy to add items from any online store you’re visiting.

Once you’ve signed up and installed the browser bookmarklet, adding items to your list is as easy as clicking a button–you never even have to leave the site you’re visiting. Whimventory is simple to use, meaning whoever you pass your list along to will have no problem following it…unless they’re intentionally trying to make you angry with a bad gift.

If you’re planning a wedding, getting psyched for the holidays or simply being a smart shopper, Whimventory is a great way to keep everything organized. Even if you’re not planning on sharing it with family, it’s a good way to remember what purchases you may want to make for yourself.

We’ve added everything from pint glasses to powerboats to our lists. We know that long-lost oil tycoon relative will come forth sometime soon.

The wisdom of reflection becomes clear when you track past actions with iDoneThis. It’s a simple productivity tool that works just by having you write down the things you’ve achieved each day.

After signing up, you’ll begin receiving a simple email every day. Just reply to it with a list of the day’s accomplishments and they’ll be automatically added to your iDoneThis calendar. Each entry is stored privately, like a digital journal.

The best part is versatility: you’re encouraged to reply to the email however you’d like. They don’t care whether you’re trying to stay motivated for a long-term work project, lose weight, train for a marathon or simply record your thoughts. iDoneThis records all of it with ease and efficiency so you can track progress or push yourself harder.

It’s way more effective than the last journal we kept, which was mostly filled with cringeworthy poetry and angry rants against our algebra teacher.

Now that we’re older, wiser, and way more responsible, we use Manilla to manage all our finances in one spot – and never pay a bill late. It works hand-in-hand with your bank accounts, credit cards, household bills, frequent flyer programs and even magazine subscriptions to create a centralized financial dashboard.

Simply add your accounts, like your wireless carrier, electric company, and checking account, and settle up everything you owe right from Manilla. The site will even send helpful reminder emails or text messages when bills are due to help you help yourself.

Companies on Manilla no longer have to mail you paper copies of your bill, saving money for them and keeping Manilla free for you. It’s a greener alternative to old-school paper billing that also saves on stamps. And of course, all this problem solving comes with bank-level security verified by the best in the business.

To quote the great Bill Pullman in Independence Day, “Today we celebrate our independence…” from worrying about fees and due dates.

We’ve been making progress with the help of WriteThat.Name. It extracts the information from email signatures so our Gmail address books have everything we need.

The service fills out your Google contact information to include phone numbers, fax numbers and physical addresses. And since we sync our phones with our Gmail, our completed contacts go with us wherever we go.

Of course you can check every detail before a single change is made. If not, they send an email report of all changes made at the end of each day.

Sure, we’ll miss the cool breeze thrown off by a Rolodex in motion, but this is just way better.

Netted has you covered with online tools to help you get the most out of your summer trips while making sure your time and money are well spent. So grab your sunscreen, prep your flight-booking fingers and get ready to hit the road–it’s vacation time.

That’s why we’re glad we came across RockMelt. It’s a browser that has our favorite social media sites, news feeds and instant messaging all built in for constant easy access.

RockMelt has taken all the parts of the Internet you use most and built them right into your browser. No more constantly scanning Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr: your social media is all on the side of your browser, no matter what site you’re browsing.

It’s streamlining at it’s best. If you’re working on an email or project, you can quickly search for address information from Facebook or for that link your friend Tweeted earlier.

Basically, they’ve taken all the parts of the Internet you use most and built them right into your browser. You can easily convert any RSS feed into a custom tab, so you’ll never miss breaking news while accessing all the other sites you can’t function without. Even better, their mobile app brings all the awesomeness to iPhones, too.

And to think: people used to mock us for wearing sweatbands while surfing the Internet!

CityPockets is like having a wallet that not only organizes all your online coupons by expiration date, but also provides a map of where your coupons are redeemable. It’s so technologically advanced, it’s basically the super-wallet you never thought would exist until you were at least a foot in the grave.

Chances are you’ve set up a plethora of accounts with different deal sites to take advantage of offers. But like those gift certificates from Christmas that are still sitting in your drawer, it’s very easy to forget about them until they’ve expired and you’ve lost your money.

City Pockets is a one-stop place to manage all of the deals you’ve purchased that will remind you before your deals expire. It currently syncs with 23 voucher sites including things like UrbanDaddy, Thrillist, Groupon and LivingSocial with more being added as the deal sites boom continues.

Did you go overboard on half-priced tacos and discounted group ice-climbing excursions? They’re also testing a marketplace so you can sell all the coupons you bought but won’t use.

The only next step these deals can take is paying you to use them.

Now we use Tildee to make easy-to-follow tutorials for anyone who needs a little help. Their easy-to-construct instructions can include images, maps and video and can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be.

Maybe the driving directions to your summer house require a bit more explaining than a GPS can offer. Or perhaps your cheesecake recipe requires a little more explanation than a recipe allows. Tildee makes following your tutorials as easy as making them.

It’s way faster, better-looking, and more enabled than writing up a Word document. Each tutorial has a unique URL, so it’s even easier to share once you’re done.

The possibilities for using Tildee are limitless, especially in the computer help area. There’s also an archive of pre-existing tutorials that you’re free to browse.

We really don’t miss those phone calls from mom every time she wants to “turn on the Internet.”

Thoughtboxes might be the custom Tom Ford suit of productivity tools. Instead of a giant, daunting outline with obscure references, Thoughtboxes takes one overarching idea and breaks it down into boxes which can then be separated into notes, tasks and links.

It’s an aesthetically pleasing approach to planning your next trip, brainstorming party ideas or organizing projects at work by separating ideas and tasks into color-coded boxes. Basically, it puts the messy scribbles in your Moleskine notebooks to shame.

If your tasks change, you can move related thoughtboxes next to each other so all the right information won’t get lost. Think of it as a giant e-bulletin board filled with everything your working on.

The first three trains of thought and all their ensuing thought boxes are free, but the Super Thoughtbox with unlimited everything has been discounted for our readers. Just enter the special “Netted” promo code here for a 50% off a year subscription.

And if you choose to listen to “I Can’t Go For That” while getting organized…well, that will only help.

scrible has saved our careers and our computers by offering all the Internet annotation we can handle. Adding their toolbar or bookmarklet gives you all the tools you need to turn any website into your own personal document.

Set that poorly-written article in its place by striking through text or give the writer the subtle nod they’ll never get by highlighting important passages. Add a note coordinating with the highlights or text colorations and then throw in a legend so the patterns all make sense. It’s versatile, useful and has completely changed the way we do research on the Internet.

Collaborate or show off your work by emailing the page to everyone involved. All of your notes can be exported or saved to your convenient, searchable library on scrible like an e-Trapper Keeper.

Now that the Internet is your notebook, all you have to do is resist the urge to write your crush’s name in hearts all over it.

We’re not entirely sure what he meant, but using the AG Wine app for iPhone and iPad has made discovering wines a lot less confusing. It’s a comprehensive guide that lets you browse wines by region, varietal, style or food pairing.

It’s an educational wine shop companion, making the process of selecting the type of wine you’re really after a lot simpler. The app is very well organized, so finding information is lightning fast.

The app doesn’t focus on specific producers or brands unlike other pocket sommeliers. Instead, they use regional strengths and accurate descriptions so you can make your own decisions. Put simply, it makes buying wine about discovery again.

Android users should check out Swirl Pro. The app searches the powerful Snooth database for recommendations, and lets you keep track of the wines you’ve tried with a camera and note system.

We think we’ve reached the next level of funk because now we can’t get “Raspberry Beret” out of our heads every time we go wine shopping.

Copyto makes storing webpages convenient again by only bookmarking the parts of a webpage you actually need. No more scrolling or searching for what you’re looking for: it’s like assembling a cork board of your important Internet info.

Being able to save as much — or little — of any website was all we needed to get on top of bookmarking again. Now we store pictures and prices of the hotel we’re visiting, clip recipes from cluttered blog posts, and save Craigslist posts without fear of losing them in a mishmash of random bookmarks later.

Of course, you can still bookmark entire pages in the Copyto dashboard with a browser add-on  or via email. Your existing bookmarks can be imported, and its mobile site guarantees your bookmarks stay with you wherever you go.

We’ve also managed to score Netted subscribers a 50% discount on premium memberships to Copyto. Just enter the promo code “netted” at checkout.

When we reached out to Oprah for a comment, she simply replied  “Bookmarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrks!”

Taskforce is a simple browser add-on that turns important emails into tasks. It adds buttons directly to your inbox, making it easy to build your to-do list or add on to existing items.

The app makes staying focused effortless: You can prioritize your list by hiding less important tasks until you can tackle everything else on your plate.

For group work, get coworkers involved by clicking the “Collaborators” button and adding their email addresses. Taskforce will automatically keep everyone updated on each other’s progress whether or not they have the program installed. We definitely won’t miss those pestering back-and-forth emails.

We used Taskforce to save time and lives. The subject line was “Steps to Survive the Real Apocalypse — The Zombie Apocalypse”: it involved stockpiling food, locating machetes, and running really fast.

Now we use Storify as a way to tell stories using social media, photos and videos. Simply drag-and-drop the items you want, add personalized text, and share with it the world.

Storify searches Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Google News for individual elements to build your story. Instead of a rambling email or shoddy Facebook photo album, Storify curates the best of social media and brings everything together.

Now we round up our friends’ Tweets, Facebook posts and photos into one place after a get together. Is a major event happening in your city? Combine your friends’ comments and local news reports to make it your own.

We’re so excited, we’re pitching an Internet-based storytelling show to LeVar Burton: Reading Double Rainbow.

Amazon Cloud Drive provides the Internet’s most reputable and reliable cloud storage. It provides 5GB of free backup storage, no physical hard drive necessary. If you have the Internet, you have your files.

The first 5 gigabytes come free, but if you find yourself running out of space yearly plans are also available. Options include $20 for 20GB, $50 for 50GB and so on up to a Terabyte (1000GB).

Awesome Deal Alert: purchase of an MP3 album on Amazon comes with 20GB of free storage on the Cloud Drive for a year. And Amazon’s Cloud Player for your desktop or Android phone lets you take your music with you wherever you go.

Be warned though, Cloud Drive is by no means the best way to get songs unstuck from your head.