Chelsea Hejny is a social media writer at ShortStack, a tab-designing tool that creates custom Facebook pages. Hejny also works as a president of the American Marketing Association in Nevada.
The first couple weeks of the new year are in the books, and those New Year’s resolutions are not completing themselves. Luckily, 2012 is the year that technology will do almost all of your New Year’s resolution heavy lifting for you — all for free or at rock bottom prices. Want to get organized? There’s a mobile application for that. Need financial help? There’s an app for that. Need a full-service, mobile office? There’s software-as-a-service for that.
The year 2012 is one of no excuses. It is the year that the brightest minds in technology are hand-delivering solutions to all your shortcomings. In the 1990s you might have run out to Office Maxx to spend a couple hundred dollars on filing cabinets. But in 2012, all you need to do is click and download. Here are two sites to help you in the workplace, and two sites to help you at home in 2012:
In the Office
New Years Resolution: Enter the cloud and go mobile
Tech Solution: YourOfficeAnywhere.com
Small businesses and entrepreneurs have to be mobile multi-taskers, and that means going to sales calls, meeting clients and hitting the road to drum up new business. YourOfficeAnywhere.com taps these businesses into the power of cloud computing to solve all of their information and communication needs wherever they are. No driving back to the office to get a file off of your desktop or printing out reams of information. With YourOfficeAnywhere.com, you receive a mobile office and online meeting capabilities with data storage and scheduling capabilities.
Versatile enough to absorb most small business technology needs, YourOfficeAnywhere.com is a comprehensive technology solution for a small business that wants meetings, scheduling, data storage and more, all in one central and mobile location. The easy-to-use service is priced at $10 a month and is perfect for small-business owners who do not want to deal with complex technology but still want the data storage, mobility and collaboration of cloud computing.
There is nothing to download, and your entire workspace can be pulled up from any digital device with a simple online login. The service also allows you to invite clients into the cloud and work on projects collaboratively, without the clients having to sign up to the service. The addition of video conferencing and chat allows communication in the cloud. And, at 100 gigabytes, the service’s storage is large enough for even data-intensive small businesses.
If you are looking to improve efficiency and stay organized on the road in 2012, check out YourOfficeAnywhere.com.
New Years Resolution: Stay on task
Tech Solution: Wunderlist
Collaborative and mobile, Wunderlist has turned a lot of heads for its elegant simplicity. Because — let’s face it — when you are choosing an application to simplify your scheduling and organize your life, the last thing you want is a complex and confusing piece of technology. Wunderlist’s simple lists and reminders keep you on schedule, and Wunderlist can be created directly from your e-mail inbox. A drag-and-drop functionality makes organizing your lists simple and intuitive.
The application can be used on any computer or mobile device. And you can invite people to events and collaborate with co-workers or clients using the application. Best of all, it is free.
At Home
New Year’s Resolution: Save money
Tech Solution: Mint.com
Saving money has always gone hand-in-hand with laborious data entry. But not anymore. Mint.com has revolutionized finances with a service that tracks spending, saving and financial performance effortlessly. Using the feeds from your bank accounts, retirement funds and stock portfolios, Mint.com crunches all of the numbers and gives you all of the analysis you need to see where your money is going. You have to surrender the passwords to all of your banking accounts to the secure site, but that has not stopped 1.5 million people, fed up with number crunching, from using the service.
Recently purchased by Intuit for $170 million, this is no fly-by-night service. Your financial profile is served up in pie charts and charts that are easily trackable and can be broken down by category. The site adds security to your financial life by alerting you to unusual spending patterns that may signify identity theft.
With the power of Mint.com, and the pinpoint knowledge of where your money goes each month, saving and a better organized financial life is your for the taking in 2012.
New Year’s Resolution: Remember, and act on, those great ideas
Tech Solution: Evernote
Did you have a lot of million-dollar ideas in 2011 that got lost in the outer recesses of your brain? Do you find yourself brainstorming in the car or on a walk, and then find those great thoughts have evaporated when you finally get back in front of your computer?
Evernote is an application that will catalog and save all of your genius. The Wunderlist for notes and ideas, it’s easily searchable and able to hold notes, photos and those favorite webpages that you happen upon when you are not at your desk. Perfect for writer, designers and students — or anyone with a phone and a case of forgetfulness — Evernote stockpiles your great ideas and allows you to collaborate with friends from the site. It’s free, so you have nothing to lose, especially if you have been losing great ideas all along.