Springpad It and Get Really Organized

Posted by techgirl

Posted: February 20, 2009 - 2:00 pm

Comments (0) |

springpad at springpadit.comI'm just starting to play around with Springpad (http://www.springpadit.com) and getting those "aha" moments you get when you suddenly see a lot of uses for something. Believe it or not, Springpad is a cross between a "get it done" application, personal organizer, event and meal planner, and clipping service.

How does Springpad work?

You can sign up for Springpad for free. Then you can start building your Springpads which aren't quite springpads, per se, but more like Pastepads - places where you can add, copy/paste and accumulate information in an organized fashion around a particular task or set of tasks.

For example, you can find templates for Springpads for:

Meal Planning
Date Night Planning
Medical Tracking
Gift Planning
Weekly Chore Tracking
Day Planner
Receipt Manager
GTD Notebook ("Get Things Done" for the non-GTD initiated)
Trip Planer
Party Planner
Babysitter Handbook
Calorie Tracker
and much, much more.

Basically, Springpad gives you the template, tools and features to set up a task-specific organizer to help make those tasks easier and more efficient.

Let's Get Cooking

Take meal planning, for example. I can never think of what to cook for dinner every night and go through the same sudden panic a few hours before dinnertime. I popped into Springpad, picked the Weekly Meal Planner template, clicked on today's date, and chose Add a Recipe.

Because I didn't yet have a recipe in my personal Springpad database, I instead surfed the Web and found a quick and easy recipe for Parmesan Chicken. I copied and pasted the URL for the recipe page into Springpad. And here is what is very cool: Springpad parsed out the ingredients from the recipe - something I could then add to my Springpad shopping list if I wanted.

The full recipe still resides on the original recipe site, however, in my meal planning calendar, under today's date, it now reads Parmesan Chicken along with all the required ingredients. Tomorrow's dinner entry reads Pecan Chicken with Mustard Sauce. Okay, so they had a sale on chicken at the grocery store.

Date Night Made Easy

If you like to organize a date night with your significant other, Springpad can make it a cinch. You can add components to your evening such as dining in or eating out and make a restaurant selection if you're going out on the town. Your selection includes reviews from Yelp to give you more confidence in the place you're choosing if you've never been there before.

You can select a movie, get reviews, access the schedule and even buy the ticket online through Fandango if available in your area. You can even get recommendations for gifts or add a recipe for chocolate covered strawberries to serve at the end of the evening if you so desire.

Organizing Online Clips

Another handy tool within Springpad is their SpringIt bookmarklet available from their blog (http://www.springpartners.com/blog). Drag the link to your browser window and whenever you want to copy something from a Web page, click your Spring It! button and SpringPad will grab it and paste it into your account.

You can organize articles, images, anything you grab from a site, and still be able to access the original content. Gone are the days of long unorganized bookmark lists. Now you can file just the parts of pages that you need and organize them by categories that make sense to you.

Getting Things Done

I admire the GTD community who are obsessive about getting things done and have all kinds of systems and tools in place to help them be more efficient. Springpad gives deference to GTDers' specific needs, allowing for a "have it your way" type of customization on features such as the GTD Notebook which can include reminders, budgets and milestones.

Trying to box Springpad into a single category is futile. Springpad should be thought of more like an engine with mix and match tools to create the organizer that works for you and the specific types of tasks you need done in your work and life. Clever!

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