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| Free E-mail reminders and personalized online calendar services are a great way to get organized. These free services are among the most useful freebies to be found on the Web. Below, we offer a roundup of the Web's best E-mail reminder services and online personalized calendars. Just sign up with one of these services and they'll send you reminders for any occasion, from birthdays to anniversaries to doctor's appointments to business meetings. Many of these services also offer free online, customizable calendars, as well as personalized online appointment books, schedule managers and much more. Recently, the Web has been seeing a mini-boom in online PIMs (Personal Information Managers). In many cases, this type of service (which includes entrants such as PlanetAll) offers a free online calendar, address book and E-mail. Given the overall pokey nature of the Web, however, you might not want to get rid of your copy of Microsoft Outlook just yet. Please send us E-mail if you're aware of any other free services that we haven't listed below. |
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LottoBot - This is a helpful free reminder service if you play the lotto regularly (particularly if you're too busy to have time to check your tickets.) LottoBot will automatically check your lotto tickets for you and send you an immediate E-mail notification of your results for the latest draw. LottoBot sends personal lotto results for all the U.S. state lottos and the biggies like Powerball, Big Game, etc. LottoBot also offers results for games in Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.
InfoBeat - Get personalized news and alerts sent to you via E-mail with this helpful free service. Many categories, including finance, sports, ski snow reports, entertainment, weather and reminders. (Formerly known as Mercury Mail).
- LifeMinders - Sign up with this free service to get personalized E-mail reminders sent to you on a variety of topics. LifeMinders will help you remember important dates, ranging from birthdays to holidays to car maintenance to pets to garden reminders and more. Reminders are available as text E-mail or as HTML mail.
- TVEyes - A fascinating new free service that sends you an E-mail alert any time a topic or keyword that you specify is mentioned on TV. Many uses: from following the latest news on your fave celebrity to keeping up with anything that's mentioned on the air about your investments. TVEyes.com monitors broadcasts in real time and "watches TV for you when you're not able to."
- AnyDay.com - An excellent free service, AnyDay.com can help you get your life organized. Sign up and you'll get your own private online "DayPlanner" service that includes a calendar; an address book for your contacts; a place to keep track of your to-do lists; and your own personal reminder service. You may also easily synchronize your data here with your Palm Pilot, as well as other hand-held organizers.
- FreeNote - This handy little freeware application will help you get organized. If your monitor and desk are cluttered with yellow sticky notes, then FreeNote is for you. FreeNote helps you manage memos, "to-do lists," Web links, phone numbers and much more. The program resides in your tray and is always only one click away. (For Windows 98/95). 310 kilobytes.
- SuperCalendar - Get your life organized with this colorful, free Net calendar service. SuperCalendar displays all your group and personal events on a single integrated, color-coded calendar, with graphical "stickers" to highlight events. You may either use their selection of stickers or create your own.
- StickyNote - This is a simple reminder and memo program for Windows that can be used to create colored notes to display on your desktop. You can paste these "notes" all over your display, and configure their colors, fonts, alarms, etc. with a simple right-click of your mouse. Each time you start Windows, the StickyNote icon will appear in the system tray for easy access. 716 kilobytes. (For Windows 98/95/NT). There are a number of programs like this available, but this excellent utility is the only one that's free.
- DateReminder - A handy new free reminder service that is easy to set up and use. Just sign up and select a subject, date, message and frequency and you're all set. You may set up as many reminders as you want. Now you don't have any more excuses to miss that important appointment!
- Calendars Net - Free service that lets you easily set up a free, interactive, customized Web-based calendar, where you (and anyone else you want) may post events. You may also copy the calendar data onto your computer or print it out. Calendar users may search events and display only those items that they're interested in.
- The Daily Drill - Here's a useful new free, Web-based calendar and reminder service that can help you get your life organized. The Daily Drill offers a personal calendar, a group calendar, "to do lists," and an event calendar. One nice touch is that you can customize your online calendar here with a lovely new image each day.
- Resolution Reminders - Did you make some resolutions for 1999? This helpful, award-winning site offers a free resolution E-mail reminder service, as well as goal-tracking tools. There's lots of info here about making (and most importantly, keeping) resolutions of all sorts, from losing weight to quitting smoking.
- Mr. Wakeup - This innovative new free service delivers messages to you via your phone. Just fill out a form at the site and tell Mr. Wakeup when to call you and at what phone number. And presto! Your phone will ring at the appointed time and deliver your wakeup and/or personal reminder calls. Mr. Wakeup is still in "beta," (which means you may encounter a few glitches). (U.S. only). This service is ad-supported, which means you'll have to listen to a five second ad, before you get your message.
- ScheduleOnline - A number of sophisticated free scheduling services have sprung up lately on the Web. ScheduleOnline is one of the best (and easiest to use) that we've seen yet. This fully-featured service, which targets small companies, lets you perform a wide range of helpful tasks. Here, you can schedule meetings and tasks, create "to do" lists, broadcast E-mail invitations, send E-mail reminders and lots more.
- StockTrigger - Are you a stock investor? Sign up for this free service and you'll receive stock market alerts on your alphanumeric pager, digital cell phone, personal organizer or via E-mail. Just enter the stocks and values that you want to track and when your stock hits the trigger point, you'll promptly get a message. (Available in English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish).
- Online Elephant Reminder Service - Keep forgetting your wedding anniversary, your mother's birthday, your doctor's appointment? Never again! In addition to reminding you about special events, OnlineElephant.com will E-mail you a famous quote or Bible verse every day.
- When.com - This ambitious site (now part of the America Online empire) offers a useful free personalized event planning and calendar service. Their personal online calendar lets you keep track of appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, reminders, and upcoming activities in a "secure, online environment." It's accessible anytime online and let you combine your personal schedule with When.com's huge event database. When.com also offers a free group calendar, designed to help groups of people stay in touch through a common source for key dates and shared events. Helpful for anyone from volunteer groups to small companies to soccer parents.
- When.com's drawbacks are that it lacks an address book, as well as synchronization (which should be must-have components of any online PIM).
- Web Address Book - Here's a new, free online personal organizer that stores your contact information (phone numbers, addresses, E-mail addresses), your Web bookmarks, and even miscellaneous notes in a virtual notepad. There is also a Web-based scheduler to keep track of your important dates and appointments.
- Schedule Online - This recently launched site offers a free online calendar and scheduling service, aimed at small to mid-sized businesses and non-profit organizations. Here, you can schedule meetings and individual tasks, reserve resources, as well as create personal to do lists and notes, all in a secure environment. It's perfect for organizations that don't have the resources to create their own Intranet or to purchase and administer full-blown, client-server, groupware applications, such as Microsoft Exchange with Outlook.
- PlanetAll - This very useful service, which is part of the Amazon.com empire, lets you receive automatically updated information and reminders about your contacts. This service lets you keep on top of things: birthdays, anniversaries, etc. PlanetAll also allows you to build a private address book that's always up-to-date (and which you can access anywhere).
- PlanetAll offers a useful feature that allows you to exchange address book data with your Palm Pilot or with Microsoft Outlook.
- Easy Diary - Web calendars are emerging as a hot new trend on the Web. One of the best we've seen is Easy Diary. This free service offers a helpful, Web-based interactive calendar that lets you conveniently make and confirm appointments, send and receive reminders, create a "to-do" list and more. It's a great way to get your life organized.
- NoWorry Reminders - This is quite an impressive free reminder service that's easy to use and quite comprehensive. Just sign up and you'll automatically get E-mail reminder notices on a wide range of topics, including birthdays, anniversaries, bill payments, daily tasks, elections, holidays and more.
- rE-minders - Here's a useful, easy-to-use free E-mail reminder service. Just enter your information and they'll send you a reminder on the date that you specify. Your data here is private and they say they will not spam you. You may also use this service to promote events of your own.
rE-minders offers recurring or one-time reminders, as well as a searchable database of nationwide events.
- AntiVirus Email Update Notification - If you want to protect yourself against computer viruses, you must do more than simply download an anti-virus program. You need to keep it current, with the latest updates. That's where this free service comes in. With this service you will receive an automatic notification by E-mail whenever there is a new release of the antivirus software package(s) you use. You need register once and may send a cancel command at any time.
- TracerLock - Here's a handy free service that will monitor search engines for you and notify you by E-mail when new matches for your specified keyword(s) appear on the Web.
- Oil Change Reminder Service - This free service will help you calculate the next scheduled oil change for your vehicle or equipment. They'll send you an E-mail reminder as the date for scheduled maintenance approaches.
- Versions - Do you have a tough time keeping up with software upgrades and new products? Then sign up with this service---the free version will track up to three products that you'd like to keep tabs on. You can request notification about new products, sales, and special offers by category. Versions keeps listings of over 50,000 products.
- Remind U-Mail - Sign up for this service and you'll get your own reminder calendar, which you can then update, edit and modify. You can also have E-mail reminders sent to you. Here's a sample calendar.
- Remember To... - Nice reminder service. Enter your info and then you'll have E-mail automatically sent to you to remind you when you want it to.
- Dave's Auto Maintenance Reminder Service - This reminder service sends you a reminder email when it's time to
perform auto maintenance. Enter data about your vehicle and the system
calculates a reminder date based on your manufacturer's recommendations.
- Allnotes - A useful free site for all your reminder needs. Allnotes provides complete service for remembering those important dates like anniversaries and birthdays. Allnotes will also handle your day to day reminders like meetings and appointments.
- RememberIt.com - This is a free E-mail reminder service that can remind you of a variety of preconfigured and customizable events. It's easy to use, secure and reliable.
- Bigfoot Reminder Service - This major free E-mail service now has a nice reminder service feature. Here, you can specify a date you'd like to keep track of, define how many days in advance you'd like to be reminded of it, and enter a message to yourself regarding the occasion, which is all delivered to you via E-mail.
