World of Tech: Organizing Inspiration (Free Tools)

World of Tech: Organizing Inspiration (Free Tools)

September 16th, 2010 @ 12:11 pm by Mrs. Meerkat
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I’m all about keeping up with your favorite wedding blogs using an rss reader. This is great for just reading, but what happens after you read a few hundred entries and you want to go back and find a specific picture of something? What about accessing all your planning stuff at someone else’s house? Don’t worry—this tech-savvy bride has the tools to help you.

I use a couple different tools to keep all my inspiration and documents accessible anytime from anywhere:

**NOTE: If you don’t already have one, you will need to sign up for a free Google account, but the account is used for ALL Google products, such as Google Reader, blogger.com, and all of the tools we are talking about on this blog. Yes, I heart Google!

World of Tech: Organizing Inspiration (Free Tools) : wedding resources riviera maya Meerkat meerkat

Picasa—Photo Storage

Picasa is a web-based photo storage system. If I had to compare it to something tangible, I would say it’s like a filing cabinet where you have different folders in which to store pictures. Just like a filing cabinet, I use Picasa to store all my inspiration photos. I create different albums/folders for things like ceremony, reception décor, attire, candy buffet, etc., and then upload all the inspiration photos I’ve saved from blogs to the appropriate album. Not only is it easy for me to find a photo now, but I can also send a link to anyone I want of any photo or to any album.

World of Tech: Organizing Inspiration (Free Tools) : wedding resources riviera maya Google google-

Google Chrome—Sync Your Bookmarks

Google Chrome is a browser; it’s like Internet Explorer on steroids. (I LOVE Chrome.) One of the things I love about Chrome is the ability to keep your bookmarks in sync on any computer that has the Chrome browser on it. What I like about this is I can bookmark a page at work and then access it from any computer that I have Chrome running on, such as my home computer. It uses your Google account to store your bookmarks, so you sign in once when you set it up, and then it syncs automatically every time you add or remove a bookmark from any computer that is using the Chrome bookmark syncing. For those of you who would rather not use the Chrome browser, a plug in called Xmarks can be added to any browser. The syncing is not as seamless, but it works on the same principal.

Coming up next in our technology series of posts is how to store all this information so that you can easily access it from anywhere.

Now that you know all my favorite techy tools for organizing my inspiration, what tools are you using?

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19 Responses to “World of Tech: Organizing Inspiration (Free Tools)”

Bee

Mrs. D'orsay (message) 2,275 posts, Buzzing bee

Love chrome. Loooove chrome.

9/16/10 @ 12:38 pm (reply)

Member

emma5w (message) 547 posts, Busy bee

Hmmm…Picasa is a great idea! I definitely have inspiration pictures saved on my hard drive and I have NO idea where they came from. I should start using Picasa. Thanks for the tips!

9/16/10 @ 12:39 pm (reply)

Member

Violet Violet (message) 985 posts, Busy bee

I <3 Google! I’ve used picassa and chrome to keep myself organized–not to mention Google Docs to keep me and FI on the same page (guestlists, budget, playlist). Great tips!

9/16/10 @ 12:40 pm (reply)

Guest

Erika Lee

I LOVE my RSS!

I use weddingwire’s “Binder” to keep track of ideas, links, and inspiration. It’s also cool because you can categorize them which makes for easy searching once your binder gets a bit, er, full

9/16/10 @ 12:50 pm (reply)

Member

Leprechaun (message) 907 posts, Busy bee

I loved (loved is not a strong enough word!) Google Wave–I could share my inspiration photos with BMs and hubby, and we could have threaded discussions of things. But Google has stopped supporting it, and there is talk that the whole service will be taken down, so I have started just bookmarking/emailing stuff

9/16/10 @ 1:35 pm (reply)

Guest

Google docs! It was the best to be able to get to my million spreadsheets from my house, my parents house, work, etc. And the collage maker in Picasa is so great for inspiration boards!
google=priceless

9/16/10 @ 1:36 pm (reply)

Member

jordynrose (message) 6,351 posts, Bee Keeper

I <3 Chrome!

9/16/10 @ 2:11 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Thimble (message) 807 posts, Busy bee

Picasa is the best! And I love Chrome. The best.

9/16/10 @ 2:15 pm (reply)

Bee

Mrs. Frozen Yogurt (message) 2,685 posts, Sugar bee

I love picasa!! that’s the only one I use now.

9/16/10 @ 2:51 pm (reply)

10.

Guest

Jessicarney

I’m a google fanatic! I even used docs to designmy own invitations

9/16/10 @ 4:29 pm (reply)

11.

Bee

Miss Meerkat (message) 3,216 posts, Sugar bee

@Jessicarney: I *heart* other Google addicts!! LOL

@Mrs. Frozen Yogurt: Have you used the desktop application for picasa? Awesomeness!! Makes everything soooo easy to load lots of photos.

9/16/10 @ 4:31 pm (reply)

12.

Member

LoriLori (message) 727 posts, Busy bee

I’m a huge delicious.com fan for my bookmarks and love Google docs too!

9/16/10 @ 5:37 pm (reply)

13.

Member

fromcharleston (message) 651 posts, Busy bee

Wait wait wait…if I use chrome, my bookmarks are backed up AND accessible anywhere?!?! AND I can save all my pictures online without clogging my hard drive?

9/16/10 @ 6:32 pm (reply)

14.

Bee

Miss Ostrich (message) 1,948 posts, Buzzing bee

picasa and all things google is fantastic. i also starred my favorite wedding blog inspiration posts in my google reader {see?} for easy reference. love!

9/17/10 @ 12:56 am (reply)

15.

Bee

Miss Meerkat (message) 3,216 posts, Sugar bee

@fromcharleston: ROFL That is so what I felt like when I discovered Google. =)

Here try these links for more details info:
http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=165139

http://picasa.google.com/features.html

9/17/10 @ 8:25 am (reply)

16.

Member

fromcharleston (message) 651 posts, Busy bee

@Miss Meerkat: Ok you’ve convinced me. I not only made a Google account, but I am currently importing everything from the Yahoo account I’ve had for like 7 years (no big deal) AND I have on my to-do list to learn the following: how to keep all my bookmarks web-based (I’ve lost them too many times), how to keep all my wedding inspiration web-based (so my hard drive isn’t so full and won’t hate me), how to put all blogs in the reader, how to use Chrome, and OMG I’m starting to stress all over again!!!!!!!

My cousin works at Google. I’m sure I’ll call him multiple times. Thanks for the links!!!

9/19/10 @ 11:50 pm (reply)

17.

Bee

Miss Meerkat (message) 3,216 posts, Sugar bee

@fromcharleston: WOOT! If you need any help feel free to PM me. =)

9/19/10 @ 11:53 pm (reply)

18.

Guest

World of Tech: Storing Your Inspiration (Free Tools) | Weddingbee

[...] a previous post, I talked about using technology to organize your inspiration. One thing I have not covered is how to store all the information so that it is easily accessible [...]

9/24/10 @ 5:15 pm (reply)

19.

Guest

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Cierra Flournoy

3/23/11 @ 7:40 pm (reply)