But when I hear from the folks at Springpad about changes to the service, I always read with interest. Even as my usage has waned, I really have always been very impressed with the service, and the possibilities of what it could become. The latest batch of changes promise to make Springpad even more useful.

I’ve already discussed the transition that Springpad seems to be making, moving away from a structured note-taking app toward more everyday usage, like capturing and then using data around restaurants, movies, books, food and recipes, for example. The company’s own description of Springpad as a “lifestyle application” encapsulates this change and is quite apt. So while I don’t really use it to store the notes and other such data as I have in the past, it’s still a wonderful way to grab information about my stuff and then get presented with more contextual information about it.

I was really excited to read about the new Extension for Chrome, released today. The nice thing about the extension as opposed to the bookmarklet is that not only does it allow me to get info into the app, it also gives me access to the data that already resides there, without having to visit the site. I can quickly view and sort the info in my account. Adding items is easy and it does a wonderful job of recognizing the type of data that I am adding, and can also enhance it with useful information, such as pricing information or addresses for physical locations.

When I clip items using the extension, I can edit the information and add tags. I can’t seem to change the public / private settings at the time of clipping though, which would be nice. I do tend to capture a mix of items and the defaults don’t always match my intentions.

Any application that is supposed to help you capture and organize your information is really only as useful as the tools that are made available to help you get that information into the app. No matter what you can do with the data when it’s there, if it isn’t easy to grab and store it, chances are you just aren’t going to take the time.

I am not an iPhone or Android user so I don’t have access to the mobile applications available for those platforms, but they’ve received a couple of useful updates designed to make that connection even more useful, specifically the ability to send mobile alerts from within Springpad and to quickly push notifications about specific items directly to your phone for easy access. Again, the ubiquity of the data and the ease with which it becomes useful is key. I think mobile users with access to the Springpad application will find the service even more appealing than I do.

Springpad is free, web-based and works in all major browsers. Applications are also available for iPhone, iPad and Android.

I am rediscovering my Springpad — what can it do for you?

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Over the last few months I’ve continued to use it for that purpose, but always seem to have neglected to utilize some of the interesting things that it could do outside of my business and work endeavors. Features that, while appealing, I just never really got around to using. That’s about to change — and in a big way.

Instead of just being a “place for my stuff,” the newest release of Springpad now helps me do things with that stuff. It processes what I place there and then presents me with some contextual options that let me actually do something with that data.

For example, if I capture a CD that I think I might want to buy, it automatically recognizes what it is, links me to some shopping sites with price comparisons and gives me a list of tour dates for that artist. For movies it links to reviews, showtimes and a way to buy tickets.

This anticipation of why I added something in the first place makes it easier to take action whenever I happen to revisit that item, thus making the act of capturing and storing that information in Springpad much more useful to me.

Even the act of capturing the data has gotten easier. The new “Quick Add” bar not only does a web search so I can pull in structured data but it also live searches my friends’ shared data so I can easily find items that they have already captured, and possibly reviewed.

While Springpad is much more than just a bookmarking tool, I tend to use the “Spring It!” bookmarklet most often for data entry. It lets me grab and store items as I encounter them. The bookmarklet has been greatly improved as I can now more easily tag and identify items and add notes, all without needing to go in and tidy things up in the full interface.

An email dropbox has also been added, which is nice for entering story pitches, receipts, and other interesting items that come in via my Gmail. I use this feature often with Toodledo and my CRM app and have grown quite accustomed to it. Email items need a bit of cleaning up, however, and I haven’t figured out a way to tag or categorize them while entering them with the dropbox.

An iPhone app has also been released with options for capturing data by type, photo or even viah a bar-code scanner. I’ve resisted the urge to buy an iPhone up until now but the lure of easy, ubiquitous access to Springpad and some of my other favorite apps is making that more difficult to do recently.

All of these new features make it much easier for me to capture what I’m thinking, what I’m seeing, and what I’m finding and then put it in a place where I can easily process it, use it and store it. Not only does the capture process clear my mind from trying to remember the minutiae, but when I do need to use some information I can do so quickly and efficiently.

I’ve watched Springpad change quite a bit since I first looked at it, and with each release it becomes more useful. If I have one concern it is that the focus of the service on the apps and other tools that originally hooked me is somewhat diminished. For example, the apps folders have moved from the main page to a tab of their own. Everything still works the same and no functionality has been lost, but there is a sense that it is moving away from the product that I started using to becoming something else. I guess since that something else is also quite useful, perhaps it’s just a matter of me evolving right along with it.

Springpad is free and should work in any major browser. The iPhone app (also free) is now available in the App Store and other mobile versions are forthcoming.

I keep a lot of stuff in my Springpad — how could it help you?

And yet, I still haven’t been using it in my daily work. You see, a couple of years ago I found Backpack from 37signals and was smitten with it. I created Backpack pages for everything: tracking client information, article ideas, concerts I’ve attended, purchasing, research and more. If I started something new, it got a Backpack page.

However, as much as I loved Backpack, there were some gaps. I found the calendar lacking, instead using the Google Calendar. Reminders and To-Do items were much better handled by Toodledo, and the sheer volume of information I was managing with it often got unwieldy.

So when I had a look at the new iteration of Springpad that was released earlier last week, I finally took the plunge. Goodbye, Backpack … Hello, Springpad.

At first glance, the two products might seem very similar, but there is a fundamental difference between them. In Backpack I can create pages that are essentially containers for the items that I am trying to organize. On these pages I can add notes, lists, files, photos etc. I can move items around these pages, even drag and drop them between pages. But the various items I’ve created have no properties or tracking abilities of their own. Each item gathers its context only from the page on which it exists. It’s all about the pages. In a literal analogy, a page is a drawer and the items on it are all of the things you dump in there.

In Springpad anything I can create exists independently of pages. I can add anything to “My Stuff,” which is what it calls the bucket that all items exist in. These can be a note, a list, a task, a contact or business, an event, a restaurant — anything. When I find something I like or want to save, I just add it to “My Stuff.” What’s cool is that each of these items has its own properties, and can be customized further. I can add tags, notes and links to each item. Have a picture you want to add to a note? No problem. Want to add a file to a list? You can do that. So before I even start to organize these items (put them in their drawers), they already have all of the building blocks required to be useful on their own.

This is where apps and groups come in. In Springpad, these are the drawers. Custom groups can be created to associate items together, and various apps exist to help utilize and further organize your stuff. There are apps for GTD, budgeting, task management, date planning, and more. These apps help provide an additional layer of context for the items I’ve gathered, and each item can be assigned to as many groups or apps as I need.

For example, say I find an interesting web service that I think might be worthy of an article for WWD, and perhaps might also be useful for a few of my clients. In Backpack, I would note this web service on a single specific page, and there it would remain until I happened upon it again. But with Springpad, I can quickly capture the information from the web site using the “Spring It!” bookmarklet and place it in my unfiled bucket. This item might contain a snippet of text from the web site, a URL, and some notes for me to remember when I review it later. I tag the item appropriately with “WWD” and some client names. I add it to a “web apps” group and also to the specific client notebooks apps I have set up. The same piece of data is applied to multiple areas. This is like keeping the same screwdriver in both the tool drawer in the basement and and in the junk drawer in the kitchen. I can find it in either place, because it really should exist in both places.

Not only can each item appear in multiple groups or apps, but individual items can also be pulled together from these groups and apps and viewed in aggregate fashion. For example, for each of my current projects, I create an app (the “notebook” works extremely well for this) and then I add events and task items related to that project right to that area. With multiple projects running concurrently it might be difficult to keep track of all of these things, but Springpad will then aggregate these items to my calendar and master task list automatically. This allows me to view my work in overview, or drill down to a project level. I can store my data more contextually, without giving up the ability to pull everything together, or fear losing track of something on an infrequently accessed page.

While there are many apps available in Springpad,  I find myself using the “notebook” app for just about everything. It’s customizable, I can add tabs to help further organize it, and I can add any type of content I want to it. Some of the apps do allow for different presentation styles and I use a couple of them for specific purposes but generally the notebooks work well for just about anything. There are plans to introduce the ability for users to create and distribute their own apps in the future.

While I’ve focused mostly on the functionality that I use for business and other work endeavors, Springpad is equally adept at organizing other areas of life as well. It is getting tremendously popular in the food community as recipe sharing and acquisition is remarkably easy, and a recent partnership with Gary Vaynerchuk is introducing his Wine Library TV content to the system as well. Integration with Yelp allows me to easily add and track my favorite restaurants and the grouping and public sharing capabilities let me put together cool things like this quickie guide to some of my favorite places to eat and things to do in New York City to send to friends who are visiting there.

I’ve been working on migrating my content over to Springpad for a few days now and am still discovering new and interesting ways to put things together. I am finding a few things I miss from Backpack — like dividers and the ability to copy pages — but the benefits really outweigh these minor annoyances.

Registration and use of Springpad is free and works well in all the major current browsers. A mobile app is also available.

I’ve made the switch to Springpad — have you?

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Once you have your account set up, visit my.springpadit.com to view the pages from your mobile device. The mobile site isn’t as feature-rich as the main site but it’s quite usable for quick access to your springpads while on the go.

I did receive error messages about lack of support for Opera Mobile, which I hope they will address soon. The minimalist pages I was directed to using that browser pale in comparison to the full mobile app that displays with Pocket IE on my Windows Mobile.

With an eye to being a “whole life” organizer, springpad has always been more than just a productivity app. The addition of mobile access goes a long way to making it much more ubiquitous, and thus much more useful.

How do you use your mobile springpads?

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So I decided to revisit a few of the applications I was impressed with in review, but hadn’t personally adopted, to see how they fare after a bit more cooking time. The first of these is Springpad, the online notebook organizer I last looked at back in November.

The things that most impressed me about Springpad originally are still there: that it’s a “whole life” organizer, the ready-made Springpads, and the Personal Organizer area, which aggregates and consolidates content from all of my individual Springpads to master lists.

But over time Springpad has added a couple of very nice usability tweaks. Most noticeable is a design refresh that moves the navigation to a slide away “drawer” that tucks itself out of the way when not in use.

In addition to the bit of freed-up space, hiding the navigation out of the way allows you to really focus on the tasks at hand. If you prefer to keep it visible, you can pin it open as well.

They have also added a very handy bookmarklet, the Springpad Clipper, that lets you grab highlighted content from any web page and easily transfer it in to the Springpad page of your choosing. This makes it great for capturing notes and photos as you are doing research, or even just to flag things to look at later.  I also like that it works in any browser and isn’t just Firefox-specific.

The quality of the ready-made Springpads has also improved, with the newer ones getting more interactive and detailed. The task-oriented Springpads are a good way to get up and running quickly, but if you prefer you can still create your own from scratch.

So, overall, while it lacks the ubiquity of a tool like Evernote for general information capturing, Springpad has matured quite a bit in a few short months and continues to be a fine option for an online organizer.

What do you think?  Could Springpad be the whole life organizer for you?

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While most apps of this type tend to be free form or even business focused, Springpad is a series of online notebooks designed to be a whole life organizational tool. Stay on top of not only your business or professional projects and items, but also track your personal life as well.

Much like other notebook or organizing applications, Springpad uses a familiar notebook and page metaphor. Each page can feature data in the form of notes, lists, maps, files, alarms, events, etc.

Every item can be tagged, flagged or annotated for even more filing flexibility. Items can also appear on multiple pages but remain connected to the original. Everything is drag and drop capable so it is easy to move items around on or between pages.

Where things get cool is when you visit your Personal Organizer section. This area aggregates the content from all of your springpads together into one place. For example, if I create a unique list of to-do items on each of my project pages, I can go to this master list and view them all pulled together for action.

Or say my wife has a shopping list for our general meal planning but then she also creates one on a party planning page. No problem, the organizer pulls the shopping lists together so she is prepared for her trip to the store.

The same goes for contacts, addresses, and other types of data. By letting Springpad know what these bits of data are, it can be organized and presented back to me in unique and useful ways, becoming much more than just notes on pages. Dates and events automatically appear on your agenda while addresses automatically connect to a Google Map.

Springpad is primarily aimed at those who are looking for a tool to help them get organized, but who also want a bit more help than they would get from most applications of this type. By providing templates and ready made lists and organizers, Springpad makes it easy to jump right in and get started.

There are a wide assortment of templates already available covering everything from your workouts to your job search. Springpads can also be tied together, for example the meal planner tracks recipes and ingredients and allows you to quickly create a shopping list.

Future partnerships with content providers will allow you to pull in branded templates, lists and content from these partner sites. The plan isn’t so much to have Springpad be ad supported but rather to allow you to easily import data from other sites and have it maintain branding and links back to the original content. You can already pull in restaurant reviews from Yelp and make reservations using OpenTable , and future similar integration is planned with other providers.

Springpad aims to be a database for your life. It is structured enough to be consistent and easy to use but the pages are flexible enough to handle most routine day to day projects and planning. You can have unlimited springpads so you can create one for all of the things that you are juggling.

This demo video does a good job of highlighting these and other key features:

Springpad is still in beta and there are some features like mobile access that are still forthcoming. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve seen frequent updates and enhancements and they seem eager for feedback and suggestions.

Registration is open now and accounts are free. They are currently featuring a Thanksgiving Menu Planner which should be a great way to test out the service and make sure you’re prepared for the upcoming holiday.

Could you use a Springpad to help you get organized?

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