<b><i>Online Extra:</b></i> A Baker's Dozen of the Top (Mostly Free) Useful Web Tools

Asana. http://asana.com. Created by a group of former Facebook and Google smarty-pants (so you know it has to be good), and it makes a good case for re-imagining how teams can get things done. Its goal is to take the friction out of coordination and communication and to improve individual and group productivity. From what we've seen, it meets its claims ' it's fast, focused and efficient, just like your ideal team.

Tracky. http://trac.ky/. Claims to be the new social collaboration platform designed to make everyone's lives easier, from busy individuals to Fortune 500 companies. Instead of tasks, they have 'tracks' that allow you to store pretty much anything and everything. For example, let's say you're writing a new biz proposal; you could store meeting notes, company boilerplate, research that you want included ' and share it with your team, designating who's to do what. That's just one example. One of the interesting aspects of Tracky is its open social collaboration platform that allows for people and project discovery through public tracks. They offer a free plan for up to five projects and 100 MB file storage, or you can upgrade to unlimited for only $5 per user, per month.

If you're inclined to seek out more traditional milestones and dependencies, then check out:

TeamLab. www.teamlab.com. Offers full project management functionality with no time or project limits (within 1GB of storage space). Absolutely free.

Or, if you're willing to pay for more users and more space, there's :

Soonr. www.soonr.com. A collaboration and document management tool that lets you work on-the-go, from any device, anywhere in the world. You can check them out with a free 14-day trial.

That's it for team collaboration and productivity.

How Do You Keep Yourself Organized?

If you're using the team collaboration tools, then there's a pretty good chance that you're on top of your workload. Sometimes, it's not the work that's the problem, but maintaining energy and focus.

Surrounded by technology, half of us are texting, IM'ing and attending to e-mail when we're supposed to be doing something else, like writing a pitch or proposal. That deadline that seemed so manageable is due. Now! Stressed out by time, you can't concentrate. Enter Focus Booster (www.focusboosterapp.com). Based on the pomodoro technique, it enables you to view time as a valuable ally and can be used for any kind of task. How do you think this article got written?

Sometimes it's browsing the Internet that leads us down a rabbit hole and sucks our time. Or it's that five-minute break you thought you'd take to rest your brain and play a game online. Suddenly five minutes becomes 20 ' or more! Well, here's a tool ' X-minutes (http://x.minutes.at/) ' that lets you set the clock on any website.

Other things that can eat up precious time are tasks that fall into the 'if this, then that' category. Iftt (http://ifttt.com) simplifies these across almost 50 channels (including gmail and even your own phone) by allowing you to create recipes or use any of the thousands that people have already thought up for you. Heading across country to a client meeting and wondering if you'll need an umbrella? How about, 'Let me know if it's going to rain.' Et voila, you get a text message.

We've mentioned Evernote (www.evernote.com) before and it's still a favorite to capture and store pretty much everything, from photos and articles, to lists and notes. Accessible by phone, tablet and laptop, it's your digital memory bank.

Sometimes, What You Need Is a Helping Hand

When you need a virtual assistant, VA4U (http://va4u.com/) is a diamond in the rough. The user interface is weak but the data is incredible. Unlike other sites that force you to use their ecosystems to communicate with potential freelancers and virtual assistants, VA4U allows you to search by location and then profiles and resumes. And, you can contact individuals directly, saving time in the hiring process.

Other cool tools to help you find help locally are Task Rabbit (www.taskrabbit.com) and Zaarly (www.zaarly.com). You post what you're looking for ' Executive Assistant for half a day? Office storage closet organized? Lunch for 12 delivered? And local people respond directly, avoiding the high costs of the middle-men.

Sometimes We Need Questions Answered

Try Quora (www.quora.com), which aims to be the easiest place to write new content and share content from the Web. When you want to know about something, Quora delivers answers and content from people who share your interests and people who have first-hand knowledge ' like real doctors, economists and lawyers. It's easy to create a personalized homepage of everything you want to know about by following topics, questions, people and boards. Boards are collections of things you write and find ' like lightweight blogs or personal notes. You can post anything you find on Quora or elsewhere on the Web, onto a board. You can follow other people's boards and you can also add people as contributors to your own boards so you can collaborate to capture and share information about anything.

Just remember to set the timer before you start!

I've written in the past about free Web tools, and unsurprisingly, Google continues to top the charts. As everyone who doesn't live under a rock knows, Google's suite of free tools ' including Docs, Calendar, Translate and Alerts are all but indispensible. Sometimes, however, you want tools that are more comprehensive and can be tailored to your needs. If this is the case ' read on ' there are a slew of companies trying to crack the SaaS nut for team collaboration and productivity.

When you want to focus on getting work done rather than managing the software that tracks how the work is getting done, there are three products that stand out:

Sparqlight. www.sparqlight.com. Combines popular social networking conventions and tools like Yammer and Google Docs to enable assigning, sharing, and tracking of goals, ideas, to-do lists, and more. While it encourages improvisational collaboration, it also comes with an analytics dashboard with workflow accountability so you can track progress milestones and deadlines ' and see if your team is being efficient! Free for as many as 30 users, with paid options available for bigger enterprises.

Asana. http://asana.com. Created by a group of former Facebook and Google smarty-pants (so you know it has to be good), and it makes a good case for re-imagining how teams can get things done. Its goal is to take the friction out of coordination and communication and to improve individual and group productivity. From what we've seen, it meets its claims ' it's fast, focused and efficient, just like your ideal team.

Tracky. http://trac.ky/. Claims to be the new social collaboration platform designed to make everyone's lives easier, from busy individuals to Fortune 500 companies. Instead of tasks, they have 'tracks' that allow you to store pretty much anything and everything. For example, let's say you're writing a new biz proposal; you could store meeting notes, company boilerplate, research that you want included ' and share it with your team, designating who's to do what. That's just one example. One of the interesting aspects of Tracky is its open social collaboration platform that allows for people and project discovery through public tracks. They offer a free plan for up to five projects and 100 MB file storage, or you can upgrade to unlimited for only $5 per user, per month.

If you're inclined to seek out more traditional milestones and dependencies, then check out:

TeamLab. www.teamlab.com. Offers full project management functionality with no time or project limits (within 1GB of storage space). Absolutely free.

Or, if you're willing to pay for more users and more space, there's :

Soonr. www.soonr.com. A collaboration and document management tool that lets you work on-the-go, from any device, anywhere in the world. You can check them out with a free 14-day trial.

That's it for team collaboration and productivity.

How Do You Keep Yourself Organized?

If you're using the team collaboration tools, then there's a pretty good chance that you're on top of your workload. Sometimes, it's not the work that's the problem, but maintaining energy and focus.

Surrounded by technology, half of us are texting, IM'ing and attending to e-mail when we're supposed to be doing something else, like writing a pitch or proposal. That deadline that seemed so manageable is due. Now! Stressed out by time, you can't concentrate. Enter Focus Booster (www.focusboosterapp.com). Based on the pomodoro technique, it enables you to view time as a valuable ally and can be used for any kind of task. How do you think this article got written?

Sometimes it's browsing the Internet that leads us down a rabbit hole and sucks our time. Or it's that five-minute break you thought you'd take to rest your brain and play a game online. Suddenly five minutes becomes 20 ' or more! Well, here's a tool ' X-minutes (http://x.minutes.at/) ' that lets you set the clock on any website.

Other things that can eat up precious time are tasks that fall into the 'if this, then that' category. Iftt (http://ifttt.com) simplifies these across almost 50 channels (including gmail and even your own phone) by allowing you to create recipes or use any of the thousands that people have already thought up for you. Heading across country to a client meeting and wondering if you'll need an umbrella? How about, 'Let me know if it's going to rain.' Et voila, you get a text message.

We've mentioned Evernote (www.evernote.com) before and it's still a favorite to capture and store pretty much everything, from photos and articles, to lists and notes. Accessible by phone, tablet and laptop, it's your digital memory bank.

Sometimes, What You Need Is a Helping Hand

When you need a virtual assistant, VA4U (http://va4u.com/) is a diamond in the rough. The user interface is weak but the data is incredible. Unlike other sites that force you to use their ecosystems to communicate with potential freelancers and virtual assistants, VA4U allows you to search by location and then profiles and resumes. And, you can contact individuals directly, saving time in the hiring process.

Other cool tools to help you find help locally are Task Rabbit (www.taskrabbit.com) and Zaarly (www.zaarly.com). You post what you're looking for ' Executive Assistant for half a day? Office storage closet organized? Lunch for 12 delivered? And local people respond directly, avoiding the high costs of the middle-men.

Sometimes We Need Questions Answered

Try Quora (www.quora.com), which aims to be the easiest place to write new content and share content from the Web. When you want to know about something, Quora delivers answers and content from people who share your interests and people who have first-hand knowledge ' like real doctors, economists and lawyers. It's easy to create a personalized homepage of everything you want to know about by following topics, questions, people and boards. Boards are collections of things you write and find ' like lightweight blogs or personal notes. You can post anything you find on Quora or elsewhere on the Web, onto a board. You can follow other people's boards and you can also add people as contributors to your own boards so you can collaborate to capture and share information about anything.

Just remember to set the timer before you start!