For a while I’ve been wanting to have one place that does everything. A site that has everything that I use in a web based application and nothing over bloated. Today I think I got a step closer when I saw ADrive in a WebWorkerDaily article.

I think I have it down to 3 sites that I access regularly for all my information and files to keep online.

• Gmail

Over the last few months Gmail has upgraded their contact management. Only a few weeks ago I got the new Gmail contact layout, it includes more fields to enter information about each person who’s in your contact book. This is what I’ve been waiting for since I began using Gmail a lot more. I now have the ability to edit a contacts name, add their mobile phone number, home and work numbers, fax numbers, postal address, instant messaging addresses and company information. It doesn’t seem like there is a dedicated field for a company’s website. Adding it in a custom field doesn’t give the address a link either. In addition, there are also the Gmail regulars like Email with tags and over 6 gigabytes of storage, archiving and some more small adjustments they’ve made. Also the documents online. One thing I’d like to see is the option to put a 3rd panel in Gmail so I can see the contacts to access them, a lot of people have widescreen monitors now like I do and the space should be used. Also Google Calendar which I’m using even more every day.

• Netvibes

I’ve been using Netvibes for a while now, it’s been a great place to store my bookmarks and newsfeeds. Which is what I use the majority of it for, I don’t like Google’s news reader. Netvibes has a much nicer layout and more options to play with so you can set it just right. I’ve also got my Weather, a To-Do List, Notes, an Address Book (of which I’ll be transferring my contacts to Gmail). Netvibes has stacks more features, I suggest you check them out.

• ADrive

ADrive I only got onto recently, it’s still in beta. But go check it out, 50 gigabytes… yes, thats Fifty gigabytes. Of online storage for FREE. No catch, they are powering it by Google Ads, I’ve managed to get subfolders in there and upload applications I use in places. Back up some websites and some documents and files, add some music on there. It also has the ability to share these files publicly. It’s all web based, I’m hoping the possibility in future versions that we may see the storage be able to appear in Windows as a drive, and some FTP access. But for now it’s purely a web based java applet to upload your files. The only downside I can see, is popularity making the bandwidth to much to come and sending them under. So click the Google Ads and get them some money to pay for it!

• Alternatives

There are a few alternatives out there. Zoho has a lot to offer that covers pretty much all of what I’ve talked about, but for some reason I just don’t like the layout. It’s boring and I just don’t want to load the pages no matter how much cooler their web based applications are.

Google has the iGoogle which does a lot that Netvibes does, however I still like my clean Google search page and don’t want the crap all over it. I tried it once and then shifted my ways to Netvibes.

Another alternative, web based operating systems like EyeOS. It’s your operating system in a web browse, take everything I’ve already mentioned plus more, and operating system and it’s on the web. No need to keep anything on your computer. I’ll give these some time before I look at moving everything there and using one for every day to day work.