One of the curses of the computer age, especially for those of us who do development work, is the vast amount of detail that one has to keep track of. Among other things, there’s:

• The sites I like to read regularly
• The sites where there’s some tidbit that I just might want to find again some time
• The usernames and passwords to the dozens of sites I have accounts on
• My to-do lists for various projects
• Commands that I have a hard time remembering for administering my Linux hosting boxes
• Tips on something or other than someone gave me that I mean to follow up on someday

... and so on. I used to deal with all this with a combination of Outlook notes, word documents, post-its, and my increasingly unreliable memory. This all worked reasonably well as long as I stuck to one notebook machine, and one desk, as the center of my life.

I’ve been moving away from that approach, so I can be more mobile and use multiple machines without worrying about syncing. I’ve found a few tools that have been very helpful.

For sites I want to read regularly, RSS feeds of course are the answer. Add the feed to my feed reader, and the content comes to me automatically. (Of course, this changes the problem to one of too much stuff to read, but that’s inevitable.) I’m using FeedDemon as my feed reader, sync’d to a NewsGator Online account. This setup isn’t free ($29.95 for FeedDemon, plus $19.95 per year if you want the premium version of the online service), but I like the fact that I can read feeds offline or online and everything stays sync’d.

For those web sites I just want to remember in case I want to come back to them some time, I’m using del.icio.us for all my bookmarks. I use their Firefox plugin, which gives me one-click access to either add a bookmark or view my bookmarks. And now it doesn’t matter what browser I’m using, or what system I’m on—I always have the same bookmarks available.

For everything else, I’ve found 37Signals’ Backpack invaluable. I keep to-do lists for various personal projects there, and I use their “writeboards” (online documents) to keep all my miscellaneous notes. I’ve been training myself to always keep my notes there, so I always know where to look for them. I started off with one writeboard will all sorts of miscellaneous notes, and as it grew, I split it up and now have about a dozen different ones. There’s lots more that Backpack can do that I haven’t gotten to using yet. You can start with a free account, but I quickly hit its limit and splurged for the $9/month premium version.

I struggled with whether or not it was reasonable to keep a list of usernames and passwords on a writeboard. It is really convenient, but I’m sure security-minded folks would frown on it. I ended up with a compromise: I made up my own personal secret code, so what I record on the writeboard is not actual passwords, but a coded version that is easy for me to translate to the real thing but hopefully not so easy for someone who finds this data. I suspect this still isn’t really good enough; I’d prefer it if the information was encrypted on the Backpack server. One thing the premium account gives me is SSL access, so I feel a little more comfortable with some of the sensitive information I’m storing there.

For projects that involve multiple other people, I’m using Basecamp, also from 37Signals. I use it much like I use Backpack, but it allows me to manage a list of other people who have access to individual projects.

Do you have solutions to these problems that you’re happy with? Please leave a comment and share your approach.