This summer in Berlin, we worked all the time. Days would go by when I didn’t leave our apartment/office. I usually worked straight from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. Those precious hours of sleep were spent on an IKEA cot. Needless to say, I was tired for most of the summer.

Now with some pesky classes that weaseled their way into my daily schedule back at Duke, I seem to have less time that ever. Other people on the team are feeling the pinch too, and we’re looking for anything and everything to make the day longer and more productive.

I’m more of a traditional coffee and Pepsi fan for staying awake and alert. And it goes without saying that if you leave a Red Bull lying around the office, I’ll probably steal it.

But other people on the team are a little more desperate for feeling more alert. Matt, Tomas, and Justin are all trying a much-hyped sleeping schedule called polyphasic sleeping. This is where you get a couple of hours of “core” sleep at night, which usually lasts 2-3 hours. Then you take a 15-20 minute nap every 2 hours during the day. This series of short naps is supposed to make you feel really awake throughout the day.

The three of them have had a hard time in the beginning getting onto this insane schedule, but they all claim to feel amazing. They are writing a blog about their experience. Read it here.

And me? I think I’ll just go put on a pot of coffee.

When it comes to online shopping, I’ve realized that my mom isn’t really seeing the whole picture. Sure, she’s learned to order her running shoes online so that she can save money. We’ve set up online banking so that she can easily pay all of the bills electronically, saving paper and minimizing piles on the kitchen counter. She even knows that there’s a way to download music with something called “iTunes” that somehow can get on your “iPod”. Yes, she uses air quotes.

But I don’t think she realizes all of the ways that the internet can improve her day-to-day life. If she needs to find research for a paper she’s writing on childhood development, even the local librarian is going to recommend Google Scholar as a starting point. If she needs a detailed map from St. Louis to Durham, it’s always faster to use Mapquest or Google Maps. If she misses the finale of her favorite show, she should know that they are often available for free on the network’s website.

So it’s time I step in. I can’t say that I understand what moms out there want. And I certainly don’t claim to understand how my mom thinks — AT ALL. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the point. No one has ever taken the time to tell my mom what she should know about the internet — how it can make her life easier. The more time I spend working at Shoeboxed, the more I feel compelled to help my mom see what she’s missing.

So if you want to use the internet—if you want to know how it can make your life easier, here are a few sites that you might want to check out:

Amazingmail.com. Let’s start with the basics. Who doesn’t like to show off the cool places they have visited? Now you can do it easily and cheaply. Upload your digital photos to the computer (the camera should come with instructions…) and make a postcard that you can send to friends. It’s a great alternative to the yearly Christmas card, and the product always looks great. Then check out Ofoto.com where you can print your favorites.

Keycode.com and HotCoupons.com. You might want to sit down for this one. There are online sites that specialize in coupons! Many of the sites offer deals for specific retailers that can’t be found in the weekend newspaper. And don’t think that you can’t find local deals—you can enter your city’s name and “local coupons” into Google and find printable bar codes for your favorite shops.

Iexplore.com. You know something’s good when it’s affiliated with National Geographic. If you want to go on an exciting vacation but don’t have any time to plan it, you should check out this site. It has travel and activity guides for every inch of the globe, with advice on how to get the most out of your vacation. Whether you’re looking to climb a mountain or go sailing, Iexplore can make the appropriate recommendation (based on your experience and the trip’s level of difficulty). It will even recommend pre-screened travel and gear packages.

Rottentomatoes.com. When you’re in the mood for a romantic comedy, do you really trust the opinion of Roger Ebert, Richard Roepert, or Gene Shallot? Of course not. This is a democracy, people—when I’m choosing a movie, I want to hear the opinion of all the qualified critics and film gurus. Next time you’re heading to the cinema, check out rottentomatoes.com. The “Tomatometer” is the most trusted scale when it comes to finding the freshest movie. On a scale from one to ten, anything over a seven is a safe bet.

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You already know that Shoeboxed helps you keep your online receipts organized and your e-mail inbox free from the annoying clutter of spam and advertisements. But as I have learned over the years, there is actually more to life than just the Internet. For this reason, I made a list of a few easy habits that can help you stay organized in all aspects of life.

1. Reduce before you organize. One of the main reasons that people get unorganized is that they just have too much stuff. Since it is much easier to organize 10 things than 100, it’s a good idea to toss out all the items that you don’t need before you start actually organizing. Recycle papers when you can’t remember what they refer to, give old clothes to charity when they don’t fit any longer, and then start organizing that desk or closet.
2. Everything in its right place. Assign specific places for everything, and then make sure to always return items to those places. It’ll be a lot easier to find your sunglasses if you always put them in their “home” rather than just tossing them onto the table somewhere.
3. Take care of things now. Small messes are easier to manage than large ones, so get rid of the “I’ll do it later” mentality and start putting things away right when you’re done with them. That way they won’t build up and leave you with an unmanageable mess on your hands.
4. Write it down. I have personally perfected the talent of forgetting very important pieces of information until just after they are useful, at which point they miraculously come back. To keep this from happening to you, I recommend keeping a calendar or notepad with you and writing down important events as they arise. It is also not a bad idea to periodically go through your notebook and prioritize the things you have written down so you do not get bogged down by unnecessary tasks.
5. Make a system. It is not enough to just clean everything up once—clutter always has a way of coming back. Make a system to stay ahead of the mess. Have a cleaning schedule where you do a little bit every day, have a set method for approaching your paperwork, and put your kids to work. Okay, that last one may not be serious, but it doesn’t hurt to have kids learn the basics of staying organized at a young age.

When you think about it, online shopping is a pretty new development. Just a few short years ago, even the most internet-savvy consumer would have been hesitant about buying anything other than a computer online. We all love to be able to thoroughly inspect things before we buy them (granted, half the time we have absolutely no idea what we’re looking at), so the concept of buying something that you can’t see or touch was a little disconcerting. However, times are changing, and people are now buying more than just electronics online; buying travel tickets and booking hotels online have become commonplace, and last year apparel and accessories beat out computer hardware and software as the top non-travel markets in online retail. In fact, online apparel sales went up 61% in 2005 to a total of $18.3 billion dollars — almost double the total from 2003.

A large part of the increase in popularity of online shopping is due to the fact that people have access to more detailed information regarding various products online. Five years ago, you were lucky if you could see more than one picture of the shoes you were thinking of buying, and chances are those pictures took about half an hour to load. Now, many retailers offer full photo albums for each product, and some even have movies of the product being displayed.

Even with all this progress and growth, though, the Internet still only accounts for about 7% of total retail sales, and research has shown that the meteoric growth of online retail may already be starting to slow. According to Forrester Research, much of the online retail industry’s money goes into minimizing glitches in the transaction process, rather than into the creativity or innovation. It’s time for a change—the online shopping industry has seen some incredible growth in the past few years, but it is going to take some cool new ideas to help make it a truly powerful presence in the retail world. Whatever those ideas may be, Shoeboxed plans to be there all the way, organizing that ever-growing pile of digital receipts. And it’s only just the beginning

Seventy-six percent of six- to eleven-year-olds wish they could spend more time with their parents—that’s according to Nickelodeon’s “Kids’ State of the Union” survey. Okay, I admit it’s no Gallup poll. But these statistics certainly suggest that there may be some sort of problem that isn’t being actively addressed.

According to recent research conducted by the Society for the Advancement of Education, kids are spending less and less time with their parents. On average, children in America spend 2.5 hours a day with their dads on weekdays and 6.5 hours a day on weekends. Of this time together, it is estimated that only half is spent directly engaging with one another. The rest of the time, dads are hanging around and are available to their kids if needed.

But it’s not just fathers who are having difficulty finding the time. Mothers have traditionally spent more time with the children — especially during the week. In years past, when compared with mothers, the average father spent less than one-third as much time with his children However, that’s all starting to change. Dads continue to play a more active role in their children’s lives. New studies claim that fathers spend about sixty-five percent as much time with children as mothers do on weekdays and around eighty-seven percent as much time on weekends.

Whatever the case, parents need more time to spend with the kids. As hard as it may be to believe, the Nickelodeon viewers have spoken—and they want more quality family time. It’s just one example of how busy our lives are—we don’t even have enough time to hang out with our parents or kids.

I admit, I’m only twenty-one — and no, I don’t have any children. But I already feel pressured by having too much to do, and never enough time. It would great if my everyday life were just a little bit simpler. And this is why so many people are excited about the launch of Shoeboxed. It gives you back time by automatically organizing a piece of your life. No need to worry about tracking your purchases or avoiding identity theft because it’s taken care of for you.

So now you can spend an extra hour each week hanging out with the kids. My finances are automatically organized and I get to spend more time with the family? Sounds like a win-win to me.