Maven Says: Cozi is Cool

When I heard about Cozi Central my first thought was that's nice but not for me, I use Outlook. I decided to go ahead and give it a try to see what advantages it could bring to organizing our lives outside of work mode. Gman and I run our lives by the Outlook calendar, we are both hooked in at work, he has Outlook set-up at home, and I am a card carrying Crackberry addict. When I found out that Cozi had the ability to sync up with Outlook I thought all of my organizational prayers had been answered! I had dreams of everything I needed to know right there on my Blackberry at my side all the time. And serious bonus, FREE. Unfortunately despite some of its great features I didn't reach the organizational nirvana I had imagined.

The Cozi Central web site is visually appealing and easy to use. To personalize it you can add your own pictures and make picture collages. The homepage displays three days on the calendar, the current time in big readable numbers, the shopping list du jour, and any messages you receive at the bottom of the screen. A great overview of what you need, where you are spending your time and what the rest of the family wants you to know right there at your fingertips. You can assign each person in the house a color and the calendar is then color coded so at a glance you know who has to be where and when. A definite improvement over my black and white calendar that requires actual reading.

Okay, back to my Outlook/Blackberry love affair. I downloaded the Cozi toolbar for Outlook and all seemed well. The instructions were easy and the toolbar showed up as expected. Unfortunately I could never make the two sync that I could tell. I did have some appointments show up with a Cozi ID listed when I printed them out. Unfortunately every time I tried to sync Outlook hung up and I ended up having to shut everything down and re-boot my machine. Not totally unexpected for a beta version of a tool for Microsoft or for me, the Tech Support nightmare. Given the issues I've had with my Outlook account in the past and the critical nature of my work calendar being pristine I had to abandon ship on the Outlook/Cozi synchronization. Hopefully when the release is out of beta testing I can take advantage of the great features.

I do love the list feature, go in any time and type in your grocery and warehouse store lists. Then you can e-mail them, print them or access them via phone. My collection of post-it notes don't allow for accessible storage or remote retrieval!

Cozi Central is a great concept for busy households. If it weren't for my work dependence on Outlook I'd use it to run my household in a heartbeat. Given my current technological challenges there are features that I'll take advantage of the opportunity to look at the sweet faces of my kids, keep a running grocery list and retrieve it remotely. Again, its a great FREE service so go check it out and see how it can help you better manage your household activities. I'd love to hear from someone who has been successful in integrating it with and Outlook Exchange account to learn the tricks of the trade.

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