Several times a day I’ll find something neat on the web, see a Facebook post from a friend, or get a link to an article in an email. At first I would try to go to all these articles immediately because I had no way of saving them to read later. It first got to the point where I would just skim everything, and then I pretty much stopped trying to read all these articles and posts altogether because I simply wasn’t getting any work done! Enter Instapaper.

Instapaper offers a one-stop shop where you can save anything and everything you find on the web and read it later: in a checkout line, on the bus, or waiting to meet up with friends.

How it works: you register for an account and download a bookmarklet (a little link that runs a mini-program from your browser toolbar) for Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari. You click on the bookmarklet whenever you find something you want to remember to read later. All the content gets saved to your Instapaper account.

Instapaper saves two views of each page whenever possible: a web view with all content intact, and a stripped-down text-and-links version without all the slow-loading flash videos, images and ads (good for reading from your phone or mobile device).

The best part for iPhone users is that the Instapaper iPhone app actually downloads the content of the articles to your phone so that you you can catch up on reading when you don’t have a wifi connection. Like when you are camping out for Red Sox tickets, for example.

Many people subscribe to RSS feeds so that they can stay updated on all their favorite websites sites from one place (usually a feed reader like Google Reader) without going back to the sites all the time. Instapaper offers a great way to save and read scattered articles from those sites that you may not necessarily be interested in subscribing to.

Canditto is a computer-based kiosk that collects the digital photos guests have taken at a wedding, party, or reception.  It produces a CD collection of all the guests’ pictures by the end of the night.

How it works: as guests leave, they are invited to insert their cameras’ memory cards into the device. The kiosk stores the photos on a thumb drive that the bride and groom can take home.  It’s built to be simple and fast:  no buttons to push and near-instant file transfer.

The inventors (above) are two MBA students from the college where I work–Babson College in Wellesley, MA. The New York Times did a nice write-up about it here.

Save-the-Date Widget provided by Bridal Guide

How it works:

You simply fill out a short form here with the names of the bride and groom, as well as the wedding location, date and time. Once you fill out the form, the program generates code that you can cut and paste to your wedding website or your Facebook page–or anywhere else you can think of.  After you post the widget to your site, your guests simply click on the “add to my calendar button” to automatically add your wedding date to their calendars.

Only thing is, I am not so technical and I couldn’t figure out how to add it to Facebook. And I can’t add it to our wedding website because WordPress won’t let you mess with the code…help? Anyone?

Anyway, it seems to be pretty comprehensive from your guests’ perspective. Here is a list of all the calendars the widget works with:

* 37signals Backpack
* Airset
* Apple iCal
* Contactizer
* Buni Meldware Communication Suite
* Facebook
* FirstClass
* Google Calendar
* Jalios JCMS
* Joint Contact
* Joyent Connector
* Kickstart
* Lotus Notes
* Microsoft Entourage
* Microsoft Exchange Server
* Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
* Novell GroupWise
* Nuvvo
* Rainlendar
* Sun Java Calendar Server
* Westlaw (TWEN)
* Windows Calendar
* Windows Live Calendar
* Wrike
* Microsoft Works Calendar
* WebTrain – Web Conferencing Meeting Reminders

Special thanks to Brenda of Brenda’s Wedding Blog who found it first.

Although as trends go, I gotta say…um, I know it sounds crazy patently obvious, but technology’s here to stay. The Knot isn’t going too far out on a limb here. I think it’s more a question of how brides and grooms will use technology in their planning. Will they keep the actual event traditional, but facilitate the planning by purchasing some of the great software out there? Or will they use the free tools from sites like Martha Stewart and The Knot?

The only wedding planning software available for the Mac. Are you listening, Steve Jobs?!?!?

What about taking it to the next level by posting photos on Facebook and asking their friends to vote on everything from wedding-day ensembles to centerpiece options? Photo-booth kiosks where guests’ photos are downloaded onto a hard drive instead of printed out? And I’ve even heard talk of emailed invitations and online RSVPs (greener options, yes, but I’m not quite there yet). Stay tuned…

one of my favorite sources of wedding inspiration: snippet & ink

And the blogs! There are blogs where crafty brides show off their fabulous DIY projects. There are blogs by gorgeous punk rock brides , geeky brides, and preppy brides. There are even sites for brides who are fed up with the Wedding Industrial Complex and want to bring weddings back down to earth. I haven’t been able to find a lot about internet junkie brides,  though. I did find one iPhone-toting wedding photographer.

In my “real” life as an academic technology project manager, I also read lots of blogs: blogs about web 2.0, blogs about social networking for education and business, and blogs about productivity in a world where we’re often overwhelmed trying to keep up with the next big thing. But I seldom see technology-oriented blogs devote much space to weddings (it makes sense, I suppose; most tech blogs just cover the tools and leave it up to the reader to see how he or she can apply them).

So there you have it folks: Connected Bride is where my “connected”, plugged-in, iPhone toting geek  self meets my “bride” self — the part of me that loves beautiful clothes, gorgeous interiors, tasty food, and spectacular parties. Enjoy!

I added the Weddingbook app for Facebook as soon as I found out about it, but I ended up creating a Facebook event for our wedding, too. I love some of Weddingbook’s features, like the countdown widget and the wedding party photo gallery, but all in all Weddingbook just didn’t have the options I wanted. Weddingbook seems geared toward brides and grooms who want to use Facebook to plan their entire wedding; that didn’t appeal to me because there are too many tools out there that can do the job way better. And when it comes right down to it I am a tiny bit old-fashioned. Sorry, folks, you won’t be getting your invitations via Facebook.

To me, one of the best things about Facebook is the way everyone can post photos quickly and easily. I hope my guests take tons of candids and post them to Facebook right away. As the bride, I am sure to miss a lot of what goes on at the reception, but if people are clicking away on their digital cameras, and upload the photos to the Facebook event page, I’ll get a much fuller picture of the night we worked so hard to put together.

The photos are what I’m after, but if you think of it as a quick and painless way to add a little interactivity to the mix, there’s a lot to be said too. Guests will get to know each other a little better before the wedding, or at least know what the main players look like. The wall can act as a message board for questions and good wishes, and a way for guests to communicate with each other (think sharing cabs from the airport, or buddying up for cultural excursions while they’re in town). A nice feature is the option of including guests who aren’t on Facebook yet–they can click a link in their email and be taken to your event without having to set up an account or log in. You can see all the responses and quickly and easily send a message to the entire guest list.

The wall and photos and videos are available to all invitees (although I bet non-Facebookers can see the content but not add to it). In my head, Facebook can be the 21st century version of leaving disposable cameras at every table! It’s my fervent hope that people will take tons of pictures and video at our wedding and post them to Facebook for all to see (tip: if you do a Facebook event for a wedding or any other non-public occasions, keep the event closed to prevent crashers, but after the party, change it to “open”, so even non-invitees (co-workers, old high school friends) can see all your awesome pics!

Don't tell Dave I'm also engaged to someone named Kevin

Weddingbook is a wedding planning app for Facebook with some handy dandy features. I’m a sucker for anything related to wedding software, so I added it immediately got started by adding members of the wedding party from my Facebook friends.

The app even let me add people who weren’t on Facebook (you know who you are), so at the end I had a nice little gallery of thumbnails. We are only having two attendants each so it didn’t take long to add everyone, and there were progressive choices like man of honor and best woman.

I then entered our wedding date, and opted to add the countdown box to my profile page which was kinda fun. You can also add your guest list, but I couldn’t figure out a way to add people who aren’t on Facebook, which makes little sense, so if I’m doing it wrong, please comment me and let me know. The other thing I noticed was the little message at the bottom that said, “your guests won’t be notified due to Facebook restrictions”. You can invite guests but not let them know? Wha? And there’s no way to track RSVPs. Looks like I won’t be managing my guest list via Weddingbook.

I didn’t use the vendor search feature either since we are pretty much all set on that. Seems like the most useful parts of Weddingbook are: neat-O wedding party photo gallery, kewl little wedding day countdown widget, and the forums. Oh, and you can post a link to your wedding website, which I haven’t done, because the dang site isn’t done yet. D’oh! I really need to get on that.

I’m new to this whole blogging thing, so if you have anything to add to one of my posts, or if there’s a great resource you think I should know about, you can email URLs to connectedbride at gmail dot com. If you’d like me to give you a shoutout when I post it, let me know your web address as well.

Likewise, if you see a photo or other item that is incorrectly attributed, I would appreciate it if you’d let me know. I started clipping items from the web long before I started to blog, and sometimes forgot to note where the ideas and images came from.

Here we go….