At David Allen’s Roadmap seminar in February of this year he posed a question to the audience when talking about how to set up a functional office. He asked if folks knew where to find the owner’s manual for their cell phones. Not a lot of people raised their hands - I’m sure because not a lot of people had a clue where that manual was.

Similarly, if something expensive like your digital camera breaks, are you organized enough to know where your warranty information is or if you even bothered to send that annoying but suddenly terribly important warranty registration card in to the manufacturer in the first place.

MyThings is a website that is built to solve just this problem. Their goal is to provide an online storage facility for your purchase receipt or other information and in addition to providing you with a free and easily accessible online storage space where you can archive information related to anything you own.

What’s more, for many of those things, MyThings can provide for you the owner’s manual, can send in your warranty registration and can even provide you with alerts related to recalls, upgrades, new accessories or replacement parts.

The company is also in the process of archiving a large number of clever tips and tricks ranging from how to take better photos using the camera on your phone to how to recover a damaged hard drive using your freezer.

There’s no limit to the number of things that you can archive and there’s no cost no matter how much or how often you use the service. For GTD’ers I think this is a great addition to your trusted system. Why have to label all those folders for your various electronics - especially since the one time when you might need all that paperwork is the one time it’s most likely to be gone - after a house fire.

MyThings makes it easy to keep track of what you own, to get it fixed if it’s broken and even to learn how to use it better if you’re just learning. So the next time David asks a seminar who there can tell him where the manual is for their mobile phone there shouldn’t be anyone in the audience who doesn’t have their hand up, now should there?

Tags: Gadgets, Getting Things Done, Software //