•  Manage your information online. •  Virtual calendars keep schedules at your fingertips -- anywhere. •  Store your files on the Web.

You may temporarily be a company of one -- while you transition from your former job to your future job. Or you may be a permanent company of one -- you're the whole business, lock, stock and secretarial help all by yourself.

You've probably heard the buzz about "ASPs" or "application service providers." To the extent that you understand them at all, you probably understand that they're for big companies: They provide services that big companies used to use to create and maintain big software programs. Way out of your league, you think. But, you're be wrong.

The Web is blossoming with ASPs that are offering services you can use at a price you can afford -- free.

These services are sort of virtual gadgets, software applications that you can use without buying. They do many of the things you might otherwise spend money for hardware or software to do. And because they're Web-based, they have some other advantages as well. They're not tied to any particular PC, so you can use a Web-based bookmarks file, for example, from any PC you happen to be using.

Another benefit is that other people can use it, too. Web-based applications are great for sharing the information they manage -- group calendars and discussions or shared files.

A Web-based calendar probably won't replace your Palm Pilot, but it will work well with it. And if it doesn't, there are a number of others out there. That's another advantage of virtual gadgets -- competition is constantly making them better, and it doesn't cost you to use the best.

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) like the Palm devices have been reinvented on the Web as applications that provide virtual personal digital assistance: appointment calendars, address books and to do lists. A couple of the most interesting are Visto and AnyDay.

Both are calendars with added features and have very easy-to-use interfaces. AnyDay is a little bit better at personal information management, while Visto has the edge for sharing with a group.

If you've got a Palm Pilot or other PDA, or use desktop organizer software like Outlook or Organizer, you might like AnyDay. Once you get over the hump of downloading and installing its 4MB synchronization application, you can actually synch your PDA or app with AnyDay. Appointments or contact records created in either place will appear in the other. (The synch software works with just about any PDA you can think of, and several organizer and contact-management software packages.)

Visto has an "Instant Import" feature that doesn't require a big download and install, but it doesn't work both ways, either. It just transfers your content to its site, but only works only in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Both AnyDay and Visto let you create virtual clubhouses where you can share calendars and message boards with the members of groups you create. Visto's interface for this is a little bit better and more businesslike, but AnyDay does have one clear advantage: To view a shared calendar in Visto you must be a fully signed-up member of the service. AnyDay lets you create special calendars to share and simply email a URL to anyone you want to see them.

Both apps also let you do group calendaring. You can add an event to a group calendar, and send email to group members notifying them. AnyDay even lets you collect RSVPs.

AnyDay's "Events Club" feature lets you search schedules of local sports and cultural events and add them to your calendar -- nice for personal and family-group calendars, less useful for business. Visto includes file upload and download. It's one file at a time, to be sure, but it lets groups share documents, which AnyDay doesn't.

There is a sudden swarm of Web gadgets for file storage -- sites that provide you with a place to upload and download files. These are useful primarily for sharing files with others, but they can also be helpful if you're working at more than one location, on more than one PC. You can upload files from one PC and download them from others, or use the Web storage for secure central backup of files you don't want to leave on computers you use only as a guest.

Like the group calendar sites, Web storage sites let you share access to your files in a controlled fashion. Typically, you list the email addresses of the people who will have access to a folder of your files, choose whether they can just read files or also edit them and add their own, and maybe set an optional password. The group gets an email that includes a URL they click on for direct access to the folder.

What is this good for? The most common use seems to be MP3 files, but there are business reasons as well -- you can avoid sending large attachments in an email message by parking them on a file storage site and sending your correspondent the URL. If you're circulating a standard set of work samples as computer files a storage site can make it easy. If your resume material includes photographs of products or projects you can create a photo album on many of the sites.

Ease of use varies from site to site. You wouldn't want to back up your whole hard drive this way -- most sites give you about 25 megabytes of storage, and force you to transfer one file at a time. Many of the sites offer a downloadable utility that works with Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer to treat the file storage site just like any other storage device -- a hard disks, a Zip drive -- on your PC. One site, Driveway, stands out because it offers a desktop feature for the Macintosh as well. Freedrive offers a wireless option, and iDrop boasts that it is the only site with FTP access.

Several of the sites offer a clipping feature that lets you save copies of Web pages conveniently. This can be especially useful if you're doing research on the Web. Many news sites change the URLs of their articles when they archive them, so if you just bookmark them, you won't be able to find them again. A clipping permanently captures the page.

Some storage sites will either sell you more space or give it to you if you will take their surveys and give them your email address (and deal with their spam). Xdrive offers up to 100MB of storage and a drag-and-drop desktop application for uploading files. MySpace will up the ante to 300MB.

Using file storage sites to capture Web clippings is just one of the ways to use Web gadgets to do Internet research.

Backflip and Blink are sites let you store your bookmarks in cyberspace, and access them from any computer. They overcome one of the most pervasive annoyances of the Web -- a forgotten URL.

Both sites give you a quick link for your browser taskbar or Favorites pane that lets you add a bookmark with a single click. This is the other great benefit of these sites -- not only can you see your bookmarks from any computer, but you can add to your bookmarks from any computer.

Adding a bookmark is easier in Backflip; Blink makes you log in as part of the process. Backflip's user interface is arguably cleaner, which may give it the edge as a personal productivity tool. But, Blink has more features for sharing your bookmarks with others.

Both sites let you share folders with selected others, "publish" public folders, and export your bookmarks to HTML files. In addition, Blink lets you assemble a temporary "surfboard" list of links that you can either export or email to others. You can email an entire folder of links, as well. And you can use a "bookmarks wizard" to create Javascript code that you add to your own Web pages to display a folder of links.

MindIt is a Web gizmo that can help you manage the generally squirmy nature of information on the Web. Backflip will let you bookmark a URL, and Driveway will let you pin a Web page down like a butterfly in an album -- both ways of making sure you can find information when you want it. MindIt does something different. It watches a page, and notifies you via email when it changes. You can set MindIt to tell you if a page disappears or moves or changes. You can even specify particular changes -- a different image or changed text, for example. MindIt can tell you when a company's home page or its job listings change. A set of "QuickMinds" let you set MindIt to watch for news of a particular technology, or reviews of a movie, or reports on a stock.

The interface is extremely simple, and the sign-up process is almost invisible -- you must first set up a QuckMind entry or a URL for MindIt to watch before you are registered as a user.