Online Finanacial management

So a few years ago (quite a few), I had started using MS Money to manage my finances. I used it around 6 months and than the overhead of it got to me. Entering, downloading, classifiying - and the damn little bug that messed up credits and debits on my line of credit!! Now there is also my wife and myself, do I use my computer or hers? how do we deal with travel.

One of the hardest things was organizing - once I had a system, I forgot it, and needed to recall it - kind of recreated it.

I have just found two online applications - both are online finance management, Wesabe and mint, with a scocial networking twist. So you can tag expenses and the system will eventualy find similarities between you and others, and get you in touch with each other. This sounds cool, but will it realy help me? How is this different than what credit companies, customer cards and banks do ? Should I trust such a company ?

One of the arguments is will people trust uploading all their private financial information to the web site. My original thought was "hell no", but after thinking about it, don't I do that with my bank? my brokerage account? My retirement fund? What makes this different?

For me, I think, the largest difference is that this is a "new net-only guy" - it's like handing over finances to an accountant. I have "non-net" relationships with evryone else - or I possibly can. As well they none of them have full access to ALL my financial data. My bank and credit company possibly have the most - what I buy, when I buy, how much I make my payment history etc. It will boil down to two items - will it be worth it, and can I trust them.

Bill tracking

Hey - here is a cool application - Where's Willy? will allow you to enter a paper bill's serial number and track where it ends up. There is also a US version called where is george (Willi is for Wilfred Laurier). There is also a link for a google map to track the bill.

Presence Systems Number One On Federal Wish List

This is a pretty interesting read Presence Systems Number One On Federal Wish List. I had once read presence - the status part of instant messaging, for example - as DNS for people. Of course there are many other ways to tell presence - from IP address and account login, to cell phone registration when you turn it on. Very cool and scary at the same time.