After Dina Dreifuerst’s car was stolen, it wasn’t the missing wheels that was the biggest problem—it was the fact that her day planner had been on the passenger seat. All the details of her life, right down to records on about 50 hours’ worth of billable research she’d done for her employer, were gone. “I lost my brain,” she says. “I vowed from that point forward that it would never happen again, and that was when I bought my PDA,” a clunky handheld computer with a black-and-white screen. Twelve years later, Dina, now a librarian for the international law firm Bracewell & Giuliani in Houston and a single mother to a 10-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter, can’t imagine managing her overscheduled life without a little help from technology. Her smartphone is like her “spare brain.” She uses the gadget—which is a phone but also has features that you might find on a PDA or a computer—to answer work emails on the fly, plan meetings for her son’s Cub Scout den, track her checking account balance, record recipes and grocery shopping lists and even remember the product number of her hair color. At the end of the day, everything gets backed up on her home and work computers—no more lost billable hours. Dina is one of a cadre of working moms who know that technology can mean the difference between chaos and calm when trying to balance kids and career. It streamlines, time-saves and offers much-needed assistance. Of course, with the constant stream of new and improved high-tech offerings, it can be challenging to discern which new technology is worthy of a busy working mom’s time and money. The key? Make sure you’re running the technology, not the other way around.

Scheduling Genies With her job as a life insurance analyst, her two under-5 kids and her volunteer work as a youth advisor for her church, you might think that Shawna Foster spends a lot of time coordinating schedules. Not so. Foster and her husband swear by an online tool that helps them avoid that complicated “let’s sit down and match up our calendars” conversation—the online calendar from Google. Its most appealing assets: You can share scheduling information among linked accounts, and events for different family members can be color-coded. And, oh yeah, it’s free. “I import the weather and the calendar that my church created, so I’m on top of those events,” says Shawna, who works for a life insurance society in Omaha, NE. “My husband imports area events with Google Calendar. I import his calendar and he imports mine, so our respective Google Calendars are always in sync. I put the kids’ doctor appointments there, as well as playdates and piano and ballet classes. Plus, we can see if there are parades or festivals in our neighborhood.” Another popular organizational tool is Microsoft Outlook, often carried on a BlackBerry or other smartphone, synchronized with an office computer and set up so that events for different family members are color-coded. And if both parents have Outlook, they can use the software to schedule shared appointments. “I assign my husband tasks through Outlook or via my Palm,” says Lisa Stavsky, a Columbus, OH, mom of three who runs a bank’s brokerage and investment services division, like “Bring Jared to soccer.” Whatever tool you use, the women we spoke with agreed: Keep just one calendar, not separate ones, for work and home. Otherwise you’re bound to end up double-booked.

Just Text Me Like many working moms, Lisa can’t be there when her three kids—two sons, ages 14 and 12, and an 8-year-old daughter—get home from school. But technology helps keep her from worrying. That’s because Lisa has signed up for a “Family Locator” service with Sprint. Her two older kids have phones that act as GPS tracking devices, and at any moment of the day, she can use a Web browser to check on the kids’ whereabouts. (Imagine Mrs. Weasley’s kitchen clock in the Harry Potter books, minus the “mortal peril” setting.) “Every day at 4:30 p.m.,” says Lisa, “I get a text message with their locations.” Actually, lots of moms cite text messaging with older kids as a key way to stay connected while at the office. At moments when they’re in a meeting or don’t have time to take a call, they can shoot off a quick, discreet text message, with their coworkers none the wiser. “My kids know they can always get in touch with me, like to tell me if they just got a ninety on a test,” says Lisa.

Plugged In to the Max On the flip side, technology can make it easier to take that work-at-home day, even when there’s something important going on at the office. Just ask Mary Alice Colvin, a mother of two who’s a senior product-marketing manager for Allyis, a Kirkland, WA–based technology consulting company. A toll-free on-demand tele-conferencing line, coupled with the collaboration tool Microsoft Live Meeting, is Mary Alice’s connection. Recently, she and a colleague in Amsterdam went over a presentation after her kids had gone to bed. “We can look at the same presentation, and he can be typing or writing with a little digital pen. I can see his comments and say, ‘Actually, I think we should change it,’ and I can type it in. It’s almost like we’re side by side.” The ability to work 24/7 can have its drawbacks. But many working mothers have found that the benefits outweigh the burdens. “People are so weird about the BlackBerry, because they think you’re addicted to it,” says Meredith Bove, an executive vice president at a marketing firm in Portland, ME. “But it lets me be so subtle. My kids don’t need to see me with a laptop attached to my hands day and night. I can just check my BlackBerry every half hour and know what’s happening at work.”

Breathing Room Perhaps the biggest boon for working moms? The Internet. Gone are the days when you have to trek to the grocery store—just load up a virtual shopping cart with all your regular weekly purchases in a matter of clicks. And who goes to the bank anymore? “I do all my banking online,” says Rebecca Holland, a mom of two and a vice president at Doubleday Publishing Group in New York City. “I’ve programmed Outlook to remind me when to transfer money into our household account. I try to have all my bills sent to me electronically.” She files for reimbursement from her flexible spending accounts and manages her 401(k) and mutual fund accounts electronically, too. With the time you save, who knows, you might just find a decidedly no-tech hour or two to spend some face time with the girls—instead of searching for long-lost friends on Facebook.

More Technologies We Love 1. Automatic Backups Mozy (mozy.com) and IDrive (idrive.com) both offer automatic online backup services that are free unless you want more than two gigabytes’ worth of storage. To handle all those hard-drive-hogging photos and videos of the kids, try Memorex SimpleSave record-once DVD discs that automatically search your computer for any photos and video files and create backups ($15 for a 5-pack of 4.4-GB discs, memorex.com). 2. Wi-Fi Gadgets Some newer portable devices—including Apple’s iPod Touch and iPhone, the BlackBerry Bold 9000 and the Palm Treo 800—are Wi-Fi compatible. That means that if you have a Wi-Fi connection at home, you can surf the Internet from the playroom without paying for an additional plan. Another cool trick is the Eye-Fi wireless card, which enables you to upload photos from your camera to your computer whenever both are on and the camera is in Wi-Fi range (2-GB SD memory cards starting at $80, eye.fi). 3. Windows Mobile When you’re always on the run, this catalog of products lets you do lots with your mobile phone: find a restaurant and make reservations, practice a presentation or find alternative routes to avoid traffic jams (learn more at microsoft.com/windowsmobile).

Sarah D. Scalet has two daughters, ages 5 and 1, and is the technology editor of About.com in New York City.