Like many web workers, one of my challenges is keeping my data in sync between the various devices and apps that I use. I stopped using my Palm handheld over a year ago, but I’ve continued to use the Palm Desktop application, because it’s one of the easiest-to-use and most mobile-friendly applications ever, even though I now have a BlackBerry. Finding a solution that can keep my data in sync between Palm Desktop, my BlackBerry and the other apps that I use has been difficult.
For a while, I’d sync Outlook and Palm Desktop, and then Outlook would update the BlackBerry (I didn’t actually use Outlook at all, it just acted as the middleman). It worked great. But then my dependence on Google Calendar grew, because I could access it from any computer as well as my BlackBerry, and it wouldn’t work with my sync setup. Read the rest of this entry »
I really like Google Tasks. It’s free, easy to use, and well integrated with Gmail and Google Calendar, yet it’s flexible enough that it can be adapted for use as part of a Getting Things Done (GTD) system. Unlike many web apps, it has some very handy keyboard shortcuts built in, which can make it much faster to use and give you a real productivity boost. It’s well worth learning these shortcuts, particularly if you use Tasks a lot: Read the rest of this entry »
There are a huge number of task management and reminder apps available, each with a different range of features and complexity. Some applications seem to have too many features for me, while others don’t have enough. Superminder seems to get it just right. It falls into the useful yet easy to use category.
The web app has two key features: adding new to-do items and setting reminders. It also lets you set up email or SMS reminders. Read the rest of this entry »
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my quest to organize my workflow, it is that everyone’s brain works differently. There are almost as many answers to the question “what task management tool do you like” as there are people, and we’ve reviewed a host of those solutions here at WebWorkerDaily.
I’ve struggled for years to try to find the right solution for me. I’ve used a Franklin Planner, a Palm T/X, Microsoft Outlook (s msft), Remember The Milk, and a few other options. Nothing ever seemed quite right for me, though, and at times I found myself scribbling on paper pads still.
That was the case until I bought my first Mac and started looking for a task list for OS X. One of my friends recommended Things from Cultured Code. I almost didn’t try it because of the price ($49.95 desktop, $9.95 iPhone app). Thankfully, there is a free trial of the desktop application, so I was able to check it out without committing to the hefty price tag. It’s good that there’s a free trial, because I would otherwise have passed it by.
Put simply, Things has been the solution I’ve been searching for. It has revolutionized my productivity. It works with my natural flow, instead of against it. Read the rest of this entry »
Task.fm, the task management/reminder app with natural language input that I wrote about in May, has just come out of beta, promising an improved interface, Twitter and email support, and improvements to the natural language input. As I noted previously, Task.fm’s input was limiting, which would likely frustrate many users.
The input on the new version is better; the particular input that I complained about in my previous post (“meeting with Dave in 30 minutes”) now works perfectly. However, there are still problems with it. For example, if you enter “dentist today at 4:30,” you’ll get a reminder of “dentist today” set for 4:30 a.m. on the current day. Try “dentist at 4:30 this afternoon” instead, and the result is even worse: You’ll get a task of “dentist this after” set for noon. As I noted in my previous post, natural language input is very hard to get right, and unfortunately Task.fm hasn’t cracked it yet.
The new email and Twitter support means that you can enter tasks by sending Task.fm an email or a tweet, so if you really want to interact with your reminder app through email or Twitter and you’re willing to put up with the shortcomings of the natural language input and learn its syntax, it might be an option for you. But given the problems with task entry, I still can’t recommend this app for widespread use.
Have you tried Task.fm’s natural language input? How could it be improved?
reQall is “a voice-enabled memory aid that seamlessly integrates your mobile phone, email, text messaging and IM into a powerful organizer, reminder system and productivity assistant.” It provides a personal notes and reminders system that you can access anywhere: over the phone, over the web, over email and over IM. Because it’s voice-enabled, you can access your to-do lists with a just a phone; you don’t need a laptop or Internet connection. If you’re looking for a system to manage to-do lists that you can access from anywhere, reQall is a good choice. Read the rest of this entry »
If you have a problem with procrastination, you might like to try novel to-do list app ForceDo, which lets you set a timer for completing your tasks.
ForceDo works just like any other online to-do list management app — users of Gmail Tasks and Remember the Milk should feel very much at home — except that when you set up a task you can estimate how long it should take to complete. When you start the task, you set the clock running. You can optionally set alarms to sound before the end of the task and when the time is up.
The idea behind the app is that by heaving a timed deadline to work toward, you’ll be less likely to procrastinate or get distracted. You can also use ForceDo to measure the amount of time you take to complete your tasks.
Here’s a quick screencast of ForceDo in action: Read the rest of this entry »
Someone I follow on Twitter recently wondered if twittering might be useful at work, as a means of communication between coworkers within a company. It struck me at the time as a very, very bad idea. Many companies are hesitant to use enterprise messaging applications because they fear worker distraction. Company use of Twitter would obviously put even more of a strain on the attention spans of readily-distracted employees.
Now there’s a service that aims to provide the benefit of regular status updates without (one hopes) the productivity-killing distraction inherent in Twitter or Facebook, for example. It’s called Remindo, and it provides you with a bare-bones company network for free. The company network is organized by email address. In fact, the service is so based upon email addresses that I had trouble figuring out how to sign up when I initially visited the site. Read the rest of this entry »
Like many web workers, one of my challenges is keeping my data in sync between the various devices and apps that I use. I stopped using my Palm handheld over a year ago, but I’ve continued to use the Palm Desktop application, because it’s one of the easiest-to-use and most mobile-friendly applications ever, even though I now have a BlackBerry. Finding a solution that can keep my data in sync between Palm Desktop, my BlackBerry and the other apps that I use has been difficult.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
