The Productive Organizer

Ever thought of starting a download on your home server pc while you are halfway around the world? There are solutions on how to do that on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

For geeks like us we have been dabbling in such things for some time, the defecto solution is VNC viewer, where you setup a VNC server in your home pc and connect to it via a VNC client. [Guide to control your pc from anywhere using VNC >>]

A comparable Free solution:Mocha VNC Lite

The Free solution on the iPhone and iPod touch is Mocha VNC  Lite[iTunes >>]. It is an OK solution but the thing about VNC is that, its more for geeks as we can tweak alot of the configurations to the way we wanted.

Anyway Mocha VNC Lite is limited in features and if you are looking for an alternative to this then Team Viewer is for you.

What is Team Viewer?

With the TeamViewer App for iPhone and iPod Touch you are now able to access remote computers from everywhere. It allows you to give spontaneous support as well as having permanent access to unattended computers.

This works like Mocha VNC, but it is suppose to be more secure then VNC, that is, if you trust the security protocol used by Team Viewer.

Team Viewer App for iPhone comes in 2 version, the USD 99 one and the FREE one.

You can use the FREE version as long as it is for personal use, so its good enough for most of you.

Here i try to walk you through what it does.

Download Team Server full version

You first hop on to Team Viewer’s site to download a client for your Windows or Mac PC. [Download TeamViwer Portable >>]

You will administer as well as to allow your iPhone and iPod Touch to connect

Run TeamViewer Installer

Unzip the package and Doubleclick on “Teamviewer.exe”.

You will be brought to this screen here. Note that in the middle of it is an ID and Password. These are the credentials that your iPhone will use to connect to this computer.

The password is abit difficult to remember so go to Extras > Options >Security to configure your own password.

With all these done you are all set to go.

Connect to your computer on your iPhone

Fire up your TeamViewer iPhone App and you will be presented with a login page. Key in your ID and Password and then Touch Connect to Partner.

You will be presented with simple instructions how to navigate using your iPhone on your desktop computer.

You will see that you are connected via another node. Start accessing your computer via the iPhone

Here is how it looks like on your iPhone. Navigation is quite ok. Do note that this, like VNC sends you many screen shots of your desktop so it will be abit pixelated sometimes.

Anytime you wanna end connection click the cross.

You will be able to quick access recent sessions on your iPhone Application as well

Conclusion

All in all, a pretty competent solution and at a cheap price. I have yet to test it on my companies websites to see if i can access it or use GPRS to access it. Do give it a try and let me know what you think

I always advocate mind mapping as  a good way of collecting one’s thoughts and taking notes during meetings.

We have quite a fair bit of solutions for the iPhone and iPod Touch. What about Android.

Lifehacker today alerted us to this application called Thinking Space that does mind mapping pretty well and the format is compliant with Freemind, an opensource mind mapping software.

Gotta say this offering is really promising! it might be just the equivalent of all those great mind mapping software on the iPhone like iThoughts [comprehensive review of iThoughts>>]

1. Compatible with Freemind, an opensource Mind mapping software.
2. Reasonable structure to creating maps through toolbars
3. Cloud Sharing of your mindmaps! You can upload and download maps to a Thinking Space server where it keeps revision copies of your maps and you can share it with your friends or act as backups. Very good plus feature. Syncing not real time though.
4. Its FREE!

[Learn more and download Thinking Space for Android >>]

Firstly thank you Charles for being kind enough to extend a beta copy of Action Lists for me to do this review.

So far i have the chance to investigate 2 Task Management Software:

1. Appigo ToDo [Review Here >>]
2. eToDo [Review Here >>]

For sure, these are not the only lists around and the fact that the competition is so hot means there is only one winner here, which is you the consumer!

Action Lists is brought to you by Daze End Software, you may have come across another of its software which is ListMaker and this one is working on the same formula as List Maker.In fact you can say that action Lists is building on the same formula as List Maker.

Action Lists, like most task management applications on iPhone enables you to follow the GTD Workflow by David Allen but for me, it can be much more than that.

How much does it cost?

There is a free version for you to try that is FREE. However, it only enables you to create a limited number of tasks and projects.

The paid application cost USD9.99, which is the same cost as Appigo Todo and Things.

When you cost that much, you gotta be as competitive as them. Here we will see if it measures up.

How does it work?

Action Lists does task management according to the GTD workflow, but you have the flexibility to do it in alot of ways.

Typically you start off by doing a sweep to collect any thing that you can think of. Any thoughts that translates to actionable tasks will go into the Inbox.

Task entry is similar to Appigo ToDo in that you can use a Quick Add button to add a task without detail specifications. But most would prefer to use the detail entry screen.

Here you can enter the

1. description of your task
2. start date of the task
3. end date of the task
4. notes for the task
5. context/categories of the task and
6. which project it belongs to
7. set task to repeating

whatever a good todo list have, Action Lists have it for you. You can specify your own contexts and later you can filter by them.

The repeating task is abit special. You can set them to continous repeat, and the tasks will be generated either when the day have been reached, or when the task have been completed.

I find this to necessary in the past to have the task recur on its own when the day comes but i realise that doing this, you can very likely litter your todo list should you fall off the to do list bandwagon and attempt to hop back on.

The preferred method will be to recur when you have complete the task. Either way, once you marked a task completed, a new recur task is added to the Inbox

This is abit different but its Action Lists way to make sure that all new task is handled at Inbox level. some people will like this, some will not.

Nested Projects

When you are organizing your tasks in your inbox, if the task needs more than 1-2 steps to be handled, you will create a Project to group them together.

This is where Action Lists differs from all task list on the market. Action Lists enables you to have unlimited projects within projects and there will alot of folks who appreciate this as you can really group your tasks by:

1. Personal and Work
2. Strategic Goals
3. Area of Responsibilities
4. Project Milestones
5. Small Projects

I used to want this nested feature alot as i think it makes alot of sense. Even the Desktop ToDoList that i have created based on Nested Tree List. People that are in software development would have use Microsoft Project and it enables you to have nested task. If you look at your life as one big project then having nested list will really help.

Not having it is not end of the world. In fact most people will just make do with 2 levels: the first level being your Area of Responsibilities be it Project A, Being a good family man and the second level being your Project milestones to achieve that area of responsibility.

Task Status and Doing the Task via Context

How you perform the “Do It” after “Organzing it” will be based on 2 things: the Status of the task and the Context.

When defining the task you can select the status.

Setting the Task to Waiting will cost the task to pop up at the Waiting Tab (notice the increase in number badge indicating the number of waiting task) for me this is good as it really provides a clear seperation of tasks that are currently waiting. Currently with Appigo ToDo, i have it as one of my Tags and while i have said Appigo toDo main problem is that you need to go into the tags to see how many unfinish task you have. With Action Lists you don’t have this problem.

The Same goes with Someday. Once you decide to do a Someday task, just switch the status to Active or Next Action

As i have said, you hop on over to Action Lists Tab to go through your context to see your next action.

You will note that there aren’t alot of task queued here. Why is that? This is because only task set to Next Action Status will appear here!

Its a novel way of filtering away all the freaking task and only show what you have to do next.

There is abit of a problem here. So lets say you completed a task, what you need to do next is go to the Projects tab and go to that particular project and set the next task status to Next Action from Active.

what happens when your task is so deeply nested inside?

This is where Task Queue comes in. Touch the blue arrow next to each project folder and you will see the option “Queue Next Actions“.

Toggle it on and after you finish one next action, it will immediately set the next earliest due task to Next action from Active. This may not work well if you have tasks that have dependency not based on time of completion. the jury is still out if this performs well enough

Synchronize and backup to ToodleDo

Action Lists enables you to back up your tasks and folders to Toodledo. I have not tested how well this works since my ToodleDo syncs with Appigo ToDo but i have a feeling it will be another case that ToodleDo will act as a backup rather than allow you to use it both online and on your iPhone.

Do tell me your experience with syncing.

Where to improve upon

This App have alot of potential i feel.However here are some things that they need to iron out.

Full Calendar selection – We cannot rely on the roller to select the date! As we are setting dates, we want to see clearly which day of the week or which weekday we set upon. Using a roller selector is not good for this.

More Description details – from the picture below you will see that its very difficult to tell at one glance what you need to do. you will have to go into the task itself. I feel this needs to be expanded

Conclusion

On the whole a very good to do list i feel. Does everything the competition has and a very niche and competitive feature in Nested Projects. Fix the problems that i mention and its well worthed the price.

For one that have program a todo list, i can truely appreciate this product and its difficulties. We hope that the next 1 month users will give ample feedbacks to increase the stability of the software. Appigo Todo have this problem for all versions, due to the complexity of to do lists in general.

so do contribute and highlight the issues to make this a good todo list!

Engadget Reports that the Archos 7 and 8 home tablets will be coming to US and they look value for money:

• around USD 203 (pretty good i feel)
• 600 MHz ARM 9 (average to weak)
• weighs 350g
• WIFI
• 2GB integrated memory
• battery tout to last 7 hrs of video

The earliest we will see this is probably in April in Europe. I think the processor is weak to handle Android OS. Tell me what you think.

1Password, the password manager for alot of Mac and iPhone lovers, brought out their implementation for the iPad, and if all other software on the iPad is designed this way, i’m telling you its gonna feel good using it.

I’m always a support of great user interface and it is one aspect that i like the iPhone OS platform because there are so much intangible subtle advantage of the transitions, use of colors, fonts and shadows that makes you feel pleasant using it.

I do know for a fact that the data services that we use are far less than voice data when it comes to constraints that the cell tower of wireless carriers use. So how come the wireless carriers are still so much affected? Ars Technica have a good article on this, specifically, the smart monitoring of connections could be causing this:

The first problem that O2 encountered was that the iPhone uses more power saving features than previous smartphone designs. Most devices that use data do so in short bursts—a couple e-mails here, a tweet there, downloading a voicemail message, etc. Normally, devices that access the data network use an idling state that maintains the open data channel between the device and the network. However, to squeeze even more battery life from the iPhone, Apple configured the radio to simply drop the data connection as soon as any requested data is received. When the iPhone needs more data, it has to set up a new data connection.

The result is more efficient use of the battery, but it can cause problems with the signaling channels used to set up connections between a device and a cell node. Cell nodes use signaling channels to set up the data connection, as well as signaling phone calls, SMS messages, voicemails, and more. When enough iPhones are in a particular area, these signaling channels can become overloaded—there simply aren’t enough to handle all the data requests along with all the calls and messages.

It’s important to note, however, that this technique is not limited to the iPhone. Android and webOS devices also use a similar technique to increase battery life. While the iPhone was the first and currently most prolific device of this type, such smartphones are quickly becoming common, and represent the majority of growth in mobile phone sales in the past year.

Our source at O2 told us that network equipment that is configured to handle signaling traffic dynamically—shifting more spectrum to signaling channels when needed—can mitigate this problem. But even with more signaling capacity, network nodes may not be able to set up a data session, or may have problems getting a valid network address from an overloaded DHCP server. He said that data capacity is rarely the problem—nodes themselves can usually handle much more data than is flowing through them. However, the networks need to be configured to handle a growing number of devices connecting and disconnecting at a much higher rate than they’ve been accustomed to.

We spoke to another expert who works in the telecom field to find out why most European networks were not experiencing the problems that AT&T and O2 did. He told Ars that Europe embraced heavy text messaging and data use far earlier than users in the US. SMS and MMS messages rely heavily on signaling channels to operate, and so networks were generally configured to dynamically manage changes in signaling traffic.

O2 worked with its network equipment vendors to identify the problems and adjust the configuration to adapt to the changing needs of its smartphone users. For its part, AT&T has announced publicly that it is increasing backhaul capacity by running fiber to its cell sites, and plans an additional investment in network infrastructure—including adding up to 2,000 additional towers this year. The company would not comment on its efforts to address the kinds of issues described by our source at O2, though we know that O2 shared what it learned with AT&T and other carriers.

[From Ars Technica >>]

Ars Technica provided information that points to how Apple are likely to leverage on their iPhone OS success to bring it to multiple hardwares.

As first discovered by Computerworld, Apple is looking for a full-time engineering manager to oversee “platform bring-up,” with the Core Platform team, part of Apple’s Core OS group. Such a manager would be responsible for low-level architecture, hardware drivers, firmware, and platform security for iPhone OS on “a range of hardware platforms, including iPhone & iPod.” The manager will also coordinate the software team with hardware and custom silicon teams in developing and prototyping new platforms.

Candidates for the position are expected to have experience with kernel, driver, and firmware development for Unix-based systems as well as an understanding of system-on-a-chip design. Experience with ARM-based SoC’s is preferred, of course—that’s the platform currently used in the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, as well as Apple’s Time Capsule base station (among others).

TiPB suggests that Apple should massage iPhone OS to power a future revision of the Apple TV—though it already runs an OS X derivative, so perhaps they are merely suggesting making the UI more iPhone-like and capable of multitouch input. (We still prefer using the Remote iPhone app, however). It would be nice, though, if Apple offered Apple TV apps that let users access other online content like Netflix or Hulu. Computerworld also speculates that Apple may move its custom chips and iPhone OS upward to products like a future MacBook Air, Mac mini, or even a lower-power, ARM-based server.

Regardless of what specific products result from the effort, it only makes sense for Apple to leverage the architecture as widely as possible given the investment the company has made in developing Mac OS X and iPhone OS. When Steve Jobs revealed that Apple was moving to x86 processors after years of using PowerPC, he said that OS X was always intended to be “platform independent.”

[Ars Technica>>]

Productive Organizer would like to update everyone that the Official Ebay application is out in the US Android App Store.

You will now able to review and track as well as bid for items through your Android device.

Found this off gHacks and its pretty splendid. I know alot of people buy national geographic magazines just so that they can admire the wonderfully taken pictures, but have you taught of where to find them and add them as wallpaper?

The National Geographic Wallpaper downloader is such a Windows application that downloads wallpapers from different magazines to your computer at different sizes.

The magazine wallpaper categories include wallpapers from the years 2007, 2008, 2009 as well as wallpapers from the International photography contests of 2009 and 2008.

The website wallpapers currently include the categories photography, animals, science, kids and environment. The developer has already promised to add more categories such as history, adventure, traveler or sea monsters to the next version of the National Geographic Wallpaper Downloader.

Do give it a try!

[Hat tip gHacks >>]

Have talk a fair bit about what i think this product can do for us here on Productive Organizer so no need to keep blabber about it.

I found this article by Bill Hill,part of the original guys that created the ClearType on Windows for easy reading which we are all enjoying now and he likes the look of this iPad.

Alot of us can only visualize what the iPhone did for us and relate it to a larger screen but this is a guy that have been a forefront not just in the digital age but also in the publishing industry.

[Read the full article here >>]

His initial guess before the announcement:

“Apple could easily create a really elegant Tablet which looked just like a larger iPhone. With the iPhone, it already has a keyboardless UI which millions of users have found easy and convenient to use.“

“With a Tablet device, Apple could enter both the NetBook and eBook markets at the same time.”

“Apple has shown with each of its devices – PC, phone and music player – that there are millions of people who’d happily pay a premium price for a great user experience.”

“If Apple can get reasonable battery life from an iPhone-like Tablet, it’s going to make the Amazon Kindle screen unacceptable.“

Where he thinks Apple have truly got it:

It’s a great-looking device. It’s sleek and elegant – exactly what you’d expect from Apple. But that isn’t why it will dominate the Tablet category. It’s because Apple understands that computers have made a transition from “computing devices” to “consumer devices”. Apple has built its huge success in recent years by becoming a company which creates great end-to-end consumer experiences.

Where he thinks EInk and Kindle fails:

The trouble with the Kindle is that for all its vaunted modernity, it’s really a backward-looking device. So is the eInk technology at its heart. Both are aimed at creating an experience close to paper. But that’s not the Future of Reading. The future will be created by first equalling, then going beyond, paper. It is books with full color, books with video, books which update through the Web. Kindle was good enough to jump-start the digital book market. But it’s not good enough to keep it. eInk was acceptable only until the appearance of a color screen with acceptable battery life. And the iPad’s 10 hours is more than enough to knock it off its pedestal…

His view on the problems with Microsoft’s tablet endeavors:

When TabletPC began at Microsoft, it was a research effort – outside of the regular Windows organization. Once it was re-organized into Windows, that was the kiss of death. I never really thought much about this while I worked there, but it’s my belief that despite all the lip-service paid to end-users, the only Windows customers with any real power are the Windows Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

They’re the customers Windows really has to care about – because most people get their OS upgrades when they change machines. And the Windows OEMs never seemed to get what TabletPCs should really be about. Most of them shipped machines which were basically conventional laptop PCs with Tablet functionality implemented like an add-on. They all had keyboards, and converted to tablets by swiveling a standard screen.

He likes Windows OS but talks about the Mac book pro being his best Windows PC:

This MacBookPro is the most trouble-free Windows machine I’ve ever had. I could never get a Windows laptop to Sleep and Wake instantly. Even if it would sleep when brand-new, inevitably the Sleep capability would fail within a few weeks, and I’d be forced to use Hibernate instead. My MacBook Pro still Sleeps and Wakes reliably, months later.

ClearType is better than what apple implemented but hey Apple wins because Microsoft fucks it up:

ClearType was one of the things we did get right at Microsoft – even if it took ten years to get it into the hands of most customers.

I’m not revealing any confidential information here. Anyone who saw Bill Gates’ keynote speech at Comdex in 1998 saw me on stage demonstrating ClearType. And they heard Bill say – in pretty emphatic terms – that it would ship in Windows.

Well, it shipped in Windows XP, right enough. But the Windows team buried it so deeply that most users never even found out it was there, or how to turn it on. It wasn’t until Vista that it was turned on by default for all users. And that shipped in 2008. Ten years after we first showed it before we truly got it into the hands of our customers!

What ClearType Addresses and where iPad might not do so well, reading texts:

we invented ClearType specifically to solve the problems of creating highly-readable text at normal reading sizes (between 9 and 13 point). There’s a lot more technology going on than simply utilizing the RGB sub-pixels on LCD displays. Apple’s clone creates text whose characters look more like the original print fonts at those sizes than ClearType does – but the price they pay is a lack of sharpness and clarity, and text that’s slightly blurred at the edges. That means I still prefer to do all my reading on Windows, with “genuine” ClearType – even on this great 133ppi display.

My only misgiving about the iPad is that its screen is 122ppi. If Apple implements its current ClearType clone on it, we might end up with text that’s slightly blurry, and could cause problems reading for sustained periods. That’s only speculation, though. I can’t say for sure until I’ve held one in my hands and tried to read on it for several hours.

He got farked for saying Windows Pc Makers don’t measure up:

But my BootCamp experiences led me to ask the question – publicly, in this blog: “How can Apple make a better Windows machine than any Windows PC maker?” (That turned out not to be such a good career move for me at Microsoft. Take my tip – never tell the Emperor he’s butt-naked, unless you’re sure he’s big enough to see it as an opportunity to buy new clothes).

If you install Vista on a Mac using BootCamp, and run the Windows Experience Index diagnostics which rate its capabilities, you end up with better scores than the vast majority of Windows machines. This machine rates a WEI of 5.3 – and I’ve never seen a score higher than that.

People are willing to pay for good user experience:

Even in these tough economic times, Apple has proved there are plenty of people who’ll pay a premium for a great device. It has been creating winners for years now. There were plenty of cheaper MP3 music players available long before Apple’s iPod appeared. Yet the iPod owns the market - even though it was both later to market, and more expensive. Checking out eBay recently, there were only 3 used iPods for sale (and over 1000 Zunes…)

His new phone and his experience with the Windows Mobile Phone:

There are plenty of mobile phones around. But Apple’s much more expensive iPhones (both the phone and the service) have been flying off the shelves. I’ve had a Windows Mobile phone for years. But compared to the iPhone it’s a complex, fussy, unfriendly brick. I had been meaning to get rid of it for a long time, but I don’t use a mobile phone that much, and I still read books on it using Microsoft Reader, so I’ve been hesitant about making the switch.

However, last week I dropped my Windows Mobile phone in the water. It was DOA when brought back to the surface. So now I need a new phone. No way am I buying a Windows Mobile replacement. I really grew to hate that phone. I’ve checked out the new Google phones, and I don’t like them much either. No, I want a great customer experience – so I’ll go with Apple.