Productive Organizer

The use case: You have 3G mobile data connection on your Windows Phone, how do you share this with your other device which are wifi enable?

MakeUseOf have revealed it is build into the Mango release of Windows Phone 7.5. Yet it was released with little fanfare.

1. Make sure that Data Connection and 3G Connection is enabled in Settings

2. Slide to enable Sharing and specify a name so that other devices can discover your phone’s connection.

3. Go to your device and find this SSID name, key in the password and you should be connected.

If you are a fan of streaming English subtitled Animes, you would enjoy the use case of

1. Watching Anime in between commuting
2. Not having to bother about downloads
3. Watch for Free

Now we know that sites like

1. Anime Shippuuden
2. Anilinkz

Aggregates Anime episodes so that you can stream and watch English version of them. But can you stream and watch them from  your smartphone over 3G?

I believe you cannot do it for iPhone or iPad because Flash does not work on iOS platform. However, that’s where Android comes in because you can stream from a mobile browser window to watch these Anime.

What I tried was to watch an episode of Gundam Age on my Samsung Galaxy S2. The superior performance of the phone, plus the Dolphin browser makes the whole process rather enjoyable.

How do you guys find this use case?

Last week, we received this announcement from Samsung that they are coming out with the Galaxy Note.

Perhaps it is appropriately named this way because at 5.3 inch, we do not know whether to call it a smartphone or a tablet.

On top of that it comes with some awesome specs

1. high pixel density – 285 pixels
2. dual core 1.4 MHz processor
3. 1 GB of RAM

Personally I find this awesome. If you realise, communication have changed from voice and SMS to video and data messaging. The device will become a small portable computer to make us more productive.

1. I always wanted a device that can squeeze into a pocket or a pouch.
2. Yet I want it big enough to read PDF books properly.
3. 4.3-4.5 inch is good but I believe 5 inch is the optimal size.

What do you guys think?

Here is a good review of the Galaxy Tab at Mobile DZone. The user mainly use it for

1. Surfing the web
2. Check Mail
3. Facebook
4. Twitter

He really enjoy using it but I somehow feel that these functionalities can be adequately achieve on a 4.3 inch smartphone.

When you read articles like this it makes you think why Microsoft was disappointed with Windows Phone 7 take up:

GooNews (see video review) was one our favorite apps on Windows Phone as it not only offered a nice, smooth UI for accessing Google News, but also allowed you to have custom feeds. The app was free, then $0.99 or ad-supported and was really the only one of its kind (as far as we know).

Developer Shawn Wildermuth has reluctantly given up on GooNews, pulling it from the Marketplace, despite very positive user feedback. The reasons come down to frustration with the app approval process, inconsistencies in approval and just plain running out of steam.

[WP Central>>]

Here is a simple tool to resolve a problem that some of you would have. If you are using outlook and would like to move your contacts to Gmail or vice versa, this tool would be very useful.

Price

This Application is FREE

Platform

This Application works on Windows

Features

• Contacts Sync works with any Gmail account as well as Google Apps account.
• Synchronize from Outlook contacts to Gmail contacts or
• Sync contacts from Gmail to Outlook contacts.
• Runs in system tray.
• Option to choose a Outlook Contacts folder to sync.
• Retrieves all contacts from Gmail, including "Other Contacts" / "All Contacts" folders
• Whenever you send an email from Gmail, all email addresses are stored (with or without Names) in "Other Contacts" / "All Contacts". Contacts Sync retrieves such email addresses from Gmail contacts even with blank names.
• Sync Outlook Contacts with Gmail Use your Outlook contacts from anywhere in the world with your Gmail account.
• Transfer Gmail contacts to Outlook and use Gmail Contacts Offline.

Download it here

We have reviewed quite a fair bit of task management application here on Productive Organizer (Take a look at my sidebars for reference) and many of them are focused on Getting Things Done.

Nubi Do is somewhat unique in that they have been very early to this yet not used by many. We hope that this post changes your opinion about them.

Price

USD 4.99. This for me is at the mid range section for iOS applications and specifically as a task management application

Flexibility is the key here

Nubi Do prides itself to be a very flexible task management application. It is catered to not just folks who only wants a simple list app but also people who does intensive tracking and planning.

How Many Levels of Hierarchical List/Projects

The downside for Nubi Do is that it has only one level. So what this means is that you can only have lists and tasks in the lists.

Can you specify GTD Contexts?

GTD folks would want to have categories to specify contexts or tags or classify them into

1. Time Specific
2. Location Specific
3. People Centric

In Nubi Do you can make use of Contexts. Each task can only have 1 contexts.

If that is not enough, you can make use of tags. Each task can have more than 1 tags.

Can you specify recurring tasks?

Yes you can. Tasks can recur Every Day,Weeks, Months or Year or Every specific day of the week

Task Entry

Task Entry have been made very smooth as the user can always key in the description of the task and not bother about keying in everything about the task.

If you require to key in more details, you can touch the task and key in more details.

One thing that I don’t understand is the need to specifically Pin to either Today or Next. Pinning as Next I can understand, since u specify that this is next to do.

But pin it to Today? I can only guess that its to make this task something you need to do today, as a quick reference.

Reviewing: A quick glance of what needs to be done

The front page of the application presents to you what are the tasks overdue, what you need to do today and what is next upcoming.

You are then presented with an Inbox to do your processing. And should you are doing your weekly review, you have all your lists of projects here to perform your reviewing

Reviewing: Calendar due tasks

What Nubi do does that is different from competitors is that you get a calendar that you can view at quick glance what tasks are due on which date.

And this Calendar is presented even in the task entry portion when you select a due date to your task.

So you can for example see that it is suppose to be done by this date but there are too much tasks so I postpone it by one day.

I think this is an important feature that might go down very well with some people.

Reviewing:Context/Tags tasks

At every page you are able to at the touch of a button go into context and tag filtering mode.

You however, can only view tasks in one tag or context but not multiple.

Importing and Exporting

Nowadays, the default for task management apps is to sync to Toodledo or Outlook or iCal.

Nubi Do does is enable the user to Import/Export from Google Docs.

Google docs is a good medium to import and export but I think people are looking for a cloud based method of synchronization rather than a file based import and export.

Nevertheless file based import and export has its advantages. And personally for me, I do prefer file based import.

Other FEATURES:

■ Assign priorities and due dates.
■ Attach text notes.
■ Search tasks quickly with a live search.
■ Delete, move or email multiple tasks at a time.
■ Lock & passcode protect individual todo lists.
■ Full screen note viewer with data detection so you can enter linkable email addresses, web addresses and phone numbers.
■ Multiple color scheme options.

Conclusion

All in all, a very competent task management application. Would I switch over from 2Do? Probably not. The cost of switching and reseting my whole system is too much. If 2Do works for me I will stick with it.

The plus side is definitely the Calendar review and the downside, is the single level hierarchy of lists/projects

If you like it do grab it off the market place

Today I saw this blog post from WorkAwesome that discusses on the much understandable problem of improving the keyboard that we have been using since 50 years ago.

We didn’t all love the keyboard but after a lot of practice, we really don’t have much complains about it. The problem is, if someone sells you a keyboard concept that is much more efficient, will you change? what if it increases your WPM from 20 to 50?

You would probably not do that, because the cost of switching is too high. Imagine you can buy one for yourself at home, but what happens if you are at work? Likely case your boss won’t buy one of that for you.

But with the smartphone revolution, this could very well change. Why is that? On a 2-4 inch screen, your typical keyboard, without much prediction capability just will not work, especially for Americans since their hands are so big.

So Virtual keyboards like iPhone’s very good keyboard does auto correction, prediction to make your text input much faster.

Other virtual keyboards uses prediction in a lot of different ways to make our text input much faster.

SWYPE

BlindType

So we are already changing the way we input, why not just change the layout to something more efficient?

Will habitual creatures like human beings do it this time?

“Something’s wrong with your keyboard,” a friend borrowing my laptop would say. “When I type, all that comes out is gibberish!”

“Nothing’s wrong with my keyboard,” I would reply with a grin. “It’s the layout on your keyboard that’s wrong!”

Click image to enlarge.

What usually follows is a long lecture on how the Dvorak keyboard layout is better than QWERTY in every way. My friends usually humor me — this has happened several times — but I’ll spare you the sermon and make it short. Out of the hundreds of reasons you should switch to Dr. Dvorak’s layout, here are seven:

1. QWERTY was designed for the typewriter, not the typist.

Christopher Sholes, who invented the typewriter, found that early prototypes of his invention had a mechanical flaw: When he struck neighboring keys in rapid succession, the typewriter jammed. He needed to replace the initial alphabetical layout with one that separated keys often struck successively. Thus the QWERTY layout was born. This did not solve the problem entirely, but it made the machine jam a lot less.

Good for the typewriter. But what about the typist? While QWERTY was designed so that the typewriter could work, Dvorak was designed so that the typist could work well.

2. Dvorak increases your speed.

Typists base their fingers on the home row of the keyboard. If you want to increase typing speed, the home row is where you place the most commonly typed keys . Which is exactly what Dr. Dvorak did in his layout — 70% of keystrokes are on the home row; 22%, on the top row; 8%, on the bottom.

In QWERTY, only 32% of keystrokes are on the home row. Which means most of the time, typists’ fingers are either reaching up for the top row (52%) or down for the bottom row (16%). So not only does QWERTY do nothing for typists, it actually hinders them.

Dvorak further increases typing speed by placing all vowels on the left side of the home row, and the most commonly used consonants on the right side. This guarantees that most of your strokes alternate between a finger on your right hand (consonant) and a finger on your left (vowel). Alternating between fingers from either hand is faster — just imagine texting with one hand or drumming with one stick.

3. Dvorak lessens your mistakes.

Not only is Dvorak faster than QWERTY, it’s also more accurate. Errors occur more when you type away from the home row, or consecutively with the same finger. When you combine the two problems (using the same finger to type consecutive letters not on the home row) you make even more mistakes.

Reaching away from the home row, typing consecutively with the same finger — these happen more often in QWERTY. And so do mistakes.

4. Dvorak is more comfortable and better for your health.

Although its only your fingers that do the extra reaching in QWERTY, the distance adds up. A study compared the distance traveled by the fingers of two typists in performing the same task. In Dvorak, the typists fingers traveled 1.5 km per day; In QWERTY, 30 km per day. This extra distance increases not only the likelihood of errors but the stress on your fingers.

The discomfort is often temporary. But with the amount of typing we do today — plus the prevalence of QWERTY keyboards — it is not uncommon for the pain to progress to repetitive strain injury. Some RSI sufferers have reported some relief from taking breaks, doing stretches, improving posture, and of course, switching to Dvorak.

5. Switching to Dvorak is easier than ever.

Studies have shown that Dvorak is easier to learn than QWERTY. If you already touchtype with QWERTY, it’s even easier, because you already have the finger coordination needed for touchtyping. There are online resources on learning Dvorak and a ton of typing games for practice.

But where do you get the keyboards? Today, keyboards with the Dvorak layout (or that can switch to Dvorak) are available if you wish to buy one. But you won’t even have to. Most operating systems allow users to make Dvorak their default keyboard layout. You can also make it easy to switch between layouts, but trust me — you won’t want to.

6. Dvorak is cool.

Aside from getting friends and coworkers to type gibberish on your computer (a useful security measure, by the way) Dvorak has other cool benefits. Using Dvorak puts you in an exclusive club — like having a Mac instead of a PC. But aside from mere prestige, you can flaunt your productivity and the ease with which you attain it.

You’ll also be in the company of some cool people, including Bram Cohen, inventor of BitTorrent; Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of WordPress; and Barbara Blackburn, world’s fastest typist.

7. Using Dvorak is a noble cause.

Dr. Dvorak created something great, but he died in vain.

“I’m tired of trying to do something worthwhile for the human race,” he said, realizing his failure to convince people to adopt his layout. “They simply don’t want to change!”

QWERTY has remained the default keyboard layout for over a century. It has outlived the purpose for which it was designed, yet its weaknesses still remain. By switching to Dvorak, you are joining a movement that empowers typists and honors the legacy of a great man.

[Read more at WorkAwesome >>]

Steve Ballmer is in the news these 2 days talking about the need for them to succeed in the Slate:

“We have got to make things happen. Just like we had to make things happen on netbooks, we’ve got to make things happen with Windows 7 on slates, and we’re in the process of doing that as we speak.” — quote via TechFlash.

The question is that they didn’t. The most prominent OS have been Windows XP and Linux OS. Why is that? Because they are light weight enough to run on a 2GB Flash hard disk.

Gotta Be Mobile:

Intel started offering their Atom line of processors, which were cheap enough for netbooks and fast enough to run Windows. Tiny SSDs were replaced with cheap 80-160GB hard drives. Screen sizes increased to today’s 8-10″ standard. Microsoft offered better pricing for netbooks, but technologically, they didn’t do anything specifically for netbooks. At most, they convinced vendors to upsize the hardware to accommodate Windows, but they didn’t change Windows.

Microsoft got caught flat-footed by netbooks, so I cut them some slack for Vista not being ready for them and offering XP as an alternative. But after some early back and forth, the Windows 7 Starter Edition for netbooks wound up being just the basic Windows 7 operating system without premium features. It offers no netbook-specific functionality. Yes, Windows 7 is a big improvement over Vista in terms of running on the hardware, but that’s an improvement on all hardware, be it new netbook, old desktop or anything in-between.

So basically, the only thing Microsoft really made happen for netbooks is better pricing. They didn’t squeeze out Linux as the main netbook OS. They just waited for hardware improvements to allow Windows to be an option, and let their dominance of the OS market do the rest. That won’t work with tablets. If they just want to make faster and cheaper Tablet PCs, then by all means, go the netbook route. I encourage it. But as much as I love Tablet PCs, I’m not going to pretend that price is the only reason they haven’t been embraced by the consumer market these past nine years.

If Microsoft wants to make things happen for tablets, they have to do it under the hood: improve the interface, make it as easy to control with touch as it is with mouse or pen. Making business deals and waiting for hardware improvements, like they did with netbooks, isn’t enough. Unfortunately, between his talk about working with vendors and waiting for Intel’s Oak Trail processors, that’s all Steve Ballmer has claimed they would do. Whatever else may be happening on the software side, Ballmer offered no reassurances about that.

I sometimes don’t understand why those Chinese Tablet or device manufacturers won’t commoditize this opportunity to provide a simpler solution.

Charbax from ARMdevices.net rant about these custom UI like Sense UI and Motoblur being bloatware and the user SHOULD have the option of turning it off:

I am an Android fanboy. But I don’t like the different custom Android user interface designs such as Motorola Blur, HTC Sense, Samsung TouchWiz, Sony Ericsson’s nor Acer’s custom user interfaces, I think they are confusing and they are like visual bloatware. Please investigate following:

1. Is there a home replacement in the Google Marketplace that returns the full UI in Android to the default Android UI in all of the different Android phones? If not, then why isn’t Google officially releasing this default Android UI in the Google Marketplace? Does anyone have any contacts at Google to whome they could ask about this?

2. Will that Default Android UI Home Replacement provide a way to have exactly the same UI as on the Nexus One? And without voiding any of the warranties? And without consuming any extra RAM memory or slowing anything down in any way?

It’s very simple, but we need simple and definite answer on this. And we need answers from Google officially. Thanks.

I do understand that the reason for each of these different layers of designs on top of Android is that each of the phone makers feel that they have to differentiate their Android offerings from the competition. That consumers have to think that they are buying a HTC phone and that only HTC phones can do that or look like that. And so on.

But I would rather that the Android ecosystem imitate the Windows world, let all the default desktop user interfaces look the same. Stop confusing the consumers. Let them recognize the true value of the whole Android ecosystem. And phone makers should preferably compete on hardware and features for the prices.

I understand this idea is disruptive to the current Android business plans of each of the companies. But please, could we at least just get a little basic Home Replacement somewhere deep in the Google Marketplace that offers anyone with any Android phone to set it back to the Nexus One styled basic Android UI design?

I’ve been told in certain comments that Launcher Pro and some other Home Replacements were good. But I am looking for a Home Replacement that offers exactly the same UI designs as on the Nexus One. Please let me know in the comments if you know of a near or fully Nexus One UI Home Replacement that is available for any of Samsung Galaxy S, Droid X, HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson X10 or any of the other Android phones, what your experience is with it and on which of the phones.

Having to void warranties on those $500 devices just to get a normal UI is a terrible thing.

I do have to agree with Charbax here. In my previous post, I have show a clip of how well Cyanogen Mod 6 enables an old non-snapdragon processor to run the latest Android 2.2 Froyo like ROM and its pretty smooth. much smoother than the stock ROM.

Android can be optimize to run with good performance, but the more they layer these UI that not every one will appreciate in, the more it adds to cost and the more it becomes a waste.

What we need is just:

1. The latest Android ROM 2.2 or 3.0 delivered to us
2. Good Capacitative 5-10 inch screen
3. Reasonable ROM (512 and above)
4. Small Storage but with a SD Expansion
5. Good Battery life

If they could just compete and come up with something like that a lot of people will be satisfied.