The Productive Organizer

WebOS is an OS that i have least experience in and a search on softwares that tailors to Getting Things Done yields very little results other than our dear Evernote.

That is why its refreshing to see Outline Tracker for WebOS. I did not give this a spin since i do not have a Palm Pre or Pixi to try it out.

How much does it cost?

There is a free version on the App Catalog that limits you to 50 tasks but the full version costs USD23.50.

What version of WebOS is it compatible with?

You will need webOS 1.3.5

What are its main functionalities?

• Organize tasks and sub-tasks as many layers deep as you need
• Keep track of where you can work on a task and who’s responsible
• The dynamic to-do list shows only the tasks you can work on here and now
• Color-coding shows at a glance who’s responsible for a task — you, your organization, or no one
• The dynamic waiting list shows tasks that are waiting for action by someone else — a single tap takes you to their entry in the webOS Contacts application
• Items with a due date appear in the webOS Calendar and the project outline, and tasks appear in the dynamic to-do list as well
• Coordinate with others using Basecamp from 37signals (useable through any web browser, with custom apps available for many kinds of smartphone)
• Basecamp items are cached locally, so Basecamp projects can be edited without a network connection. Changes will be uploaded when the network connection is available.
• Supports David Allen’s Getting Things Done® methodology
• Also functions as a general-purpose outliner, exporting to (and importing from) the modern XOXO format, easily integrated into web pages

GTD – Able to Organize in tree structure

with this you can essentially create Tasks and Sub-Tasks or Sub-Projects

GTD – Able to filter by Contexts/Places

if you are to perform GTD you will need to be able to filter your tasks by places or agendas. This one does it but not sure if it can achieve the sophistication of Appigo ToDos context filtering. [context/places intro and tutorial >>]

GTD – Waiting for looks good!

You can review your waiting for list according to the people. Outline Tracker allows you to go to the Palm’s contacts when you click on the person’s name.

Very useful.

GTD – comprehensive task view and integration with webOS Calendar

This is a good move that i don’t see on alot of mobile apps on iPhone since you will need a fair bit of work to achieve this on the iPhone OS platform.

essentially, your items need not be tasks and need not have dates. this gives it flexibility, but also increases the developer’s complexity.

also, note seems to be missing if you want to add additionaly details.

the kicker is that those items with due date specified will go into your webOS calendar. some folks definitely love to have this in their GTD system.

Final Thoughts

i thought its abit expensive at $23 bucks but really not sure if all App Catalog application are priced at that range. I hope we come accross more apps like this to compete and come up with good GTD apps for the webOS.

At the iPhone App Store competition have kept the incumbents at the top of their game and we do hope to see more of these on the webOS.

[Outline tracker for Palm Pre and Pixi >>]

I came across this Windows desktop application that aim to follow the Getting Things Done to organize the information you come across in your daily lives.

I didn’t manage to give it a try but it does look very sophisticated, on the level of Mind Manager by Mindjet.

How much it cost?

its not free and the price might turn off a few people. it cost like USD197.

Who is it for?

Probably for people who have a windows desktop or laptop as their main GTD planning and collection center. Definitely not for me since i seldom have access to my personal computer.

What are its main functionality?

You would have to check out a very very detail walkthrough at Information Management Tool’s website. There it will show you how to Collect, Process, Organize and Review using their software

• flexible structure helps you to merge individual to-do lists, projects, articles into a strategic plan
• use the program for online research, journaling, to-do lists, note taking, document archiving, GTD and more.
• break down large projects into smaller parts using as many tree-levels as you need to keep everything in one place and under control
• use Wiki-hyperlinks to tasks, web pages, notes, to-do lists etc.
• capture web pages directly from the integrated Gecko Web Browser by Mozilla
• drag-and-drop notes, hyperlinks, files in appropriate place in the free-form database, reorganize your projects and tasks at any time
• reorganize your projects, to-do lists, ideas and tasks at any time you want
• find what you need when you need it using fast search
• create your own structure of GTD Trusted System, capture, organize and manage all your projects and tasks in the free-form central database
• real-time immediate save of all added information to the database
• fully customizable interface: more than 300 icons, custom colors and font formats to help you focus on what is most important
• capture any ideas, notes and edit them using full-featured Rich Text Editor
• recall items quickly with tagging
• align your time, effort and energy with your highest priorities so you can focus on what really matters most to you
• browse local files and forlders using integrated Folder Explorer
• work with multiple projects without feeling overwhelmed
• save any web pages in HTML, edit them in the integrated HTML Editor and preview them
• integrated tools needed to create your own structure of a logical and trusted system outside of your head
• display only the tasks, notes, to-do lists etc. you want to see at the moment by expanding them

Final Thoughts

It does look more polish than alot of the free desktop apps that i see, but its steep at USD 197 and i wonder with the coming of the mobile internet you should be paying that much for a standalone desktop app.

[Take a look @ Information Management Tool >>]

We always think about different ways to perform inputs such that we have extraordinary keyboards like Swype that took Windows Mobile and Android users by storm but this one by google really looks good.

Swype across an Android 2.1 OS keyboard to begin voice input. This will translate to text. If the voice to text engine is good you should be able to achieve better than your typical typing. Here’s an introduction it it:

Introduction

In my opinion,for a productive worker, once you get pass scheduling on your calendar, reading mails and taking notes, the next frontier is whether you can do the same on your mobile device like how you do it on your desktop computer.

I always tell my friends that on a 3.5 inch device, and for the matter, the old devices comes not more than 2.8 inch screen,

1. The OS SDK might be a limiting factor
2. The OS might be generally powerful enough to reproduce the kind of things you can do on your desktop
3. Your word processing can be carried out quite well on a mobile device
4. You can do limited powerpoint slide review and creation on a mobile device
5. Using excel will be a pain in the ass on such a small screen

I’m glad that the folks at QuickOffice is kind enough to provide me with the resources to carry out this review. The folks at QuickOffice have been doing this difficult task in translating what you do on the desktop to Palm,Symbian and Blackberry since i first saw them in 1997, so they are very experienced in this area.

The Cost

The iPhone App cost USD19.99 but as far as i know for a limited time you can get this application for USD9.99 on the app store

The QuickOffice Suite

What you will be getting is a suite that enables you to manage your files, not just your Microsoft Word,Microsoft Excel but also

1. Images: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tif, .tiff, .gif and .svg
2. Microsoft Word: .doc and .docx
3. Microsoft Excel: .xls and .xlsx
4. Microsoft PowerPoint: .ppt and .pptx
5. iWork: Pages, Numbers and Keynote (iWork ‘09 is not supported
6. Adobe Acrobat: .pdf
7. Web Pages: .htm and .html
8. Text: .txt
9. Audio: .mp3

Of course, what is important is that you can create and edit Word and Excel documents well on your iPhone.

Transfer too and from your iPhone is a breeze with Web Access.

On top of that it does leverages on MobileMe’s iDisk to provide cloud storage so that you can have access to your files that is not on your iPhone.

You can also forward your email attachments that you want to open with QuickOffice to files@quickofficeconnect.com to edit your files quickly.

Transfer your documents and spreadsheets via WIFI

The first way to get access to your existing word or spreadsheets is to transfer wirelessly by ensuring your computer is on the same WIFI network as your iPhone

By going to the Settings icon, you are able to configure your file transfers. You may also provide Authentication for added security.

You will be able to see a url http://192.168.1.101:4242 below. Basically, your iPhone is now a server and any computer on the network can connect to your iPhone via the Web Browser to transfer files to and from.

At your desktop computer, type in the URL and you should be able to see the above page. You would be able to download the files stored on your iPhone and at the same time upload files to your iPhone.

Accessing your MobileMe iDisk

The beauty of cloud computing is that it works very well if you are using a Mac computer and have a MobileMe account. To find out what is iDisk [link here >>]

Once you have set your iDisk details you would be able to edit and create files if you are connected to the cloud. There is this much i can say about this service since at the moment i do not have a MobileMe account.

Do feedback to me if you have problems with it.

Editing and Viewing your Email attachments

This is a functionality that i thought it would be quite seamless but it is not. Basically, when you see view email attachments, the idea in your head is that “I head over to Safari and i should be able to launch quick office when i select an attachment”

Well, this is not the case. Here are the steps. Basically, you will need to go to this screen and add your email accounts that you want to monitor for attachments. This would likely be your regular Gmail and Yahoo accounts people usually send mail to you.

Now once you click save, you are not done yet. You will need to go to your email accounts and validate the email account

Go to your email account and you should receive this mail. Click on the bottom Validate your address

You should see this page where they will teach you how to access your email attachment. So from now onwards, whenever you forward your email to files@quickofficeconnect.com from this email address, the files will be stored. Note that you have 50MB of space for these to be stored online.

Here i will compose a mail with a text file and an excel sheet.Once sent i should be able to see it on my iPhone app.

I think its a long process but they probably don’t have a direct way of accessing safari for your attachments which is why they have to resort to this method. Having 3 methods is better than 1 i feel and they should look into partnerships with Dropbox, Syncplicity,SugarSync or ZumoDrive to make their network stronger.

The Quickword

Quickword comes in the QuickOffice Suite but if you do not need to Excel component you can always purchase it at USD11.99 and at a special offer now at USD8.99.

So how does this measure up?

I think its pretty good. Its got most of the things that you need to be on the road. For sure you are not gonna do full wordprocessing on it. You are looking to

1. Kick start a document while the idea is fresh in your head
2. Finish up a document as you really need to rush out
3. Review a document someone did

If you are thinking about doing this then i think it measures up.

Apparently you can choose which format your new document is saved whether its MS Office 97-2004,XP format or Office 2007 format which is DOCX.

The first button below enables you to edit your text to the desired format. What you see in that image is what it can do. There are quite a few standard colors to choose from even though i hope that there will be more.

Selecting the Text Format and you are able to choose the font size and font type. Other than the 5 shown on the screen there is also Arial. Very limited selection here. Which is a down side

The second button on the bottom brings you to the Alignment options. You can drag the blue text left center or right to format it to how you want it to look. You can indent only the first line or the full paragraph here.

The fourth button lets you insert bullets into your document. The negative thing about this is that it only allows you to insert unordered bullets and not numbered bullets so i hope to see this in the future versions as i am sure alot of folks will need this.

The last button enables you to comb through a document to find certain word or phrases. Works like what it is suppose to.

Overall, I would say it serves the 3 functions that i mentioned above but not as close to even what you can do on a cloud word processor like google docs or zoho word.

The Quicksheet

The standalone quicksheet cost like the standalone quickword and alot of people will look forward to this as more important since it enables you to check calculations on the go or for some people they keep their accounts and expenses in excel sheets.

In terms of presentation i feel that the cell size is big compared to their old Palm and Blackberry software. Of course you can drag the columns to resize, no problem there.

You would be able to see the formula’s on top just like your excel and the layout below is just like Quickword

Clicking on the first button will bring you to the formatting options. Most of them are covered under Quickword but there are a few pertaining to sheet, which is Background color and Cell borders.

The Number Format gives you the standard options which is good because you can further define how many decimal places for example you want your Percentage.

Clicking on the third button enables you to add or go to another worksheet. you will use this alot for complex worksheets.

I did an experiement to see if you can cross reference cells in different sheets. In the above example i created a Sheet 2, and i try to reference cell B1 of Sheet1. It does work just like the desktop one which is a good thing.

The last button i want to go through is the fourth button which enables you to insert and delete columns and rows. A very useful feature that worked well.

Tapping on the fx word on top will bring you to the functions you can insert into your current cell formula. The formulas are well categorized but i haven’t fully tested them out so not sure if there are problems with it.

If you are going to use excel you want extensive formulas to work and this is where they score big points with me.

Overall, i would say in terms of functionality for Quicksheet it is adequate. Unless you are a math professor you won’t be meddling alot with things that are out of reach in terms of formulas. However, the problem is that the cells take up too much space and on portrait you can only see this much and you end up scrolling left and right.

The problems with QuickOffice

Landscape mode

The main problem i have with QuickOffice is that it is somewhat lacking when you switch to Landscape mode for Quickword and Quicksheet. You do not get the bottom bar any more. I do not know if its to faciliate more screen estate to editing but for Quicksheet it really hurts without the top formula bar and the bottom bar.

It highlights that when it comes to user experience, working on a 3.5 inch might not be big enough given that resolution.

Switching between landscape and portrait

This is what pissed me off more than anything else on an iPhone device. Doing spreadsheets and word processing while the screen accidentally switches from landscape to portrait can be very detrimental to a person’s patience and productivity.

There are some software that have incorporated options or locking mechanisms so hopefully Quickoffice will come up with a great idea on this, since most of the time when you are reviewing something or editing you either view it for a prolong period in landscape or portrait.

PDF viewing of large files is laggy

I do understand that PDF is not the most friendly format to render and not the best format for reading. But would just like to point out that if you are looking at this to view alot of PDF files you might as well go for one that does well viewing PDF files.

Performance Issues

Every software have its performance issues and you do have to understand when you open a large word document or text file or pdf files, its not gonna open immediately. If you are using a 3GS device then you might not face the same problem since 200Mhz diff can do quite a fair improvement to software responsiveness.

Conclusion

Overall, I think wordprocessing and spreadsheets have come along way from the days where we have to rely on Microsoft crappy Mobile Word and Excel. However, office productivity is one area that is very difficult to overcome due to the screen size and resolution.

I have a feeling a minimum of 6-7 inch is required for an adequate experience but feel that QuickOffice have provided a comprehensive Word and Spreadsheet package here. If  you have the need, then you can’t go wrong with this one.

Thanks for Kevin for giving me the heads up on this news. I talk about a cheap and very efficient ebook reader software for the iphone called GoodReader and how i believe its one of the best productivity apps out on the App Store at the moment.

GoodReader have made a few progresses since then, adding in reflow functionality and fine tuning the page turn to ensure you have a smooth reading.

Now for folks who even think USD 0.99 cents is too much (currently on offer), there is now a Lite version. So is this another crappy lite version?

Not exactly, this version contains all the features of the full GoodReader. The limitation is that you can only keep 5 files on you iPod Touch or iPhone. I think its good enough for many folks since if you primarily use it for reading or reference, you can always upload and download through its easy method of transfer. Not much of a problem there.

If you think its too much of a hassle just spent USD0.99 cents on the full fledge app.

Introduction

eToDo have in recent weeks zoom to the top of the productivity category on app store. So what makes etodo so appealing?

eTodo as a late comer to this task management and to do list space have to really distinguish itself from the competition.

What it offers is to carry out task management GTD way in the simpliest way. but that doesn’t mean that it is shitty, rather I see that it appeals to users who aren’t thY big on gtd and just want a simple way of managing tasks

The Presentation

eTodo have the nicest to do list interface I have ever seen, but you may disagree with me. Take a look at the screenshots below and you will see that it’s high on the colors and funky icons.

let’s be frank here. I am an engineer by training an while I like to prefer functionality for my todo list over beauty, it will turn me off if it’s really ugly. thankfully I don’t see many of those at the app store. at the configuration you can change the background wallpaper as well.

The Front end

eTodo provides task bins much in the Gtd way. If you guys are familiar with my post on Appigo Todo you will know that Appigo provides lists which houses projects and tasks. these task bins are like this list, only thing is it’s fixed based on what is required by Gtd.

• Inbox- basically your starting point. any thoughts that is vague will go here. you should have one daily or weekly mind sweep to add to your inbox.
• All- all your tasks whether it is anywhere will be here.
• Actions- all your actionable tasks (which to me is almost everything). the key distinction here is between Actions and Someday. This is where your tasks in your Inbox that are actionable will be shifted to.
• Someday- tasks that do not have a definite start date. pending tasks. If your Inbox tasks are nit gonna be carried out anytime soon and might be a project or task next time, shift it here.
• Next- the tasks that should be carried out next. The next task from your actions bin that u will carry out next.
• Completed- your completed task will be housed here. More for review purpose.

Task Creation

Touching the cross will bring you to the task creation screen.

This screen to me is freaking colorful and I think it’s a bad thing as the user have a hard time perceiving if this is a textfield.

You can enter the standard stuff:
Due Date – A joy to enter. The developer took note to include frequently used reference dates such as Today, Tomorrow and Next Week. I feel people should stop using the date roller tool. Its really sickening to roll for far reaching dates!

Repeat - Great here. The standard outlook level recurring tasks options Days, Weeks and Months. The developer also includes standard reference recurring options as well: Day, Week, 2 Weeks, Month, 3 Month and Year.

Tags – You can tag each task with multiple tag contexts so you can better filter your tasks during review or do phases.

Priority – None,Low,Medium,High,Urgent. Personally i think priorities don’t work haha.
Images – You can append images that will be shown describing what task this is. The range of images is limited, they look good and imo it clutters the screen.

Task Filtering for Review and Do

How you use eToDo to carry out your task in an efficient manner differs from person to person. If i were to use this, I would reference the All List quite alot.

One thing that you would really appreciate about eToDo is really the number next to the titles that tells you the number of tasks in there. I mean, If there isn’t any tasks in there I wouldn’t want to bother reviewing it and doing it right?

Touching the Filter Icon allows you to filter not just by Starred,Overdue,Today,Tomorrow,Next 7 Days and Future Tasks but also by the Tags. The filtering is eToDos strong point and it is a very important aspect of Getting Things Done as
- You need to Tag your tasks with the right context during Organize
- You need to filter and do tasks when you are at the right Context/Environment
- You need to filter well to make Reviewing of your Actions easy

This gets an A+ for me as this is where Appigo ToDo lacks. The number of tasks in each category is very useful!

Search

eToDo has a search as well. Not Sure when i will need this really!

Mailing Actions List

I love this option! What  you can do is that you can use Task Filtering to Filter
-Specific Tasks meant for Certain Colleagues
-List of Tasks You are Waiting for
-List of Tasks Tag with a certain category for others to review

and then send it out. Another A feature.

Conclusion

Overall, at USD 0.99 cents this application is a winner. It still won’t pull me away from Appigo ToDo as
- It does not have Sub-Projects
- No Sync backup to online server
But for folks that is looking for a flexible, well thought out to-do list 0.99 cents is a small price to pay.

Best iPhone apps at AppStoreHQ

I just updated my  GoodReader for iPhone to version 2.4 and man its so fast! The rendering on my CCNA 18MB reference book is noticeably faster.

Other improvements includes support for power point documents, bug fixes.

GoodReader at USD 0.99 is the best PDF reader for the iPhone. To read more about what goodreader can do take a look at my past review below

[How to read PDF books and files on your iPhone:GoodReader >>]

This post can be really out of nowhere but i am really getting frustrated about forgetting this thing. The problem for folks using MSN Messenger like me is that. If you format your pc and you reinstall your MSN Messenger you will need to sort your MSN contacts to categories. Chances are you will see your online and offline contacts. Your offline contacts cloud your overall view on who is online and offline.

What you want to do is to turn off viewing of these offline contacts in Sort by Category mode. How do you do that with so many buttons around this msn client!!!!!!

1) Click on your name/title > Options

2) Go to Layout.

Here, at the bottom you will see an offline contacts in a separate category checkbox. Check it and Click OK or Apply then Ok

3) Desired results seen

The first public beta of Microsoft Office 2010 is now available as a free download on microsoft.com/office. And other then Office, you can also download Visio 2010 beta and Project 2010 beta for your Windows computer.

This is the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 edition so you get to experience Publisher and Infopath 2010 as well in addition to the regular Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook applications.

The Office installer weighs around 700 MB in size but you need around 3 GB of free space on your hard drive for the installation.

I am gonna try this on a pc of mine that does not have office installed.

We seen alot of keyboardless devices recently but this one looks perfect. Hardware wise.

The Vega Android Tablet comes in 7-inch, 11-inch, and 15-inch versions that could find a use in any home since ICD (Innovative Converged Devices) promises to make it a low-cost device that may even find carrier subsidies. The specs for the Vega Android Tablet are:

• Android 2.0
• NVIDIA Tegra
• Resistive touch-screen display
• 1366×768 screen (for the 15.6-inch model)
• 512 DDR RAM / 512 NAND Flash storage
• 1.3-megapixel Webcam
• MicroSD, USB 2.0
  
• Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth
• Accelerometer
• Dual microphones
• Battery Life ~4 hours

The Vega Android Tablet is supposed to make its way to users in the first half of 2010.

so whats the problem. Software. Android software still sucks. You really need apple like GUI and better performance optimization and more innovative applications to go with such a good hardware.