Productive Organizer

Introduction

In one of my previous post, i did a brief overview on Mindjet, a mind mapping software that is available for your ipod touch or iphone. Mindjet is also the company that brought you mind manager, a state of the art mind mapping software that is pretty expensive for most of us.

Digital vs Analog Mind Mapping

I used Mind Manager before and really its a great software to mind map on your laptop or desktop. But my good friend Melvin made a comment, that if he were to mind map, he would rather use a piece of paper.

I find that digital mind mapping have advantages, particularly, you can:

• re-arrange the nodes so that you can structure your thoughts
• you can easily archive and reference them next time for notes
• you can translate them into project plans or tasks list
• you can link them to your word,excel and web documents

Perhaps the problem with a desktop or laptop is that for Kinetic people they need to scribble down things instead of clicking and typing and looking at a screen.

For me though, I find it difficult to collect my thoughts or do planning facing a digital mind map. I am a kinetic person, which means i remember things better if i scribble it down. But really, the problem for me is that i tend to misplaced by maps all over the place. So i like something digital, but also enables me to mind map wherever i can, not bounded to any desktop or laptop. The best option is that if i were to be able to find something good on the Apple iPhone app store it will be good!

Requirements of my mind mapping software

In my exploration of apps on the Apple iPhone App Store, i found a few softwares that does mind mapping. Some of them are great like Mind Meister, which touts that their app for the iphone can sync real time with their online maps.However, as part of my needs to keep notes offline and away from the web, i need better solution. Specifically:

• Maps must be sophisticated compare to desktop mind mapping tool
• Maps must be able to view both on iPhone and desktop
• Maps must be portable
• Pricing must be affordable

So i stumble upon Mindjet and iThoughts.

iThoughts Overview

iThoughts was released first before Mindjet. And the similarities between the 2 applications are very very similar. I got a feeling the folks at Mindjet copied what the folks at iThoughts did to come up with theirs (don’t sue me! everyone will think the same way after looking at the comparison here!)

The problem of them being so similar is that for the same price which one should i go for?In the end i took my plunge with iThoughts instead of MindJet and i have not regretted since.

Pricing

Both iThoughts and Mindjet cost USD6.99. Its not cheap, but its not that expensive compare to GTD apps that i bought such as Appigo ToDo. The cost is nothing if it brings improve productivity to my life. Hey, some of my dinner cost like USD15, so i believe i am not paying an expensive price for an independent application.

Version

Version reviewing is version 2.1.

Why is it good?

Basically, most of the basic things you are able to do on your desktop mind map software such as Nova Mind and Mind Manager you can do it here

Able to handle large maps

iThoughts uses a canvas to paint the topics and they tout that you can go greater than 1000x the screen area which is more than enough for me.

You can zoom in zoom out of maps to get a better vantage view after you have rearrange or finish composing

Zoom Out

Zoom In view

Very good performance

What i really like about this application is that not only does it have a lot of good functionality, those that i expect to be in it, but on the iPod Touch 2G it does it with a very good performance.

• Double tapping immediately brings out the Topic input screen
• Not much lag on scrolling around canvas to review Map
• Organization of the above map neatly is fast

Very friendly Topic input mechanism

Topic Input

Entering a new topic or nodes is a breeze! All you need to do is touch on a parent topic once to select that topic. You can enter a new topic by touching the top buttons to either enter a child or sibling topic.

Additionally, the fast way is to double tap an area to insert a child topic.

(More screenshots and functionality explanation after the break)

[Read the rest of this entry...]

There are a few project management solutions if you are having a team to work with globally and you would want a centralize place to:

• handle project calendars
• handle project tasks
• email to all
• host your documents

Open source solution OpenGoo is one of them. Today, i found another one in Collabtive. Like many web based tools they serve as alternatives to Basecamp. Features touted by Collabtive are:

Core functionality

• Unlimited projects, milestones, tasklists, and tasks
• Unlimited members with user profiles
• Role-based permission management
• Messaging and instant messaging
• File management
• Timetracking

Reporting and notifications

• Timetracker reports, activity logs and messages in PDF format
• Export user profiles as vCard
• RSS feeds for messages and tasks
• Synchronization of calendars via iCal task export
• Excel files from activity logs and timetracker reports
• E-mail notifications

Other

• Search, tags
• Basecamp import
• Fully themeable
• Available in more than 25 languages
• Full UTF8 support

Who is it for?

OpenGoo and Collabtive are for teams that have a small webhosting and can mount a php based web application such as OpenGoo and Collabtive.

Installation is not difficult and you should be able to get it up and running very fast.

Alternatively, if you are a guy that wants to do your own scheduling and practice Getting Things Done where information is on your own server, you might be interested in this solution as well.

[Check out Collabtive today >>]

Project Managers that are used to Microsoft Project would be interested to know if there are any microsoft project like management tools on the iPhone or iPod touch.

I believe project management should be done on a device with a larger screen as the key to planning is viewing Gantt Charts and Calendars and on iPhone’s 3.5 inch screen it will be a crumblesome experience. However, on a Archos Android device and the upcoming iTablet, we might have something there.

Nevertheless there are 2 softwares that falls into this category.

iGantt Chart

This is a simple Gantt chart application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This will cost you 0.99 and really it is only good for simple purposes. As a project manager it is probably not robust enough for you.

Certainly not recommended.

Projects

Now this is a more robust application. certainly looks like a project management app with Gantt Chart and all but it does have serious problems in that task dependancies and resource allocations are missing. It cost 6.99 so its pretty expensive in app store world as well.

Here is a really good review of Projects. It will show u what it can do and what it cannot do.

Conclusion

We haven’t arrived yet. Productivity GTD style on an iPhone have come leaps and bounds but if you want something that you are able to review as a project manager with dependency and nested subtasking, you are asking for too much now.

Lets hope some great company actually develops one.

It looks like MSFT are planning big things for the new MS Project 2010. I recently got re-acquainted with project at work and will look forward to news on MS Project 2010

Simple and Intuitive User Experience

• Project Professional and Project Server both use the Fluent User Interface (aka Ribbon), based on Microsoft Office. This helps users discover new tools relevant to what they’re doing at the moment.
• Intuitive Excel-like behavior adds the ease-of-use of Excel to the power of Project’s scheduling engine.
• Powerful new views like the Timeline View and Team Planner.
• Web-based project editing brings the power of Project to the web.

Enhanced Collaboration and Reporting

• Built on SharePoint Server 2010 to bring the power of SharePoint’s business collaboration platform with Project’s advanced portfolio management. It also shares the same interface as SharePoint.
• Easily create reports and dashboards on the fly.
• Better time and status reporting.
• Connect teams with SharePoint Sync to allow two-way round-trip synchronization of tasks and schedules. This allows team members to update their status on SharePoint and stay more connected as a team.

Unified Project ad Portfolio Management

• Common experience across full PPM lifecycle, including centralized administration.
• Flexible project capture and initiation so that organizations can also capture work that may not be part of a project yet.
• Enhance governance through workflow.
• Powerful portfolio selection analytics.

Scalable and Connected Platform

• Extended interoperability with other Microsoft products like Exchange Server so that team members can report status directly from Outlook, for example.
• Simplified Administration.
• Rich Platform Services make it easier to connect with 3rd-party products.
• Enhanced Developer Productivity through integration with Visual Studio.

Microsoft Project 2010 builds on the Microsoft Office Project 2007 foundation with flexible work management solutions and the right collaboration tools for occasional and professional project managers, and includes a pathway to more advanced project and portfolio management capabilities as business needs evolve.