Productive Organizer

We have introduced BlindType, which I think is great and Swype which is also good. Now we have a whole new keyboard experience in 8pen.

8pen uses a lot of gesture based actions for input but what matters more is the way the letters are arranged. They are not QWERTY style.  Why do I think it will not work?

1. Simply too much learning curve

Learning curve is steep. Most of us grew up learning to type on QWERTY which on a whole is not efficient, but after years of practice  it has become second nature to us. While 8pen might ultimately be more efficient as a input method after 1 year of practice, most people are unwilling to learn this input mechanism.

2. Not standard from other devices input.

Imagine this, you take an effort to learn this method. Then when you go to your netbook or desktop and you need to input, it will likely impede the way you input on those device as your brain has to process 2 different sets of input for the same thing. I am not sure how big is the impact but we were able to do that quite well with the QWERTY keyboard and the T9 alphanumeric keypad.

Somehow everytime I see all these so call green solution, I have a feeling that its just gonna be another money sucking exercise from these large companies.

Logitech came up with a solar wireless keyboard that has an ambient light solar panels installed on the top of either side so that you do not need alkaline cells to run.

Now people will think hey this cool tech is gonna safe me money because I don’t have to buy batteries.

But the likely scenario is that this is going to be a lot more expensive such that the equivalent battery cost would be roughly 5 years of using normal batteries compare to using this much more expensive keyboard.

Its equivalent to purchasing a netbook just to save electricity since it will take you 10 years or so to save that amount equivalent of your netbook.

[Read the article @ Engadget >>]

For me this video shows what the future of the car is about but it highlights so much flaws that I crap about with the Android platform not too long ago.

1. Too much information! Information of weather conditions, fuel consumption and mileage
2. iPhone integration is great, you will be able to lock and unlock your car through the phone, which provides secondary way to unlock and lock cars
3. Green indicator to show if you are accelerating efficiently to be fuel consumption friendly.
4. All this means the cost of car ownership gets jacked up.

Do you really need to be overload with so much information? What they should do is to research on what is necessary for the users or better yet decide the recommended setting templates for the user.

I really like Windows 7 and I think I have not had such a good operating system for some time. But almost everyday I discovered a lot of things that I did not know about the operating system.

Solving network connectivity issues can be a pain in the ass sometimes. When you cannot assess the internet, it is often due to either

1. your cable modem
2. router
3. cable
4. wireless reception
5. wireless card
6. windows configuration settings

For me, who have some intermediate networking knowledge resolving the problem is not that big of an issue, but sometime, I too wonder what is wrong when I cannot get an internet connection.

When a user experiences a networking problem, NDF provides the ability to diagnose and repair it by presenting the person with diagnostic assessments and resolution steps. NDF simplifies and automates many of the common troubleshooting steps and solution implementations for networking troubles.

With Windows 7, Microsoft has now integrated NDF into the OS along with new features such as the notification area, the Troubleshooting item in Control Panel, and network tracing using Event Tracing for Windows (ETW). This lets you more easily view and collect information needed to troubleshoot network difficulties that defy correction either automatically or through user interaction

How good is this built in NDF? I think its really good. The problem I often face is that my wireless networking adapter will acted up and I do not know which configuration to toggle to resolve it.

My steps of trouble shooting

1. Open Network and Sharing Center
2. Click on the cross that shows I do not have an internet connections
3. Select Troubleshoot Connections

NDF will carry out the troubleshooting automatically.

The astounding thing? I thought normally these debug and troubleshooting tools are pretty crappy but it turns out that 10 times I use NDF it resolves the problem 9 times. These problems are typically problems with the wireless card and windows 7 network services issues.

So next time when you hit upon a network or internet issues do use NDF! Highly recommended.

We are on a spree here when it comes to task management application. So shortly after Nubi Do here, we have taskList.

taskList in itself is a unique task management experience. It does not turn you off but you sort of have the feeling that it follows the system of how a unique individual will do things.

Price

USD 1.99. This for me is at the low range section for iOS applications and specifically as a task management application

How Many Levels of Hierarchical List/Projects

Like Nubi Do, taskList have only 1 level of Lists/Groups. They addressed it as groups which means you can group your tasks as these groups.

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 taskList , you can specifiy tags. Each task can have many tags. And during review you can select multiple tags to filter.

Can you specify recurring tasks?

No. This is the first task management application I reviewed in a long time that you are not able to do that. This is very disappointing.

Task Entry

In terms of task entry there is really not much that you need to key in.

You are limited to task descriptions, the group, contact who, info and notes as well as the due date

What I like as well is how easy it is to select the tags. very no bull shit and if you have drawn out a nice list of tags, you can touch them and select them and need not go to another screen.

At times we forget that we are busy people and minimizing the number of screen to traverse will help a lot.

Reviewing: A quick glance of what needs to be done

There is no Today, no Inbox, no Next Actions. But really what it excels in is being minimal and focusing on the core.

The core is that we do things based on certain contexts. And here you are able to quickly filter based on multiple tags.

You can quickly select whether if you want a union of tags or an intersection of tags.

Conclusion

I can fully understand where this application is coming from. As an individual you do not need a lot of functionality to be efficient you need to have a UI that focus on what is important.

This task manager chooses to center on the ease of reviewing by Contexts/Tags.

If you work well with Tagging things this application focus very much on that aspect. For me, I need my repeating tasks very much. Not having that is the greatest let down.

Kyith:

Here is a nice read from Gotta Be Mobile. We at different points of time have screwed Apple’s products but you gotta give them credit for bring people’s and competitor’s focus to user experiences and human computer interaction.

For the past four years we’ve struggled to get my in-laws set up with video conferencing and media sharing. They live in a very small town in Pennsylvania, while three of their kids are in California and a fourth is in Illinois, which means they miss out on quite a bit. I can’t count the number of times we’ve tried to show them how to access various media sharing sites and use Skype. We’d given them computers, webcams, tutorials, etc. over the years and they still struggled. The other night was the last straw.

On Tuesday night my wife and I shared a video with several family members via Dropbox. Everyone else was able to view it on their various devices, but my wife’s parents just couldn’t get it to play. The phone rang and my in-laws complained to my wife about the video not working. According to my mother in law, clicking on the video link made caused a small box to pop up for a split second and disappear. The video wouldn’t play in their PC’s browser and it apparently was nowhere to be found on the desktop. I’m just about 100% sure they weren’t doing something right or were getting an error message pop-up, and I’m sure I could’ve walked them through the problem, but I refused to take the phone from my wife. I told her instead to tell her parents to go to an Apple store if they wanted to chat or see any more photos or videos of their kids. And that I’d pay for the damn thing if it meant that I wouldn’t have to talk my father in law through messing with browser preferences, updating Quicktime, etc.

My mother-in-law overheard me raising my voice and told my wife I sounded angry and rude. I was. Despite having a computer engineer for a son and myself as a son in law, they still struggle with what a lot of us consider the basic computing tasks. I wasn’t angry at my wife’s parents, I was more angry at the fact that  consumer technology, which I generally love, is still much too complicated for a large segment of the population. Products and services may seem intuitive to younger generations, or geeks that think about tech everyday, but inexperienced users and older generations still face major frustration points for a number of reasons. My comments in the background of the call didn’t seem to be received that well as the call ended abruptly and we didn’t hear back from them.

But then last night my wife’s iPhone 4 rang with a Facetime call from her dad’s number. She quickly answered and on the other end were her parents sitting in their dining room, 3,000 miles away.  Both had big smiles and it was the first ‘facetime’ they’d had with us since they visited back in June.

Apparently, my father-in-law took my threat/offer seriously. He visited Apple.com to find the nearest Apple Store, which was about 15 miles away in Fullerton, PA. He arrived right around opening and told the Apple rep what he was interested in doing with an iPhone. My father-in-law spent over three hours at the Apple store. That sounds like a long time, but he wasn’t dealing with any problems. Instead, he was getting help…lots of it. After telling the Apple rep that this was his first iDevice, he was treated to an extended setup and tutorial session. The rep taught him how to use visual voice mail, make calls, take photos, check his email, buy apps, browse the web and place Facetime calls. The rep invited him back for iPhone classes and made sure his email account was set up properly.

What a difference a day makes. The in-laws that were handcuffed by computer problems for years are now free to perform many of the tasks that matter to them.

[Read the rest of this article at Gotta Be Mobile >>]

Great Design focusing on User Experience really grabs you.

The Astonishing Tribe is an astonishing company behind some great UI designs on the Android and other platforms.

Today, I saw a clip that shows their UX design on the MEEGO platform (and possibly Android) and it blows me away how smooth and sensible such a UI design can be.

Granted, not everyone will appreciate it but great standard UI toolkits are built upon these great ideas.

Take a look at this video:

Spending on Gadgets seems to be the past-time of many men and boys.

I have dabble in my love for Gadgets for a long time since my secondary school days. Back then, money was really hard to come by and whenever I spend on such stuff, I feel a sense of guilt because although I am curious about how they work, spending on them means I will have to forgo something that matters to me.

After I started working, the budget constraints gets relaxed and while I can realistically buy an iPhone every month, it is ridiculous to do that.

1. Enjoying the process of researching/finding out about the Gadgets

I realize that the curiosity to identify how things work and the difference between each brands and trival details can be a form of experience that I grew to like. That is why I started a blog www.productiveorganizer.com to talk about mobile productivity and softwares in general.

I realize that much of the utility for a lot of people probably happens DURING the process of researching for it and gets reduced a lot after the anticipation, and the purchase have been carried out.

Knowing this, I controlled my urge to purchase much better and learn to maximize what increases my utility levels.

2. Assigning a budget per year for Tech Gadgets

Tech Gadgets should be treated as a hobby and as such, it would be best to assign a budget for it. Having a budget means it is likely that you are constraint to spend only this much on tech gadgets and when it runs out, you better not spend anymore.

For me, I budget SGD40 per month to spend on this hobby via Envelope Budgeting . If you are familiar with this realm, you will know that 40 bucks really buys shit in today’s world.

So this would mean that I only have 40 * 12 = 480 bucks to spend on my gadget hobby.

3. Sell Old Gadgets to finance for new ones

A lot of my friends doesn’t do this because of attachment to the gadget or the reluctance to part with the gadget because of the huge depreciation in gadget value.

Gadgets drop in value pretty fast and the only way that your gadgets can still maintain or even be of higher value then purchase is if you are shrewd enough to import from overseas at a cheaper price and sell it locally.

To this all I can say is: If you leave it lying in your house, it is likely that

• You will never look at it again
• The value can never be higher than what it was worth n-months ago
• You will eventually throw or give it away

So my rule of thumb is that if I deem that it has some sizable stored value, I will sell it away.

I bought my current iPod Touch 3G for SGD480 but essentially finance this by selling away my iPod Touch 2G for SGD230, which was bought at SGD330.

Another good friend of mine looks to spend quite a fair bit on his sound system. But turns out that he is pretty shrewd to import them from overseas and when he grew tired of them, the price he sold it was not far from his purchase price!

It pays to:

1. Know the value of what you are playing with. Certain high price gadgets hold value better than those cheapo gadgets.
2. Leverage on overseas opportunities.
3. Sell it off the moment you think its not working out for you. There is a cost to procrastination.

Here is a nice account on TIPB that shares the story of how an IT Administrator uses the iPad in his daily work.

Before the iPad, I was always having to ask people to move so I could use Remote Desktop on their systems to remote in and look at settings on the servers to figure out what the problem is. Now with the iPad, I keep the servers in Mocha RDP’s app for quick access to the servers, or to my Desktop when I’m away from my desk. the iPad works for about 80% of what I need when I’m working on a system, but for that other 20%, having my Windows 7 Desktop so easily accessible is a Godsend.

I been in his shoes now and then, and one of the main benefits of tablets like the iPad is really to enable you quick access to troubleshoot your servers and computers when you are not there.

Overall, I bought the iPad hoping I could use it all day to remote into the servers, and maybe to control the soundboard. In fact what I found was so much more. It’s totally revolutionized how I do my job – more so than my iPhone – just because of it’s larger screen. I would highly recommend the iPad for any systems administrators who constantly have to wander yet still have access to the servers.

This could be very very useful when you are travelling home from work and some shit crops up and you need to access to that server.

My setup is even better (I think!). Team Viewer have turn our smartphones into VNC and Remoting device such that I use it to check on the stock market through the computer at home or to review certain documents that is only accessible on the home pc.

Here is my TeamViewer Remoting Setup Guide.

Now here is what could be a future great text input solution. We blog quite a fair bit on how great Swype is over the iOS stock keyboard or any of the HTC and Android Stock Keyboard.

BlindType is something else! Its predictive engine is so good that even if you shrink the size of the virtual keyboard, BlindType will still translate it so well.

Also, if you are a QWERTY wizard and knows your QWERTY by hard, even without the virtual keyboard, you can still perform text input!

BlindType is not out yet, but from the looks of it they might take the Swype route and go after OEM manufacturers but I really dunno how it will work well on the iOS. IMO if you cannot mount BlindType as a virtual keyboard on the iOS then its pretty much useless.

Take a look at this video to find out the potential of this keyboard.

BlindType on the Android