Productive Organizer

I think I won’t get into details as most people will know that Apple this week announces their yearly changes to their iPod Shuffle, Nano and Touch. But What I would like to bring to readers attention is the iPod Touch 4G.

I own an iPod Touch 3G 32GB and used to own an iPod Touch 2G 8GB. The iPod touch to me is a great organizer because

1. You can get many productivity apps off the App Store to enhance you.
2. It makes a great music player. Its DSP is comparable with many of today’s portable devices sans those produced by Cowon
3. It’s a great video player
4. It’s a great youtube video player
5. Its an on the go browser that is very responsive
6. It’s a great game player

But the thing is that many competitors are always trying to gain market share at the expense of Apple and all this while their products are cheap and work just as well.

Archos just released 5 Android Devices with the cheapest 2.8 inch going for USD99.

My take is only for the 8GB because that is the entry level iPod I feel matters most to budget conscious consumers. In the past, the 8GB segment have always been the segment that Apple did not upgrade to the latest generation’s technology. Not anymore.

Great Screen Resolution and Retina Display

If you are going to stare at something for a lot of time a day, you would want something that makes what you look at pleasing.

The retina display  at 326ppi will make most of the things you view on your iPod Touch 4G to be fuller than without it.

The resolution on the 4G is also increased to 960×640 from 480 x 320. This is gonna be a wall of difference in terms of details that developers can size their images and texts.

For a user, you can expect more high quality applications compared to the Tablets or PMP players from Android or webOS.

You will see that there  are many tablets that offer big sizes such as 7 inch or 5 inch yet their resolution stays at 480 x 320 or at most 800 x 600. This is not making full use of the screen size.

Perhaps the cost of producing LCD at high resolution is much higher and they would not be able to hit this pricing point.

Very good performance processor

Compare to other webOS or Android devices, it is imperative that the processor is good so that normal interaction with the gadget does not irked the user.

A lot of China made Android devices ran off poor processors such as the Rockchip 2808 or the Telechip and it just shows off how good the iPod Touch in experience is much better than these gadgets.

The A4 Cortex A8 is the same chip used in the iPhone 4G and iPad. For that pricing we got a really good processor here to handle great gaming and intensive processing applications.

Very Reasonable Pricing

What Apple does well is to test the full user experience and sell it to you. At times we complain that their price is expensive. Like those of the Mac Powerbook and Desktops.

But USD229 for the 8GB is a great price to gain access to a lot of great applications, portable media player, camera and gaming console.

Yes it is more  expensive then some other device but when you compare the user experiences, they just don’t measure up.

… And now for the factors that don’t

Small Display

For a gaming and media playing device, 3.5 inch is so small! Perhaps that is why they are able to keep their price points.

The right screen size could be 5 inch. That to me is the sweet spot.

Battery Life

The battery life for the ipod have always fared worse then their iPhone brothers. The problem is that you are still doing much intensive things over WIFI.

My iPod Touch battery can be drain in 1-2 hours if I use 1-2 intensive applications.

Greater battery life increases the production cost as well. And many china manufacturers knows that.  Many of them may have good specs but the battery life just make the whole experience degrading.

Unable to use in Secured Sites

One of the main reason for getting the iPod Touch is that it serves as a good organizer in areas where we cannot bring camera devices.

With 2 cameras, a lot of folks will not look to the iPod Touch as a PDA to bring to these places.

Conclusion

So the big question is whether I will be upgrading. The answer is a firm no because its got not one but 2 cameras.

The 8GB devices is very attractively priced at USD 229 which comes up to SGD 318. No different then the price when I first bought my iPod Touch 2G

I must say I am really dissappointed with the move to include camera but that can’t be help as most consumers want that and only a small minority of us doesn’t want that.

This week’s most useful application comes from Logitech. Touch Mouse is quite a cool program. If you want to control your computers away from it like a remote control, be able to type and use it like a mouse pad, Touch Mouse from Logitech is the solution for you.

I tried it and it works. You need to download the application from the App Store.[Link Here >>]. At the same time, install a service component by downloading it from Logitech’s site.

When you start the application, you will be able to find your computer if your iphone or ipod touch is on the same WIFI network as the comp. if the desktop service component [Link Here >>] is install you can control your desktop from your iphone!

Very good if you are watching a video away from your pc!

Cost: FREE

Its not the end of the world for Microsoft. This LG phone has a attached projector. Looks an awesome product.Microsoft fight! fight well!

The actors are even cooler than the phone. ( on second thoughts……)

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.

In the world of mobile computing you would have come across many apps that allow you to keep your Ideas organize.

The most common on the market is free and it’s called Evernote. Evernote let’s u compose notes and tags it and this Is where u can collect your ideas and store it in the cloud.

But not everyone uses that and if you prefer something simple and meets this needs then Idea Organizer is just for you.

General view

The general setup for Idea Organizer is simple and clear cut. It tells you what you can do for this app and how you can carry them out.

Idea organizer enables u to collect your thoughts using 3 means. Text, voice and pictures.

Entry by text

Entry by pic

One of the aspect I like about mobile computing Is platform like iPhone and android allows the user to capture notes, ideas and tasks wherever they are.

Consolidated view of ideas

This app is really very presentable and straight forward and does what you are looking for well. Do not expect any bells and whistle like that of cloud syncing in this app. Ideal for people who are more particular eith their thoughts and ideas.

It will be a good platform for the developer to incorporate more ideas into future versions. Thumbs up.

News announcement: Creative enters the Android phone mkt with this offering.I think this will not take off. 1080 and 3D for fark when no developer wants to develop for Android compare to iphone!

and 3.1 inch screen? HD and 3D on 3.1 inch???

Ready to start lusting after a new smartphone? If Creative has its way, you’ll soon be enjoying Full HD video on a 3.5 / 4G device, with built-in WiFi, 5 megapixel autofocus camera, accelerated 3D graphics, and mini-HDMI and Composite video outputs. The newly announced 3.1-inch, multitouch-capable Zii Trinity has been designed by Creative subsidiary Ziilabs, and will be licensed out to clients who’ll be able to customize a Zii-optimized Android install and Plaszma interface. As if we haven’t got enough smartphone ecosystems knocking about already, this also marks the introduction of ZiiLife, which aims to be both a content delivery and productivity suite. Powered by the ARM-based ZMS-05 or ZMS-08, the new handset actually seems destined to perform plenty of KIRF and grey market duties, judging by Creative’s “strategic partnerships” with Chinese manufacturers, but that might be no bad thing as, according to Gartner, the grey market is booming right now

[From Engadget >>]

When i discovered this application, i am thinking the cycle is complete. There are 4 desktop ubiquitous file access software out there:

1. Soonr
2. Dropbox
3. SugarSync
4. Syncplicity

Out of all these Soonr,Dropbox and SugarSync all have iPhone Clients, it is only till now that you have one for Syncplicity making us able to look up our files through our iphone.

You will require your Username and Password. Once you log in you should be able to access your files.

The thing that pisses me off is that you need to purchase downloads to view PDF, Office and PNG files. Thats basically everything you would like to view there. bummer.

This software is an EPIC Fail

I have blogged about this iPhone Mindmapping software that is really good and how you can use it to incorporate into your GTD system.

Their Version 2.2 is currently in the approval stage and what i like about them is that they don’t rest on their laurels but are coming up with more and more ways to make this mind mapping software as functional as the desktop applications.

Here is a video showing how you can map relationships between related nodes.

What i really hope to is that they can come up with Tagging and Tag filtering of nodes. That will be awesome

Also check out:

GTD Series Part 6:Project Review through iThoughts Mind Mapping Software

Mind Mapping Software for iPhone:iThoughts Review

Alot of phone buyers or interested in purchasing phones would like to know what kind of functionality they are able to use with their smartphone operating system.

This Image Presented will be updated as often as i can.

The objective is to show a comparison of services that are commonly used by mobile workers and whether these mobile smartphone eco-system provides that.

Note that this is not an exhaustive list. It is just to show that for such a service or functionality, this phone is able to carry it out either by native services or application or third party services or application.

So take for example in Symbian phones, Calendar sync off the air is not provided by the symbian platform itself but with Road Sync you are able to do that.

Click to view Larger Image

This chart is last upated on 27 Nov 2009

Action: Added PIM Sync (Email,Contact and Calendar)

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.

eToDo Front End

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.

Main Task Creation

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!

Due Date

Repeat

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.

Multiple Tag/Context Selections

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.

No of Tasks are shown next to the Tags

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?

You select tasks that are Overdue and are Errands

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

The Filter is shown Here for Concise reviewing

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.

Touch Mail Button to bring up this functionality

You can filter then email this list of tasks to your colleagues

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