The Productive Organizer

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 >>]

Introduction

Are you looking for a software that enables you to access Microsoft OneNote on your iPhone? If you are then, MobileNoter is probably what you are looking for.

I think alot of folks out there really like to use Microsoft OneNote for note taking. For folks that want to keep research materials, or information pertaining to a project or a business object that they are working on, OneNote is the closes software you get to a real note book.

I personally think its one of the best products release by Microsoft and it should be bought as a stand alone application.

If you currently already have much information stored in OneNote and would like to access them from your iPhone or iPod Touch, MobileNoter can do the job.

Pricing

This is a subscription based service. The desktop and iphone application is FREE. But monthly subscription comes up to USD 1.25 per month.

iPhone Version reviewed

1.0

What does it do

MobileNoter is bascially a service that, for a small fee per month, allows you to sync selected notes to MobileNoter Server and enables 2 way sync with your iPhone Mobile Noter Software.

How to setup and how MobileNoter looks like after the break

[Read the rest of this entry...]

I never have been a big follower of the development for the Zune HD, but since discovering this video, i realise that Microsoft might have a serious product to compete with the PSP and the iPod Touch in the gaming arena here.

Its got better graphics and touted to have better sound quality (not hard to beat, Apple have some really bad sound chips) But the screen size is so small! I wonder how you are gonna enjoy it without speakers as well.

I think this might be an infant step but get more developers on board Microsoft. Then we can start talking

Introduction

I gotta give a shout out to Dominique from CalenGoo for facilitating this review. I would say out of all the intriguing software on the app store CalenGoo interest me the most.

I am big on planning and scheduling in a Getting Things Done kind of way and i make use of Google Calendar as my main calendar so it is natural that i would make it a criteria in choosing my GTD device.

In this review i would break down why this would rock more than the native Google Calendar sync and where it will not be that good in.

Why you would want to sync your calendar to google

Ubiquitous Calendar Assess

A good reason other than Appigo ToDo that sways me to the iPod Touch 2G was due to its ability to sync google calendars and contacts via exchange protocol from Google  to my iPod Touch.This means that you can assess to your events and schedule offline, you don’t need  a constant internet connection.

What this means also is that you make your google calendar your base where you house your events and schedule. If you are using an iPhone your calendar synchronize with it. If you are using an Android phone your Android phone calendar gets synchronize with it.

When you get home or in the office and want a better view of your calendar, you can view the same events and schedule from your desktop internet browser.

Auto-Backup of Calendar via web synchronization aka Offline Mode

Remember those windows mobile days where you need to put your windows mobile phone into a cradle and sync your contacts and calendars to your desktop through ActiveSync? Well in web 2.0 you don’t have to rely on that any more.

Offline mode for iPhone,Android and Adobe Air for desktop allows you to assess your calendars when you do not have an internet connection and automatically or manually synchronize your events and schedules when you have one.

In each device the application will make use of the local database in your iPhone. If there is an internet connection, the application will invoke a sync request to sync your data with the web database. What this means is that should you lose your phone, you will still have assess to your data as it is last sync this morning to the web.

Thus for this concept to work well your software must periodically poll to see if you have an internet connection, if it has, it will sync it.

Through iPhone Exchange services you are able to sync your calendar to google and will periodically update. It works very well and i am satisfied with it.

Continue after the break for review of CalenGoo with screenshots

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Introduction

The GTD Series is a series of articles where i share about how i carried out GTD to help me function in daily work.

Part 1 here talks about my plan and overview of my GTD system

Part 2 here talks about why i eventually chose iPod Touch 2G as my main to do list console

Part 3 here talks about why i choose Appigo ToDo for iPhone as my main task manager

Part 4 here talks about how to plan for big projects and smaller projects

Part 5 here talks about how to make use of Contexts, Tags to Execute your tasks

Part 6 here discuss about how you can review projects better using iThoughts mind mapping software

In this article, i will talk more about making use of mind mapping softwares such as iThoughts to plan projects and take notes.

Viewing things from an overall perspective

One of the flaws that i realise for using Appigo ToDo as my main GTD application is that if you want to get a holistic view about things, its difficult.

Why is this so?

In the first part of the series, i highlighted that should you have a new multi step action collected or an action that belongs in an existing project, you should flow back to your Appigo ToDo to perform your project planning assessing what is the actionable task that you should be doing.

Dependencies and Bottlenecks

To me, with my ipod touch on my side all the time, collection is great and dropping it into sub projects. However, certain difficult projects, you would want to see what u have done in chronological order, or an order that shows u dependency. This can’t be done well with most GTD software on the market.

Many folks that use Microsoft project would have realise the importance of dependencies in milestones and tasks and would like to have this flexibility.

For further example we go back to our buying a bicycle example i illustrated in planning for projects and big projects:

1. Ask Son what kind of bicycle he likes
2. Find out how much your family have to pay for the bike (budgeting)
3. Research on where to buy the cheapest bike on the internet
4. Give son a look at the bike see if he likes it
5. Find out what to look out for if it is the first time you are buying a bike
6. Go down and buy the bike
7. Wait for the bike to be delivered to you

In the example here, there are certain things that have no dependency and some that  you have to execute it in a chrono logical order. Example u need to research where to buy the cheapest bike if u are tight on your budget. If you haven’t done that, you can’t carried out the rest of the other actions.

The there are some such as get the son’s approval which, depending on what kind of parent you are you might not care about that and would most likely proceed to action 5 or do it concurrently.

Those actions that do not generate a bottleneck or have dependency are easier to settle. You use your Context management of where you are at such as @Home, @Errands to help u do it fast.

Difficulties in Weekly Review or Daily Review of Project

Those that do, its difficult to use Appigo Todo to view that.

Here we have 3 tasks. If we go by my plan. I would most likely be scheduling my day to solving this client problem. Then i can see what is my next action in office and resolve them. Suppose the bottle neck or the dependency is under @Waiting For or @Contact, then i need to do that first in order to start my actions in @Office.

You can’t see that link in such a GTD application.

If that is the case, what we need to fall back on is to our Weekly Review, Daily Review or Project Review, where we identify what is really the next action.

However, the thing about all these to do list is that, unless you use the desktop ones, you get to see in an order which task you have done and what is left to do.

In Appigo ToDo if you done with the task, it automatically removes it and puts it at the bottom should you chose to show it.

The solution to this is that you should be looking for a mobile task management software that is THAT flexible. But if that is the case, you are looking at something ah la Microsoft Project + Context filtering on iPhone. Do we have that? The answer is i have failed to locate such an application.

iThoughts as a solution

The discovery of mind mapping software such as MindJet and iThoughts have brought about a possible solution to this.

I am still experimenting with it but so far its been a complicated planning process. I don’t want to make it overly complicated so its purely to test out how good iThoughts is as a GTD planning tool.

As a primer to what iThoughts can do, please review this article that shows how powerful this would make your iphone and ipod touch.

Viewing the Vision,Goals and Areas of Responsibility

The thing about iThoughts is that you can bring your map from your favorite desktop mind mapping software Freemind or Mind Manager to this app and vice versa.

So it means that if iThoughts close shop on you, you are not screwed.

So back to topic. You can actually create a vision map to enable u to plan and review your goals and what you hope to achieve.

There are numerous templates out there on the web, and the good thing about iThoughts is that you can always have a template map and duplicate that map so that you can reuse and reuse a map template again.

Here is an example of a map illustrating your goals for the year or 3 years and what are the area’s of responsibility to bring you to that. The great thing about this mind mapping tool is that it can take a large area so u can literally go on to plan your projects here as well. But for me i just find it very clustered if i go on further. I would rather plan sub projects in a seperate map.

iThoughts enable you to show progress as well.so that means you can do quarterly review of these maps to see how far you are from achieve these goals and whether for example you need to redefine your big projects( your big projects will be those Area of Responsibilities, which are equivalent to large lists in Appigo ToDo)

Planning projects in detail

By setting a Project Planning Mind Map Template, you can easily duplicate this template and start planning your projects.

A note is that, it would be best to plan really extensive projects that are more complex here in iThoughts. For simple stuff like buying a bicycle, i would recommend software like Things or Appigo ToDo. It makes life easier. Different software have their strengths and weakness and GTD to-do list excel in quick collection and filtering based on contexts.

Mind Mapping software like iThoughts do not do filtering that well.

The goal of project planning is that you have an idea about

1. Why you are doing this (Purpose)
2. Where you are at
3. Where do you want to be (Outcome)
4. What are my constraints? (time? resources? other complexity?)
5. What do i have to do (Milestones)

And in a template such as this, things become very clear at one glance. This is an example about buying an insurance policy. So the purpose and  outcome and constraints are spelt out clearly whenever you review and plan.

You will also be able to see your progress of each milestones clearly plus how much time you have left or whether a milestone is overdue (denoted by the red clock in “REquest advice from advisor”)

Here we drill down from the milestones to tasks. The conflict that i have is that you can’t really filter your tasks by context. But really if you are someone who wants a once glance review and plan ahead, such a task management mind map will be great.

Here you see that a target icon marks my next action and what i should be focusing on. This would work, if you schedule a time to carry out such a sub project. If you don’t schedule it on your calendar then if you keep so many sub projects map you end up checking here check there to see what you should be doing.

This is where you really give and take and really appreciate Appigo ToDo. You can view all your sub projects and which is your next actions easily but not iThoughts.

I would suggest that for someone who is using a task management application like Things or Appigo ToDo, put your tasks necessary in your Appigo Todo, don’t double entry. it wastes time.

Use iThoughts purely as a review and planning from a higher perspective.

1. Review your iThoughts Milestones
2. Move to your Appigo ToDo check if its completed
3. If it is and all the tasks in the milestones are completed move the progress to the appropriate level.
4. Re-evaluate milestones and brainstorm if there are tasks that needs to be added into any of the milestones.
5. Review if you can still meet your deadline.

Conclusion

This is by no means a good solution. But iThoughts is such a flexible software that it can weave into this purpose of reviewing and keeping track of your 50000 – 20000 feet stuff.

That way you don’t lose track of what is the overall objective.

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

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

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)

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