Filed under: GTD, Technology | Tags: Getting Things Done, GTD, iPhone, Remember The Milk, RTM, Task manager, Tasks
Kudos to the little company that could. Remember The Milk is a truly impressive way to manage your tasks.
Having tried many “Getting-Things-Done” (GTD) applications, RTM was something of a revelation – it works so well that I use it several times a day. In fact “use” is the wrong word, I totally rely on it.
Less is more. Simple is best. What I really like about RTM is;
1. I can access it via any web browser on any computer.
2. It syncs to the matching iPhone app over the air (and vice versa of course)
3. Recurring tasks are easy to set up – and you can use almost any wording you like. For example, “repeat every third Tuesday”, “repeat every 4th day” and so on.
4. Tagging allows you to triage your tasks by topic (e.g. shopping, Christmas, holiday plans), day, event, location – whatever you want really.
5. The RTM plug-in for iGoogle is fantastic – I use this as my primary access gateway to RTM
6. The one-click “Postpone” feature rolls the task over a day – this is incredibly handy
7. Yes there are priority’s, due dates etc – all the usual stuff.
8. RTM is free, but the iPhone app is an annual sub (and well worth it too)
9. You can get email reminders, work offline, interface to Google calendar, share tasks and more. Despite the simplicity, there is enough for power users too.
10. It works well with GTD principles. For example I have a tag called “someday” and I add this to undated tasks. Later I can see all my “someday” tasks grouped together – moving some to active dates as required.
Remember the Milk say that their app is “The best way to manage your tasks.” No argument from me. Two thumbs up.
Visit them here. Even if you only find RTM half as useful as I do, you’ll still be well impressed.
Filed under: Media, Technology | Tags: Apple, Bare Bones Software, iPhone, Yojimbo
Yojimbo has earned a lot of fans for Bare Bones software. It’s a nice app for the Mac and probably has many uses as there are users – because there are countless ways to organize notes, clippings, passwords, in fact any kind of information.
Sadly there’s no iPhone version. Two years after the iPhone launched the Bare Bones site FAQ simply implies “don’t count on it”. I imagine there are plenty of challenges around syncing the database (maybe use Mobile Me?) so I’m not saying it’s easy, but now I’m looking for an alternate solution as I really want this kind of app sync’d on iPhone and Laptop. Surely there is a revenue stream in the iPhone App store waiting for them, as people are prepared to pay $39 for the desktop version of Yojimbo.
Yojimbo will sync (via Mobile Me) across multiple computers, but I would like it on my phone. There’s also a product called Webjimbo for this need – but you have to leave your Mac turned on – which is not ideal.
Filed under: Media, Technology | Tags: iPhone, Kaywa, QR Code, QRcode, QRstuff, zazzle
A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. (Wikipedia)
I’ve been wondering how these things are catching on – I see a few more all the time, but it’s not exactly an avalanche.
There are plenty of sites that will generate turn your text into a QR code – for the one above I used kaywa.com and from here you can use the image for pretty much anything – business cards, t-shirts, posters, flyers, adverts, and even a plain old blog like this.
One downside I have found is that while it’s an easy scan on the iPhone (plenty of free apps for that), if your QR Code points to a web site that uses Flash, well it won’t render on the iPhone – kind of defeats the point of using your iPhone as a scanner.
I also made a t-shirt with a code I generated at QRStuff – the code file can be ported to Zazzle who will soon have it on a t-shirt for you, BUT there’s a lesson here. My delivered t-shirt had a code that was a bit like the truncated address you get from a service like Tiny URL. This kind of frustrated me as that isn’t what I wanted. If someone scans my QR Code they should get an idea of where they’re going off the URL (my URL) and not see someone else’s domain as the decoded message. Sure it eventually points to my URL in the same way Tiny URL does, but this is what you get if you use QRStuff as a free-user. Another risk is that the parent URL (qrstuff) is out of my control – if they go bust my referral service is lost. So, the free-access to their generator is for fun but not really suited to business use – for that you’ll need to pay with QRStuff.
Lastly, if you use a free iPhone app like i-nigma as you camera/scanner you can scan if off screen before you commit to your code.
Press and hold down the Home button, then tap the Power button. The current screen will be captured and added to your Camera Roll of photos. Too easy.
