As many of you already know, I recently switched from my Apple iPhone 3GS to the Nexus One (running Google’s “Android” operating system).  The reviews I’d read essentially say that if your life is in Google (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Voice, etc), it’s a smart move to make.  I agree.

However, it’s certainly not better than the iPhone in every category.  I’ll try to break some of those down.  The main difference I noticed is that the iPhone is more polished (smoother scrolling, etc) while Android has more features.  The iPhone OS 4.0 update coming this summer will catch up to some of those, but Android will still have a solid lead.

Email

This one is easy; if you use Gmail, it is awesome on the Nexus One.  The iPhone mail app is very nice, but doesn’t have any of the Gmail specific tools in it (conversations, starring, etc).  Having all of that on the Nexus is wonderful.  If you you any provider other than Gmail, then it’s essentially a tie.  Both phones have solid mail apps that do a nice job.

Customization

The new iPhone update will finally allow users to set wallpaper behind their icons, but Android can already do that.  In fact, you can even set “live wallpaper”, which is animated and reacts to your touch.  It’s neat, but it’s a battery drain and it’s pretty much useless.  However, Android also allows you to put widgets on your screen to show news, weather, tweets, etc.  They’re very slick, and iPhone has nothing that compares to it.

The other neat thing is that applications are given more flexibility to customize other parts of your system that the iPhone doesn’t allow.  For example, when I plugged my phone into my car (Ford’s SYNC system), I always had to tell the phone to “mount” to the system.  It was a single click, but got old.  So, I found an app that could do it automatically.  The way Apple controls their applications, it would be impossible to write an app that does something like that.

Applications

Apple certainly has a ton more, but Android covers 95% of what you’d need.  I miss a few applications (such as “Words With Friends”) and others are still pretty weak (like Evernote), but all in all the selection is pretty solid.

Speed

Technically, the Nexus is a faster phone but they feel about the same.  Once Android 2.2 “Froyo” arrives on the Nexus, it’ll certainly take the lead.  Of course, the new iPhone is due out soon and will likely leapfrog the Nexus.  These kinds of battles are great for consumers!

Battery Life

In general, battery life is roughly the same.  However, the Nexus gives you two nice advantages:

1. It’s a removable battery. This means you could carry an extra around with you, or replace yours if it goes bad.  No such options with the iPhone.
2. There are various “power control” widgets you can use on Android.  You can have a single tap to turn on/off things like wifi, bluetooth, gps, etc.  Making it so easy means that I can leave those items off when I don’t need them (and save precious battery life).  With the iPhone it’s a few more taps to toggle them, so I usually just left them all on.

Camera

The Nexus has a considerably better camera (5 megapixel vs 3.2 megapixel), but they really give similar quality shots.  I think phones are about to the point where they need bigger and better lenses to take advantage of the increased resolution, which is tough to do when it’s a fight for the skinniest phone.

Music

With the Nexus, you can just drag and drop music onto your phone.  You can even drop files into folders like “notifications” and “ringtones” to set those up.  Much easier than the cumbersome mess of iTunes.

However, iTunes makes it easier to purchase and load music, and it’s much easier to load podcasts.  Also, the iPhone music player blows away the one on the Nexus.  The Nexus music player is adequate, but no where near as nice as the iPhone player.

Conclusion

So, should you trade your iPhone for a Nexus One?  Probably not.  If money and availability were no factor, I’d suggest that around 75% of the country should have iPhones and the other 25% should have Android devices.  The Nexus is better for geekier users, but each release is bringing it more mainstream.  My guess is that those numbers will flip in a few years (75% should have Android), but the iPhone will always have a place due to it’s simplicity and ease of use. Time will tell…

Which do you prefer, and why?

From the iPhone 3GS to the Nexus One is a post from: MickMel

I’ve been using Nozbe for a while now to manage my tasks, and overall I’m quite happy with it.  It’s certainly got some quirks and minor issues, but it’s not bad.  However, I always feel like there must be something else out there that’s at least comparable to it.  I mean, there are literally hundreds of task management systems out there; can’t any of them get it right?

Here’s what I’m looking for:

1. Web-based
2. iPhone app (or at least an iPhone compatible version).
3. Project based. Call it something else (“queues” or whatever), but I need to be able to group things.
4. “Next Actions” or “Starred Items” or some kind of nice overview.  I don’t want to see everything at once; just the items I’ve selected.
5. Have items due today (or overdue) show up on that overview page.
6. Recurring events. Nothing fancy here.
7. Sharing. Just have shared projects show up along side my non-shared items, not tucked away in some special “sharing” section.

Here’s a short video where I explain those items a bit more:

So what do we have?  I’ve gone through a ton of different systems and they all fall short on at least one of the items above.  Am I asking for too much?  It doesn’t seem like it, but maybe I am…

Here are the 32 33 34 systems I’ve looked at, in alphabetical order.  Some are very good, but I’m not covering their good points today. With each one, I’ll explain what feature(s) it is missing:

• 5pm — Solid, but sharing is odd.  You share with your “team”, and they’re either an admin or they can only see what you give them.  I want others to be able to create their own private lists, and share with people other than me from time to time.  They over-thought it and it’s a mess.
• Action Method — No good “next actions” screen.  Sharing is there, but is kind of weird.
• Checkvist — No recurring tasks.
• do.Oh — Only a single list; no “projects”.
• Doris — No good “next actions” page.
• Enleiten — Weak sharing, and their blog hasn’t been updated in 18 months – dead project, I assume.
• Get It Done — Weird sharing setup.
• gQueues — Poor recurring event setup, weak sharing, no real “next actions” page (though “smart queues” are close).  This one is actually quite close, as it has all of the right features – they just need to be tweaked.
• GTD Agenda — No sharing.
• GTDify — Every task is required to have a context.  No sharing.
• Gubb — No good “next actions” page.
• HiTask — Can only share “tasks” with a normal account; need a “business” account to share projects.  Simplify!
• Hive Minder — Complex sharing, and no real projects.
• Listable — No good “next actions” page.
• Listigator — No good “next actions” page.
• Neptune — No sharing.
• Nirvana — No sharing or recurring tasks. Both features are “coming soon”, at which point this could be a contender.
• Online Task List — Missing all kinds of stuff.
• Producteev — No good “next actions” screen.  You can sort of do it with their “smart filters”, but it needs more control.
• Remember the Milk — No good “next actions” screen.
• Somethings — No recurring tasks, no sharing.
• Ta-da Lists — No due dates, recurring items or “next actions” page.
• Task2Gather — No good “next actions” page.  Sharing is kind of odd.
• Task Bin — Shared projects are shown in a different area, similar to Toodledo.
• Task Writer — No sharing, no good “next actions” screen.
• Thymer — No iPhone access, but that’s coming “soon”.  That might put them at the top…
• Todoist — No sharing.
• Toodledo — Very close, but it has a very bizarre and stupid collaboration setup.
• Tweeto — No sharing, no projects.
• Verb — No real “next actions” page, no recurring items.
• Vitalist — No easy way to view all “next actions” and “due today” on a single page.  Also, I didn’t understand how sharing works, and an email to them for clarification has gone unanswered for more than a week.
• Voo2do — No sharing.
• Wrike — Overly complex.  I guess “simple” isn’t technically a requirement, but this is a mess.
• Zenbe Lists — No stars, next actions, overview page, etc.

So there you go.  32 33 34 systems later and we’ve got nothing.  Nozbe is still the only one to handle those basic ideas.  I think Nirvana, gQueues, Thymer and Producteev have the best chance of getting things cleaned up. They’re all very close, but they’re all still missing some essential items.

I’ve looked at Google Tasks, but it’s missing so many features that it’s not worth even adding to the list — yet.

Is the answer out there?  Let me know what other systems should be added to the list.

What I want in a task management system is a post from: MickMel

This is the tenth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

We’ve been at this for 10 days now, and you’ve got a problem; despite all of the tips on how to get things organized, you’ve still got a small pile of stuff to deal with — business cards, passwords, notes from meetings, etc.  What do you do with all of it?

Evernote is your answer.  Evernote’s goal is to become your “second brain”.  They want you to store everything in there, and they’ve got some slick tools to help.  Their software works on Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile and they have a normal web version to handle everything else.

The way it works is simple.  You save some content in there, and it’s synced to their servers.  From there, it’s synced to all of your other devices, kind of like DropBox.  Here’s where it gets awesome, though — their servers can read all of the stuff you upload, like names off of business cards, and words off of your notes.  All of that content is then easily searchable through any of their applications.

Some of what I upload to Evernote includes:

• Business cards. I save vital contact information in my phone, but keep a copy of the card in Evernote in case I need it again.
• Receipts. I’m considering moving to Outright instead, but Evernote does well enough for now and I really don’t have very many.
• Online receipts. They have plug-ins for most browsers, so when I get a page that says “save this confirmation number for your records”, I just click the Evernote icon and it saves the page for me.
• Manuals. If it’s a big manual, I just save the entire thing in my filing cabinet.  For single page instructions, like for a universal remote, I snap a picture of it, save it in Evernote, then throw the paper copy away.
• Deposit receipts. When I make a deposit at the bank, I snap a copy of the receipt and save it.  In the event something goes wrong, I’ll have a copy handy.
• Client notes. While on a phone call with a client, I take notes on paper.  When I’m done, I assign tasks into Nozbe as needed.  However, I’ll often have other “stuff” to remember; passwords, future ideas, etc.  I put those in Evernote so I can get to them in the future.
• Party/wedding Invitations. I usually keep a copy in my filing cabinet, but I take a picture and put it in Evernote too.  You never know when you might need it.
• Policy numbers. Insurance, etc.
• VIN numbers for our cars. I tucked those in there too.
• Photos of other things around the house. I took a copy of the paper roll in my labelmaker, print cartridges in my printer, etc.  When I’m out shopping and need to buy a replacement, I can look in there to see exactly what I need.
• Code snippets. If I write a bit of code that I find myself always hunting to re-use on another site, I’ll toss it in Evernote so it’s easy to access later.

The list could go on and on.  Their iPhone/Android app makes it very easy to just take a photo and upload it, which means I use it a LOT.  The fact that it syncs to all of your computers means you can access your information from anywhere and it’s always backed up.

Here’s a cute video they’ve produced to show how it works:

Here’s a more serious video that shows a step-by-step process of how to use it:

If you have a similar solution that you like better than Evernote, I’d love to hear it.  Or, if you already use Evernote, what other kinds of stuff do you store in there?

This is the tenth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 10 – Capture everything else in one place is a post from: MickMel

This is the ninth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

You probably already use online banking, online bill pay, and maybe even mobile banking on your phone.  I’m going to show you a few other neat tools that you might not know about that can help you get your finances in better shape.

Mint – www.mint.com
Mint is a very popular financial tracking site.  You add all of your accounts to it, and it’ll keep track of where your money goes.  They’ve got some great budgeting tools, and lots of nice charts and graphs to help explain everything.

They also have an iPhone app so you can keep an eye on your finances on the go. Here’s a quick look at how to get started with Mint:

Credit Karma – www.creditkarma.com
You hear all of the commercials for FreeCreditReport.com, but it’s not free.  However, you are entitled to an annual credit report for free each year, which you can get from AnnualCreditReport.com.  Credit Karma takes it a step further.

They’ll show you your updated credit score each month, and give tips and advice on how to improve it.  Being able to track it over time can be very valuable, and their advice can be quite useful if you don’t know what steps you need to take to improve your score.

Here’s a review of how Credit Karma works:

Freshbooks – www.freshbooks.com
Freshbooks is a slick invoicing tools for small businesses.  I use it quite a bit for invoicing clients, and it’s a great tool.  It’s only free if you have a few clients, but they monthly fees beyond that are very reasonable.  If you do any kind of invoicing, it’s a great tool to use.

Shoeboxed – www.shoeboxed.com
Shoeboxed is a tool to help you manage your receipts.  If you need to keep up with receipts for any reason, this is a great way to do it.  You can scan (or photograph) and email them in, or bundle them and send them through the mail.  They’ll track the totals, and put it into a form that you edit, sort and print.

They even have a new iPhone app, but the pricing gets weird.  You can only upload 5 reciepts through the app, but you can send unlimited receipts via email from your phone.  Why the difference?  That aside, it’s a good solution to consider if you deal with a lot of receipts.

Outright – www.outright.com
Outright is a competitor with Mint, in that it tries to track all of your financing.  It connects with Freshbooks and Shoeboxed, which is great, but it doesn’t automatically connect to many bank accounts.  Having Mint pull in that information automatically is wonderful, and missing that feature in Outright is huge.  It’s “coming soon”, but there’s no sign of it yet.

So there you have it — five great options to help get your finances under control.  Most people won’t need all five, but hopefully one or two them will be useful for you.

Are there any other great tools that you use to track your finances?  Let us know in the comments.

This is the ninth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 9 – Finance is a post from: MickMel

This is the eighth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

I’m finding one of the keys to being productive is to be able to take advantage of the small breaks of time during the day.  If you found yourself with 5 extra minutes, could you use them?  How about an extra 60 seconds?

Those small breaks of time can add up to quite a bit over the course of a day.  I have two main suggestions:

• Be able to do a lot from your phone.
• Keep things open on your computer.

:: Be able to accomplish a lot from your phone

I discussed this a bit in part one of the series (“get control of your email“), but it’s worth mentioning again; a good phone is worth far more than the initial expense.  During the day, many of your small breaks of time are found when you’re away from home.  Some examples:

• Waiting for your child after school/dance/sports
• Waiting to see the dentist/doctor
• Waiting for food to arrive at a meal
• Waiting in line for tickets/check-out

I’m sure you can think of many others, but that’s a start.  When I have extra time in one of those cases, I do one of the following on my phone:

• Process some email.  I don’t usually convert any into tasks (I leave that for when I get home), but I can read, respond, archive, delete, etc.
• Catch up on Google Reader.  I can knock some reading off my list, and “star” items for later if I need to read them more in-depth or write about them.
• Read some Tweets or catch up on Facebook.  You can access Twitter and Facebook from almost any phone.  If those are important to you, then this gives you a chance to catch up.

Right now the iPhone is still your best bet, but some of the Android phones (like Verizon’s “Droid”) are catching up really quick.  Ultimately, any decent smartphone will do the job for you.

:: Keep things open on your computer

If you find yourself with a spare minute or two, you don’t want to waste a chunk of that time opening programs, logging in, etc.  If possible, leave those programs open all the time.  When you find a spare minute, your tools are right at your fingertips and you can get things done.

The problem with this is that leaving too much stuff open can slow down your computer and cause other issues.  I wrote a long post about this back in January, but here are some tips:

• Leave it on. Don’t shut down every night.  Reboot once or twice a week to keep Windows fresh, though.
• Use a fast browser. I use Google Chrome 90% of the time, and Firefox for most of the rest.  They use less memory and run much faster than Internet Explorer.
• Clean up your computer. There are a lot of small (free!) things you can do to speed up your computer.  Here’s tips for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Mac.
• Buy more memory. RAM is dirt cheap, simple to install and will make a huge difference.  At this point, you should have at least 2 gigs in your computer.  If not, go get more.  Not sure what you need?  Go to crucial.com and use the “scan my system” tool.  They’ll tell you exactly what you have, offer some choices, and they’ll sell it at a fair price.  I use them quite a bit.
• Get a new computer. This is last on the list for a reason, but it’s worth mentioning.  If your computer is more than a few years old, you can get a new one that is much faster for $500 (or less).  It’s something to consider.

If you find yourself with a bit more time and you’re caught up on email/reader/etc, Chris Brogan has a list of things to do if you have an extra half hour.  It’s got some good tips to try to keep you ahead of the game.

What else do you do to take advantage of those small breaks of time?

This is the eighth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 8 – Take advantage of the small breaks of time is a post from: MickMel

This is the seventh in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Without a doubt, task management is one area of my life that has improved the most in 2009.  I always thought I had a decent system, but then David Allen came and rocked my world.

Back in 2001, David wrote a book called “Getting Things Done“, which I finally read late last year.  The book offers a great system to build into your life to stay organized and be as efficient as possible.  If you haven’t read the book yet, I highly recommend it.

Whether or not you decide to use a system like that, there are some great tools available online to help you organize your task list.  As you’ve probably guessed by now, my priorities when choosing a system included having one that was web-based so that I could access it from anywhere and it would always be backed up.  There are some decent programs out there that you can install, but most of the options out there are completely web-based.

I also wanted one that tied somewhat into GTD methodology.  I’m not strict about implementing his system, but I like to stay with the general flow of it (“projects” for everything, “next actions” in each project so you know what the next step is, etc).

Here are a few of the better ones that I considered:

• Remember the Milk — This is one of the more popular solutions out there.  They have an easy interface and a slick iPhone app.  However, it missed the “next actions” part of GTD entirely.  Some products let you “star” particular items, which does the same kind of thing.  RTM does neither.
• Google Tasks — Amazingly, I’m not going to suggest the Google solution.  Google Tasks is relatively new, and very simple.  It integrates nicely with Gmail, Calendar, etc, but it’s simply too lightweight.  I anticipate it will develop more features over time, and may eventually be the right choice to use.  For now, it’s not even in the conversation.
• ToodleDo — ToodleDo is a very powerful application, with a ton of features and a great iPhone app.
• Nozbe — Nozbe is the first tool I looked at, with an ever-expanding toolset and a solid iPhone app.

There are more that might be worth considering, such as Action Method, Nirvana and many others.  When it came down to it, though, Nozbe was the best solution for me.  I came really close to choosing ToodleDo, but Nozbe just worked better for me.  I wrote up a comparison of the two earlier in the year.  While both products have matured a bit since then, the basic comparison of features still holds true.

So why do I stick with Nozbe?

Some reasons:

• Sharing — Nozbe has a very easy, useful sharing feature.  You can simply share a project with someone else (or multiple people) and everyone has full access to it.  You can assign tasks to others, view notes that everyone has left in the project, etc.  It works very well, and few other task systems have it.  Others over-complicate it or simply leave it out entirely.
• Notes — You can add notes to a project, or even add notes to a task.  The project notes are great.  If someone sends me their FTP info, or their Constant Contact login, I just create a note within that project and drop the info in there.  If I ever need to get to it again, from any computer, it’s right there for me.
• iPhone — They have a nice (free) iPhone app, as well as a mobile version that works for most phones.
• JOTT — They integrate with JOTT, the very cool voice transcription service.  If I think of something when driving down the road, I can call JOTT, tell it “Nozbe”, then tell it the task.  It’ll be sitting in my Nozbe for me the next time I check it.
• Google Calendar — You can export your calendar (task due dates) into iCal format, which can plug into Google Calendar.  I don’t use this feature very often, but I know that other people do.

While Nozbe certainly works best for me, your best bet would be to try a few of them and see what works best for you.  We all have slightly different systems for getting things done, so the perfect tool for one person might not be the perfect tool for someone else.

Getting your tasks in order can be very freeing.  Having a proper task system in place can help you handle your email much more easily, allowing you to convert an email into a task and then remove the email from your inbox.

What task system do you like to use?

This is the seventh in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 7 – Organize your tasks is a post from: MickMel

This is the sixth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Whether you realize it or not, most of you are creating a “lifestream” of some sort.  Your Twitter updates, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and other assorted items are out there on the web in a haphazard fashion.  Getting that organized can be beneficial in a lot of ways.

For most people, there are two aspects of this that need to be tweaked:

• Posting updates to a wide variety of services, rather than having to update each service individually.
• Getting all of your various updates (status, pics, vids) to show up in one place.

:: Posting updates to a wide variety of services

I wrote a fairly comprehensive post on this a few weeks ago, which pretty much tells you what you need to know.  In a nutshell, I recommend that you use ping.fm to handle the bulk of your updates.  It takes some time to configure for the first time, but once you have it set up it’s a huge time-saver.  You can post one status update on there and it’ll post to all of your networks — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and about 50 others.  It’s superb.

For photos and videos, I’ve started using Posterous.  It’s a very popular micro-blogging tool that allows you to post new items via email, from their site, or using a mobile app.  It can be configured to post to a variety of services, to the point where it duplicates much of what Ping.fm does.  However, Ping can post to a lot more, so I confine my Posterous posting to simply images and video.

It may look a bit confusing a first, but check out the image below.  Depending on what kind of item I want to push out (on the left), you can see the path that it takes.  All of that really only requires setting up accounts on two sites (Ping and Posterous), assuming you already have accounts on the destination sites.

The only real downside to this setup is that pictures and videos don’t get pushed out to the “various other microblogging sites”.  It’s a small price to pay, since Twitter/Facebook are the main ones for me right now anyhow.

:: Getting all of your various updates to show up in one place.

This one isn’t as important to most people, but I’ve just spent some time figuring out the best way to handle this so I thought I’d share my findings.

My goal was to create a single page that would always pull in my latest “stuff”; blog entries, twitter posts, flickr photos, youtube videos, etc.  Here’s what I considered:

• storytlr: From what I can tell, this site did exactly what I wanted.  Unfortunately, they’re shutting down at the end of 2009.  Quite a shame…
• posterous: If I chose to push my status updates through Posterous, it would essentially contain my lifestream.  Some people do it this way and it works well.  However, I have a lot of other sites configured in Ping.fm that I don’t want to leave out.  Posterous is adding new features constantly, and it might fit the bill in a year or two.
• Sweetcron: This is a nifty script that you can load on your server.  It’s very customizable and you can do a lot with it.  I ran it as my lifestream for a while, but it seemed to have some issues (duplicate posts, broken videos, etc).  When I went to get a newer version of the code, I found that it hadn’t been updated in over a year.  It’s never good to hitch your site to an abandoned tool.
• Lifestream.fm: This had it all in theory, but the site seemed quite buggy to me.  I sometimes couldn’t add new feeds, things wouldn’t appear, etc.  Also, ideally, I’d like the lifestream to show up on my domain, not theirs.
• wp-Lifestream: A lifestreaming plug-in for WordPress.  It supports a large number of sources and integrates nicely into WordPress.

I tried all of them to some degree, and ended up going with wp-Lifestream.  Not only does it support the usual suspects, but it has a few neat ties to other sites (like Gowalla).

The result is my lifestream page. It pulls in:

• My latest posts on this blog
• My latest images posted to Flickr
• My latest videos posted to YouTube
• My latest Tweets
• My latest check-ins using Gowalla
• My latest posts on a few other blogs I write for

It’s certainly not perfect, but it works well.

What do you use for your lifestream?

This is the sixth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 6 – Streamline your lifestream is a post from: MickMel

This is the fifth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Out of the 10 parts of this series, keeping photos organized is the one I’ve traditionally been the worst at doing.  My wife takes a ton of pictures every time we go on a trip (park, zoo, vacation, etc).  It’s wonderful, but we’ve built up a massive pile of pictures over the years.  Last time I checked we had about 40GB in various places!

My first priority is to make sure they’re secure.  If her computer crashes, will we lose the photos?  With that in mind, I keep a copy of her photos on an external hard drive and third copy in a folder on my computer.  She posts her favorites to her Facebook account to share with friends and family and it works pretty well.

However, with all of the great photo-sharing systems out there, we’re working on improving our system.  Here’s what we’ve considered:

• Shutterfly — We’ve used them for printing photos before, and they also offer “free, unlimited picture storage”.  It’s an obvious one to consider.
• Picasa — Since I use Google for almost everything else, I thought I’d give Picasa a try.  It’s a solid system, but doesn’t work well for multiple computers.  We’d end up with different sets of photos on each machine, and it gets a little messy to try to remember which ones you’ve uploaded from which computer.  For a single-computer house it would probably be a good solution, though.
• Flickr — Flickr is one of the most popular photo-sharing sites in the world and I’ve been a happy member for years.  However, their focus seems to be on quality over quantity.  That’s very noble, but I need a place to dump 40GB worth of photos.  That’s just not what they’re designed for.
• Facebook — Since we already upload a lot of our photos to Facebook, why not just use it for all of them?  The answer came down to two reasons:
  • Quantity: It’d take a long time to build galleries and upload all of the photos.
  • Quality: More importantly, Facebook greatly compresses your photos when you upload them.  That’s fine for how they’re used on there, but we want to keep high-quality copies of the photos for use in the future.
• SmugMug — I’ve used SmugMug for years with our church.  We have over 23,000 photos in that library and still growing!  Their pricing starts at $39.95/year, which is very fair.  The killer feature for me is their “Send to SmugMug” Windows upload tool, which makes it very simple to upload photos to their site.

With all of that in mind, we’re using SmugMug for our photos.  I know of friends that use Shutterfly and Picasa, and those are excellent options as well.

As I said before, I’m a big fan of the “Send to SmugMug” tool.  The short video below shows how it works, and you can download it here (free, Windows only).

Do you you use a different tool for managing your photos?  Tell me about it in the comments.

This is the fifth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 5 – Organize your photos is a post from: MickMel

Over the past few years, I’ve tried a lot of different tools to help myself stay organized.  Some worked, and some didn’t, but each one helped me get my life a bit more organized.

At this point, I’ve got a solid system worked out for dealing with all of the electronic cruft that shows up in my life, and over the next two weeks I’ll share those tools and techniques with you.  I’ll cover ways to get your inbox under control, be able to access any of your files from anywhere, keep your to-do list tidy, never fear a computer crash again and much more.

There are many tools out there to help you, but the problem now is finding the right ones.  Not only will I help you find the best tools, but I’ll show you how best to use them and how to make them work together.  Even better, almost every tool I showcase is free.

I started on Monday, December 7 and I covered one aspect of your life each weekday for two weeks.  Here’s what’s we talked about:

• Monday, Dec 7 – Get control of your email
• Tuesday, Dec 8 – Keep up with the sites you care about
• Wednesday, Dec 9 – Manage your calendar
• Thursday, Dec 10 – Organize your files
• Friday, Dec 11 – Organize your photos
• Monday, Dec 14 – Streamline your lifestream
• Tuesday, Dec 15 – Organize your tasks
• Wednesday, Dec 16 – Take advantage of the small breaks of time
• Thursday, Dec 17 – Get control of your finances
• Friday, Dec 18 – Capture everything else

Make sure you stay in the loop to get everything out of this series. You can subscribe to the RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, or just have the posts automatically sent to your email address.

10 days to organize your digital life is a post from: MickMel

How have I not seen this before? A friend showed me Jing a few days ago, and I’m in love with it. It’s a software program for Windows or Mac that makes it very easy to capture screenshots or video clips and share them.

I had seen Skitch a few weeks ago, and thought it looked awesome. The problem with it is that it’s Mac-only. A Windows version is “coming soon”, but not here yet. In addition, Skitch only does image capture, while Jing does both images and videos.

To explain how easy Jing is, I’m going to do the following:

• Pull up ESPN
• Grab a screenshot
• Add some arrows pointing to interesting items
• Annotate it a bit
• Post a link to the final, uploaded image
• Time the whole process.

Here we go…

Done! 32 seconds.

http://www.mickmel.com/jing/2008-05-20_2230.png

It’s great! For another brief example, here’s a quick video I just made so you can see how those look:

http://www.mickmel.com/jing/2008-05-20_2246.swf

You’ll probably find quite a few uses for this. I even grabbed the Jing logo at the top of this post by grabbing it from their site using their own software. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

Jing is awesome! is a post from: MickMel