Archives For nozbe

Why don’t you have an iPad?

February 9, 2011 — 3 Comments

I enjoy tech gadgets, and I tend to have quite a few of them.  I have a variety of computers, a Flip video camera, a Verizon Mifi, and I change phones fairly often.  With that in mind, people are often surprised I don’t have an iPad, so I thought I’d explain why.

The iPad

First off, the iPad is great!  I’ve used them before, they’re amazingly slick, and some of my favorite apps like Evernote and Nozbe look awesome on there.  There is no doubt that right now the iPad is the best tablet out there.  If I had to buy a tablet today, I’d certainly get an iPad.

Android

The holdup is Android.  I had an iPhone for a few years, but for most of that time I knew I’d switch to Android eventually.  I use Gmail a lot, and I knew that Gmail on Android would be far better than the mail app on iPhone — and I was right.  However, I was sticking with iPhone until a few things happened on Android:

  • Waiting for improvements to the Facebook app.  At the time, it was awful.
  • Waiting for the release of the Evernote app.
  • Waiting for the release of the Dropbox app.
  • Waiting for some kind of better Twitter app.

Eventually, all of those were met and I’ve moved over to Android and I’m (probably) never coming back.

DroidPad?

It’s been no secret that there are Android tablets coming out, and we even saw a few last year (like the Samsung Galaxy Tab).  However, they just weren’t very good.  I could have picked up an iPad at that point, but it would have been just like when I had an iPhone — counting down the days until there was a decent Android alternative.  The time has finally arrived.

The Motorola Xoom

For quite a while, I thought I’d be moving to a Notion Ink Adam.  It had the potential to be an awesome tablet, but it’s had shipping delays, screen problems and a host of other minor issues that held me back.

While I was debating whether or not to pre-order an Adam, news of the Motorola Xoom came out and my decision was made.  Despite a somewhat higher than anticipated price, the Xoom looks to be an amazing tablet.  You may have seen their Super Bowl ad, which clearly took some shots at Apple:

As with the phone, email is the killer app for me.  The Xoom has a crazy-good Gmail app, along with some impressive email widgets.  All in all, it should be a great machine.

It’s expected to be released on February 24, so look for a full review sometime after that.

Do you have an iPad?  Are you waiting for a Xoom?  Do you think tablets are a waste of money? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Don’t let the meta drag you down; the two minute rule

February 7, 2011 — 3 Comments

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, keeping my inbox at zero is a huge part of my organizational process, and I attribute much of my productivity to it.  Having your inbox clean makes it much easier to prioritize new messages so you’re always on top of everything that you’ve got going.

A big part of inbox zero is having systems in place to keep everything.  I put my tasks in Nozbe, file attachments in Dropbox, passwords and other notes into Evernote, and I count on auto-resurrection to bring emails back when a response comes in.  If you don’t have a great way to deal with every email in your inbox, you’ll never be able to get them all out of there.

The two-minute rule

However, another big piece of the GTD method is the two-minute rule.  If you get a new task and it’ll take less than two minutes to do, then do it immediately.  If you wait on it, then you’re adding more meta data to the task that will ultimately slow you down.  For example:

  • Adding it to your task list takes a minute to do, as does crossing it off later and prioritizing it in the meantime.
  • Leaving it in your inbox just gives you one more item to look past as new items come in.
  • It’s more difficult to have a “mind like water“, since you’ll probably be thinking about it until it’s done, at least subconsciously.

Even better, I’ve found that clients love it!  People are amazed when they send me an email with a minor update to their site and it’s done (with a reply back to them) in just a few minutes.  I certainly don’t always respond that quickly, especially if I’m in the middle of another project at the time, but I work hard to respond as quickly as possible.

Distractions

This idea could really lead to another conversation about distractions.  The nature of my work requires that I stay on top of client requests during the day as much as possible, leading to many (paid) interruptions.  However, for most people, processing email in scheduled “chunks” throughout the day (instead of responding each time a new one comes in) is often a more productive way to handle it.

Not always just two minutes

Another thought is the length of time that you fit this rule into — I often stretch it to the “5 minute rule”, or even a bit longer.  If it’s something that needs to get done at some point that day, and it’s a 5-10 minute task, I’ll still usually tackle it right away.  If it’s a longer task, or something that isn’t a priority for today, then I’ll add it to the to-do list and worry about it another day.

Regardless of how often you process your email, the two-minute rule is gold.  Get it done and move on!

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Stop trying to remember things

January 31, 2011 — 10 Comments

One of the basic ideas behind GTD is what David Allen calls “mind like water” — keep your mind clear by keeping your tasks in a trusted system.  This simple premise has improved the quality of sleep as well as my prayer life, because my mind was no longer racing with things I had to do.

However, I was only doing that for significant tasks such as “upgrade WordPress on Joe’s site“, “contact Bob about that proposal“, etc.  For smaller things, like when my wife would ask me to start the dryer, I’d count on remembering to do it in a few minutes.  We know how that ends up…

For the past few months, I’ve worked very hard to get every thought out of my head and recorded before it had a chance to just slip away. Now I keep a notepad at my desk and write down everything as a quick note.  For example, I have one sitting here now that simply says “start dryer“, because there’s a load in the wash right now that we need clean in the morning, but it’s still going.  When I come back into my office to shut it down for the night, I’ll see that note. It helps to have a clean desk, or the note would get buried. :)

I’ve also been using the notepad on my phone more often (via a quick note in Evernote) when I think of things.  I used to use Jott for that, but this is a simpler solution.  By using it with Evernote, that quick notepad is with me wherever I go — it’s on my phone, my desktop, my laptop, etc.  When I get a chance to sit down and process my inboxes, I make sure to clear out that note and either do the tasks or add them to Nozbe.

Other techniques can help as well.  Some examples:

  • I need to drop a check in the bank tomorrow morning, so it’s in my wallet but I left it sticking out.  When I grab my wallet in the morning, I’ll see the check and remember to take it to the bank.
  • Our current dishwasher doesn’t have a delay timer on it, and I really miss that feature.  We do the dishes right after dinner, but can’t start the dishwasher right away because the girls need hot water for their baths. In the past, I’d intend to start it later in the evening so it’d be clean for the morning, but I’d often forget.  Now, I just put the dishwater detergent bottle out on the counter after I finish loading it.  Later in the evening, I’ll see it sitting out and it’ll remind me to start the load that’s in there.

I’m sure you have similar little techniques that help remind you of small tasks.  What are some of your favorites?

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Being productive on the road

August 5, 2010 — 3 Comments

I’ve worked hard for the last few years to be productive while away from the office, but a recent trip to Michigan showed me what I was lacking.

I have three primary computers; a beefy desktop, a solid laptop, and a netbook.  My goal is to be able to pick up any of the three machines at any time and have virtually all of my tools available to me.  Using web-based services such as Gmail and Nozbe are easy, but the challenge has been with desktop-based software like code-authoring and FTP tools.  I’ve just about got it worked out, so here’s what my arsenal looks like today.

The tools I’ve used for a while

Gmail – Love it. Being web-based it’s available on any computer I’m using and has a great interface on my Droid X

Google Reader, Calendar, Analytics, etc – All are web-based.

Nozbe – For task management. I have dozens of projects in there and it works great. Despite searching for something better, I haven’t found it.  Nozbe is still doing a great job.  No Android app yet, but their mobile version is good enough.

Evernote – I have it loaded on all three computers (along with their weak Android app), so they’re always in sync with my 500+ notes.

Dropbox – Aside from personal photos and videos, ALL of my files are in there; more than 15,000 of them, taking over 13GB of space.  Every file is accessible from any of the three computers and from their Android app.

Tweetdeck / Sobees – I use Sobees on my main computer (more screen real estate to play with) and Tweetdeck on the laptops.  On Android I’m currently using Seesmic and I’m quite pleased with it. Since they all pull directly from my Twitter account, they’re automatically in sync.

The new tools

Now, none of that stuff is particularly new to me.  I’ve been doing that for a while and it’s worked great.  My problem is when a client needs something fixed and I’m on the “wrong” computer.  I’ve used Dreamweaver for years (love the way it handles FTP and code coloring) and a variety of FTP clients.  The problem is that I’d add FTP info on one machine, but I’d need to add it on the others as well.  This wasn’t a big problem since I keep that information handy (mostly in Evernote), but it was a pain.

The problem became worse because WordPress 3.0.1 was released while I was up north this time.  I’m responsible for nearly 80 WordPress installations (some are mine, some are friends, some are clients, etc), and the quickest way to update them is to find the “changed files” each time and push them up via FTP.  I had all of those sites saved in my FTP software at home, but only a handful on the laptop.  Finding and loading the credentials for the others would have taken quite a while.  Even then, I still wouldn’t have them on the netbook or in Dreamweaver on either machine.

My solution was a few portable applications. “Portable” applications are designed to run off of a thumbdrive.  It’s quite cool; pop the thumbdrive into a computer, and run the application directly from there — no installation necessary.  For an IT person that needs to carry around various anti-virus and other tools, it’s gold.

For me, the great part about these apps is that they can be installed within Dropbox and run from there.  I loaded FileZilla Portable to handle FTP and I purchased phpDesigner7 Portable to handle code writing/edits.  I spent a few hours and loaded the credentials for all of my sites into both programs, and now I’m rolling!  Any edits to either program get automatically saved to Dropbox and synced to the other machines.

So far it’s working out great.  Not only am I looking forward to my next trip, but it’ll make purchasing a new computer much easier; I simply install/sync Dropbox and Evernote and I’m nearly done!

How do you manage software/data across multiple computers?

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What I want in a task management system

January 18, 2010 — 62 Comments

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 35 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.
  • Wedoist (added 8/14/10) — Closed sharing (everyone must be in one account), no overview page of any kind.
  • 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.

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Organize Your Digital Life 7 – Organize your tasks

December 15, 2009 — 19 Comments

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

getting-things-doneWithout 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.

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Keeping up with life while at Disney

November 27, 2009 — 4 Comments

Tony Dye had an interesting question for me: Aren’t you @ Disney, with the fam? How in the world are you doing this much research and twitter work?

I’ll try my best to answer it.

disneyFirst, it’s important to realize where your time is spent as Disney World.  The chart on the right should help explain. :)  Seriously, between waiting for buses, riding buses, waiting for food, waiting to meet characters, waiting to ride rides, etc, you spend a lot of time just standing around.  AT&T happens to have solid 3G coverage in the park, so the opportunity to stay somewhat connected is there for you.

–1 — My goal wasn’t to get much “work” done; just to keep up with my inboxes.

I have three main inboxes I like to keep at zero: Gmail, CoTweet and Google Reader.  Everything else, like my normal Twitter stream, could just flow on by.  I caught a few of them, but didn’t worry about it too much.

Gmail was cleaned to zero every day, with replies sent and many tasks added to Nozbe.  In Nozbe, I simply added tasks and then dated them for either Thursday (when I’d have wifi again) or Monday (when I’ll really be working again), depending on their importance.

CoTweet doesn’t have an iPhone app yet, so I had to deal with that on the laptop.  I don’t really get a whole lot in there, though, so it wasn’t a big deal.

I’ll talk about Reader in a minute.

–2– Apps are the key.

While the new Android phones can do most of it now, iPhone is still your best bet to stay on top of things:

email: I was able to respond directly to many people while waiting in line.
nozbe: Using their app, I could copy/paste new tasks right in there.
wordpress: Using their app, I could deal with any spam comments on my sites.
bulletin/byline: For managing Reader.  I’ll discuss that in my next item.
tweetdeck/twittelator: For watching random tweets. Twittelator has nice list support, so it’s my primary mobile client for now.

–3– Manging Google Reader.

I follow a lot of feeds in reader (somewhere over 500 at last count).  It’s critical to keep it at zero. I started the week using “Bulletin”, which I’ve used for a while, but it’s latest update makes it sync very slowly.  I switched to “Byline” and I’m quite pleased so far.  I do three primary things when using these apps:

  • Read. I get it to zero almost every time I open the app.
  • Star. I star items that I want to look at later when I’m on my computer.  When I deal with them, I un-star them so I know what I still need to work on.
  • Share. My shared items automatically get sent as tweets from my account, so it makes it easy to share breaking news with my followers.  I have it send my shared items to FriendFeed, which then tweets them out, but there are other ways to do it (via TwitterFeed, perhaps).

–4– AT&T 3G card, combined with CradlePoint

PHS300-vert_0709Disney uses a lot of neat technology, but somehow wifi in the hotel isn’t one of them (another post about that coming later).  They had high speed internet via ethernet, but the cable was very poorly located and it cost $10/day.  Using my AT&T 3G card along with the very slick CradlePoint PHS-300 I bought a few months ago, I was able to do a bit of work on the laptop during nap time and in the evenings.  I had very little time to do much work in the room, but I didn’t have much I needed to do, either.  With so much already resolved via iPhone, my time on the laptop was relatively little.

That’s pretty much it. I think the key is the “shared items” from Reader.  Standing in line reading the latest few feeds, I could just tap the “share” icon and have it auto tweet the post.

The other thing to realize is that doing all of this only took a fraction of the time in line — I didn’t have to stay buried in the phone to make it happen.  By hitting it briefly at each stop, I only needed about 60 seconds to read the 1-2 new emails and flip through the 10 new items in reader. We still shot tons of pics/videos, met a zillion characters and had a wonderful time!

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Software to load on a new computer

November 1, 2009 — 1 Comment

I purchased a new desktop yesterday.  My old computer was better than three years old and starting to show it.  The new one is quite a powerful little beast — Intel Quad Core i7, 8 GB ECC3 RAM, terabyte hard drive — and I got a great deal on it.  Tossed in a second video card and it’s running all three monitors quite nicely.

As it was going through it’s initial start-up, I made a list of the software I’d need to load.  So much of my life is in the cloud (Gmail, Google Calendar, Nozbe, etc) that it was fairly easy, but it was still a pretty sizable list.  Here’s what I loaded:

  • Firefox — Much better browser than Internet Explorer
  • Google Chrome — This is actually my primary browser, though I use Firefox a good bit too.
  • Ultramon — If you have more than one monitor on your system, this tool stretches your taskbar across all three, then only show icons for the programs open on that particular screen.  It’s superb.
  • Open Office — I use Google Docs for most things, but sometimes it’s nice to have native software to run.
  • Dreamweaver / Fireworks — I still run old versions of these (ver. 8), but they’re essential.  I’ll upgrade to the latest CS versions eventually.
  • Google Earth and SpaceNavigator driver — I use Google Earth a ton, and the Space Navigator is a great tool to have with it.
  • Notepad++ — For quick text/code editing.
  • DropBox — I’ve got thousands of files stored in here, all automatically synced to all of my computers.
  • iTunes — Of course.
  • Evernote — Syncs notes and ideas across all of my computers and my phone.
  • Jing — Slick software to quickly grab screenshots or do short screencast videos
  • AceFTP — Simple free FTP software.

Beyond that, I made sure to install the video chat plugin for Gmail, a patch for Dreamweaver, my printer driver and some files from an external hard drive.

I must say, it was the easiest and smoothest new PC transition I’ve ever made.  Using the right tools can make all the difference.

Anything I’m missing?

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Office Max still doesn’t have a clue

January 16, 2009 — 1 Comment

DYMO Letratag LabelmakerI’m rarely kind to Office Max.  They fill a nice need I often have as a consumer, but they’re often idiots.  My latest trip was no exception.

I needed a new roll of labels for my labelmaker.  I’ve become a big fan of GTD (started a new blog about it, and love using Nozbe) and so I’ve been working on getting my files organized.  My first roll of labels was about gone, so I stopped by Office Max while I was out.  I had forgotten to write down the model number of my labelmaker before I went in, but I thought I could figure it out.

When I got to their labelmaker section, they didn’t carry mine (of course), but they had spare labels that I thought would work.  I pulled out my iPhone, found my labelmaker in it, and checked to see if they were compatible.  Based on the website and the box I thought they were, but I wasn’t positive, so I found an employee to help.

I showed him the phone and the box and asked what he thought, and he was stunned by the phone.  “What IS that?  It’s so cool!  Is that a BlackBerry or something?”

I was kind of floored.  This is a first-gen iPhone — certainly nothing special — and this is a technology-based store.  How on earth could a late-20′s employee not recognize an iPhone?  I don’t expect them to know every model of phone off the top of their head, especially considering they don’t sell them, but how can an Office Max employee be that out of touch with today’s technology?

I dunno, it just seemed very very odd to me…

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