TaskPaper, maybe the best ever to-do organizer

For Mac users who want an easier way to make lists and stay organized, TaskPaper is a simple to-do list that’s surprisingly adept.
Unlike today’s complex organizers, TaskPaper is just about you and your tasks. [read more]

Weekend picks #019

Making Firefox better

[1]

Read it Later - Firefox Extension BETA
Read it later is a small extension for Firefox that permits you to save web pages so that you can read them later. It works similar to the bookmarks but it’s easier. All you have to do is click a button and the page is saved for later. If you want to go back at some point later click the second button and you will see the list of your “read it later pages”. After you have read the page click again in the first button and the page is gone. No bookmarks, no deleting, no e-mailing a link or all the things we usually do when we see something in the web but we don’t have the time to read it. I use it a couple of days now and it’s really helping. Give it a try. You can find it here . Check also the rest of the site; it has some pretty cool ideas.

[2]

Restarting Firefox
When installing a new extension in Firefox you always have an option of restarting the browser. You do not have the same option though when you uninstall an extension or when you want to change a theme. This is easy if you do not have any open windows or tabs but if you are working in something you will have to save as bookmarks all tabs, close Firefox, re-open it, and open all the tabs. There is a much easier way and it’s call extEMM 2.0. With extEMM you can restart Firefox just without losing any opened tab. You can find it here

[3]

GTDinbox for Gmail
And as we talking about Firefox Extensions you should definitely keep an eye for GTDinbox for Gmail. The extension is not working now (I would assume due to latest changes in Gmail) but the creator promises that would get a working update as soon as possible. The latest non working version right now is 1.33. I will come back to this when they fix it. You can find it here

Until next time... Keep on smiling. It will make your friends happy and your enemies crazy :-)

mGTD2: GTD for Moleskine v2.0

Trying to integrate the GTD method into my Moleskine planner, I designed one year ago, a "GTD" A5-sized sheet which helped me on my daily efforts to apply the GTD procedure.

The idea behind was, that if the Moleskine planner itself, is the
"basket" where we collect the everyday "stuff", then the only thing we
need is to have an easy reachable place for the lists of: Actions,
Waiting for and Someday/Maybe entries.

After some weeks that the first beta version was out, I released the
version 1.0, and the name of this handfull paper tool became mGTD.

Well, after many months, I designed the new version of mGTD, [mGTD2], and I have to admit that is more useful than ever.

The improvements from the version 1.0 are:
1. Rounded corners! [yes we all love these ;-)
2. Now you can choose between an actions list sheet that includes
"Waiting for" and "Some Day- Maybe" fields or a new version with two
sheets [one with actions list and another one with "Waiting for" and
"Some Day- Maybe" lists ]
3. Now we have 3 different color versions: Red, Green, Blue [Orange
was abandoned]
5. Each page has crop marks for easy cutting
6. Each version has the main mGTD page and also 3 more back-page options:
a. a daily scheduler,
b. a contact names page and
c. a new design as a mindmaping playground!

If you want to have an idea about the mGTD system, take a look at the
following images:




And if you are ready to use the mGTD2 system here are the PDF files, ready for printing:
PDFs: Red | Green | Blue


But now mGTD has a pocket version!
Take a look at the bellow images and if you use a pocked size
Moleskine, you just found your best GTD helper!
[Print it into an A4 paper and fold it!]

PDFs: Red | Green | Blue

UPDATE:

A new modified blue pocket version just uploaded, here.

Stay tuned!

So now, you can have the mGTD version which fits better
to your daily needs ;-)


PS: Special thanks to Diana for her help to the design of the mGTD project!

Weekend picks #017

Linux is definitely Getting Things Done

[1]

Getting things done fast
In theory there is nothing wrong about Getting Things Done. The only problem is that sometime the theory of GTD is just a theory and the work you have is time consuming regardless David Allen. I recently had a large number (around 500) of txt files with some URLs in them. I wanted to collect all the URLs in an Excel file. I also wanted to sort them out alphabetically and delete the duplicates. I can’t imagine how much time would take someone to open manually 500 files and copy paste the 5.000 more or less URLs in Excel. I did in less than 5 minutes. In fact the copy paste, the sorting and the removing of the duplicate URLs just took a little more than 2 or 3 seconds. The rest was just me trying to remember and searching the net for the correct syntax of two or three Linux Bash commands.

grep
grep is a Linux program for searching lines inside a text or text files.You can use it to collect lines from a txt file that match a particular pattern. All I had to do is to collect all the lines from the files that started with “http://*” (yes you can use wildcard in grep).
uniq
If you have a sorted file you can use uniq to remove the duplicate lines.
The whole script was just 5 lines. I had to use a “for” command to open the files one after the other and collect the particular lines.

[2]

Cygwin
I recently installed Kubuntu 7.10 so I did all the testing there but I could also have used my Vista installation if I had installed Cygwin
Cygwin is a Linux Like environment for Windows which gives you access to huge number of Linux tools like the ones I used. You can use it to run other Linux programs and scripts within Windows. It’s really something to open up Command Prompt and instead of “dir” to type “ls” to see the files in a directory. The current version of Cygwin runs in all versions of Windows (32 and 64bit) except Windows CE. I tested in Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit and it worked without a problem.

[3]

Exploring Flickr
I really love flickr.com. You can find my photos here. Today I came across a new web application with the name flexplore
How does it work? Well flexplore analyzes your favorites and the photos of your contacts and suggests Flickr photos that you might like. Give it a try, it really works!

Until next time... Keep on talking to your friends.

Weekend picks #016

It was a very long week at work, and an very unproductive weekend…

[1]

David Allen’s Blog

David Allen is “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” according to some magazines. Business 2.0 magazine included him in the list of the “50 people who matter now”. His methology of Getting Things Done has become something like a religion for millions of people around the world. You can find his blog here with topics like “Categorizing Your Stuff Is The Path To Freedom” or “Is Thinking Interrupting Your Sleep?”

And if you are interested in what GTD is you should read here the definition by David Allen.

[2]

Apache Friends
What is the best way to start testing, or learning the fine art of building sites? Well you could buy some space in a server but wait a moment; don’t you have an old computer in the basement? Maybe you could use that old PIII as a testbed? Well yes you could use it. All you need is to download a Linux Distribution (if you are afraid of Linux, read on there is a solution for Windows also),and install on top of it, a Web Server like Apache, MySQL, PHP, and a content management system like Drupal or Joomla or… and there you are, ready to start.

What is Apache Friends? Apache friends is a nonprofit project. It was started in 2002 and its goal is to promote Apache. One of the projects that Apache friends is working is Xampp. Xampp is taking a big burden off your shoulders by combining in one, easy to install, package Apache MySQL and PHP among other useful tools. You would still have to choose a Linux Distribution like Kubuntu and you will still have to choose a CMS like Drupal but you should get you site in the air (of your local network) in a little less than hour (installing Linux included).

You can find the latest Xampp packages for Windows and Linux here.

[3]

Kubuntu
Kubuntu is the first Ubuntu derived distribution. The Kubuntu distribution is based in Ubuntu with the main difference that it uses KDE instead of Gnome. It’s the easiest way to learn about Linux. The CD is a live one, which means that you can try it without affecting your own system. Play around and if you like it just click Install. While installing you can still browse the Internet, chat with your online friends; listen to music and whatever you normally do every day with your computer. Impressive? When the installation finishes [about 10 minutes in my notebook] you will have to reboot (only once) and that’s it. You are finished.
You can find a nearby server to download it here.

Until next time... Keep on supporting Open Source

Weekend picks #015

Internet is not a network of Computers. Internet is a network of people!

[1]

David Allen in YouTube
What is GTD? Well Getting Things Done is not tiring, what it is tiring is not Getting Things Done. Check out this lecture by David Allen in YouTube and you will understand more.

[2]

43 Folders in YouTube
And as long as you are in YouTube you may want to check out also Inbox Zero, a lecture from Merlin Mann, the creator of 43 Folders

[3]

Internet Download Manager
I haven’t used a Download Manager for years. I installed IDM [Internet Download Manager] because I wanted to test my Internet connection. The first thing I did, well, was to download something. I was surprised. The highest download speed I had ever seen was around 425-430kb/sec from a particular ftp server regardless the time of the day. With IDM I was somewhere between 465-480kb/sec from the same server! After some minutes it settled to 470kb/sec. I didn’t believe it. I tested with Firefox again, the result was 425kb/sec. One more test with IDM, the same results, after a while 470kb/sec. IDM is great! It can catch downloads from Internet Explorer or Firefox, Opera and Netscape or you can add your own browser. You can even download videos from YouTube, Google Video, and MySpaceTV and it works like a charm in Windows Vista.

[4]

SmartLinks
SmartLinks is a different kind of Links. You can put them in your website, your blog or where ever you could put a weblink like your favorite social networking site. The Blueorganizer extension drives productivity by building smarts and semantics into the browser.It integrates with many popular sites and services - including Amazon, Flickr, YouTube, iTunes, Odeo and Netflix.

[5]

Layered Desktop
Who said that a successful GTD tool must be a 100MB program? As I was writing this post a friend of mine (Thanks Maria) send me a link for a Flickr Image. What a great idea was my first thought! A nice looking desktop with four areas to help you stay focused in what needs to be done next. It doesn’t work if you have 20 or 30 icons on your desktop but if you have that many desktop icons then you really have another problem ;-)

Until next time... keep on using the net to meet new people.