Just when I needed her most, along came Doris, a free, web-based task management app developed by Seagull Systems originally for their internal use. (Disclosure: Seagull Systems has done development work for one of my projects.) Doris, their personal assistant, turned out to be so helpful that they dressed her up, in the form of a nice UI, and decided to let her help the rest of us get organized, too.

I’ve tried several task management apps and never found one that was quite right. Producteev is a very nice option, but it has more features than I need. Remember the Milk never did anything for me, though many swear by it. I’ve even tried digital Post-its for my desktop. (Don’t go there. They’re cumbersome, harder to deal with than paper Post-its, and very slow to load.)

I was most struck by the simplicity of Doris. I have little time or patience for steep learning curves, and there is literally none with this app.

Once you create an account (just two fields), the first thing you’ll want to do is create groups (one click) for your to-dos. I created one of for WWD article ideas, and one for side projects, among others.

There is no need to set due dates or priorities. Nothing else is required beyond creating groups and adding tasks. You place groups in any order on the page by dragging them. Within a group, you can drag tasks up or down in the list, and you can drag tasks from one group to another.

How does this help you get things done? You simply check your Doris page every day and drag urgent items from their group into the “Today” group. Then you check them off when they’re done and they go into your “History.” There’s a “Tomorrow” group by default, but you could also create groups for next week, next month; whatever you need.

I really wanted simplicity, and that’s what Doris offers.

Doris is still in beta. I provided my feedback right away and said that I would like to be able to collapse groups individually. They responded by saying you can already do that, just by clicking on the group name, and that they’ll be sure to make that more clear. Seagull Systems are constantly improving the app, so do share your feedback: it could have a real impact.

She’s currently available in English and Russian but, pretty soon, approved translators will be able to log in and translate the whole app in 20 minutes or so via a GUI. In the near future, you’ll be able to share tasks with contacts and set Doris up to send you e-mail status reports if you want them. And you’ll soon be able to synch Doris with your iPhone. Look for her in the app store any day now!

Have you tried Doris?Are there other task management apps that work for you?

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Photo By Sam Grover

Later this week, I will be taking a road trip from Portland, Ore., to Oregon State University in Corvallis to give a talk entitled, “Online Community Manager: Yes, It’s Really A Job.” As a result, I have spent quite a bit of time over the past few days thinking about online community management as a profession. I have been working in various community management roles over the past several years, sometimes managing online communities directly and more recently consulting with companies to help them build new communities or improve existing ones.

Community management is one of those careers that I think of as a quintessential web worker position. In my first full-time community manager position, I worked from my home in Portland for a company based in the Bay Area. Now, I work from home as a freelance online community consultant. Even when I was working in a more traditional company with a local office, I tended to behave a little more like a web worker, since almost all of my work was online.

I have also noticed that online community management positions tend to be weathering the current economic downturn better than some other jobs. Community managers are still being hired on a regular basis, and I’m still seeing openings on various job boards for companies looking to hire community managers. Here are just a couple of examples of companies who are currently looking for or have recently hired a community manager: Current TV, Sega, a record label, Rosetta Stone, QT Software, reddit, and more. Community management continues to be a hot job despite the state of the economy.

While online community management isn’t a new job, it is still a career that tends to evolve out of other positions instead of a career where people have formal degrees in the field. I happen to have a computer science degree and an MBA, but I know other community managers with formal training in marketing, library science, communications, criminal justice, product design, and more. Some of the best community managers I know have a broad background with a diverse job history, which seems to give them a variety of experiences to draw from when managing communities filled with people from diverse backgrounds and experiences.

What are your experiences with community management as a profession? What would you tell a room full of college students about community management? What trends have you noticed during the economic downturn?

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For a very simple, unobtrusive solution that works directly within the Firefox browser, ReminderFox is worth a try.

ReminderFox is an extension for Firefox that primarily focuses on tracking your important tasks and dates and sends you alerts or alarms about them. It doesn’t aim to be a full-fledged calendar application, and for that I find Google Calendar to be the tool of choice, but it provides a very quick-in, quick-out way to enter and track milestones. You can view your collections of to-do items and reminders in list format.

When you receive an alert or alarm in ReminderFox you can choose Acknowledge, Mark as Complete, Delete or Open to see more information about the task. You can also hit a Snooze button to make a reminder go away and come back at a set time interval.

While ReminderFox is not calendar-centric it does provide a rudimentary calendar. You can view to-do list items and reminders in conjunction with the calendar, which is useful for making plans.

For these kinds of applications, my main requirements are that they are quick to get in and out of, and simple to use on the fly. ReminderFox meets these requirements, even if it doesn’t shoot for some of the bells and whistles found in applications that reside outside of your browser.

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The Googlers responded a couple weeks ago with their launch of a Gmail Labs Task Manager, and like any self respecting Google junkie I just had to give it a shot.

So let’s fast forward a couple of weeks and see how they did.

Because it is a labs feature, you’ll need to activate the tasks functionality before it appears. Do this by clicking on the green labs beaker or by choosing the labs tab under “settings”.

This adds a menu item to your sidebar so you can access your new tasklist.

Because of it’s integration with Gmail, creating tasks directly from an email is a key feature, and is really easy.

From your “More Actions” menu choose “Add to Tasks” and a new task is created with a link back to the related email. Otherwise, just click any empty area and start typing, a new task will be created for you.

Once the task appears, you can add more information, notes or a due date.  I liked the ability to drag and drop tasks to reorder them or indent them to make subtasks.  Keyboard shortcuts make most tasks easy.

Your task list appears in a pop out window so it can remain active while working in your email or can be detached for use as a more standalone application.  I can’t seem to find a way to open tasks other than through the Gmail link.

Overall, I was frequently frustrated by the limitations, while the benefit of email integration is easily mirrored by most other to do list applications in some format.

If you’re a task junkie, you’re likely already using a full on task management system like Toodledo or Remember the Milk , and there is nothing here to pull you away from those tools. The level of functionality there is well beyond the basic tools here.

However, if you’re a Gmail user looking for a quick and easy check-list application with some nice email integration, it might serve you well.

Here’s the rundown:

The Good:

• Nice integration with Gmail and tasks are really easy to create.
• Keyboard shortcuts and drag and drop make task management a breeze.
• You can create multiple lists and tasks can be indented at multiple levels for organizational purposes.
• The interface is simple with an iPhone like appearance and navigation.

The Missing:

• There is no sorting, like by due date.
• Minimal task information, there are no priorities or contexts.
• While you can set due date, there is no calendar integration, reminders, or recurring functionality.
• I can’t seem to be able to move items between lists.

I know this is an initial release so my expectations shouldn’t be high, but I’m a little disappointed in this first outing. There are good ideas here but I fear it will suffer the same fate as the integrated Gmail contacts feature.  As an adjunct to Gmail, while basically functional, it never seems to flourish and doesn’t really serve to the level that it should. I hope tasks fares better.

Have you tried Google’s Tasks? What were your impressions?

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• 75% of small businesses negatively impacted by the current economy
• 72% are reducing overhead costs
• 50% are cutting back on business services
• 23% getting rid of physical office space

Overall it paints a picture of small businesses heading for the lifeboats – but how much can we tell about the reliability of this picture?

Not a whole lot, as it turns out. This particular survey was performed by RingCentral, a hosted phone service for small businesses. They provide a variety of virtual PBX plans, toll free numbers, multiple extensions, faxing, and similar services. While their feature summary is impressive, the reliability of this survey is somewhat less so: it was compiled as an online survey among their customers.

It stands to reason that companies investing in a virtual PBX system are likely to self-select towards companies trying to reduce their overhead costs. This is analogous to a restaurant surveying its customers to ask if they ever eat meals outside of the house. This selection bias doesn’t say anything strong in this particular case about whether the survey results can be extrapolated to a wider class, say all small businesses in the country – but it does give a good reason to be suspicious of the results.

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The app is well designed and attention to detail sets it apart from some of the other choices in the app store. The layout includes 4 buttons across the “dock” at the bottom that let you choose between a loan calculator, lease calculator, advice on negotiating loan options and terms, and program help. The advice is simple, but straightforward, and the help covers all the options available in the program.

Setting the loan details is straightforward. Just tap on the value that you want to adjust and type in the new value. I actually prefer the slider mechanism used in the Auto Loan / Lease Calculator because it gives you immediate feedback on adjusting loan values, but iLeaseMyCar remembers what you’ve entered so you can quit to check email and return to where you were without losing anything.

I’d love to see some additional features like saved loans, a payment schedule with principal and interest, compare two loans, and so on. There’s certainly room for improvement with all of these apps, but my sense is that the good folks at Not Too Shabby Software have a solid base on which to build.

iLeaseMyCar is available in the iTunes App Store for $0.99.

Update: For a limited time, the best deal appears to be the brand-new iLeaseMyCar Pro which has special introductory pricing of $1.99. iLeaseMyCar Pro adds reverse loan and lease calculations to calculate other factors from the payment and also allows you to add taxable and non-taxable fees.

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And today, Episode 7 of The Line, Saturday Night Live‘s first real foray into web series production, brought the story to a close. But is this satire of fanboys waiting for the latest installment of their favorite sci-fi franchise a Dark Knight-esque success or a Phantom Menace-esque letdown? Lower your expectations, then check it out at NewTeeVee Station.

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TokBox has worked to expand its reach over the past year, developing its video chat service for web-based IM platform Meebo as well as Facebook, and the company released an Adobe AIR version of its service.

TokBox isn’t alone in this space, IMO.IM is another browser-based video-enabled chat service (founded by ex-Googlers) and Skype offers video calling as well. No one, however, has solved the biggest problem with video chat: webcam placement. Until someone builds a camera behind the monitor, video conversations will never feature eye contact, as everyone’s looking down (and away from the camera) to see the person they’re chatting with.

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Produced in partnership with Universal Music Group, Sam King has an interesting premise and also the promise of lots and lots of real-life music act guest stars (a cameo by the ubiquitous Jonas Brothers is embedded below). Set at Universal Music UK’s actual offices in West London, Sam King is a mailroom worker who starts his own music label. The show will incorporate up-and-coming bands on Bebo and perhaps pave the way for them to hook up with Universal.

Bebo’s Ziv Navoth, SVP of marketing and business development, was in town from London and stopped by our office today. We asked him for a rundown on the new series, which is embedded above.

Sam King will air daily episodes lasting 3-5 minutes. Virgin Mobile and Sony Ericsson are already signed on as integrated product. The show is hosted on VideoEgg, whereas other Bebo series have been on Ooyala.

OK, that’s it for the vitals. As to whether or not Sam King is good — that’s yet to be seen. Check back in with our friends at NewTeeVee Station for a review.

Watch More Videos       Uploaded by www.bebo.com/IamSamKing

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It is kind of funny that I can’t find the handheld device I want given all the diversity in the mobile PC world right now.  We have UMPCs of all shapes and sizes, from the standard 7-inch screen models down to the diminitive OQO.  The bigger devices are too big for the kind of mobility I am referring to.  I really want a device that will fit in one hand for ease of mobility and use.  Standard sized UMPCs just aren’t mobile enough for me.  After a lot of thinking about this I decided to list what I want in such a device:

• fit in one hand for usage
• screen size around 5 inches
• resolution of at least 800×600 (depends on screen size)
• full Tablet OS (XP or Vista)
• good buttons and controls on the front of the device optimized for hand usage
• rotatable screen
• at least 1 GB of RAM
• at least 60 GB hard drive
• good processor power
• decent touch screen that works well with inking
• integrated 3G (EVDO preferable)
• Bluetooth for use with peripherals (keyboards, etc.)
• WiFi of course
• dockable for use on a desktop

I look at this list and it seems to me that this shouldn’t be so hard to find but my investigation proves otherwise.  Every handheld device I’ve examined falls short, sometimes woefully so, in one or more key areas.  Let’s look at the current choices:

Sony UX- I used one of these for a while and I found the integrated keyboard to be near useless.  I also had trouble using the screen with the extended resolution (1024×600) as I found prolonged use to be tiring.  Too bad because it fits nearly all other criteria with the exception of the Tablet bits.

OQO Model 02- the OQO has a nice keyboard but I think the lack of a touch screen would make this handheld less convenient to use.  It’s pretty pricey too, although that’s not on my list.  I have been playing in the handheld realm long enough to realize that you have to pay to play.

Digital Raon Everun- this innovative device comes as close as any to meeting my criteria.  Unfortunately, until a Vista version ships there is no Tablet functionality which is important to me.

Nokia N800- I include the N800 even though it’s not really a PC because it delivers a lot of the functionality on the list.  I do feel I need a real PC so I can do anything that I might need to do on the fly and the N800 just doesn’t deliver.

Fujitsu U1010- this mini-UMPC looks really interesting and might be a good fit.  I think that the keyboard will be too small to be truly useful for someone like me who writes a lot and if that’s the case I’d rather it not be adding weight and bulk to the device.

FlipStart- too heavy and bulky plus the lack of a digitizer screen renders it useless to me.

Sadly, this is pretty much the entire list of available gadgets that I have to choose from, and as you see none of them really hit the mark.  Of all of these devices the OQO comes closest to fulfilling my needs, but I’m not sure it’s close enough.  Having a screen that rotates to portrait orientation is very important to me and I can’t recall anyone mentioning the OQO can do that.

Anybody got any suggestions for me?

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Once we saw refurbished Sony UXs for around a grand, I thought I had seen it all for the UX. Nope, not by a long shot. One adventurous owner decided that he wanted Mac OS X on his handheld device and he was kind enough to document the entire process, step-by-step. sev7en as he goes by, has pages of documentation to get that little Sony running; he’s even got the touchscreen working with ink and a third party on-screen keyboard! Bear in mind that if you plan to try an OS X install on non-Apple hardware, you might be skirting some legal issues, but allegedly, it’s OK for an Apple developer to do so. You’re on your own there….here’s another shot:

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