My 10 tips cover three important dimensions: Technology settings and strategies, our developing calendaring etiquette and norms, and broader organizational practices.

Technology settings and strategies

1. Set up appointment slots. Many systems (I’m most familar with Tungle.me and Google Calendar) let you choose the times others can book you.
2. Make your wishes known. Many systems let you add comments on the page where people would schedule you, so use those comments to share your preferences for scheduling meetings. On my scheduling page I ask that people request at least three options, across multiple days.
3. Set your default meeting time to a smaller increment. This great tip comes from Thursday Bram. I just changed my default meeting time to 15 minutes. She also challenges us to:
4. Schedule your own time so you can get some work done. My own technique is to schedule my required events (with prep, travel, and assimilation time added on), block time for work, and then negotiate the shared aspect of my calendar. You may not have that kind of control, but as you’ll see in the the organizational practices category of tips, you won’t have this kind of control unless you ask.
5. Check the other person’s schedule first. Before asking someone if you can book some time (see next tip below), search the system for times that might work. You’ll get an better idea of the how busy the person is and be ready to book using their technology of choice.

Etiquette and norms

6. Get an OK before you set the meeting. Don’t book someone else without prior correspondence, unless it is standard operating practice, or the person’s scheduling page says you can.
7. Offer multiple options. If your calendar system allows it, suggest a few different meeting times, spread across multiple days — you never know where the person will be and whether or not they’ll have access to a computer, good wifi, or whatever else the event might need.
8. Don’t schedule back-to-back events. The person will be more likely to be on time and have your agenda in mind if you give them some breathing room. Try and schedule for an “odd” time so others are less likely to schedule immediately before or after your meeting.

Organizational practices

9. Talk about calendering and meeting ideals. Come to agreement around norms for booking each other, how personal time can be blocked, and assumptions about meetings. Agree on when it’s ok to say no to a meeting.
10. Enlist IT’s help. See if your information technology gurus can adjust the calendaring system to defaults of 15, 25, or 55 minutes, to help shorten meetings (or at least allow 5 minutes’ breathing room between them). If this isn’t a standard setting, see if IT can ask the vendor to implement it as a new feature.

Certainly, we’ve had shared calendars inside organizations for years. That doesn’t mean we’ve done calendaring well or that we’re prepared for public calendar sharing.

Would be great to know how these tips have worked out for you. Please share other tips you’ve found to be valuable.

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1. Decline meetings. I don’t accept every meeting. If I don’t see real benefit resulting from my attendance, either for me or someone else, I decline the meeting. By only going to meetings you need to attend, you free up some time to do something productive.
2. Have effective meetings. Strive to have shorter, more effective meetings by being organized and always having a definitive end time. Spending a few minutes preparing for a meeting and send out an agenda and other materials in advance; it will mean that you get through the meeting faster, with less floundering around figuring out what you need to accomplish. I also try to keep people on track during the meeting and attempt to end on time or early when possible.
3. Schedule work. We all have certain tasks that require uninterrupted time where we can focus. For those activities, I try to free up big blocks of time on my calendar, and I schedule those tasks the same way that I would schedule a meeting, which allows me the time to work uninterrupted.
4. Schedule recreation. I also schedule my workouts just like any other meeting on my calendar. This has a couple of advantages. First, I get a reminder when it’s time to work out, and second, it discourages other people from scheduling over my workout and makes it more likely that I will be able to find the time for staying fit.
5. Take advantage of off-peak times. Try to schedule activities at times when you can do them in less time. When I need to drive to work (a 45- to 60-minute commute), I get up early to beat some of the traffic and schedule my workout after work, so that by the time I’m done exercising and ready to drive home, the traffic isn’t as heavy. I also try to avoid grocery shopping right after work or going to the bank at lunch.
6. Group and combine. Where possible, I take advantage of logical groupings to minimize travel time, such as scheduling afternoon meetings downtown when I know I need to be there for an evening event. I also try to combine meetings where possible, and I often meet with people for informal discussions at local tech events or prior to meetings. By combining meetings with meetups, I can get more done.
7. Be flexible. I try to be flexible with my schedule to maximize productivity. On days that I work from home, I start work at six or seven in the morning and then take a slightly longer lunch with a workout, which helps me start the afternoon refreshed. I also tend to move things around on my schedule and be flexible to take advantage of unexpected, but productive conversations with coworkers or to stay “in the zone” when I’m really being productive on a chunk of work.
8. Take breaks. When we get really busy, we tend to turn into workaholics and attempt to power through the work even when we aren’t being productive. While taking a break sounds like you will lose time, in many cases, it can help you get a new perspective on a difficult problem. A short walk can help, as can taking a break to accomplish something else, like running an errand or getting in a workout. After a little break, your brain will be refreshed and ready to be productive again.
9. Turn off the television. I used to watch a lot of television in the evenings until I realized I was spending too much time watching other people and not enough time experiencing my own life. I was surprised at how much time I had for hobbies, reading, fitness or even just getting a little work done in the evening when television wasn’t sucking hours out of my day.
10. Block out time for you. I block out my calendar from 4:30 to 5:00 every afternoon to give me a few minutes to reflect on the day, double-check my task list and wrap up any last-minute projects. In a past job where I often had back-to-back meetings all day, I used to block out my lunch hour just to give me time to eat! I know others who block off some time in the morning or afternoon to have time to take their kids to and from school. Think about what is important for you and make sure you find time in your schedule for what you want to do.

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Here are my tips for getting more done in less time:

1. Stay focused on the important work. Keep your eye on the work that will have the biggest impact, and make sure you finish the most important work first. Don’t get caught up in tasks, even those that seem urgent, if they aren’t really important.
2. Learn keyboard shortcuts. The more you can do without taking your fingers off of the keyboard, the faster you’ll finish your work, so take the time to learn available keyboard shortcuts for commonly-used tasks. Email, RSS readers, browsers and any other frequently-used apps are good places to start. Keyboard shortcuts aren’t only available in desktop apps; many web apps, such as Google Reader and Gmail, also have keyboard shortcuts.
3. Know whom to ask for help. If you can spend less time trying to figure things out for yourself, you can get more done. Make connections with people in your company and your industry you can ask for help. However, you’ll need to be prepared to help others, too.
4. Filter anything you can. If you get really good at automatically filtering out the noise, you can focus only on what you really need to see. Set up filters wherever possible: in your email, RSS reader and more.
5. Learn to skim. If you get good at skimming over content without reading every word, you can quickly determine which items require your attention and which ones can be ignored. This works for reading social network posts, news and email.
6. Touch once. This one is hard for me to stick with, but when I do it, it really makes a difference. For email or other communications, look over it and decide what to do with it right away: archive, respond, create a task item, flag for followup, etc. Regardless of how you process communications, just make sure you deal with them once rather than looking at them multiple times.
7. Take control of your calendar. I’m really proactive about my calendar, and I only attend meetings where there is some benefit from my attendance. If you want to have time to get any real work done, you’ll probably need to occasionally decline meetings.
8. Become the master of your email. Don’t let email control you. Finding ways to reduce email overload and proactively deal with email will allow you to spend less time on email and more time on actual work.
9. Work in chunks and focus. Despite what some might think, humans are not great at multitasking. We work better when we focus on one thing at a time. I do this by breaking my work up into logical chunks where I can focus on specific tasks.
10. Get really good at using search engines. Learn little tricks for your favorite search engine. For example, with Google, you could search for “productivity site:gigaom.com/collaboration” to find all of the productivity tips posted on this blog. Spending less time looking for information means that you can get more done.
11. Automate routine tasks. For any mundane tasks that you perform manually over and over, you should find a way to automate them if at all possible. I write scripts, automatically process email with rules and filter RSS feeds to automate tasks and spend less time on things I can have the computer do for me.
12. Prune. Have less data to process. Dump those irrelevant newsletter subscriptions, drop the social network contacts who don’t have anything interesting to say and prune feeds out of your RSS reader. Focus on the important information and get rid of the rest.
13. Keep it simple. When faced with any task, look for ways to keep things simple and avoid spending time on complexity that doesn’t add much value. Simple document formatting is a good example. Focus on the content that matters without getting too caught up in having elaborate formatting that could create more maintenance problems later.
14. Get news from podcasts. I pick and choose the news sources important to me with a combination of mainstream news and news on niche technology topics, and I listen to that news when I’m doing household chores, driving, grocery shopping, working out and more. I get only the news I want, and I listen to it at times I wouldn’t otherwise be productive, which allows me to keep up with industry news while spending little time on it.
15. Take time to recharge. If you work constantly, you’ll look like you are busy, but you’ll burn yourself out. If you really want to be productive, you need to take time to workout, do something fun, take a vacation, read or do something else relaxing. You’ll find that you come back to work with new ideas and focused energy to make a real impact.

Share your productivity tips below.

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Gantt Charts

Since the Gantt chart is one of the more popular project schedule formats, most people are familiar with how it looks. A horizontal axis represents time, while a vertical axis lists tasks/activities. Bars are used to illustrate the duration of each activity. These bars can be color-coded according to your needs. For example, using the same color for different bars can show task dependencies, who is assigned to the task, or what resources are used. You can also add lines and markers to specify milestones, notes, and other information.

When they’re useful: Gantt charts are effective for showing the big picture. Because smaller tasks are shown adjacent to each other in relation to the project as a whole, everyone in the team can see how their work will affect everyone else’s. This is especially useful for teams with remote workers. Gantt charts can also provide a useful template for projects with scopes and schedules that rarely change.

When they’re not: Since you need detailed breakdowns of project activities in order to develop Gantt charts, they may be difficult to implement in projects requiring many changes, such as in agile software development. The slightest change in dependencies, milestones, or tasks may force you to start a new chart from scratch. There are still ways to use a Gantt chart in these cases, but it’s not always the best choice.

The graphical representation in Gantt charts may also be unnecessary for projects that look more like the linear process of an assembly line, or for projects with only one or two participants.

Tools: If you want to try out Gantt charts, here are some apps you can start with:

• Tom’s Planner
• Gantter
• Gantto (currently in private beta).

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) Charts

The PERT chart illustrates a project by focusing on the relationships between activities. The structure of a PERT chart is similar to a flowchart or mind map. An important characteristic of PERT charts is accurate time estimates. Examples and instructions can be found at NetMBA and Edraw Soft.

When they’re useful: The layout of a PERT chart makes the relationships between activities easier to see than with Gantt charts. Thus, PERT charts can be effective for projects that include many activities occurring sequentially and in parallel. PERT charts are also more flexible; you need to make three different time estimates per task, which allows for mid-process changes.

When they’re not: Some people don’t like the math involved in computing the “expected time”, which is the average time it may take to complete a task if it were repeated. Here is a concise explanation of the formula, which may make it seem less intimidating. Another disadvantage of PERT charts is that they can be difficult to understand and follow, if the project has many complex dependencies and simultaneous activities.

Tools: Since PERT charts resemble mind maps or flowcharts, most mind mapping tools can help you create a PERT chart quickly. You can start with:

• Gliffy
• Mindmeister
• Other tools we’ve reviewed

Task Calendars

Task calendars show the activities you need to accomplish each day, week, or month. Task calendars can be as simple as paper desk calendars or planners that are date or time based and have room for a to-do list each day.

Some calendars have blank spaces for a to-do list for items that don’t have to be assigned to a specific day. Some of them have indicators for task priorities, work-life balance, and task progress. David Seah has a number of different varieties of task calendars available from his blog,

When they’re useful: Task calendars are time-based, making them useful for those who are working on multiple projects at the same time. You can see the tasks you need to accomplish each day, week, or month, even if they’re attached to different projects. Breaking down tasks this way also makes them seem more manageable. Task calendars are also ideal for projects with simple, straightforward processes, since you don’t have to think about simultaneous activities or thorough time estimates.

When they’re not: Unlike Gantt or PERT charts, it’s not easy to see the connections, dependencies, and costs of your projects on a task calendar. Some calendar apps do give you the option to view only the tasks associated with a specific project, allowing you to check your progress for each project. Also, as the number of project participants increases, the daily task lists will become bulkier. This makes task calendars difficult to use for large teams, unless individual calendars are created for each participant. Because of these limitations, task calendars may be more effective when used in tandem with PERT or Gantt charts.

Tools: Most calendar apps allow you to create task lists or an agenda for the day, including:

• Google Calendar
• iCal
• MS Outlook
• Rainlendar

There are also a few to-do list apps that have a calendar view. Todoist is one of them, though you have to type in a search query to get custom calendar views. I also recommend Worktrek, especially since it tells you whether you’ve had an efficient day or not.

While these three models aren’t the only ways to schedule your projects, they can provide a good starting point when figuring out your approach. Will you benefit from the big-picture thinking inherent in creating a Gantt chart? Or will a PERT model serve you better, since you’ll make several changes along the way? Is having a daily to-do list of deliverables enough? You can even use these different models together, if necessary. After all, no matter how you dress them up these models all aim to do one thing: help you get that project finished.

Have you tried any of these project scheduling formats? What are the benefits and limitations you’ve encountered?

Photo by stock.xchng user jnatiuk

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When you open the app, instead of the usual grid of hours, you’ll see an analog clock face marked with AM or PM. Click the plus sign, and you’ll be presented with over 50 icons that can be used to create different types of events. These images are imaginative, and include a check mark, a golfer, a dog, a party hat, a sailboat, a skier and a blank one that you can add text to. Once you’ve selected the icon, you can drag it to attach it to the clock, or double-tap on it to add details. The result is a visual representation that’s surprisingly easy to understand at a glance. It works well for “dinner at 7″ but is probably not so useful for “train at 5:28.”

Diacarta has some cute touches, like a “ticking” sound that plays for a couple of seconds while it’s loading. It uses some unusual gestures like rotating the clock face — clockwise to move forward in time, or anticlockwise to move backward — so it takes a bit of learning. But I figured it out in only a couple of minutes, even before watching the entertaining and narration-free video.

What makes the app stand out are the graphics, which are elegant, and a real change from Apple’s usual clean, if slightly sterile, design. The app looks good on my iPod touch, and I suspect it’ll look even better on the iPad’s larger screen. The only jarring note is the use of a monospaced font in certain interface elements, which looks out of place to me, but which doesn’t detract from the app’s readability.

This is an initial 1.0 release, and it lacks some features that would make it more useful, like a way to sync information with the iPhone’s own Calendar, or with other services like Google Calendar. It also doesn’t have a way to create recurring events, or a backup and restore function.

But if you’re an analog sort of person who’s not “so amazingly primitive that [you] think digital watches are a pretty neat idea,” (thanks, Douglas Adams) you may find Diacarta a refreshing change from the traditional interface.

How do you manage your schedule on a mobile device?

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Here’s a screenshot of Hazlett’s calendar:

Hazlett’s calendar is pretty straightforward and gives a solid starting point for planning out your social media messaging. He breaks it down by months, weeks and days and then has the following additional fields:

• Focus
• Theme
• Keywords
• Events

I think this is a good place to start and gives a good overview. My company is finding as we implement multiple, highly-detailed and evolving social media marketing campaigns for clients is that we need more specificity than this, though.

Here’s a screenshot of the social media calendar my company developed and is using:

The elements are as follows:

• Date. We break campaigns down by week, and then by day.
• Client. This is where we put the tasks that fall on the client to do.
• Consultant. This is where we put the tasks that we’ll handle.
• Blog Post/Theme. This is where the campaign “hooks” reside. We see blog posts as the hub of a wheel and all social media conversations are the spokes from that hub. So if we have a contest, an offline event, a promotion or anything else that is the core of a campaign, we make sure blog posts give all the necessary details and use it as a returning reference point as links in the social media messaging we put out.
• Blogger. We utilize a number of professional bloggers in addition to our own staff, so we specify who will actually write and/or edit the blog here. In advance, we establish a single person with the power to publish, although we always have a backup who knows how to do it in case the publisher is not available.
• Deadline. We are sticklers for deadlines and make sure our calendar includes them if something needs to be produced in advance. We’re also learning hard lessons about what happens to your timeline when it is the client who misses deadlines and not your team. You should have a clause in your contract stating that all deadlines will automatically shift based on client delays, but you will still make efforts to deliver per original deadlines when possible.
• Publish On. This date is also critical so everyone knows when something is going to appear online and can activate other social media marketing steps.
• SM Messaging. While we don’t like to produce canned messaging except under certain circumstances — such as a daily empowering quote where all quotes are pre-programmed to release at future dates — we still include ideas for tweets and status updates that spring from or complement that blog post or theme. These are used more as ticklers and reminders.
• Done. Accountability is a major issue in any process with a lot of moving parts and multiple players. We make sure a date is added to the Done column when the person responsible for the task completes it.

Here’s what a portion of this calendar might look like filled out:

An effective social media calendar should include:

• Clear designations of each task.
• Clear assignments to specific people.
• Clear deadlines to set expectations.
• A place to show a task is complete to demonstrate expectations have been met.

Overall, your calendar should be clear, specific, and emphasize accountability with enough detail to support tracking and management of the many moving parts of your active social media marketing campaigns.

Do you have an example of a social media calendar you can share? Any thoughts on the ones shared above?

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For Gmail users with an iPhone who work from home, this is great news. Often, those of us not plugged in to the corporate world miss out on the little niceties like Exchange information syncing. Google Sync, now that it includes Gmail, offers a great free alternative for those of us who’ve left our office working days behind. And it uses Microsoft Exchange technology to do it.

Now you can manage your contacts, calendar and email all from your smartphone, and have that information synced back to the cloud in real time, so that wherever you access it, you’ll be looking at the same thing. I’ve been using MobileMe to do that for about a year now, but since many people already use Gmail, and since Google’s alternative is free, this is much more useful for most people.

If you’d like to set up your iPhone or iPod Touch to work with Google Sync, check out the instructions posted by the official Google Mobile team. Some may prefer to continue using Gmail on IMAP with their device, since it means you can set the schedule by which you’re notified of new mail, instead of having incoming messages dictate to you. Also, keep in mind that the iPhone supports only one Exchange account at a time, so if you have one already for work, you won’t be able to take advantage of Google Sync.

Are you using Google Sync?

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For a while, I’d sync Outlook and Palm Desktop, and then Outlook would update the BlackBerry (I didn’t actually use Outlook at all, it just acted as the middleman). It worked great. But then my dependence on Google Calendar  grew, because I could access it from any computer as well as my BlackBerry, and it wouldn’t work with my sync setup.

I investigated many tools and synchronization applications to find a perfect sync solution. I didn’t want to use lots of different applications to syncing needs.

The almost perfect solution was to find a dedicated synchronization app. Mine comes from CompanionLink. This method cuts out Outlook for good. CompanionLink now has a Google edition available that synchronizes all of Palm Desktop’s features with Google, too. For updating my BlackBerry, I use Google Sync for Mobile. It’s still not perfect, but it works and I can access and update my information in Google or Palm, while my BlackBerry just has access to the information.

If you’re struggling to find the perfect syncing app, here are some options (some free and some paid):

• Chapura: PocketMirror has been around for a long time, and syncs Palms with Outlook. Its Echo and PocketMirror work with Palm Pre.
• CompanionLink: Syncs Google, Palm Pre, ACT!, LotusNotes, Outlook and many others.
• Google Sync: free Google syncing applications for Mac, Linux, Android and others.
• gSyncit: Syncs Outlook and Gmail.
• Mark/Space: Sync apps for Macs.
• Sync’Em: Connects Macs with Exchange and Outlook.

How do you keep your data in sync?

Photo credit: djwudi

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Manymoon is well-designed, with a clean interface throughout. Of course, that’s true of a lot of project management web apps, and especially the free ones targeted at the independent, rather than the enterprise, user. Commands and tools are housed in submenus and tabs to keep visual clutter on any given page to a minimum. And I do find that everything is located where I intuitively expect it to be, which is not necessarily always the case in other apps.

Your home screen looks more like a Facebook newsfeed than the dashboard-type interface you might be used to from other comparable services. You receive updates here based on the recent activities of members of your project team. Things like the creation or completion of a task or a project, what any member is currently working on, and additions to the project team will all show up here as they occur.

Setting up a project is easy, and assigning sub-tasks within that project is as complicated or as simple as you need it to be. By default, task addition is shown in a convenient quick entry mode: all you need to enter is a title. Clicking “Show options” allows you to add more detailed information, like a due date, priority, project staff responsible and file attachments.

One really nice feature that sets Manymoon apart from other similar services is its Google Apps integration. You can tie your project and task deadlines to Google Calendar, right from within the web app, automatically. And you can attach documents directly from your Google Docs account, as well as those you upload from your hard drive. It’s definitely a huge plus if you depend on Google Docs as much as I do.

They’ve taken some cues from Facebook and Twitter, in that you can quickly and easily post about what you’re currently working on, or a useful link, from entry fields on the right of the home page. This certainly comes in handy when you want to draw your team’s attention to a useful resource without going to the trouble of sending a mass email.

While the basic version is free, Manymoon also offers two levels of upgrade, which offer you more storage space, and other custom options, for $5 and $10 a month. Since, for my purposes the 5MB allowed on the free version is more than enough, I highly recommend Manymoon as an inexpensive project management solution, especially to those who already depend heavily on Google Apps.

Does the Google Apps integration in Manymoon appeal to you?

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I really like the idea of being able to extract that useful information without having to manually copy and paste, though, so when Nicholas Maddix of Textual emailed me to tell me about Anagram, a similar Windows app, and it was also recommended by a couple of commenters on our gwabbit review, I thought I’d check it out.

Anagram is like gwabbit in that you can use it to extract contact data from emails. However, it’s more flexible, in that you can use it to capture information from any text, not just emails, and it’s not restricted to contacts: Anagram will examine any text you throw at it and automatically attempt to capture calendar events, to-do items and notes, too. Here’s a quick screencast of it in action capturing some contact data and adding a calendar event to Outlook:

WebWorkerDaily Screencast: Anagram from Simon Mackie on Vimeo.

Unlike gwabbit, Anagram is not limited to Outlook. It can work with a variety of different target applications:

• Microsoft Outlook
• Salesforce.com
• Jigsaw
• Palm Desktop/Agendus
• NetSuite

Anagram works very well and it’s very easy to use, too. You activate Anagram by highlighting your target text snippet (this can be in an email, on a web site or in a document), then hitting a hotkey combination. By default, the hotkey is tapping ctrl-c quickly twice in succession, which I think feels very natural, but you can change it to a function key if you prefer. Anagram parses the text, figures out what type of information the text contains, launches the target app (if it’s not already open) and populates the fields automatically. All you have to do is check that the information is correct and save the data. In my tests, it was very accurate with little to no manual intervention required. Anagram is a simple app, but if you use one of its target applications and find copying and pasting contact information a chore, it’s definitely worth a try.

Anagram is Windows-only and available as a free 45-day trial. After that, pricing depends on usage and will cost $34.95 for Anagram Personal or $74.95 per year for Anagram CRM.

Do you use Anagram or a similar app?

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These aren’t the only ones I use, but they are the ones that make my Web Working experience the best it can be.

Gmail – It is the lifeblood of my daily communication. I use a single inbox to aggregate a number of different accounts and it seems that the bulk of my information passes through Gmail at some point in my process. I am addicted to the ability to search and find all of my correspondence so quickly and easily. I’d love better contact capability, but my next application handles that well.

BatchBook – While Gmail is the conduit for the bulk of my communication, BatchBook helps me keep track of who I need to communicate with. A small business CRM product that is remarkably simple to use, but with a bunch of super powerful options that put it ahead of similar products. Their batchbox functionality lets me email important correspondence right into the system and automatically links it to my contacts.

BlogDesk – The only desktop application on my list but one that makes my contributions to the web so easy. I use BlogDesk to compose all of my articles for WWD and elsewhere and I would be lost without it. I can write offline and easily submit articles to just about any compatible blog platform. It handles images flawlessly, produces clean code, and it’s free. I’ve tried LiveWriter and others but nothing beats the ease of use of BlogDesk.

Toodledo – Task management tools are a dime a dozen and I’ve looked at or used a good share of them. The feature set and functionality of Toodledo makes it an indispensable part of my web working life though. It is fully GTD ready (when I make that leap) and offers me numerous ways to display my lists. I can enter and retrieve my task information via email, Twitter, Jott, as well as a handy Firefox extension so I can capture a task from just about anywhere.

Google Calendar – Keeping track of meetings, events and other deadlines is critical to me and my Google Calendar handles the task admirably. I like the way I can create and share multiple calendars and have it all appear in one place. My Toodledo tasks show up right next to the meal plans my wife makes. I can view it on my mobile and get reminders via email or SMS.

I’ve really come to rely on these tools to keep me organized and productive. With recent events reminding me that I can’t take the availability of applications for granted, I want to acknowledge how thankful I am for them while I can.

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After signing up for a free account, you’ll get a web interface with a box to type. Put in something like “Feed the cat next week” and it will strip off the “next week” part, parse it to get the date, and make the rest the text of your reminder. Then it adds it to the rest of your reminders on the web page. A search box lets you find reminders with particular text, and brighter white is used to highlight the more immediate tasks.

Other features of Deadline include reminders via email or Jabber-based IM, the ability to set reminders by sending email to a personalized Deadline address, and a mobile user interface. For the future, they’re planning an iPhone application, customization, and an API, among other things.

I found Deadline easy to use, though its parsing of English was less full-featured than I’d like (“in a year”, for example, seems to be giving the wrong results). It’ll pop up a box for direct date entry if it doesn’t see any date at all in your entry. Overall, Deadline has less functionality than the most similar service I know, I Want Sandy, but Deadline’s user interface is easier to navigate if you just want to track dates.

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It eventually gets to a point where I have to backup all my documents and application data and rebuild Windows. I had reached this point a couple of weeks ago. But this time it happened at an opportune time when I found the local Staples was selling Office 2007 Small Business Edition upgrade at a 40% discount.

Having seen favorable reviews and had limited experience with other Office 2007 modules on a recently purchased desktop (that serves as a backup PC), I bought. Now my laptop’s Outlook operation runs much more smoothly and quickly as a result; it boils down to “search”.

One of my frustrations with Outlook was the ability to find stored emails by searching contact names, email addresses or specific words in the messages. With Outlook 2000/2003 a utility called Lookout served the purpose quite transparently to my operation since I could set it to index during my sleeping hours. But Microsoft purchased Lookout to incorporate its algorithms into Microsoft Desktop Search which I found to be burdensome to my laptop’s operation; I tolerated it at best. (Based on reviews and a bad experience I totally bypassed Outlook XP.)

Trialing the beta of Xobni, which not only provides search but also records all your Outlook activity with the contact related to the email being viewed, slowed down my overall Outlook operation, both on opening Outlook and then looking at emails.

Having worked with Outlook 2007 for about a week, its internal search (which probably has Lookout’s algorithms as a basis) has proven to be fast enough such that Outlook now operates much more smoothly and at very reasonable speeds. I find other benefits such as improved management of Safe Senders. The time regained in managing my email will probably provide a full payback for the cost of the upgrade very quickly.

We can get complacent in tolerating software that does the job but has inhibited performance. It pays once in a while to go back and look at our options. If you’re still running an older version of Office/Outlook and especially are constrained to requiring it, it would be worthwhile to consider Office/Outlook 2007 – and keep an eye on your retailers for the occassional sale.

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Microsoft Office Outlook Connector provides Outlook users with the capability of synchronizing messages, calendars and contacts with Hotmail and Office Live Mail accounts, effectively providing offline access for those web-based services – and perhaps more importantly, the ability to make that data portable and transferable to other services, such as Gmail.

Previously, the Outlook Connector was a premium service offered to MSN customers, but this incarnation is free to use, though of course, this may change once the beta period is complete. For MSN customers already paying for the older service, they’ll be automatically upgraded to the Live Mail and Live Calendar editions of Hotmail and MSN Calendar.

Though other web-bases services such as Yahoo and Gmail do offer offline access for messages via various IMAP and POP options, offline calendar and contact data remains haphazardly implemented (as illustrated by Google’s recent launch of OS X contact synchronization).

For once it seems Microsoft is ahead of the Web 2.0 crowd with a release that’s profoundly useful – though as rumors build for more and more Google Gears enabled offline applications, it’s a lead that won’t last much longer. On the other hand, Adobe AIR applications may be the carrier for this new wave of applications.

You can download the Outlook Connector 12.1 beta here…

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We have covered a few utilities that have tried to solve the 2-way syncing issue, but none have been rock solid enough to use full time.  In fact, I’ve destroyed my Outlook calendar multiple times trying to sync with my Google Calendar.  This is why I was very happy to see Google has released a Calendar Sync tool.

To get started, download the application and walk through the install process.  Once installed, you’ll be presented with 3 options:

• 2-way sync, applies changes to both your Google Calendar and Outlook calendars with each other
• 1 way sync where Google Calendar events will be presented on your Outlook calendar
• 1-way sync where your Outlook calendar events are presented on your Google Calendar.

Another available option includes setting the update interval between calendars.  You’re  able to set the interval for a minimum of 10 minutes.

An icon will sit in your system tray to keep you alert on the status of the sync tool.  Keep in mind, you can’t work with multiple calendars both on the Google side and the Outlook side of the sync.  You can only sync your primary Google and Outlook calendars.

While this is an exciting development, this utility is only available for Microsoft Windows and Outlook.  It will be nice when the Apple iCal application is supported with 2-way sync with Google Calendar.

Additionally, there are other ways to enhance your Google Calendar.

[via Official Google Blog]

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Every once-in-a-while I find an application like Jott that truly revolutionizes the way I organize my life.

We all write notes on pieces of paper, napkins, etc.; but they often get lost in the shuffle. Jott comes along and helps you consolidate your tasks, notes, and events into one spot. All you do it call the Jott number, and you hear a voice that says: “What do you want to Jott?” You then give the folder name you’ve created, contact, or application and simply speak your message. Jott translates voice into text and then, based on your preferences, either e-mails you or adds the event. It also stores the message for historical purposes on the Jott website.

The premise is simple, the sign-up is easy. After signing up you can then call the Jott number to record messages instantly.

Jott has tapped into some of the most popular APIs including Google Calendar, Twitter, Tumblr, and even WordPress.com amongst others. You can do things like create a folder, associate it with a co-worker/team member, and when you post to that folder it sends them an e-mail with the tasking. You essentially have an on-the-go project management utility.

Jott can extend beyond its predefined Jott links. For example, to use Jott with Outlook, simply use the Plaxo application as a synchronization tool between Outlook and Google Calendar. Now, when you post to Google Calendar from your Jott account it will automatically be synced with your Outlook calendar.

Wishlist:

• An add-on for managing Jotts directly inside Microsoft Outlook. It would be nice to create tasks, notes, events, etc. without using an extra application such as Plaxo.
• The ability to send text messages to my Jott number and have them be translated into Jotts.

Have you tried Jott? Are you finding it useful?

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