It won’t win any points for style, and it’s still a work-in-progress so some features may not work perfectly just yet, but if you’re looking for a free GTD-capable desktop client for Toodledo, it’s worth checking out.

(via freewaregenius)

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The instant appeal for me with Thymer is the straightforward data entry process. Thymer uses a natural language parser, so I can type simple statements and it knows what I want and where I want it. There’s no tabbing through multiple selection boxes needed; a single carefully-constructed statement can tell the system everything it needs to know about my task.

The key to productivity in Thymer is learning the syntax needed to enter your tasks. For example:

Write Thymer Review @WWD @today @review @1.5 @important @waiting

will assign myself a task, due today, called “Write Thymer Review.” It will add it to my WWD project and tag it as a review, with an estimated time of  1.5 hours. The other items make use of built-in flags to show that the task is important and that I’m waiting for someone or something to complete it.

While keyboard entry is prominent, the interface makes nice use of drag-and-drop functionality: Move and reorder your tasks as needed. One of the slickest features allows you to move the input box down to the specific area of the page where you want your tasks to appear.

There is a bit of a learning curve to getting used to the syntax, and to set up the searches and views you will use on a regular basis. It’s a very freeform system, which makes it flexible enough for a lot of different task management processes, but some may be put off by the lack of structure, at least when getting started.

As a one-person shop, I didn’t have a chance to test the team features, but planning functionality is built-in and you can easily assign tasks to others. Each task can also handle discussions and comments.

While expected features like emailing tasks into Thymer, daily reminder emails and even Twitter integration are done well, I’d really like to see some better auto-complete options for predicting existing tags and projects.

There is a lot more to Thymer that I haven’t even begun to implement yet — specifically, the time tracking. Each task can be given an estimated time for planning purposes and individual timers can be set to track work completed. Additionally, multiple time entries can be added to a task and totaled upon completion for billing purposes.

Mobile access is proving to be an issue for me, though, — perhaps even a dealbreaker. While an iPhone app is available the site doesn’t seem to function on any of the mobile browsers I tested it on. Ubiquity of the data entry and access is key for me, so I’m struggling to keep up when away from my computer.

Pricing starts at free for a basic no-frills but functional account, while paid accounts start at $5/month for a solo plan. A 30-day trial is available.

I’m undecided if it’s worth the time and effort to move over from Toodledo — but Thymer is something I’m watching closely.

How do you track your tasks? Is Thymer right for you?

I know I’m going to sound like a snake oil salesman but I’ve found an answer — a tool for Windows users that when used, really used, will save you time and make you more productive.

ActiveWords is combination program launcher, text replacer, macro recorder, wizard, wonder and an incredible time saver.

At its core, ActiveWords lets you assign actions to trigger words that you type. These words perform a task or series of tasks that you’ve designated, from basic text substitution to complex macros or scripts.

A frequent complaint I hear about many of our favorite web applications is the number of clicks that it takes to accomplish any task. Clicks represent time and we’re busy folks.

We seem to have a different attitude to our desktop environments, though. We’ll click around mindlessly and repetitively to find and launch programs and documents. We’ll type the same text endlessly, keystroke after keystroke on our own PCs.  We’ll do the same actions every day and never complain to ourselves that we haven’t removed those barriers — those extra clicks.  That’s what ActiveWords does.

Think for a minute about the repetitive tasks that you do everyday, perhaps multiple times per day. A basic tenet of productivity is to automate repetitive actions or tasks and this is one way that ActiveWords can really help you. Adding a signature to your email or forum post, responding to an inquiry with a canned response, typing your address or phone number — all of these actions can be automated and triggered with a few keystrokes. These are just basic examples but the possibilities are unlimited — it’s staggering how many trigger words you’ll set up once you get started as you begin to examine your daily process.

ActiveWords also works tremendously well as a program or web launcher. I’ve got trigger words set up for web sites I visit regularly and other common applications, and I can pull them all up with just a few keystrokes. For example, no matter what else I’m working on or in, if I type “new task” followed by two spaces my Toodledo web app opens — poised and ready for me to add that new task.

The integration with Toodledo goes even further though; it’s one of many applications with an add-on pack available that allows easy access to common functions. Additional add-ins are available for Outlook, Clear Context, Mind Manager and others.  These help you get up and running quickly as they add pre-defined options to your ActiveWords setup to hook in to these programs.

There is actually a pretty extensive library of add-ins available to control everything from Windows functions to adding Google hooks. You can even add in-place arithmetic which is insanely useful once you get used to using it.

There is also a very powerful scripting language in ActiveWords that I’ve just recently begun to experiment with. Because it works at the OS level, it can interact with any interface — basically if you can access it via keyboard you can program it via an ActiveWord. ActiveWords works everywhere unlike, say, the macro or auto-complete functionality in a program like Microsoft Word.

There isn’t much of a learning curve to using ActiveWords but it does take some thought about the types of things to automate, how you want to name your trigger words, and how to actually trigger them.

The interface to ActiveWords is sparse, which is good. There is a menu bar available at the top of your screen and a keystroke triggered “Action Pad” can pop up to accept your ActiveWords. The interface appears a little dated, but honestly after a day or so you’ll likely end up turning off or disabling the visible portions.

One of the coolest things about ActiveWords is that you don’t have to  use the Action Pad or anything else to make it work, you can type your ActiveWords anywhere. I’ve got it configured so I just start typing my trigger word followed by two spaces and it does the rest, no matter where I am.

There are some instances where typing my trigger words does interfere with keyboard shortcuts (Gmail is a frequent culprit) so I move to the search box and type my trigger words there. ActiveWords automatically removes the trigger text after processing the request.

I do wish there was some sort of auto-complete functionality available for the active word triggers that I’ve forgotten. I find the lesser-used ones do get forgotten and while there is a search functionality, I liked how in a tool like Launchy it tries to guess the action based on my past usage.

ActiveWords does a decent job of recommending frequently used programs and documents and suggesting that I create a trigger word for them — it only takes a second to add items to the directory with the wizard-like prompts.

ActiveWords is currently for Windows PCs only. A very generous 60-day trial is available, which is plenty of time for you to decide if it’s working for you. My hunch is that when the trial ends you’ll stare blankly at your screen wondering why your triggers aren’t working, they really do become such an integral part of your workflow. And because it works so seamlessly you really don’t even think about the fact that you are using it — it’s just there.

Registration after the 60 days is $49.95 but that covers all the PCs that you use, so you can take advantage of the benefits if you jump between multiple machines like I do. It’s easy to import and export your directories but I’d love to see the ability to make sync easier.

I tend to be skeptical when I read reviews like this one. Could it really be that good? Can it really save me that much time? In this instance, the answer is a resounding yes.

Has ActiveWords boosted your productivity?

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Around this time last year I wrote “5 Applications and Services For Which I Am Thankful,” which was a tribute to the cream of the crop that I had chosen as my daily go-to products. With another year gone, I thought it would be interesting to revisit that list of products (at the time, I picked Gmail, BatchBook, BlogDesk, Toodledo and Google Calendar) to see what may have changed.

Despite the number of products that I test and review, all providing limitless opportunity to switch things around, it seems that very little has changed in my day-to-day web app usage, at least in the key applications that drive my business. Today, all five of these apps would be still be high on my list. Each continues to fulfill a very specific need and despite the growing number of other choices in each category, I would still choose these today.

With that said, there is one notable omission from this list, a product that I’ve come to rely on tremendously over the last few months. I’ve written in detail about Springpad in the past and with each day it becomes an even more integral part of my routine.

The tools that we use to run our businesses and organize our lives are tremendously important, and play a key role in our success.

What apps and services are you thankful for?
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/ / CC BY 2.0

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iPhone OS 3.0 brings a lot of new features to the table, but I could’ve easily gone on living without all of them, copy and paste included, except for push notifications. Push is the killer feature that elevates the iPhone platform to a whole new level of usability, both as a standalone device, and as a piece of companion hardware to your existing workstation setup.

The iPhone has taken the place of an entire screen in my current home office configuration, freeing up a whole display for more productive use. Here’s a breakdown of the apps that make this possible, and how I use them.

Beejive IM — Death of the Desktop IM Client

For me, IM can be a terrible time thief. Generally speaking, I intend to use it primarily for professional purposes, especially during the day, but having a desktop client constantly open and in plain view, it becomes hard to resist the urge to chat with a pal who’s just popped on for the first time in a few months, for example.

Thanks to Beejive with Push for the iPhone, the temptation isn’t nearly as strong to engage in distracting IM conversations. Using Beejive, I have an always-on solution that can stay out of sight, and therefore, out of mind. Even if someone contacts me, I find it much easier to politely ignore their advances when they come via my iPhone than when messages pop up on my computer’s display.

Remember The Milk — Task Management I’ll Actually Use

I have a problem with most GTD apps. Actually, the problem is more with me than with the apps. I just don’t use them, for whatever reason, for any length of time. I’ve tried a wide variety, but no combination of features seems to result in an experience that I’ll stick with.

Push has changed that. With Remember The Milk (Toodledo also offers push notifications, if you’re more inclined that way), I get an alert at a scheduled time when a task is coming due. It’s a small thing, but it’s enough to make the difference between paying attention to my task management software and not. It keeps me on schedule when I’m working at home or on the road.

Prowl — Growl Goes Mobile

Growl is a great utility for when I’m actually seated in front of my main work computer. It’s an OS X notification utility that works with an incredibly long list of applications to keep you informed, even when app windows aren’t in the foreground. What Prowl does is take some or all of those alerts and turn them into push notifications that you receive on your iPhone.

Which means that regardless of what I’m doing or where I am, I can be aware of anything my home workstation wants me to know. This includes Twitter @ mentions and direct messages — a much-requested push feature from iPhone Twitter users — and push email notifications that actually display the title and content of a message, rather than just modifying the icon like the iPhone’s built-in Mail app currently does. That means less time spent opening and checking emails that may or may not require immediate action, and more time focused on the task at hand. Best of all, you can set priorities and arrange it so that you won’t receive push notifications unless you’re actually away from your computer, to reduce redundancy and fluff.

The iPhone Arrives as a Business Tool

Not that I wasn’t using the iPhone for work before, but this is the first time it’s acquired the status of an integral part of my web working machinery. Heretofore, it’s been a nice, supplemental nice-to-have, but push is the killer feature that makes it a necessary device. Kudos, Apple, for providing an update that’s only just begun to hint at its eventual utility.

What do you think about Apple’s implementation of push on the iPhone? Do you find your device more useful now, or, if you don’t own one, does it add to the phone’s appeal?

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In what has to be a developer’s worst nightmare, last week a “perfect storm” of events led to just that for task management service Toodledo. Thankfully, after what I am sure was a very long day for the Toodledo team, they were able to bring things back online and with no data loss.

As a user of Toodledo, I was impressed with the outstanding job they did not only recovering our data but for the way they communicated with us during what was really an unthinkable situation. Was it an inconvenience to be without the service? Absolutely it was. But in what really should be a case study in how to respond to such an experience, the folks at Toodledo provided frequent updates and explanations during the outage and a thorough debrief after the fact.

I suggest you take a few minutes to read through the 10 or so pages of user comments and responses to their explanation there. It is full of appreciation and understanding from users for being spoken to honestly and treated with respect. Rather than leaving in droves, more than a few people have suggested that they have upgraded from free to paid accounts because of the way that the situation was handled.

So what did they do right? Here are five steps on how to deal with your customers during (and after) a service outage.

1. Give us a descriptive error page and lead us to a forum where you are discussing the issue. Let us know there is an issue and that you are actively working on resolving it, especially if it is above and beyond something brief or minor.
2. Make updates regularly. We know that taking the time to write an update is keeping you from the actual “fixing” of things, but we’re scared about our stuff and want to know what is happening.
3. When it’s fixed, tell us what happened. We’re probably still a bit angry and feeling inconvenienced but we’ve had “stuff” happen in our lives, too, and will likely empathize.  Keep in mind, we may not be as technical as you, so give us the details in terms we understand.  Keep the jargon to a minimum.
4. Acknowledge that the outage was an inconvenience, and don’t minimize the effect it had on us. We use your service because it helps us and provides a benefit. When it is down, we lose that. I think that this is particularly important.
5. Tell us what is being done to keep the issue from happening again.

Despite everyone’s best intentions and planning, outages are going to happen. How it is handled and how you respond to your customers will define our response.

What do you expect from a provider during or after an outage? Tell us in the comments about your experiences.

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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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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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Freelance Switch on Holding Yourself Accountable

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The Execupundit gives us 10 Reasons Used to Sink Good Ideas

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I am finding that many of the more popular web services have recognized that Twitter is becoming a communication hub of sorts. This leads to some great connection functionality built right into their apps that lets users get at their data from within Twitter. If you’re spending quite a bit of time in a Twitter client anyway, having the ability to quickly access or add to your info without needing to load another app can be significant.

So here are some of my favorite, or otherwise notable, applications that let me tweak every last bit of productivity I can from my Twitter time.

Toodledo – My task manager of choice has outstanding Twitter integration. I can add and retrieve tasks via SMS or any Twitter client, as well as receive reminders the same way. This is particularly handy when people tweet something that requires me to follow up or is something that I may want to revisit later. With a quick copy / paste I can retweet an item right to my to do list.

Remember The Milk – Another favorite to-do list also offers considerable Twitter support among its many features. Their functionality appears to be as rich as Toodledo, if not even more so.

Joint Contact – Aliza shared her thoughts about Joint Contact and their Twitter integration back in July. It seems like such a logical feature for this type of application, I am really surprised that similar functionality hasn’t made it’s way into other Project Management and Collaboration tools like Basecamp.

I Want Sandy – It’s not surprising that Sandy is so handy at using Twitter as the whole application is geared towards getting information to and fro quickly and easily. Twitter is just one of the many remote data integrations available.

Twittercal – It’s a third party tool that allows you to easily create events on your Google Calendar via a Direct Message. I like that it uses Google Authorization methods and doesn’t require my Google password. I wish it would allow me to add things to more than my default calendar though. As of now, I need to go in and manually edit most of them (which does sort of defeat the purpose…) Admittedly, this is apparently a limitation for Google’s own SMS integration as well.

I found the majority of these integration solutions to be quite robust. The syntax required can sometimes be a bit cryptic but taking the time to learn and master it can really be a productivity booster.

Does your favorite app work with Twitter? What service do you think would benefit most from this type of functionality?

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