Toluu

2WheelTech

Online registration system and software for cycling and other events. Web driven and delivered.

Jott and ReqallSeptember 1 2008

Jott recently came out of beta and have intiated their business model. They are have a payment model for extended messages and the "extra" capabilities. Short reminder messages to yourself (15 seconds) are still free. For me, the is the main usage but I was also using it to send messages to others on my list via phone. Now I'd have to pay.

Reqall on the other hand is still a free service. It is not as rich in capabilities but it does do all those things I am using. Reminders are simple to do and the transcription has been perfect. The system also sends a wave file of the audio.

Email, SMS and IM are the connections available for reminders. Nothing yet from any of the microblogging platforms such as Twitter or Jaiku. Personally I don't see a real need for those connections. I find the SMS and email alerts to be sufficient.

The iPhone apps for both services are great. They allow you to take audio notes while offline and then with the system connects, it will sync the info. Reqall also knows some key words such as "buy", "note", "remember" that will categorize those particulare items. It makes it very easy to create a shopping list for yourself OR for someone on your list. My wife can send me a shopping list prior to my leaving the office.

Jott RevisitedAugust 23 2008

I have written about Jott before.

This has been a great tool for me to drop myself a note while driving. I have also used it to send emails by talking to Jott and having it send that text to a distribution list. It's great.

Last week Jott has moved out of beta. They have also moved to a business model that charges for the services. Sure there is still a free version but all of the really good stuff for linking to other apps is a service you pay for.

Lately I haven't been using Jott as much as I did in the past. I recently got an iPhone and have been trying to use it for almost everything including Jott. The Jott app for iPhone is pretty cool. I still think this is a great app, but I really want to strive for being able to do all the work on the web with free services. Only if I can't live without it, will I pay. Haven't decided yet for Jott.

ouchJuly 28 2008

Tungle and calendar coordinationMay 23 2008

Setting up meetings with people within and outside your own organization has always been a pain.  Trying to find a common time usually involves a flurry of emails moving around the group and eventually finding that there is NO date and time where EVERYBODY can attend. That takes time.

Personally I don't believe there is a great solution for this problem since it almost requires everyone to be on the same system, on line at the same time and ready to respond.  Right, like that's going to happen often.

Recently I found   and think this has potential.  Jim Courtney's Skype Journal post gave a great explanation of the Outlook add-in product and its value. The great thing about this product is that it is agnostic to calendar systems though the organizer must currently be using Outlook.

The process is to share a set of open times, people select their preferences and finally once everyone enters their preferences, the "best" time is selected.

Try it, you'll like it.

Time, Task, Life Management Pt 2May 23 2008

As it works out there are really only a couple ways of looking at this and I believe David Allen (Getting Things Done) has pretty well summed up what you need to do.

1. Collect
2. Process
3. Organize
4. Review
5. DO

I'll next look at some tools that can be used for doing all this stuff.

RememberTheMilk has a Getting Started site that gives a great overview of the features.  I use this for maintaining a todo list for everything that is associated with my race registration business and personal activities.  I use GMail as my  personal email service.  There is a great add-in for FireFox and GMail that adds RTM as a side window.  This is an add-on from RTM and works well.

RTM has an INBOX to collect all your tasks.  You can put items into the inbox using a number of methods. Entering a task into a form on the website is one way.  The entry gives you options to enter due dates, repeating options, tags, location (more on this), url.  It also shows you information on postponed, notes and sharing options.

One of the novel features is the geotagging of your tasks.  Giving a task a location (even to tie it to a GoogleMap location) gives you yet another way to coordinate your work and plan your work.

Tagging of tasks allo