by Scott on November 30, 2009
Christmas is right around the corner. This is the year you should can have all of your Christmas To Do’s organized (with Smart To-Do List of course). Having a to do list will help reduce some of the stresses you encounter over the holiday season. The more you have everything planned out, the better prepared you will be if something unexpected occurs.
One way to use Smart To-Do List for Christmas is to a have a Gift Ideas project:
You could use this project to keep track of all of your gift ideas. Simply tag each idea with the name of the person that will be receiving the gift. You could then easily filter your list by one of the names used as a tag:
I’ve made up a few templates to help keep your Christmas To Do list organized this year. If you would like to check them out please click the links below, you can download the templates and import them into Smart To-Do List.
New Christmas Templates:
Hope you have a safe Holiday Season!
by Scott on April 22, 2009
Have a BIG goal that you would like to achieve? How about password protecting that goal. For instance, if you’d like to retire at the age of 45, you could make one of your online passwords Retire45. If you need to lose 20 pounds your password could be LOSeTwenty. I’m sure you get the idea.
I learned from an article I read recently on the Income.com blog that one great way to achieve goals is with incremental success. Using this technique to create your passwords is one small method to help incrementally achieve your goals by providing a constant reminder. According to the author, John Reese:
In order for you to accomplish anything in life you have to learn the power of INCREMENTAL SUCCESS. Let me explain how it works…
It doesn’t matter what you want to accomplish… making a million dollars, losing 50 pounds, learning to speak French, etc. In order for you to accomplish what it is that you want you MUST achieve your goal incrementally.
This post was inspired by a comment (by commenter azpat) that I read on a Lifehacker.com post. Thank you for the inspiration.
by Scott on March 28, 2009
Over the past month or so I’ve had the opportunity to try out the Peek email device. This device is billed as the first email only gadget and retails for only $49.95. The best part is that there is no contract to sign. Service is a flat $19.95 a month and you can stop it whenever you’d like.
I have to tell you that I have been thoroughly impressed with this simple, elegant, and useful device.
As you can see from the images below the Peek is slightly shorter than the iPhone and thinner as well.
Setting up the device couldn’t be easier. I simply entered my Gmail account name and password and that was all that I needed to do start receiving emails.
The number of things you can accomplish with the Peek is pretty impressive. Here are some examples:
- Send text messages, just type the 10-digit number in instead of the email address.
- Download all of your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or AOL.
- Check the weather by sending an email to weather@getpeek.net with your zip code in the subject line.
- Use Ping.fm to update basically any social network. This would work from any email account, but having this power at your finger tips at all times is great. In case you didn’t know, Ping.fm will assign you a custom email address that you can email with special prefixes to post to various social networks. For example, you can update Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, create a post on your Wordpress blog and many others. For a complete list please visit Ping.fm.
The discussion board for the Peek is awesome and full of energetic users. Here is a link to a constantly updated list of services that can be used from the Peek: http://boards.getpeek.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=465&page=1#Item_0
I believe if you already have a device like the iPhone or a Blackberry, this isn’t for you. The purpose of this device is to strip away the costs and complexity of these other devices. The Peek does the one thing it was meant to do and it does it well, email.
One last thing, the latest Peek device has been introduced and will be available soon, the Peek Pronto. This device will allow you to have unlimited text messages (same as the original), push email support (with Microsoft Exchange), up to 5 email accounts, and the ability to view PDFs and .doc (Microsoft Word) files. This device is currently listed on pre-order at Amazon for $79.95.
by Scott on March 16, 2009
TweetDeck, the most popular Twitter application, has added Facebook integration. This update allows you to use one simple application to interface with both your Twitter followers and Facebook friends.
After installing the application you can easily add your Facebook profile by clicking the icon shown above. After you enter your Facebook credentials the status of your Facebook friends will be added as a new column (third on the right below).
You can now post directly to Facebook or Twitter right from within TweetDeck. From the TweetDeck blog:
The other element is the ability to direct your tweet/update to post to twitter or facebook or both directly within the tweet window.
…following pretty much unanimous yes vote on whether to auto block message which start with @username from posting to Facebook, v0.24.1 has this functionality and is now available
In order to post to Facebook you must check the Facebook checkbox shown above and then confirm the “Allow Status Updates from TweetDeck” shown below.
Success!
This new version is considered a pre-release but can be found at the following TweetDeck blog post:
TweetDeck V0.24.1 Pre-Release: Facebook Integration
by Scott on March 3, 2009
The Adobe Air runtime allows developers to create rich Internet applications that run from the desktop on Windows, Mac OS X, as well as Linux.
From the Adobe Air Wikipedia entry:
AIR is intended to be a versatile runtime environment, as it allows existing Flash, Actionscript or HTML and JavaScript code to be used to construct a more traditional desktop-like program. Adobe positions it as a browser-less runtime for rich Internet applications that can be deployed onto the desktop, rather than a fully-fledged application framework.
Adobe provides a marketplace to find applications that have been developed using this framework. Here are a few of the applications that I found looking through the productivity and creativity sections of the Adobe Air Marketplace. All of these applications are free.
1. Vertabase Timer
Vertabase Timer is perfect for anyone that has to track their time spent on specific projects. To use this application you simply enter the projects name in the Track Time On entry box (or select a previously entered project) and press the Start button. When you press the Stop button an optional note can be added to the recorded time.
Clicking the Show Time button allows you to view a breakdown of your time spent on each project. The time can then be exported to XML and CSV.
2. Color Browser
Color Browser is useful to anyone that develops webpages as well as other creative types that need to keep track of color palettes that they currently use or get inspired by. This application allows you to create a color palette as well as import palettes from outside sources.
The first palette shown in the screen shot below is the palette that I based my website design on for Smart To-Do List. I found this palette on ColourLovers.com. Colour Lovers allows you to export the palettes in a variety of formats, one of which is the ASE format which this application uses.
If you know of any other useful Adobe Air applications, I’d love to hear about them.
Updated on 7/9/2010
Removed an application based on feedback in the comments below.
