Bloggers from around the net were in attendance and they were quick to post on David’s rather surprising dual appearances (actually the first appearance had been announced on the Office2.o website months ago) but David’s second appearance, sitting on the GTD Applications Panel was a delightful surprise made all the much more exciting for what David revealed… (we’ll get to that in another post). Among the bloggers that had something to say about David’s speaking at Office 2.0, Ed Brill was excited about David’s discussion of lotus notes and the fact David claims that the David Allen Company has more Notes databes than it does employees.j
Meanwhile, Internet.com’s Richard Adihikari wrote a comprehensive post on the entire event as well as the practice of GTD. Richard’s in particular is a great read and I highly recommend you click on over to his site and check it out.
Having seen the enormous success that Apple has had with the App Store and the way in which it appears to have single handedly altered the landscape of the mobile phone software market (at least in the US), Google has wasted no time in announcing their answer to Apple’s very successful offering, the Android App Market.
From a cursory view it looks like the guys and gals at the iPhone Dev Team not only did all the hard thinking for Apple when they created Installer.app and the infrastructure of the application environment that allowed users of jailbroken phones to find and load applications on their devices, but from what I can see it appears that they did most of the htinking for Google as well. I hope they get credit for their hard and innovative work.
At least this partially answers one of the big questions that developers had about Android applications; how they are going to get paid - which was a question I asked in a piece I authored for the Register Developer several months ago.
Of course how successful this will be depends upon the execution of the market. It will be difficult to top the ease of use that the Apple App Store delivers, if for no other reason than the standardized platform that the App Store services. How Google will make it as streamlined and user-friendly as the Apple product while still providing a way to differentiate between different handsets is still an open question. Another is whether the market will be as attractive to developers as Apple has become. When developing for Apple, developers know up front the potential universe of customers and they only have to write an application once. With Android the market is still fragmented which means, among other things, that the developer knows up front that either they are going to have to author many iterations of their applcation or be accessible to only a fraction of the possible market. Neither choice is appealing and both come with obvious costs.
For the end user though this state of affairs isn’t all bad and as competition heats up between the iPhone and other devices it is likely that one way that the manufacturers will try to make each platform that much more appealing is by offering more and cheaper applications. Clearly, the winner here is going to be the end user so long as the applications that are being developed are actually worth downloading. At this point I have enough iPhone flashlights and versions of sudoku to last me into the next century. What I don’t have is a decent graphing calculator, an alarm clock with a loud enough buzzer or a way to actually record a call on the iPhone from the iPhone. When will the developers actually tackle these tougher problems and when, for god’s sake, will we finally get cut and paste?
Have you ever stopped to think about how many different places you now have to keep track of online? Credit Card accounts, Banking, Stocks, PayPal, Ebay, MySpace, Flickr and the list goes on and on and on… Entire business models have been based simply upon keeping track of your passwords for all these sites but what no one has done is create a one-stop interface that lets you keep tabs on all the sites I’ve mentioned above plus dozens more from a single URL and with just one log-in. At least no one until now.
PageOnce is a start-up that does exactly what I’ve just described. The initial sign-up process takes just a few steps and once you’ve verified your the owner of the email address you’ve registered the web application starts walking you through adding all your accounts a sector at a time until you have filled out a surprising amount of real estate that does a pretty exceptional job of summarizing your online life on one page with one log in.
I spent a few minutes this evening speaking with PageOnce founders Guy Goldstein, CEO and Ahikam Kaufman, COO about their new application and equally exciting, their about to be released iPhone application, iOnce which should be available via the iPhone application store later this week. I got to take a look at their new iPhone application and it’s every bit as slick as their online version. This is a well thought out, intuitive and very easy to use application - figuring out what to do is definitely not a challenge and in only a few minutes you’ve consolidated your online life into one place.
Of course the big question you have to be asking here is what about security… and to be sure that’s the first thing that crossed my mind - especially when you’ve got all this information accessible on a mobile phone. What, I asked, if you lose your phone?
Guy explained to me that it’s not quite as potentially injurious as it might seem. That’s because the application doesn’t actually provide full blown access to all these accounts, just a window into them so that you can see what is happening with each.
In other words, if you lose your phone your finances aren’t in immediate danger but those nude photos you were hiding in your flickr account might be the subject of some viewing you hadn’t intended. More over you can contact PageOnce and disable access to your account in the event that it has been compromised - althought you’re probably going to want to notify your bank and credit card companies just in case someone wrote down account information.
During my talk with Guy and Ahikam, I actually realized that they have a couple of interesting opportunities related to security and fraud prevention. First, I suggested that they should offer an upgraded service that provides wallet protection for a fee. Since you’re registering all these accounts anyway, why not have PageOnce contact your credit card companies and other service providers if your wallet gets lost or stolen? Or have PageOnce be a one-stop-notification service to update all your providers that you’ve got a new address? I’d pay for such convenience and I’ll bet a lot of other people would too.
The other area where PageOnce may have a big opportunity is with the credit card companies providing anti-fraud services. After all, by putting consumers in much closer contact with what is happening on each of their accounts, we’re a lot more likely to notice an unexpected charge and take quick action before a thief manages to rack up some really damaging charges.
This is one of those ideas where as soon as you see it you say to yourself why didn’t I think of this? I know I did. All I can say is that I’m glad that someone was finally smart enough to make my life a little easier - PageOnce - as far as I’m concerned it’s a winner that will help you and me both get a few more things done every day.
Here’s a look at the PageOnce interface once you’ve set up a few accounts:
My friend and mentor Andy Abramson who authors the excellent blog, Working Anywhere. He has just posted an article called Tools of the Global Nomad that is a must-read for anyone that does any serious amount of work while on the road as well as folks that work from home but have the needs (or wants) of services comparable to those that any reasonably sized and appropriately equipped enterprise would have.
Andy’s list of service providers is very comprehensive however there’s one company missing and I think it is a vital one to have on your list if you travel in Europe at all and especially if you rely on mobile data in any way, shape, or form. That company is Yoigo. They’re a telecommunications service provider that sells 3G sim cards that work just about everywhere in Europe. The deal with them is that for about the equivalent of $1.25 per day you get unlimited voice and data with your own new international number.
These SIM cards are sold all over the place - you can get them at grocery stores, tobacco shops, etc. These cards, in and of themselves are enough reason to unlock your iPhone if you are planning on going to Europe. They mean the difference between being connected or not being connected (or being connected and not coming home to a $17,000 data bill - no I am not joking - I really did get one of those!)
Among the providers Andy lists are:
PhoneFusion, GrandCentral , Jazinga, Boingo , Skype, MaxRoam, GizmoProject, Truphone, Mobivox and many others. This is one of those “print it out and save it” sort of posts as it references a ton of best of class providers that can make it a lot easier and more economical to get things done and look good doing it.
I’m still shaking my head in wonder at the new Nokia E71. Is this really a phone by Nokia? This phone, which is barely thicker than the battery that powers it, is one of the all time sexiest phones I have ever seen. Hardly the sort of device made by the company that is to phones what Russia is to tanks and assault rifles.
Don’t get my wrong. I’m a die hard Nokia fan. I have many, many Nokia phones and I use them every single day. A least 8 of my lifetime top ten favorite devices have been Nokia phones but that doesn’t mean that I am so blinded by my Nokia gadget lust that I fail to see that Nokia usually makes phones more like tanks than like jewelry. This is not in and of itself altogether a bad thing. Nokia phones are by far the most durable, reliable and functional devices of their sort bar none.
But sexy? That’s hardly a word you see in conjunction with most Nokia devices. Until now.
Did I mention that the E71 is thin? How thin? It’s a bit difficult to measure something this thin but my guess is that it’s between 6 and 7 mm at the thickest point. What’s amazing is that in spite of the svelte package this is as fully featured a device as Nokia has ever introduced.
Let me give you a quick rundown on the specifications:
Form
Form: Candy bar with full keyboard
Dimensions: 4.49 x 2.24 x 0.39 in
Weight: 4.47 oz
Full keyboard
High quality QVGA display
Display and 3D
Size: 2.36″
Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels (QVGA)
Up to 16 million colors
TFT active matrix (QVGA)
Two customizable home screen modes
Connectors
Micro-USB connector, full-speed
2.5 mm Nokia AV connector
Power
Battery: BP-4L 1500 mAh Li-Po standard battery
Talk time:
- GSM up to 10 h 30 min
- WCDMA up to 4 h 30 min
Standby time:
- GSM up to 17 days
- WCDMA up to 20 days
- WLAN idle up to 6.9 days
Music playback time (maximum): 18 h
Memory
microSD memory card slot, hot swappable, max. 8 GB
As you no doubt noticed the device has GSM, Edge, UMTS, HSDPA, WiFi and a GPS radio. It also has a huge battery - the same battery, in fact, that comes in the much larger N810 Internet Tablet so you can pretty well anticipate that this phone is going to have about the best battery life of any phone you’ve ever used.
What does it do?
Out of the box it has support for Microsoft exchange mail as well as for Blackberry mail, though for that you’ll have to pay a subscription fee to Rimm. Out of the box it also has the ability to auto-detect your network settings and configure your services automatically so no holding for hours while someone at your carrier tries to look up how to set up MMS on your handset, it just configures itself.
TUAW is reporting that “Outpost“, an application still under development, will make Basecamp even more useful by supporting management of the application via your iPhone. Details are still fairly sparse at this time and it looks like we’ll have to wait a few more weeks to really see what the folks building Outpost are doing with their UI as even the images on their website state that they are under development and subject to change.
A lot of people are pretty excited about this developing software. Basecamp, by 37 signals is a very popular application, and many folks that follow the GTD productivity strategy have found that Basecamp is one of the most efficient and effective tools for helping to keep track of commitments, projects and the next actions that they entail.
Editors Note: Erratum. This article had a number of errors that have been corrected from the original version.
Applebriefs‘ Jeff Kabbe has done a spectacular job authoring a very detailed review of the GTD task management application Omnifocus. Mac owners have probably seen other applications developed by Omni Group, particuarly OmniOutliner which comes preinstalled on many machines from Apple. The company has also developed OmniGraffle, OmniPlan and roughly half a dozen other useful applications. His review is so comprehensive that it makes no sense for me to do anything except refer you to his blog where you can read it for yourself.
Meanwhile, the guys folks at Omni Group have made a splash of their own by giving folks a preview of their soon to be released iPhone application. In addition to supporting live sync - supposedly even capable of background syncing tasks to Apple’s new MobileMe service and being FREE to registered users of the desktop version of Omnifocus, the iPhone version is also location aware and thus can automatically identify various contexts and provide you with task details that are contextually appropriate.
As you might imagine there’s quite a lot of excitement about this forthcoming application. Omni Group says that it will be released about the same time as the new 3G iPhone goes on sale. You can learn about more about the soon-to-be-released application in the comments on the Omni Group blog
Lastly, there’s a small bit of news for GTDtimes.. Evan Carmichael maintains a list of the 50 top Productivity Blogs. When the updated list was released recently I was dismayed to see that GTDtimes was not listed. I suspected that this might be due to the fact that we only launched in March of this year and that with so many good productivity resources Evan might not have even come across GTDtimes yet.
I figured that I had nothing to lose by writing him a note to introduce ourselves and Evan surprised me by adding GTDtimes to his list as a special mention just below the top eight sites listed in the GTD Category. I thought it was incredibly cool of Evan to take the time to do this - most folks running popular sites probably wouldn’t have been so readily accommodating.
Incidentally, Evan’s Top 50 list is a rich productivity resource and his site is packed with useful content for entrepreneurs, GTD’ers, and really anyone that wants to be more productive, more successful and more balanced in their approach to work and life. I highly reccomend you check it out (and mention that GTDtimes sent you).
At this time the details are sketchy, however this link: http://qik.com/video/97932 which is courtesy of Debi Jones of MobileJones appears to be CNN reporting that the new iPhone will be announced a little bit later this morning at the Mac Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. Little else is known about the phone, though many analysts have suggested that it will have GPS in addition to the ability to connect to AT&T’s faster HSDPA network (where that network is actually available).
There has also been a consistent rumor that this phone will sport an improved camera, the ability to capture video as well as still imagery, and that it will have Flash capability.
Regardless of what people suspect and what the analysts, pundits and rumormongers churn out we’ll all know soon enough when “The Steve” steps on stage and says: “and here she is: the new 3G iPhone, the most advanced phone in the world. Isn’t she beautiful?” - oh wait, hasn’t he said that already in previous years???
Since we missed our normal Sunday videos this past week, I thought I’d share with you this quick video about GlueyNotes; a list management application that has been built primarily for your iPhone. You can set up your lists - which include projects, next actions, and even nested next actions (tasks and sub tasks, and even sub, sub tasks), as well as notes, links and contexts.
GlueyNotes is lightweight, fast and formatted specifically for your iPhone. It also appears to me like it would lend itself to individual creativity and customization.
I know that there are a lot of people that have been using the iPhone for GTD. Personally, I didn’t expect the iPhone to be nearly as exceptional as I’ve found it to be - in fact, my low expectations were probably the worst call I’ve ever made in terms of a technology prediction. While it is true that the iPhone leaves something to be desired in terms of actual content creation (the N95 and N82 *review pending on my other site) are the undisputed kings in that arena, the iPhone is simply a game changer when it comes to mobile content consumption, whether it’s browsing the web, listening to music, watching video or reading email, the iPhone has set a new standard in functionality, ease of use and sheer gee whiz when it comes to the portable However, there is a lot more to the iPhone than most people realize. From the thousands of applications available for a jailbroken iPhone to the web applications open to everyone, the total volume of applications that have been developed (not to mention those about to be released using the iPhone SDK) is testimony to the degree of interest and excitement with which this device has been met by the developer world.
That said, there’s still a big gap between hard core geeks comfortable with hacking (and risking damage to) a $400 dollar device and the average person who would just like to do a few additional things with his or her phone. This is the niche that I see O’Reilly’s product filling. Not only is the online publication (soon to be followed with a book from what they say) full of helpful hints (did you know that simply how you hold your iPhone can make a 100% difference in Edge performance?) but the information can take the mystery out of jailbreaking your device, explain how to use installer.app and generally make it possible for all but the most irremediably tech-tarded among us to do just about anything we want to do with this device.
O’Reilly is offering a free thirty day trial (no credit card required) and after that it’s $5.99 per month. I read the first two chapters and in spite of being a hard core gadget junkie, I found out a few things that I myself didn’t know (including the tip above). I heartily recommend checking this out - it may just be the publication of the year.
Bloggers from around the net were in attendance and they were quick to post on David’s rather surprising dual appearances (actually the first appearance had been announced on the Office2.o website months ago) but David’s second appearance, sitting on the GTD Applications Panel was a delightful surprise made all the much more exciting for what David revealed… (we’ll get to that in another post). Among the bloggers that had something to say about David’s speaking at Office 2.0, Ed Brill was excited about David’s discussion of lotus notes and the fact David claims that the David Allen Company has more Notes databes than it does employees.j
