I’m a big fan of Evernote, even though I don’t use it for GTD (I use Nozbe for that). However, I find it to be a great resource for reference material and notes. I love that it has a Windows version, a Mac version, a nice web interface and a slick iPhone app. Today, the iPhone app got even better.
Some of the enhancements:
Landscape view — turn your phone on its side to get a wide keyboard!
Thumbnail view — turn your phone on its side in the notes view to get a neat thumbnail view to flip through everything.
Sort your favorites
Embedded browser — external links will launch in an embedded browser, to make it easy to get back into your notes after you’ve viewed the page
A bunch of other improvements — most minor speed improvements and bug fixes.
If you are looking for a great tool to keep your notes organized on your iPhone, this is the one you way. If you already have it, go upgrade!
As promised, the Nozbe 2.0 beta is now available. It’s very obviously a beta (missing some features, etc), but it’s well on its way. The new interface is a lot cleaner and a ton faster. When it’s done, this could be something pretty awesome.
Check out the video below for more info, or head out to Nozbe and try it for yourself!
Robert Scobe, a self-proclaimed “tech evangelist” (his Twitter account has nearly 60,000 followers) is climbing back onto the GTD wagon. He’s played with it before, but seems to be giving it another good shot.
As always, Scoble has documented his time with Michael Dolan (a David Allen Co. coach) via video. Here is a glimpse of what they did:
Scoble is running everything through Outlook, which is a popular way to manage GTD. If he posts more videos on how he’s getting things running again, I’ll be sure to post them here.
Google has just released a new tool to sync your Google Calendar to your iPhone or Windows Mobile device, and it’s pretty slick!
For my iPhone, I had previously been using the excellent (but not free) “SaiSuke” app to handle calendaring. The problem was that you had to manually sync it, and it took a few minutes to sync every time, even over wi-fi. The Google solution does it via “push” in the background, so you’re always up to date!
In my case, this works out great. I use Nozbe to handle my actions, which is tied to my Google Calendar. Any action that has a specific due date shows up in Google Calendar for that date. Now those automatically sync to my phone. It’s working very well so far.
The only issue I had is an iPhone limitation — you can only have ONE Exchange account on your phone, and this requires it. In my case, my work e-mail was already connected via Exchange. However, I didn’t sync calendar or contacts through it, so I switched it to IMAP and then install Google via Exchange.
Finally, here is a short video showing how it works:
It’s finally here! Search for “Nozbe” in the app store and you’ll find it. You can read our brief write-up about it’s features, but we’ll be posting more once we’ve had our hands on it for a few days.
It’s taken longer than expected, but the good folks at Nozbe have finally submitted their iPhone application to Apple, and it should show up in the app store within a few weeks.
Nozbe already has an excellent iPhone-formatted site, but an app will be much better — faster loading, more complex, etc. They have written a nice overview of the app, showcasing some of it’s features. It really looks awesome, and I’ve very excited to get my hands on it.
The app will be free and will carry the same limits as your main Nozbe account.
For more information about Nozbe, I recommend you check out our Nozbe vs. Toodledo post.
You 2.0 has just posted a neat video of David Allen in his home office, going through his “collection” process after a trip. After watching it, I’m feeling pretty good about my sytem, as it’s quite similar. I have a few more high-tech tools in my arsenal, but all-in-all it’s roughly the same. Check it out below!
Getting rolling with GTD has brought a few unexpected benefits to my life — an improved prayer life and an easier time falling asleep at night.
I’m personally a Christian, but this applies to anyone of any faith, or anyone that simply likes to meditate. I’ve always had a hard time focusing for very long, because my mind was racing with ideas, things to do, things I forgot to do, etc. By getting everything in a system that I trust, it really does clear your mind. It’s been quite remarkable.
This carries over to my sleeping habits. Again, my mind used to churn when I lay in the bed and it would sometimes make it hard to fall asleep. While I still have worries and anxieties about various aspects of life, I have fewer things to worry about than before.
It’s amazing to see the little things that GTD can help with. What other unexpected benefits have you seen once you got invested with GTD?
I’ve been a huge fan of Gmail for a few years now. I can run a variety of addresses through my single Gmail account, then access it all from anywhere. One especially neat thing about Gmail is the “archive” feature. When you’re done with an e-mail, you can just tell it to “go away”, whether you label it or not. If you need it later, just search for it. It’s great!
In trying to keep my inbox at zero, archive is gold. As a general rule, whenever I send an e-mail to someone and require action back on it, I archive it. When they reply, it’ll pull the entire conversation back into the inbox. Perfect!
Now Google has saved me a step. My old method of sending and archiving was:
Send the e-mail.
I’m returned to the inbox.
Select that conversation.
Archive it.
Move on to the next one.
Thanks to Google Labs (go to [Settings] –> [Labs] in Gmail), you can enable a button called “Send & Archive”.
Now my method looks like this:
“Send & Archive” the e-mail.
I’m returned to the inbox.
Move on to the next one.
It’s just a small thing, but those small things add up. I send maybe 50 e-mails per day. Suppose this new button saves me 5 seconds each. That’s about 4 minutes per day, or nearly 24 hours per year. I can save an entire day just because of this little button.
I’m a big believer in streamlining my most frequent tasks to shave precious seconds that can add up.
What tips do you have to help people shave off a little more time?
Google Notebook and Jott are two of the cogs in my GTD system, and both just announced news that makes them less desireable.
Jott has just announced that they are ending their free service as of February 2. I was considering upgrading to their paid service anyhow so I could send notes directly to Nozbe, but I hate that they’re losing the free service. I’m torn as to whether I should pay for that service or switch to something like Dial2Do and hope that they include Nozbe support in the future. I’m thinking I’ll pay for Jott (it’s only $4/month), but we’ll see.
The other bad news involves Google Notebook. Google just announced that they’re closing up some services and ceasing development on some others. They’re effectively dumping Jaiku and Dodgeball, and slowing closing out Google Video (which was a long time coming, since they own YouTube). The official word on Google Notebook is:
Starting next week, we plan to stop active development on Google Notebook. This means we’ll no longer be adding features or offer Notebook for new users. But don’t fret, we’ll continue to maintain service for those of you who’ve already signed up. As part of this plan, however, we will no longer support the Notebook Extension, but as always users who have already signed up will continue to have access to their data via the web interface at http://www.google.com/notebook.
I’ve been trying to decide whether to stick with Google Notebook or move all of that content to Evernote. I think that decision has just been made.
I’m a big fan of Evernote, even though I don’t use it for GTD (I use Nozbe for that). However, I find it to be a great resource for reference material and notes. I love that it has a Windows version, a Mac version, a nice web interface and a slick iPhone app. Today, the iPhone app got even better.
