Posts Tagged ‘jott’

Google Notebook and Jott become less useful

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

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.

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A good calendar is an assumed GTD prerequisite, isn’t it?

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

When you first start digging into GTD, most models assume that you already have a working, reliable calendar.  You have one, don’t you?

In a talk that David Allen gave a Google a while back, he told the audience that in their time together, none of them were thinking “Where am I going to be a week from Friday at 3:15?”.  The reason is because they trust that system.  They know that their calendar is updated and referenced frequently, so they’ll be aware of any items on their agenda for that day.  That’s what GTD tries to do with the rest of your life.

If you can get all of your tasks into a system, and your mind can trust that you’ll access the system often enough to avoid letting things slip through the cracks, then you can free your mind from worrying about those things.  It’s a beautiful thing.

I don’t think it’s worth getting deep into calendar specifics, but make sure yours is solid.  Most of you have a system that you use and trust, and that’s great.  However, if you’re looking for some ideas to improve your system, I’ll lay mine out and maybe you can get something from it.

  • Google Calendar.  Solid system, accessible from anywhere, easy to share data with co-workers, friends, etc.
  • SaiSuke for iPhone.  It’s $10 (though there is a free test version as well) and it does a great job of syncing itself to your Google Calendar.  Very handy when you’re on the go.
  • Nozbe and Toodledo.  I’m going back and forth between these two programs (more about that in a later post), but both can push your time-sensitive tasks directly to your Google Calendar, or a variety of other calendars such as iCal.
  • Jott.  You can Jott items directly to your calendar.  It’s slick, though I really don’t use it for that very often.
  • You can also SMS items directly to your calendar.  Send a message to 48368 (“GVENT”) with something like “meeting with sue tuesday at 3″ and it’ll put it on there for you.

The other key is to reference it often.  When I’m at home, I leave a browser open with tabs for Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Reader always open so they’re available for quick access.  Other tabs alongside them come and go, but those always remain.

Any other tips for making the best use of your calendar?

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