If I could do that, I could just use Expose’s shortcut (Command + F3 in my MacBook) – or the Show Desktop we’ve discussed before – to show the desktop to see everything that I have to do printed there. Of course, those with large screens will have everything visible at all time even without the trick.

With my recent adventure with GeekTool, everything comes full circle. Now my tasks and events can be shown beautifully on the desktop, and I can look at them anytime I need to with a single stroke of a shortcut key combination.

To be able to show tasks and events from iCal on the desktop, we need help from two freewares: the previously mentioned GeekTool and iCalBuddy.

In short, iCalBuddy is a command-line utility that can be used to query the OS X calendar database for items. Being a command-line based application, iCalBuddy is the perfect scripting solution to be used along with GeekTool.

The installation used to be something that ordinary people would try to avoid – involving working with command lines in the Terminal. But the latest version of iCalBuddy comes with an “install.command” file, which will make the process a snap. All you need to do is double-click it to start the installation in Terminal and then continue the process by pressing any key (or Ctrl + C to cancel).

Now that the installation is done, let’s add some to-dos and events to the desktop

After installing iCalBuddy, displaying iCal’s to-do and events on the desktop is a matter of adding new shell items from GeekTool. This means dragging out shell geeklets from GeekTool prefPane to the desktop and editing the items.

The most important part of the geeklet is the Command pane. This is the place where you write the command line to tell GeekTool what to do. This is the basic command line for iCalBuddy:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy *****

The “******” is where you put the customization strings. There are a whole lot of variations that you could use with iCalBuddy’s command line. There are some manuals that come with the installation file of iCalBuddy that you can refer to for further information. You could also access the program’s manual page by running “man icalBuddy” in the terminal to read the documentation for all of the arguments you can use when calling icalBuddy.

As for me, these are the strings that I use for my desktop.

To display iCal’s to-do, I use:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy –excludeTaskProps “notes” -nc uncompletedTasks | sed -e “s/*/–/” | sed -e “s/!/!!/”

While to display iCal’s events, I use:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy -nc eventsToday+7 | sed -e “s/*/–/” | sed -e “s/!/!!/”

These strings are not mine. I picked them up from a discussion between iCalBuddy users and the creator. So, the credit goes to them. And as you can see, what the customization strings do are:

• removing notes from the tasks (–excludeTaskProps “notes”)
• removing the calendar name (-nc)
• changing the * symbol in front of each item with — symbols (sed -e “s/*/–/”)
• displaying events for one whole week (+7)
• emphasizing the overdue tasks and events (sed -e “s/!/!!/)

You could do your own experiment adding and removing strings (or not).

Beautifying the look

Honestly, I spent so much more time experimenting on the look than on the function; dragging the position, changing the color, adjusting the size, that sort of thing. And here’s the final result (for now).

You could just let your creativity run loose and design your own. But in case you are wondering, I’m using Apple’s standard wallpaper, and Gill Sans – Regular and Thin – for the font. As for the layout, size and color, I think the screenshot has revealed them all.

While doing this article, I also found out several communities of GeekTool users who “show off” and share their desktop designs. If you’ve tried GeekTool and think that your design is cool enough, you could share them using the comments below.

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SlateBox is a web application that may seem knotty at first. But grope around a bit and you soon realize its child’s play. Is that why it’s called SlateBox?

Here I am getting ahead of myself – What’s SlateBox after all?

Very simply, SlateBox is a collaborative visualization tool. Visualization tools are apps which help us plot or draw an idea into an image or diagram. The diagrams are meant to represent relationships between the ideas on display. Mindmaps are what can be called visualization aids. We have covered a few awesome Mindmapping applications, both online and offline. SlateBox is a similar but also a bit different at the same time.

SlateBox is a mindmapping application and a bit more

Although it can used as such, SlateBox helps you with the visual ideas and also enables you to collaborate and share those ideas with others in real time. The visual ideas are built on ‘Slates’ which are like a blank canvas. We mentioned mindmaps, but SlateBox can be a collaborative visualization that for a whole lot of things like – designs, organizational charts, flow charts, process diagrams, work planning etc.

Let’s see how SlateBox works

1. SlateBox requires a simple sign-in and you are ready to roll out your first slate.
2. The basic building blocks of SlateBox are Nodes which are like droppable symbols standing for a step or stage of your schematic. The interface of SlateBox is three paned with the center pane being the main work area. The left panel is the Template Panel from where we drag and drop Nodes onto the Drop Panel (the central pane). The right placed panel is for setting the properties of the panels and the nodes.
3. A fresh slate starts from a click on New Slate. Enter a name, description and select a template. The choices seem thin now. You can also use a website as a template by specifying a URL. Templates are boilerplates with some default nodes. You can also start with an empty template and build it up from scratch.
4. Pick a node from the Template Panel and drop it into the Drop Pane. A mouseover on each node shows a small bar on top with some icons. These are for resizing the node, entering text, creating the relationship arrows, creating a duplicate node and deleting the node.
   
5. Click the little pencil icon to define some text for this node. You can use the right panel for setting the visual properties for individual nodes. And yes, you can embed video or an image in the node.
   
6. To add some subordinate ideas, use the Template Panel to add subordinate nodes.
   
7. Now, click the star shaped icon on each Node to bring out the relationship lines. Drag them across the nodes to connect one to the other. The properties of the relationship lines can be changed from the right panel. I had a bit of problem with the connectors — one of them just wouldn’t connect. Probably, a beta glitch.
   
8. That’s it! Your first simple mindmap is finished. You don’t have to actively save your work because the Slate is always auto-saved.

Working together on one Slate

The collaboration engine is still not fully explained and frankly, I couldn’t try it out for lack of ‘collaborators’ in real time. But according to the site, collaboration will – broadcast changes in real time to all users logged under one shared account. The status panel will also reflect the user who initiated the changes. Changes can also be locked by a user so the Slate can be presented to all users simultaneously.

SlateBox also provides a developer API which can be embedded in websites and used as small web applications. But that’s beyond the scope of an average user.

What a normal user would find in SlateBox is an easy to use and easier to setup collaborative visualization tool. An uncomplicated tool like SlateBox is a fit for small teams and tutor-pupil scenarios. Though in beta, SlateBox shows some promise as a fast collaborative visual mapper.

What are your first impressions on SlateBox (Beta)?

Image Credit: LukePDQ

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But recently, I could barely keep up with everything that happened around me just relying on my biological RAM alone. While I’ve tried several free to do applications to overcome my anxiety, I couldn’t find free apps that can match the power of Apple’s iCal calendar.

So I chose iCal Calendars to help me manage my life better. One problem though, adding multiple tasks and events to iCal requires a rather lengthy process, including keeping it open at all time. Luckily, there’s FlexCal. This small application which reside in the System Preferences is designed to overcome that very problem.

The installation and settings

The installation process is quick and easy. Double click the prefPane file and choose which users you want to install this app to. Unless you use your Mac with several other users and don’t want the other users to use FlexCal, choose “Install for all users of this computer“.

Then the System Preferences will be opened. Since FlexCal is still in 32-bit, System Preferences needed to be restarted before you can tamper with FlexCal settings.

There are several things that you should adjust to make FlexCal comfortable to use. First the “Setup” tab. Click the “Start FlexCal” button (obviously) and tick the “Start FlexCal at login” box to make sure that this app will be available at all time.

Then you need to set your own shortcut to be able to access FlexCal quickly. Click on the shortcut field and press your chosen combination.

Don’t forget to choose which window should be opened every time you hit that shortcut key. If you add Tasks a lot, choose “Task Window“. The same thing goes the other way around. But whichever you choose, it’s not that important (and you’ll see why later on).

Next is the “Advanced” tab. This is the place to further configure FlexCal. You could choose to add an alarm to all new Events and how early should the alarm goes off. You could also choose which calendar should be the default place for all tasks and events, and whether you prefer to use Textual or Graphical style to display the calendar.

Using FlexCal

Using this app is a only matter of hitting the shortcut key. If you choose “Task Window” as the default, this window will appear every time the key combination is pressed.

But you could easily change the window to “Events Window” by hitting the combination one more time (and continuously alternate between the two).

Hit enter after typing the task/event and it will be saved to iCal. To cancel it, use the Esc key.

You could move between the field using the Tab key (forward) and the Shift + Tab key (backward), but you couldn’t edit the “Calendar” and “Priority” drop-down menu without using the mouse. The rodent is also needed to change the style of calendar from Textual to Graphical (and vice versa).

I wish the developer would add the ability to use the keyboard to its full extent so the process of adding Tasks and Events to iCal could be done without the need to lift a finger from the keyboard.

Other than that minor annoyance, FlexCal is something that every iCal user should have.

Do you use iCal calendars to manage your life? Do you know better free alternatives to add Tasks and Events to iCal quickly and easily? Share using the comments below.

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Personally I’ve never felt quite at home in Word to write a story. Instead, I’ve always been using creative writing suites or pre-production packages.

That’s right, there is screenwriting software that’s specifically designed to help you formulate ideas and work in a simple, but flexible creative environment.

Celtx

I’ve written an article about yWriter in the past, a tool that would help you with outlining and working on your stories. A creative writing suite, if you will. Celtx is different. Oh sure, Celtx will be able to help you with your creative writing, but it’ll do so much more.

Celtx is screenwriting software that aims to aid in all media pre-production. So what does this mean? Whether you’re working on a novel, a film, a comic, a radio or podcast broadcasting, or even a video game, Celtx will help you put down those ideas and help you plan them in a quick and efficient manner.

With all types of features and support, you won’t have to jump over and through between five different screenwriting software applications anymore (if you even used any). Everything can be written, planned and colaborated from within Celtx.

Below we’ll take a look at some of the most prominent features in the application. Believe me, if you’re in the creative business, this is one application you’ll want to add to your arsenal.

Writing Suite

For the storytellers, Celtx comes equipped with the same basic tools you’d expect and a few more advanced ones as well. With a place to list your characters, locations and the like, you don’t have to worry about losing track again. When outlining a story, you can also use the storyboard feature you’ll be discussing below. One cooks with the ingredients at hand, and in our case there’s a buffet already laid out.

One of the most important aspects of Celtx – and its greatest features – is the ease with which one can embed other types of media. If you feel the need to add a picture, drawing or movie fragment to your work, or even an mp3, you can do so with a few clicks of the mouse. One of the reasons I prefer to use the Celtx screenwriting software sis that it doesn’t try to force you into certain ‘development roads’. You can use your own creative way to get at your destination.

In the writing category, Celtx comes with a few different editor flavors: Screenplay, stageplay,  AV scripts, audio play, comic book and text. It doesn’t matter in what branch you’re working, Celtx does not discriminate.

Storyboards

I have already mentioned the storyboards. Although you can indeed use them when you’re writing a novel, they’re much more commonly used in film production.

Create different sequences and easily add individual pictures and drawings, or even do a batch import. Label and narrate your pictures to create a detailed and intricate storyline. If you want, you can even specify the camera shot you intend to use.

Drag and drop groups of images to change the order of events. When you’re done (for the moment), print the pages or share them with your partners. If you want you can even play them in a full screen diashow.

Download Celtx for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux at Celtx

Believe me, this doesn’t even begin to describe what Celtx can do. I’ve been using a lot of software, but this is certainly one of the most amazing screenwriting software suites I’ve ever seen. If you’ve got something to add, or are left with an unanswered question, head for the comments section below.

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To users who would much rather not pay $25 a year to access RTM through their iPhone, luckily, there is an alternative to RTM’s own iPhone app. Milpon is the only iPhone todo app in the iTunes store that is both free and functional for managing your RTM tasks.

When you first open the iPhone todo app, it takes you to an overview of the tasks that are due in the next week, as well as tasks that are overdue. Tasks are sorted in order of due date, in alphabetical order. The priorities of the tasks are written under the date. From here, you can complete tasks by touching the square, add tasks by clicking the (+) button in the upper right hand corner, or edit tasks by clicking their entries in the list. Doing either of the latter two will take you to a screen that looks like this:

The first line following the arrow is where you input the name of your task. Unfortunately, unlike the RTM website, you can’t add priorities and other details by using hash tags. To set a due date, click the calendar icon, which brings up a full sized calendar.

This calendar is possibly my favorite feature of Milpon. You can scroll through the months by clicking the left and right arrows by the Month and Year entry, and then pick the exact date you want by clicking the corresponding  box on the calendar. This will bring you back to the main Add page, where you can set the other details like which list you want the task in, etc.

Another great thing about Milpon’s Add page is that, when you are assigning tags to a task, Milpon brings up a list of the tags that you have already created, and adds the tag you tap to the task you’re creating.

When you are done creating a task, it will be filed with all of your other tasks, where it will be viewable in three ways. The screenshot above is of Milpon’s home screen. By clicking Overview, you will see a screen like the very first screenshot above, that details all the tasks due in the next week. If you click “List,” you’ll see all of your lists, followed by the number of tasks in that list. If you click “Tag,” you’ll see a list of your tags, followed by the number of tasks that have that tag.

I find the option to sort your tasks by their tags extremely useful, because you can set contexts (such as the location that your task should be completed at) as your tags, and then sort your tasks so that they are location specific. Then, you can view all of your “@phone” tasks while you’re making calls, and call everyone in one sitting.

Since Milpon is a relatively new app, it is still undergoing active development. For example, the latest update features automatic syncing! Instead of having to manually sync like in the previous releases, Milpon now syncs when you open the app. Unfortunately this means that you’ll still have to sync manually after making changes, but that’s still better than no automated syncing at all.

You can sync manually by clicking the refresh icon in the upper left hand corner of the home screen. Syncing usually takes quite a while, which is a bit of a drawback, but you can still view and edit tasks while syncing, so that shouldn’t be too much of a concern.

I’ve been an avid fan since Milpon first launched, and it’s come a long way since its infant days. I foresee it making great progress as it gains more users, and I hope that it will become the RTM iPhone app of choice for non-Pro users.

Do you use Remember the Milk? Give Milpon a shot, and tell us what you think of it, in comparison to RTM’s own iPhone app.

Milpon

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Up until now I have sent out meeting invitations via email for a date and time that I wanted to meet on. Then the responders would send me back comments on whether it was good for them or not.  If it wasn’t, and they were crucial to the meeting, we would re-schedule. But how about a meeting scheduler you can use before the meeting?

Wouldn’t it be nice to send out a link to your attendees where they could click on several possibilities for the meeting? You can then use the results to gather when it would be best to have the meeting. Have you used the new cover sheets on the TPS reports? No you haven’t? Well then we will need to have a meeting about that this weekend.

Let’s use the meeting scheduler When is Good to schedule it.  You do not need to sign up or pay for an account to use the functionality we will talk about in this article.

The features the free basic account has are shown below. This is really all we need to get the job done. But if you want to brand it or get a few simple options in there then by all means pay for a account. But as I said before, we are using this on the free account without signing up.

I clicked on pricing and then created an event under the Basic heading. Then you are off to create your event. You will see a calendar and a button to create an event. First you will need to name your event and hit that button.

I named my event Test Event 1 and hit the create event button to continue on to selecting dates and times that are good for me.

Then you will see a message that instructs you to choose times and dates for your events. These will be the tentative times shown to the respondents of your email.

I notched off Saturday October 31st (Halloween!) at 2pm and Sunday November 1st at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm. These will be the only choices the users can choose between to keep things simple.

Once you have completed everything, you will get a super secret code. This code will enable your non-registered users to see the results of your survey. You can see mine below and actually use it to retrieve my results.

Now you are ready to compose an email, shoot out so instant messages or even send out a snail mail mailer. You will be given the link to send out, the link to go to where you will be able to review the responses from your survey. If you actually want to see how the user will see it, follow this link and feel free to make a selection or two and submit it.

You can also choose if you want the meeting scheduler to email you the responses as they come in:

You can go and view the results of my survey here.

This is the page that the user will see to make their choices:

To check the results of your survey, hit the enter results code link on the home page. This is the screen where you can enter your results code:

And now the moment you have all been waiting for….the results!

This is the screen you should hope to see. You will get this when one item matches across all the respondents. If not you will see something (more likely) like this:

Good luck on your meeting! Do you use a better free meeting scheduler? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

When Is Good

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I can think of all types of situations this would help with. A friend of mine is in this exact situation. They are going to be doing some renovations themselves and they have almost no budget. How do they draw up plans? Right now it is on graph paper and nowhere near printed to scale.

I looked and I looked and could not find much. But then it happened… Just like that I found a program that is either installable or available via the internet that lets you virtually plan out rooms. It is called Sweet Home 3D. We will be looking at the web version today which is located at Sweet Home 3D.

Did I mention it works on Mac and Linux as well? Well it does, so I hope that calms down some of you who feel we leave you out

Let’s take a look at how it works. When you first arrive here, you will see this screen. Note you can register to save your design or if you are a privacy nut feel free to design and run!

So, you have items you can add on your left hand side and the grid to put them on on your right hand side. I cropped some of the screen off so you could see it better in our limited width here. Select an item from the left and its dimensions appear below like so:

Then you can drag your item to anywhere on your grid. You can start virtually planning out rooms or start by laying out windows and walls. It is very easy. On top of that you can modify the size of each object so it can relate to your real world situations. Just double click on the dimensions and you will see this screen:

You can check the check box to display the name you give the item or leave it alone to suppress it. there are so many options to play with for each item including angle, elevation as well as color, mirrored shape or hidden (visible). Next let’s drag some items to our canvas.

Here is me adding some bathroom fixtures and a door.

And here is some more creativity:

You see, as I add the items in the top portion, it is rendered below so you can get a feel for it. Excuse me as I go design my pseudo playboy mansion. Maybe I could let some Sims live in it until I can afford it.

Do you know of any free autocad virtual room planners that are easy to use and have a small learning curve? We would love to check it out as well. Leave comments, thoughts or death threats in the comments kids!   In the meantime, check out these equivalents by Anthony and by Ryan.

Sweet Home 3D

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With the Web, information isn’t a problem…information overload is. A few clicks and you find yourself navigating away from the information you wanted. What we all want is a single window giving us career occupation descriptions on a list of different career choices.

Mindopia seeks to answer that call by cutting short the path from career research to job hunting. Mindopia calls itself a career discovery website. Positioning itself as a single point source for job seekers to get the ‘inside scoop on careers’.

Old fashioned career planning wasn’t bad, was it?

Not at all, but don’t you feel that it was a bit too toilsome? Starting with a gut feeling about what we wanted to do…getting influenced by our peers or parents…going after subjects of our interest…oops, only to find that the reality of 9 to 5 work life was a bit different from what we had conjured up. A generation back we leapt before we looked. Some of us landed on our feet and some didn’t. Those of us who didn’t, started wishing that we researched a bit more before the leap.

Is the web a better career hunting ground?

Mindopia (beta) is a new fangled Web 2.0 career discovery site to view career occupation descriptions and other details about a comprehensive list of different careers. So let me roll back my years and see how I would approach a writing career with journalism.

1. The homepage looks clean and uncluttered with a list of featured careers, a career search bar and six tiny video thumbnails which looks like video clips of old pros giving advice on their particular expertise.



2. A little My Page link on the top tells me that it would be better if I register and create a profile of my own. It’s easy because it’s free. Add and edit your profile with details to make it complete.



3. That done, let’s see what I can find for my interest in a journalism career. From My Page, I can click on the Explore careers dropdown which lists all careers currently covered by the site or I can use the top search bar.



4. My selection takes me to the career page with all of its laid out sections. The information covers the following areas –
   • Career Advice from Those in the Field.
   • Salary Potential.
   • Find Schools.
   • Top Job Skills Needed.
   • Top Companies.
   • Jobs in your area.
   • Headline News.
   • Top Websites.
   • Top Books/DVDs.
   • About (which covers the significant details about the field).
5. Three sections are of immediate interest to me as a first timer. Career Advice from Those in the Field is a bunch of video podcasts by veterans who answer the fundamentals a career seeker might ask.



6. The About section also delivers a lot of background info I need on my profession of choice.



7. The third area of immediate interest is of course the Salary Potential section. Clicking on the graph takes me into a page with a few wizards that let me assess the financial attributes of my job.



8. The other sections add to all the inputs I will need to make an informed decision. Each detail is also a link which serves to expand on the info given. For instance, clicking on one of the resources under Top Companies takes me to a more expanded list of companies in this profession. I can click on Add to Favorites to add the resource to my profile or I can click on Find Jobs to see the kind of opportunities available near my area. Clicking on the job listings takes me to the recruitment site page where I can apply for the job.



9. Similarly, I can expand Find Schools to use the search tool for locating a training resource.



10. Each section also has the social networking angle covered through a Contribute link. Members can recommend any career worthy info by clicking the link. The Discussions section is the message board where members can chit chat and add there two bits worth. Though, I couldn’t find any ongoing thread on Editor/Journalism careers.

Trawling through the Editor/Journalism info given on Mindopia, I have got a fair idea of how to approach my choice of vocation. Mindopia succeeds to an extent in bringing me closer to my career.

Is Mindopia a one stop solution?

It can be a stepping stone but being a beta site it still suffers a few drawbacks. The first noticeable one is the still limited selection of careers. New age careers like being a radio jockey or an instructional designer are absent. Topical careers like environmental sciences should have been a default addition.

The profile page also seems a bit threadbare. A more targeted bio would have served a candidate better than generic information. I found uploading a photo particularly hard with its limitation of 104×25 maximum sizes.

The absence of a Help section or a FAQ also sometimes made me feel lost.

But the cons apart, what I really liked about this work in progress site were its comprehensive sections on the careers. Expert-speak videos arranged around questions a beginner usually asks, makes taking the first step a lot easier. Job searching is generally a local activity so it will benefit US residents directly. Of course, international students can find it worthy of a visit too.

A beta site needs all the feedback it can get. Let us know if you like what Mindopia offers in theory and fact.

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Toodledo is a surprisingly good to do list manager. It is really awesome and I thought I would show it to you today. If you wear many hats and have lots of tasks to do throughout the day you need some sort of task management system. If you don’t, you will fail – epically.

The web application features include the ability to use folders, subtasks, due-dates, priorities, tags, contexts, goals, notes, and time estimates. Did I mention that it also works seamlessly with the iPhone?

Let’s take a good look at ToodleDo :

You will need to sign up for a free account. You will see the sign in box on the right hand side and right below that will be the box to register. Hit that Green check mark next to the register button to continue.

All you have to give them is an email address and a password. You can also set up an account using your OpenID. There is a hyper link for this right below the sign in button.

Once you are logged in you will see the overview as you can see below.

Your menu bar is on the left but I mainly work out of the To-Do list. You will see two items already there for you to look at and play with. There will also be a tool tip telling you to check out the account settings page to dictate how the tasks are laid out. I did not see much difference in their two options. Clicking the Show Details option shows all the details associated with each task as you can see below:

Now let’s add our own item to the list. Simply hit the Add item button in the upper right hand corner and you will get a screen that looks like this:

Those are the basic fields and you will also see two buttons in the right hand side that say Add multiple tasks and Import tasks. The add multiple tasks window looks like this:

And the import window looks like this:

That is just a tip of the iceberg.  When it comes to importing and exporting, there are 3 more pages of options. But I digress and let’s get back to the actual task management online application.

Running down the menu the first item is Sharing. This enables you to let the world see your to-do list as well as your calendar and other options.

The calendar option shows you a calendar with your tasks on them. You can also choose to use Google Calendar instead. It is a simple check box under the calendar option.

The scheduler is a pay feature so on we move to the Goals section:

There is still Notes and History that are available for free and very handy for tracking completed tasks and adding, importing or exporting notes again with a plethora of options!

Do you have a favorite To Do task management online application? Share it with us in the comments!

Toodledo

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We’ve reviewed quite a lot of different tools that allow you to be more productive, organized and collaborative, such as Shareflow,Tokbox and Notely, but the search has not ended.  Today we’re going to take a look at Ubidesk, a fresh take on online team collaboration.

Launched just a couple of months ago, Ubidesk has already attracted the attention of the media and presents a solid feature list as well as a good user interface. Leveraging the SaaS (Software as a Service) concept, Ubidesk allows for team collaboration, be it in the same building or another continent, to instantly share and edit documents, upload files, manage both shared and private calendars, and manage tasks easily and efficient.

Ubidesk is definitely one of the most comprehensive solutions available at the moment. The online rich text editor has all the features you need to create complex documents, with formatting, images, tables, spell-checking and most essential – a solid revision tool that enables you to quickly spot changes made by other team members. If you’d rather not have your co-workers mess with your presentation, there is also a feature that locks new edits.

Since tasks and documents are almost always related to each other, you can assign documents to tasks and vice versa. Multiple documents can now be easily bundled for a task – no need to search a massive folder – and you’ve also got useful information such as the due date. Unlike other services, your tasks have different statuses: after a task is assigned, the status becomes “Started” when the assignee clicks the “Start” button. Nifty way to keep the project manager into the loop, isn’t it?

If you need more information about the development of a project or the status of your team collaboration, see who’s not doing their share or assign payment – the Timeline and the task log give a bird’s eye view of the changes. Are you working on the next generation MacBook hardware? Keep only the assigned project members in the loop by creating a hidden project. You’d like anyone to participate – make it public. Want others to see what’s going on, but not interfere, simply choose Protected.

With Ubidesk, you can manage  both your “Space” and personal calendar in one place. Keep your personal appointments private while sharing the work calendar with your colleagues – and see them all in one view, eliminating the possibility of overlapping appointments. Best of all, you can import and export at any time in the standard iCal format. Another aspect worth mentioning is the Sidebar. The Sidebar is a click away when you need to consult another document while writing or jot down notes in the Notepad.

There’s also no need to download files to your computer in order to view them – Ubidesk supports image and document formats such as JPEG, GIF, PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OpenOffice. “Direct Edit” eliminates the need to re-upload documents after editing them in Microsoft Office. We’ve also got a dedicated discussion space – with separate threads for each topic. Security conscious users will surely note the use of 256bit key encrypted HTTPS protocol to transfer data between your computer and Ubidesk. It’s good security, the same your bank uses. They also pledge not screen or filter any data.

Overall, Ubidesk  is a good way to go around online team collaboration – a solid web app with lots of potential and great attention to details. Sign up for free and share your impressions in the comments.

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When I got my first apartment, it was the same way, but I had the opportunity to plan out more than one room. Unfortunately, the Internet was still in its infancy, and computer software that could generate floor plans were very expensive.

Today, students, apartment renters and home owners now have a very cool web app called FloorPlanner, where you can create a floor plan and place all of your furniture, appliances and more with one simple online application.

Create Any Floor Plan With FloorPlanner

Anthony briefly mentioned FloorPlanner in his article on 3 floor design services, and of course there’s always PlanningWiz, mentioned before at MakeUseOf.  But I wanted to dig a littler further into FloorPlanner to show you how functional and useful this particular web app can be when you’re moving into a new place and simply want to get a look at different ways you could arrange the furniture.

The 3D feature of this application alone makes it well worth a try – why spend all day pushing your furniture around the house when you can get a virtual look at your room set up the way you want it? Don’t like it – then try something else by clicking the mouse!

With the free account, you get access to one “house” but you’re not limited to the number of times you can delete and recreate the floor plan, so this application is a perfect scratch-pad for trying out different room designs.  If you’ve ever played the Sims series of video games, this will definitely feel like you’re playing the game.

You have access to different construction “items” such as walls, windows, doors and more – but you also have access to a long list of furniture and other items such as a couch, television set and even plants.

Each item has enough design choices that you can make your floor plan fairly detailed. The library contains 14 categories from including office, plants, garden objects and even people. You can simply drag and drop the item into your floor plan wherever you like. In this case I’m simulating the design of a dorm room with one door, so first I draw out the four walls and place the door.

You’ll notice, as you create your design, that while you’re drawing out walls or placing windows and doors, the app shows you the exact dimensions in either feet or meters (you can select your choice of units).

Once you’re done building the structural floor plan (this can get even more elaborate if you’re laying out an entire house), then you’re finally ready to start decorating! Now you can start choosing from the room items provided throughout the item library, rather than the construction items you’ve been using up until now.

Controls on the left side of the display screen, reminiscent of the controls on Google Maps, allow you to pan in all directions as well as zooming in and out. Here, you can see that I’ve designed a very retro-sheek layout with authentic leopard skin rug, big screen TV and a stylish mushroom bedside lamp. Yes, that’s a banana plant in the corner – stop laughing.

Now, in my opinion the absolute coolest part of this entire application is that when you click the little “3D” button in the upper right hand corner, the entire display mode changes over to a 3-dimensional representation of the floor plan you’ve just created – complete with little bitty animation on the television screen, how cool is that?

You can rotate the entire design simply by holding the mouse button and sliding the mouse around in any direction. View the room from any angle you like just to see how the layout will actually look in real life. Sometimes, setting up a room works great in your head until you start placing furniture and realize that it won’t work because certain furniture blocks a door or a window.

While the “export to picture” feature is unfortunately disabled in the free account, you still can share your designs with others on the web. Just click on “My Account” and go to your Dashboard. When you click on the green icon under “Actions” the screen above will come up, which provides you with links that you can send to your family and friends, or an iframe script that you can use to embed the design directly on your blog!

Have you ever used any floor plan design applications? Would you use one like this just to try out different room designs? Share your opinion in the comments section below.

FloorPlanner

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My problem is the very reason I constantly look for new calendar applications – my mind is so filled with things to remember that I forget to check the calendar applications that I’ve installed. So it’s on to the next app, in hopes that it does a better job of reminding me to remember things. Alas, I believe I’ve finally found the solution, a very cool and free, transparent desktop calendar called iCalendar Lite.

Why do I love it? There are several reasons. First, it’s highly customizable. Second, it’s transparent (depending on how you configure it) so you can have it always in front of you no matter what you’re currently working on. Third, I really, really like how cool it looks.

Setting Up iCalendar Lite – A Free Transparent Desktop Calendar

iCalendar Lite doesn’t originally install as a very transparent application that’s always “on top” of all of your other open apps. In some ways this is good, because many people don’t appreciate an application that insists on staying in the foreground. However, for our purposes, this is exactly what we want the calendar to do. This is how the calendar first shows up at the upper right corner of your screen after you install it.

As you can see, with the default skin and transparency settings, it isn’t transparent at all. Also, by default the application is set up to remain in the background when you click on any other application. To set it up so that it’s more transparent and on top of your current applications, you’ll need to change the settings. In your system tray, you’ll find the calendar app appears as a calendar icon. Right click on that icon and then click on “Settings“.

Once you do that, the following window appears where you should make sure that the calendar is set up to run when you boot your PC, and also select whether or not you want the Event and To-Do windows to show up underneath the calendar itself.

Next, click on the “Appearance” to get to the screen where you can configure both the transparency and make the app remain on top of all other applications. Personally, I like the glass skin with 40% transparency, which makes the calendar look like a ghost. However, 100% transparency with the “Glass” skin also reveals the application underneath it and looks pretty cool too (see the bottom of this article).

With the new settings, the calendar application shows up like a faint mist on top of the application that you’re currently working with. For me, this is a perfect calendar setup, because it’s always there…but not really. It lingers on the edge of the screen as a constant reminder that you’re on a schedule, and you have deadlines. The next article due date is coming up fast and if you don’t complete it, you better believe that the editor is going to be all up in your face… OK, moving on.

As you can see, the calendar, event and to-do windows are unobtrusive and only slightly display on top of your application window, but not so much that they block the view or distract from what you’re working on.

Making Use Of iCalendar

When you want to add an item to the to-do list or the event alarm list, just right click the window and do so.

The to-do and event scheduling is pretty standard and has most of the features you expect in a decent calendar application, including delay time to an alarm, an alarm popup window, and notification sounds (configured in the general settings described above).

New Software – Needs A Few Bug Fixes

To show how much you can change the transparency, I’ve modified it to 100% with the “glass” skin in the display below.  However, aside from all of the “cool” factor of this app, it is clearly still new and in need of a few fixes.

Throughout the application you’ll find occasional spelling errors – fairly minor. However, a significant bug in my mind is the fact that when you configure the calendar to remain “on top,” only the to-do and event windows actually remain on top of your applications. The calendar itself has a tendency to slip behind until you click on either the event or to-do windows, or enter the settings screen. Another bug I found was that if you enter the settings window, and then right click the icon and enter the settings window a second time, you can produce an assortment of application errors.

For my purposes, these bugs are minor and not a nuisance. For the most part the application is in the forefront as a constant reminder, and you can even sync the calendar with your Google calendar account – a cool feature if you’re like me and you’ve tried dozens of calendar apps, at least you don’t have to re-enter all of those birthdays again!

Have you been in search of a free transparent desktop calendar? Does iCalendar suit your needs? Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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We all have our favorites. A browse through this website will throw up many a calendar and to-do app. Schedulers and daily task managers occupy one quadrant of GTD apps. Thinking of which, we also have the option of keeping our time planning offline or taking it online.

I won’t take sides here; I am sure there are takers for both. What I will do is introduce you to a freeware which by the colorful looks of it could find its own legion of fans.

esyPlanner is a Windows only (Windows 2K / XP / Vista) utility which is a calendar based planner for keeping track of your events/tasks. More than that it also allows you to post notes, register your day-to-day experiences in a diary and also  manage your passwords.

The esyPlanner (ver.2.0.09) installer is 2.2 MB in size and can be downloaded from its website.

The first thing you will note is the distinctive desktop-like modeling of the webpage, down to a power button. The site and the software support two languages – Italian and English.

So let’s do a walkthrough of the daily task manager software by looking at the different areas of the program.

The software itself has a colorful, responsive interface. The interface has three panels – the main panel on the left, the centered tab area and the narrow toolbar on the right. The toolbar can be undocked and moved. The buttons are large and fairly intuitive. The balloon tips on a mouseover the buttons makes it easy to know what it is about.

A planner works around events or tasks and follows a calendar. Other features merely support the other information needs of day to day planning. So it is with esyPlanner.

Events in esyPlanner can be set up around categories. Each category has a name and a color which labels it. All categories which are set up get listed under the categories section on the left panel.

Multiple calendars can be setup in esyPlanner, each with a description that identifies it. Calendars can be modified and deleted but one calendar is the required minimum. All calendars are listed on the left panel.

Notes are text files for bits of information. They can be grouped in folders within the Notes panel. They can be arranged via drag and drops from one folder to the other. They can also be ordered by date or title.

All notes in esyPlanner have a calendar linked to it. Other information like category, status, due dates, recurrence, attachments and URL links can be also inputed to further enrich a note. An included screenshots tool can be also used to capture images. An event, a popup alert and even an email can be created from any note from a single click using the toolbar.

The Password area serves as a container for storing different user passwords. A master password is required to open the locked database.

The Settings panel has all the customization options for startup, views and color changes. Using the settings panel, the calendar views can be customized according to the starting hour for the day and the first day of the week.

Planner – A container for all events

Planner is where all the action will take place. All events get reflected in the centrally displayed Planner tab.

The Planner has two views – A weekly view with color coded events (according to the category colors) of the current week and the next. The colored rectangles for the events can be dragged and dropped to new locations. Each shift gets updated in both the monthly and weekly views.

A month view which shows the events spanning over the entire month. A mouseover the color boxes details the events in a balloon tip. The events are grouped in rows with each row corresponding to a category.

A small Diary tab can be used to keep a record of events for the day.

The tracking and monitoring systems

What good would a planner be if it doesn’t serve timely reminders about scheduled events? esyPlanner prods through the pop-ups which appear on cue. Pop-ups can be created from events and notes, hidden or deleted. Choosing Daily Popup from the menu opens a popup window with all the warnings and events of the day. This can put on auto each time the applications starts.

Popup warnings can also be set for individual notes from the Notes panel. The warning can be from a certain date, on that date, on each recurrence or can be switched off.

All warnings set can be glanced through on the Warnings tab of the central panel.

Some first impressions

In my opinion, a planner and scheduler application needs to be simple enough to jump in and use but it should also have enough flexible features that make planning (and changing) tasks a one click process. Essentially, the daily task manager application should be designed around our schedules rather than the other way round. On that score esyPlanner does not disappoint.

• Events can be set up for each unit of time and they can be made to recur as we want it to.
• Events can be dragged and dropped from one date to the other.
• Impromptu notes can be converted to events on the fly.
• Multiple calendars lets us separate work and personal events.
• Alerts are simple through popups.
• The attachment inclusion and screen grabbing utility are a definite plus. Though, the password storage is a bit out of place.

All of this is a nice package of customizable colors and fonts. The software is also not perplexing with the easy to understand balloon tipped buttons and a compact help file.

But a task management application is only as good as the way we exploit it for our productivity. So is it good enough for you? Only you can let us know.

Link: esyPlanner

Image Credit: cmcbrown

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If you’ve never worked with mindmaps (on paper or on your computer), it’s time to start.

Web Seavus DropMind

DropMind is an online and offline mindmapping application. We’ve discussed a few of these in the past, like WiseMapping and WisdoMap, but DropMind is without doubt one of the most extensive suites on the market.

For this, and other reasons, DropMind comes with a pricetag. The offline software version costs you about $99 for a lifetime license. Sadly, the full-fledged online variant doesn’t come much cheaper, but Seavus does offer a free license with stripped functionality.

DropMind offers an extensive – although very comprehensive – graphical interface. Users can create topics and assign hierarchical values to them, like central, sibling, parent and key topics.

It’s possible to add graphical context aids, including symbols, arrows and callouts, to annotate and clarify your different topic levels. To make your mindmap not only easy, but even pleasurable on the eye, DropMind comes with a flexible format editor and allows you to fidget with the design until it fits your needs.

After you’ve spend some time toying around and getting to know the different options, you’ll discover how intuitive and easy to manipulate DropMind’s mindmaps are. Whether for corporate or studying purposes, you’ve got a new friend in DropMind that makes explaining things a lot easier.

Premium Features

So what exactly are you missing in this ’stripped down’ free version?  What are those golden premium features which you’ve been locked out from?

In essence, most premium features are aimed at the power users, like online-offline DropMind synchronization and Powerpoint export functionality. Nevertheless, there are some missing features that you could benefit from, like the possibility to save your mindmaps as an image, creating templates for future reference, or the celebrated Presentation Mode.

The biggest miss, however, is that you can create and store only 5 mind maps simultaneously as a free user, contrary to the ‘unlimited’ of premium users. You’ll either have to export and delete the mindmaps you’ve made, or make several mindmaps in a single file. In truth, a single file is big enough to house quite a few maps (check the ‘navigator’ in the topmost screenshot to get a basic).

A full overview of all version differences can be found on DropMind’s Edition comparison page.

Academic Licences

The schoolgoers amongst you are in big luck. It doesn’t matter what school you’re in, or what kind of education you’re in, if you’ve got an email address with an .edu domain, you automatically validate for an academic license.

This gives you a 12 month license of the premium version (worth $39) with all it’s features. If that isn’t enough to put a smile on your face, DropMind will give you a 30% discount on your next (if ever) purchase!

What do you think about Dropmind? Best online tool so far, or a waste of time? Perhaps you think the free version is too limited, or know a better alternative?  Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Wanting to experience life as it was lived by the footloose heroes above is sending thousands on the road today who will have their movements and moments chronicled on the world wide web.

When you’re starting to plan a trip today, it’s not as easy as it was for Sal Paradise in the 1940s. You can’t simply board a greyhound and expect everything to go great. Planning and further planning are necessary to get from A to B. In this article, I will provide you with a road trip planning guide for the technology enthusiast by showing you the top web apps available for the backpacker, adventurer or holidaymaker.

Yahoo Trip Planner

This is a tool for road trip planning that will get most of the nitty gritty work done for you such as finding hotels, things to do, where to eat and it will even give you suggestions of where to go. The planner can be found here. When you first go to the trip planner, to your right you’ll see ‘Create a Trip’. Click on this button. You will be asked to sign in with your Yahoo ID. If you do not have one you can register here.

When on the ‘Create a Trip’ page, enter in the location to which you want to travel. This could be a country, area, city or town.

Then, you’ll be asked for information about your trip such as dates and scheduled activities such as tours and outdoor pursuits. If you’re not sure about where to stay then enter the city you’re visiting into the destination bar. This will return tons of hotels, facilities and things to do in the area, which are constantly updated with event plans and new hotels, restaurants etc…

The trip planner also has a Journal to keep your friends and family informed. Here, you can write about your experiences on the open road. Your family (who undoubtedly will subscribe to your journal) will be able to keep track of what’s going on with you, look at your photos and comment on them. Think of this as a kind of travel Twitter come blog.

MapQuest

Okay, so now you’ve got your ideas formulated into an envelope full of timetables, bus tickets, hotel reservations and your trusty passport. What’s next on your road trip planning to-do list? Well now, you have to know where to go. While the average internet user in you will automatically point you to Google Maps, I’d suggest using MapQuest as it is more tailored to the traveler who has a geeky side with a touch of organizational OCD.

Their maps are just as detailed as Google’s but give better information for those on-foot and in a car. For example, while you’re driving at cruising speed you may as well instruct Johnny in the seat next to you to pop open the Mac Book and see what’s to come. Along the top of the map window which is on the homepage of MapQuest you’ll see buttons like ’Gas Prices’ and ’Traffic’ that will inform you of the situation that lies ahead, such as low or high gas prices and traffic conditions ranging from ‘Normal’ to the dreaded ‘Road Closed’.

How about the best restaurants or what’s going on in the city? Each major urban centre will have a star beside its name. Click on that star and MapQuest will give you all the current news on what’s happening in that city.

Quest Map is also available on your iPhone. To find it, the best thing to do is open up the Apple App Store and type MapQuest into the search bar. It is much the same as the web version with most of the same functions so I shan’t repeat myself.

Rand Mac Nally

This useful road trip planning website will give you the best info for the city you’re heading off to. Sure, the Yahoo! Trip Planner and Map Quest will give you small bursts of what’s hot in a city but Rand Mac Nally will condense the whole city and all of its thousands of energy pockets into a few articles that Johnny can read aloud whilst cruising along.

As you can see from the screenshot, there are loads of sub-categories for each city and along the left hand side; there are several options for any kind of traveler. Each city has a huge article detailing its history, cultural monuments and sights.

Rand Mac Nally is less of a planning tool and more of an idea mill from where I’m standing. Before traveling to a city, you can see what’s going on and some facts about the place like weather, population and the local culture and customs. It’s a perfect road trip planning guide.

My final advice for the tech savvy traveler in this article is to be prepared for failure. Often, while out on the road where the internet still comes via a phone line, relying totally on your Mac or iPhone for travel advice and suggestions is a silly move. The best thing (and perhaps the essence of travel itself) is to talk to the locals, see what’s going on and get the inside scoop. While it’s almost blasphemous to say on a website such as this one but the internet isn’t perfect.

On the other side of that coin however, making a journal entry on Yahoo! about how you were stranded offline for three days is interesting and makes for a great experience. Here are my Top Five Tech Travel Tips:

1. Always have spare batteries

2. Carry different plug converters for different regions

3. Charge your equipment at any chance you get – in cafés, hotels, anywhere there is a plug. Free electricity!

4. Download Google Maps for your Cell Phone. This can literally be a lifesaver. Read my article on how to do it here.

5. Tweet – loads!

Any other tips?

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One of the students replied, “Yes, but there’s a calendar next to you.”

That bored student might mention the calendar in a cynical tone, but we can’t deny that modern people could never live without it. Almost all of their daily life activities are scheduled according to the calendar.

Mac’s Native Calendar

Along with the dawn of the computer, the calendar also moved to the digital domain. For Mac territory, Mac OS X comes with its own calendar applications as a combination between iCal and the menubar clock.

The clock is activated by default, but you can adjust its properties by going to the System Preferences, choose Date & Time, and then clicking the Clock tab.

But if you want to try a free third-party desktop calendar application, here are three alternatives that you can try.

Dateline

This application will put a linear transparent calendar in your desktop. By default, it will reside above everything else. If you click on a date, it will be opened in iCal.

For some people, the appearance of this desktop calendar might become annoying. But don’t be afraid because you can adjust the appearance by going to the Preferences menu and choose the Appearance tab.

Besides color and font, width and mark shape, you can also adjust the Window level of the calendar.

Rainlendar Lite

This is a well-known customizable, free desktop calendar. At least on the Windows platform. I didn’t know that there was a Mac version until I did the research for this article. Some of the features are various skins to change the look and feel, to-do list and alarms, the ability to open multiple calendars for multiple purposes, and the ability to import and export calendars to and from different computers under different operating systems.

You can add events easily by clicking on any date. A window will show up, just add the necessary details.

There are two versions: the Lite version (free) and the Pro version (not free, obviously). If you want to know the differences, please refer to this page.

MagiCal

This free desktop calendar is an enhancement (or replacement – so they said) to Mac OS X’s native menubar clock. There are three versions to the application: PowerPC, Intel, and Universal Binary.

This app will reside in the menubar. You can open the main window by clicking on the menubar icon.

And you can adjust many things – including showing the date and the clock – by going to the Preferences (click on the “i” sign on the main window of this app).

Double clicking on any date on the MagiCal main window will open that date in iCal.

Do you use a Mac calendar application? Do you have other free alternatives?  Please share using the comments below.

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For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, here’s the quick description of ‘mindmap‘ quoted from Wikipedia:

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

Basically, here’s what happen in the process of mindmapping: you start with a main topic or idea as the center of focus, then expand the ideas with related points through branches – or children as some people prefer to call them. Each of these children could also be expanded to grand children, great grand children, and so on. If the main idea is too general, you can pick one of the children to focus on.

Personally, I think nothing beats a large piece of paper and several color pencils for mindmapping, but there’s also nothing wrong about doing the process on your Mac. Especially if you have large monitor, and unreadable handwriting

Here are three free, simple idea mapping software for Mac.

1. Personal Brain

This could be used not only for mindmapping but also for other uses such as visual bookmark manager, web site planning and site navigation, and also event planning.

To draw mindmaps using Personal Brain, you write the main idea as the starting point. Expanding the diagram could be done easily just by clicking on one of the points and drag a new child out of it.

For those who want to learn more about the app, the developer site provide users with a Learning Zone and Tutorials. This app is also available for Windows and Linux.

The free version limits users to view only three generations of a map at one time. The ability to attach files is also reserved for the Core and Pro version. To get the complete list of what each version can do, you can see the features comparison between the versions. While this app has many powerful features, I think the price to go beyond the free version is a bit too ‘much’.

2. FreeMind

FreeMind is open source, simple idea mapping software written in Java, so you can use it in any computer which supports Java. I think the interface is not too intuitive and takes time to get used to.

I spent quite a moment sweeping through the main window trying to figure out how to start a mindmap diagram. Maybe it would be better if the “New” button is not so difficult to find. On the left pane, you can find so many icons without any explanation of their functions (I found out later that they are some kind of tags to mark the children).

If you don’t mind the appearance, and willing to spend time learning it, this app is actually very usable. You can even create several maps within one window. The new map will be opened in the new tab.

Then, if you feel like sharing your thoughts and ideas, you can submit your mindmaps in the developer’s wiki-style gallery.

3. MindNode

MindNode is a very easy to use mindmapping application. It features a very simple interface for quickly creating mind maps. Among the three, this one is the simplest. The interface is also the most Mac-ish.

The default starting page already contains a field to fill in the main idea and instruction to drag to create a new node (child). You can also adjust the position of each node easily.

If you want to have more bells and whistles, such as the ability to create cross-connections and use the full screen mode, you can upgrade to the Pro version. To know the difference between the free and the pro version, read the full comparison list. For me, the free version is good enough. There are also video tutorials available on the site.

MindNode is only available for Mac.

What’s Left On The Mind
It’s worth mentioning that I started the list with five examples of simple idea mapping software, and had to eliminated two because I simply can not give the apps a try. One is XMind, which refused to work because of Java error. The other one is Consideo Modeller which couldn’t be opened at all.

It’s possible that the error is at my side. I couldn’t be sure about that. But I felt it’s impossible to review any software without being able to try it first, isn’t it?

To list some alternatives, give Ekpenso, Bubbl.us and Text2MindMap a try. Also, don’t miss out on the 6 Excellent Brainstorming and Mindmapping Sites by Kaly.

Finally, if you have any thoughts, opinions, and experiences on the Mindmapping process and applications, speak up using the comment below.

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Before you get all busy preparing, take a moment to recall what went wrong on your last vacation. Did you pack well?

Forgetting an important item at home is one of the most annoying things to happen when you leave for a vacation. And why do we forget to pack things? Because we don’t work with lists or we make a list in a hurry without external suggestions. I bet it has happened to you before — it has certainly happened to me.

Packwhiz is a packing list generator. The best is, you can sign in using your Google account!

Once signed in, you can instantly generate your first free travel packing checklist. Give it a name and set the parameter that will define your list, i.e. is your destination domestic or international, what type of accommodation and transportation are you going to use, what will you be doing, and what type of weather is to be expected.

Click “Generate” to create a standard list or “Start from scratch” if you prefer to go from an empty list.

If you went with “Generate”, you will see a long list of items on the following page. They are sorted into various categories, such as Toiletries and Personal Care, Documents and Money, Gadgets, Food and Drink, Medicine and more. The more parameters you check, the more thorough the list will be.

Basically, that’s your list and it’s done, unless you edit it. So, you need to go through your list and check all the items that you DO NOT need, then delete them. Of course, you can entirely personalize your list i.e. remove, edit and add items.

To edit an item, simply click on it and a menu will open. You can change the item name, category or add a description.

Items can be added by clicking on the “new item” link at the bottom of each category. If you don’t like the way items are sorted, you can simply drag and drop them around.

Once you’re done, you can publish your list and share the URL or simply go back to your lists, create a new list or edit another one.

Personally, I think generating the list could be slightly more intuitive. I looked at the newly generated list and started checking all items I wanted to keep on my list. That was wrong, the list was already done. So I used the Feedback to give them my thoughts on how they could make removing a ton of items much easier. I found that the Feedback system is one of the best I have ever seen. Check it out, it’s super!

Packwhiz was launched earlier this year, so it’s brand new and there are a few things that need to be ironed out. But for now, it’s very uncomplicated to use and creates thorough, free travel packing checklists that are easy to edit and customize. Unfortunately, they didn’t yet integrate a print option.

For many more helpful tools and websites to improve your next vacation, check out the following posts. They include tips on planning your trip, locating ATMs or public toilets, tracking down metro connections, finding travel companions, surviving airports and flights, and tons more.

• 10 Travel Websites that should be Bookmarked by Aibek
• 3 Must-check Traveller Websites before your Next Trip by Anthony
• 6 Sites To Make Flying A Whole Lot Easier by David
• Top 5 Airline FLight Tracking Websites by Dave
• Cool Online Resources to Plan Your Next Vacation by Tina (me)
• Tavel The World with Hello Backpacker by Tina (me)
• How To Stay Digitally Charged and Connected On The Road by Tina (me)

Is there anything you own multiple times because you forgot to pack it? Confess! You’re not alone.

Image credits: woodsy

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• Travel The World with Hello Backpacker (4)
• Share Your Trips With EveryTrail (8)
• How To Stay Digitally Charged and Connected On The Road (4)
• Cool Online Resources to Plan Your Next Vacation (11)
• A Quick Road Trip Planning Guide For Techno Geeks (3)

And then there’s always that poor fellow, who has to communicate back and forth with everyone to find the best solution.

If you’re sick of it, try the following tool.

Doodle is a webtool through which you can make an online poll to schedule an event or make a choice. Registration is optional and creating the polls couldn’t be any more simple.

This is where you start. Select the type of poll you want to launch. You can choose between “schedule an event” or “make a choice”, i.e. event or choice poll.

The first step if you want to make an online poll for either poll type is the same: you set a title, add an optional description, and provide your name and eMail address.

The next step in scheduling an event is selecting the possible dates.

Following the dates, you can add available times and set further options.

Doodle supports time zones; options offer “yes-no-ifneedbe” style polls, which allow the voter to weigh their selection; the poll can be hidden, so that only the creator can see the answers; also the number of OKs (votes) per participant can be limited.

Setting up a choice poll is even more simple and gives you the same options described above.

A poll goes live once you hit the Finish button. You will be provided with the participation link, which you can send to the target crowd. Using the administration link, you can edit or delete the poll.

Below is an example of a running choice poll. As you can see, Doodle automatically does all the counting for you.

As I said, creating an account is optional. Having an account makes sense when you’re running several polls at once because it will help you keep track of them.

Taken together, Doodle is a decision tool cooked down to the minimum. Using smart settings and options, it can become an invaluable helper in everyday life.

If you came here for that other type of doodle, check out Karl’s article Do you Doodle? Share your doodles with the world!

Will you Doodle? What works best for you in juggling group decisions? Share your ideas and solutions within the comments!

Image credits: woodsy

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Preparation

Before you head out for your trip, give yourself at least a week to acquire everything you will need to take with you.

Make a list with online traveling packing list and work on it. That means, take some time to think of what you may need. Imagine what you’ll be doing and let the list grow.

If there is something you still need to buy, do so immediately.

Put whatever you decide to take into a box and pack all of it, don’t toss anything away at the last minute unless you’re 100% sure that you won’t need it.

What To Take

Think of devices and their accessories, such as batteries, chargers, adaptors, cables, memory cards etc.

Also, take some extra digital storage space with you, so that you can backup photos and videos. This could be a USB stick, a small hard drive or an additional memory card.

Definitely bring a card reader!

If you don’t want to rely on a computer for charging your devices, get a USB-to-power plug adaptor and actually take it with you. Depending on where you go, you may also need a power plug adaptor.

Make sure you have all your login information with you. It can be easy to forget URLs, usernames and passwords when it’s all saved on your local computer. Creating a USB stick with portable software (e.g. Firefox and/or Thunderbird) may also be a good idea and make you a bit more independent, in case you’re not taking your laptop. Aibek created a list of 100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (Windows and Mac).

On The Road

If you decided to bring your computer, you will have little trouble finding internet access. Across Northern America and Europe, lots of places offer free or very cheap WiFi. Even most hostels offer it now.

David wrote an article compiling 5 Wi-Fi Hotspot Finders To Find Free Wi-Fi Spots Near You. You might want to make use of these tools before you head out onto the road, though.

If you don’t bring your laptop, you will have to hunt down the best and cheapest options to go online. In North America, I found that libraries are always a good bet. They offer high speed internet on very well maintained compuers. Many towns libraries offer free 15-minute internet and you can sign up as a one time patron to receive 1 hour of free internet. In Europe, Internet Cafes are a standard and you may try libraries as well.

Sharing

When coming back from a trip, everyone will ask you what it was like. Now, it can be not only tiring but also quite time consuming to share your stories with everyone individually. You should consider sharing your experiences while you’re on the road.

What is working very well for me is Flickr. I use it as a sort of low maintenance blog. I upload my photos, add a title and use the description to share what I’ve been doing. To keep it all a bit more organized, I created a set. So after I upload and describe the photos, I add them to the set, where I can also define the order in which I want them to be viewed. This is my “Flickr Travel Diary“.

You can also upload videos to Flickr. I set up a YouTube channel to collect my videos. But what you do is up to you.

What did you find useful to stay charged and connected while traveling? Your input on the matter is very much appreciated!

Picture credits: jana_koll, erkinsahin, Brando, brO.

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• Travel The World with Hello Backpacker (4)
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To instantly share my whereabouts, detours, experiences and some photos with family and friends, I was looking for a one-in-all tool that could easily be updated while I’m on the road.

What I found was a website called EveryTrail. The original idea for it is to provide outdoor fans with a platform where they can manage and share their tour data or browse the tours of others to find inspiration. For me it will serve as a small travel diary.

The way it works is straightforward. There are three steps to creating a record of your own trip. First you can upload a GPS file or hand draw your trip on the map. Next you add details about the trip including title, date, type of activity, location, trip story, tips for others, and edit the statistics and the map view that will be shown.

Finally, you can add your photos. If both your camera and the GPS device were set to the same time, the photos will be automatically placed on the right spot of your route, based on their date and time setting. If that is not the case you can manually place them yourself.

Once it’s all done it will look something like the following example, depending on which information you included.

Top left: summary with trip story to the right.

Middle left: map with photos to the right. You can also switch to see the full map or the stats instead of the photos.

Bottom: strip of all trail photos. Here you can initiate a sort of slide show and photos next to the map will cycle through the respective trail positions. Below the photo strip are the tags and GPS data downloads, joined by comments to the right. At the very bottom you’ll find share options and a picture summary.

You don’t have to be a member of the site to enjoy exploring. There are over sixty thousand trips to be discovered. You can search the public trips by location, activity, keyword, trip date, all-time or recent popularity, and follow in the footsteps of previous hikers, geocachers, backpackers, skaters, drivers…

Aren’t detailed maps, GPS devices and the developments they have brought us a blessing for the outdoor lovers? On the other hand, true adventurers will find it ever more challenging to discover the unexplored. Are you encouraged to follow the trails they have left for us?

Picture credits: arinas74

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• Cool Online Resources to Plan Your Next Vacation (11)
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• A Quick Road Trip Planning Guide For Techno Geeks (3)

The internet makes it easy to find out about various destinations, great deals, attractions, local customs and curiosities that might otherwise have escaped your attention or become an unpleasant surprise. But there is almost too much information to make up one’s mind. So where should you start?

Here is a small selection of websites that will hopefully help you filter for the best available deals and sights.

Spotted by Locals

Spotted by Locals covers 20 European cities and promises that you will experience cities like a local.

The articles are short and cover everything from art & culture, bars and music, to relaxing, shopping and theaters. The attractions of each city can be browsed by category or area / district.

New spotters are hand selected by existing contributors and a face to face meeting is a must before you can write for Spotted by Locals, representing your own city. They are currently looking for new spotters, maybe that would be you?

trivago

On trivago you can compare prices for hotels, browse the site for attractions, reviews and photos.

When comparing hotel prices in a given city on a specific date, you’ll be presented with a list of hotels on the right. To the left you can refine your search, for example by reducing the price range on a meter bar. When switching from Hotel to Attractions you’ll see a list of attractions for that very city and in the sidebar you can filter for bars, restaurants, museums etc. or pick specific places from the “browse box”, where all available attractions are pulled together and listed kind of like in a tag cloud.

The site operates based on member contributions. Each review is accompanied by a detailed rating and eventually photos. So whenever you return from a trip with novel experiences and great discoveries, this is where you can show off your travel expertise.

InfoHub

InfoHub describes itself as “the ultimate source for out-of-the-ordinary and inspiring travel ideas” and I must say they have a point.

This speciality travel guide is indeed a great resource for finding all sorts of professionally organized tours around the globe. Of course these offers are not free, but using the site and looking for options is totally free and absolutely recommended.

You can browse by country or popular vacations, such as eco tourism, hiking & trekking, photography & videography, scuba diving or sports. A more detailed selection is available in the quick vacation search or you simply search the site for keywords.

World Travel Guide

Although this page loaded a bit slow when I tested it, it appeared to be the most thorough, informative and easy to use travel guide site for locations around the world.

First you pick a destination from the map, and then you select the type of guide you’re looking for to the right. Your options are country, city, airport, attraction, cruise and weather guides.

If there is anything you need to know about a destination, like key facts, public holidays, climate, top things to see & do, getting around by air, water, rail or on the road, this is where your inquisitiveness will be served with details, details and more details, packed in excellent articles, decorated with nice photos.

Lonely Planet

When embarking on an exciting vacation, how could anyone miss out on the Lonely Planet?  This is the ultimate and meanwhile mainstream information resource to help you plan your trip.

The archives are huge and you’ll find tons of useful information, reviews, beautiful photos, and recommendations. Like on trivago you can search for hotels, but also for hostels and within the Travel Services you can find out about available insurances, tours, car & rail, view travel checklists (tips & tricks included) and much more.

As a signed up member of the site you can contribute to discussions in the forum. The forums are what really make the Lonely Planet homepage most unique. Here you can discuss your experiences, expectations or find company for your next adventure tour.

Although the Lonely Planet appears to cover it all, I found that World Travel Guide was more easy to use for tracking down information and InfoHub provided a much better selection of available trips. The point is, different sites are good for different purposes and each site has its pros and cons.

So are you serious about booking your vacation now? Last year Varun wrote about 5 Review Sites to Help You Find The Perfect Hotel and recently David covered 6 Useful Last-Minute Booking Sites For Your Next Trip.

Which resources do you turn to for the perfect trip?

Picture credits: Zela

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• Share Your Trips With EveryTrail (8)
• A Quick Road Trip Planning Guide For Techno Geeks (3)
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No longer. Evite, while improving, isn’t nearly the best at what it does. That title, in my humble opinion, rests squarely in the hands of Anyvite.

Anyvite is a simple, but feature-rich, way to create invitations and bring all your friends together. Anyvite helps you through every step of the event planning, from finding a venue to deciding whether or not your friends can bring friends (and how many). It’s an incredibly detailed application, that you can ignore entirely if all you want to do is send out a simple invitation.

The first thing you do with Anyvite is create your event: give it a name, a location, a date, and some information. You can style your invitation with one of Anyvite’s many themes, or create your own.

Then, start sending out the invitations. You can send the invitations by entering their email addresses, or you can import your address book from your Email or Evite account. You can see who’s RSVP’ed, and even export your guest list to other applications for easier managing. If you want to create an event for anyone and everyone, Anyvite gives you a link to share with people so they can sign up to attend without having to receive an email.

You get to change just about every option of the invite: do you want there to be a “maybe” option? How many attendees are you capping your party at? Want to remind your guests again before the party? You can do all that and more through Anyvite.

If you’re on the receiving end of an invitation, you’ve got tons of options as well. You can receive invitations, updates and reminders by email, text message, or over any Jabber IM (like Google Talk). You can RSVP by texting or IMing “RSVP y” or “RSVP n”, or even text a comment about the event or invitation. There’s even a mobile site ( m.anyvite.com ) that lets you create, manage and view invitations from your cell phone.

There’s a widget that you can embed on your website or blog – a cool feature if you’re hosting or attending relevant events. Your events can also be imported directly into your Google or Outlook calendar, making sure you never forget about that sweet party coming up tonight.

Anyvite, believe it or not, is even useful after your party is over. Anyvite provides you with a code that you put in the tags of a Flickr picture or a YouTube video, and anything with that tag shows up on the event page. It’s like its own scrapbook for your parties.

Anyvite is great because you can create an event in 10 seconds or an hour, depending on how specific and complex you want it to be. It’s incredibly simple to use, and great for planning events. The text-messaging integration also makes it perfect for last-second changes and needs for your party.

Next time you’re planning an event, do yourself and your guests a favor: ditch Evite, and stick with Anyvite for all your planning needs.

How do you use the Web to plan things?

Photo Credit : jemsweb

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• Wufoo – Easily build Forms, Surveys or Invitations (4)
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I have shown you how to set up two Windows Mobile phones to sync task lists. But what do you do when you need to print a quick check list? I mean from any web connected machine that can print? Do you open up Word or Excel and start formatting?

That was exactly what “AskTheAdmin” used to do until I found a little known site called the Printable Checklist and it is so simple I might have a hard time writing a whole article about it… Nah!

Enter, a dead-simple to use and extremely useful online checklist creator.

I made my way over to the site and then without any downloading or logging in I was able to create a checklist, modify a list and of course print a list.

By clicking the “Add item” button you will get another line that says “Click to edit”.

You simply click on the line to get a text box to enter text. Pretty easy and straight forward eh?

So let’s enter a sample list. I click on the green plus sign next to “add item” four times and create my rows. Then I enter my text line by line. I wind up with this little list that I can then tape to my monitor or forehead…

Then of course you can print out your list using your browser’s print command. Then you can use one of those things, I think they call them, pens (?) to check off those boxes!

All kidding aside this is a very handy web application. I for one find it a lot easier to follow a printed list that I can cross out and crumple up than using my phone – especially in the supermarket. Did I mention that I hate the supermarket?

In conclusion – I love Printable Checklist and I hate the Supermarket. And I’m out

How do you keep up with your lists? Any other online checklist tool we don’t know about? Let us know in the comments!

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But it turned out that he had a 5 year travel plan. Now doesn’t that makes sense? I found it hilarious!

So did you already pick your travel destinations for the year 2009? Need some help planning your trip? Want to go backpacking?

Hello Backpacker

You may want to look into the Hello Backpacker website to help you pick your travel destination and plan your world trip.

The site is set up into five different categories – get inspired, plan your trip, on the road, back home, and discuss. Let me guide you through each of them.

The travel videos contain material from the most famous cities, historical and natural sights. If you have any videos you would like to share you can submit them to the site.

The rest of that section still needs some work as it doesn’t contain a lot of material, so let’s move on to the next one because that is where it gets interesting.

In the backpacker’s toolbox you can download a free 99 page PDF file that contains checklists, templates, FAQs and lots of advice to prepare you for your trip. A must have!

In the crowd recommendations section you can pick your travel destinations and see where other people who picked those destinations tend to visit.

In the next step you can compare price levels between those countries. Or you can go to that section directly and choose from different ways of doing that.

The power plugs section provides information about voltage, frequency and plugs used in different countries. That’s critical information if you’re going to carry an electric device that requires recharging.

On the road you may know some country-specific gestures to keep out of trouble. But frankly, there are the same four gestures for every country and either they are using an de-escalated F** U sign or they fail to show the actual one. Very puzzling.

The currency card for currency conversions is more helpful, although you can never be sure how up to date it is. The currency converter tool may be better, at least it was already updated in 2009.

The conclusion of this section is the emergency card that you can create for yourself. It’s something you should really carry with you all the time, just in case. The one below is of course just an example. We all know you don’t call Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris will call you!

Once you’re back home you can update your travel map with all the places you want to see, don’t want to see or already have seen.

The profiling section is a small test of 10 questions that will tell you what kind of traveler you are. It totally failed me though since all the right answers were lacking and I had to pick the one I found least repellent. I actually don’t imagine myself shopping in New York and didn’t drink any latte in London (who can afford that anyways).

This leaves us with the last category.

Check out the forum to share your experiences and maybe you have some blog awards for the site, so that this section won’t be so sadly empty?

We have covered other websites useful to travelers in the past, for example:

- 10 Travel Websites That Should Be Bookmarked by Aibek
- 5 Review Sites To Help You Find The Perfect Hotel by Varun
- 6 Useful Last-Minute Booking Sites For Your Next Trip by David
- 6 Sites To Make Flying A Whole Lot Easier by David

How do you organize your trips and where will you go this year?

Picture credits: barunpatro

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• Share Your Trips With EveryTrail (8)
• How To Stay Digitally Charged and Connected On The Road (4)
• Create A Free Travel Packing Checklist With Packwhiz (2)
• Cool Online Resources to Plan Your Next Vacation (11)
• A Quick Road Trip Planning Guide For Techno Geeks (3)

Seriously.  You’re going to be doing most of the legwork anyway if you’re planning a party.  Why send out precious invitations printed on smooth matte cardstock paper when you can just give friends a heads-up through email?  It’s less expensive, and much cooler to anyone with a laptop or iPhone.

So let’s see how Google can save you a lot of money on your next event.

Telephone Lookup

Whether choosing to hire or fire an event planner, certain research still needs to be done in order to prepare party invitations.

How many of your friends’ addresses do you keep stored in your memory?  Probably not many.  However, calling friends up on a cellphone is as easy as pressing a few buttons.  Why not find their addresses just as easily?  Just type their phone numbers into the Google search box (only numbers, without hyphens), and receive their addresses as search results.  Then, start mailing out your party invitations.

Google Notebook

Once you locate an address through a Google search, you can save it just as easily by bringing Google Notebook into play.  This app can be accessed through your Google account, and the cool thing is that you can download a mini-notebook that can be drawn up at will from the bottom corner of your screen.  Just open it up (without leaving your search page), highlight the address you’ll be saving, press “clip” in Google Notebook, and ta-da!  The info is saved.

Plus, you can even search your notebooks just as you would Google itself, to find any clips that you might misplace.

Google Street View

If you’re going to make a map to send with your invitations, why not use Google Maps?  Furthermore, why not just go the full distance and use Google Street View?

Just type in your own address on Google Maps, and press the “street view” option included in the bubble containing your address.

What you’ll find is a photo-realistic, interactive map that will give your friends a perfect idea of how to get to your house.  If you choose to send a snailmail invitation, you can use the Street View pic of your residence as a reference; however, if you send your invites out via the internet, you can give your friends a Street View pic that they can manipulate with their mouse.

Google Bookmarks

While in the process of party-planning, you’ll probably get distracted quite often.  As soon as you begin to discover interesting sites on the internet, you’ve got to go to work or to run an errand.

Don’t worry.  Google’s Bookmark tool will allow you to save whole sites for future reference.  In order to keep your thoughts organized, you can comment on the sites & even add tags to them.

Of course, your bookmarks are searchable.

Google Calendar

Every event planner needs a calendar, and Google’s got you covered.  Google Calendar is easy to manipulate:  you can plan far into the future, to the very hour of the day in question.

You can even share your calendar with others, and when your friends agree to be at your event they’ll receive confirmation email reminders in Gmail.

Google Sites

Once you’ve planned your party and you’re ready to send the invites, you can do it via Gmail by including a link in your letter to a customized Google Site.

This recent app lets you build your own free web pages.  Save your friends the trouble of having to open up attachments in their mail, and simply upload all of your photos, info, & links to your Google site.  Then, send out a carbon copy email to everyone on your invite list, giving them a direct link to the webpage.

Is Google The Best There Is?

All of the services described above can be accessed by logging into Google & entering “My Account”.  Let us know if you’re a fan of Google’s services.  If not, are there other services that you recommend over Google’s?

A lot of companies seem to be using Google’s apps as a model, and some are creating software that is even more functional than what Google has to offer.

Feel free to comment about any other apps that are worth looking into.

Photo Credit : CleverCupCakes
Photo Credit : Alexander O’Neill
Photo Credit : Pittaya
Photo Credit : brandon.weight
Photo Credit : Derbeth
Photo Credit : Yandle
Photo Credit : Misterteacher

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Share your videos and you can even make some money!

TravelPost

TravelPost gives you unbiased hotel reviews and ratings as they are written by actual visitors. What’s more TravelPost has some information about the traveler as well (like budget and purpose of travel) so that you can compare your needs and the reviewer’s requirements and decide accordingly if the review is from your perspective.

The coverage is pretty good and the site also offers other functionalities like travel news, searching for deals and other such things.

TVtrip and Trivop

TVtrip and Trivop are your videoguides to hotels. If you’ve ever booked a hotel online, only to get there and find out that the images very cleverly showed only the best parts of the hotel, then check out the videoguides (although videos can be misleading as well). This also eliminates a lot of misinterpretation
caused by either lack of expression on the reviewer’s part or misinterpretation on your part in case of text reviews.

The basic workings are similar, locate the place you are traveling to on the Google Maps Mashup or use the search functionality, a list of potential hotels will appear, click on one to view further details :

Tripr

Tripr is a videoguide with a difference. Tripr shows you ‘real’ video reviews, made from a consumer’s point of view, because customers can make a video of the place they stayed at and upload it to Tripr. The concept thus gives a first hand customer perspective on the facilities. What’s more, if you upload a video to Tripr, you can get paid!

When your video results in a booking you will receive a commission for your video! There are some guidelines as to how the video should be shot and what all it should include.

TripAdvisor

Although an all-in-one-place to get advice on your trip, if it’s only hotels you are looking for then you won’t be disappointed at TripAdvisor. It lists the hotels in the city you are looking for. You can then read reviews for the hotels. You can even find lots of information about the destination, restaurants, things to do etc with TripAdvisor.

Do you know of some other sites that offer similar functionalities? Have you used one in the past? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments.

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So here are the three best things about it …

1. Default Location

When you go to maps.google.com you will most likely see a map of North America. Being in Europe this is not very convenient for me, so I made my hometown my default location.

To set a default location at which Google Maps will always start when you open it, simply enter a location and then click “Make this my default location” on the left. The location you choose has to be at least a city, but can be as detailed as the exact street address.

2. My Maps

With My Maps you can create your own maps, annotate a Google Map, add comments, placemarks, draw directions or just goof around, which I did as you can see below.

Within My Maps click on Create new map and you’ll see four new tools in the top left corner of the map. From left to right: select/edit map features, add a placemark, draw a line, and draw a shape. Whatever you add to your map, it will appear in a small legend on the left, including the title and description you gave your items.

Needless to say you can save and share your maps, edit them anytime, collaborate on a map with others, make your maps public or keep them private.

With the Collaborate option you can invite individuals to edit your map, you can allow them to invite others as well, and you can even let anyone edit your map.

For a direct link click on Link in the top right corner of your map.

3. Browse Popular Maps

The popular maps are both useful and fun. The Distance Measurement Tool for example is incredibly easy to use and easily reveals how far a distance it is from one point to the other, Place Finder translates your location into latitude and longitude or vice versa, Amtrak has a map with passenger rail connections and stations, another map lists all Crop Circles sightings, with Clouds you can view satellite pictures of global cloud cover, and much, much more.

Once you return to your maps you can check or uncheck the maps you have added, change settings or edit them (if applicable), and of course delete them.

4. Get Directions

It doesn’t work everywhere, but for most places you’ll be able to get directions by car. Recently also walking directions went live. Simply right click the map and select “Directions from here” at your start point, followed by “Directions to here” at your destination. Then choose By car or Walking from the drop-down menu. For the route I chose for my example Walking was not available – smart thing.

The coolest thing is that for some routes you can even view images of your trip.

5. Google Mashups

Have a cool idea for a map? Create it, make your own website and become popular, just like these guys…sort of.

• At safe2pee.org you can find a bathroom in your area (US only).
• Antipodes Map will find what’s on the other side of the world. Interestingly Australia isn’t really down under you, but in the middle of the North Atlantic ocean.
• The HealthMap lists the current global state of infectious diseases.
• QClock instantly displays the local time worldwide.
• Use grüvr to find live music nearby.

For more about Google Maps check out Mark’s post Google Maps Rolls Out Spanking New Features from May this year.

What’s your favorite Google Maps feature? What did I miss?

(By) Tina is a regular MUO author. In her offline life she’s a PhD student interested in unraveling signaling events that determine cartilage and bone development.

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Here are a bunch of websites that are diverse, interesting and even just quirky for anyone that is planning a trip or is simply a travel-addict.

MetrO – Public Transport Guide for your mobile phone

Métro is a free worldwide public transport guide can be used on the web and on most existing smart phones. Download the program for over 250 cities wordlwide and have an easy subway, bus and tram station guide rite on your phone. It lets you calculate travel time, major landmarks (in major cities), shortest distances and of-course travel direction between any stations.

Highlights include:

• - directions and information to major tourist attractions (in selected cities)
• - download maps to your phone for selected cities.
• - easy public transport search function between stops.
• - and lots more

In case you need a printable Metro map for a city you’re about to visit, also check out SubwayMap in MUO directory.

TripIt – Travel Itinerary planner

TripIt is a handy itinerary planner for those going on an independent trip. Simply forward your individual booking confirmations, reservation emails etc. TripIt recognizes these emails and creates a master itinerary that puts together all the individual pieces, provides extra information where appropriate (maps, weather information etc), enables the user to add notes and ultimately share and collaborate on this master itinerary with others.

For more details and a review see ‘TripIt: Travel Itinerary Planner and Organizer‘

ATMLocator – Global ATM locator

A free service from VISA that lets you instantly locate ATM cash machines in your vicinity. Simply select country and city name, enter pincode (optional) and get address details and map for each ATM. Also access it while on the move from any web-enabled device. Over 170 countries covered.

CyroFinders – Real-time worldwide flight arrival and departure information

Get real-time information on flight arrival and departures for all major airports in the world. View airport location on a map, check weather information, and more.

Yapta – Flight-ticket price tracker

Yapta is neat service that allows users to track the price of the flight-ticket that they want to purchase or have already purchased . For people yet to buy a ticket, Yapta allows you to purchase the ticket when prices drop. If you have already bought a ticket, Yapta still allows you to track and see if prices drop. Many airlines have policies that allow for travelers to get refunds/vouchers (of the price difference) if the price of the ticket that they have purchased drops.

See full features list @ Yapta: Get Refund on Flight Tickets

AirlineMeals – Huge directory of airline meals from around the world

Fascinating user-contributed database of airline meals (over 5000 images of airline meals). Users submit photographs, rate, provide meal details (airline, class of travel, flight details etc) for each meal. Browse meals by airline, peak into crew meals, special meals, meals from the past (1970’s, 80’s), behind the scene images, airport lounge meals etc.

SleepingInAirports – Guide for camping overnight or a few hours in an airport

Ever needed to camp overnight in an airport either out of low funds or simply bad flight connections? This is the perfect website for such a situation. Browse and read through brief overview of the airport along with user-submitted review on safety, facility, photos (where available), etc. A must for solo or women travelers who may have to experience such a situation. I personally have used it a couple of times when I had to camp overnight at airports ranging from Paris- Charles de Gaulle to Hamburg International airport and wanted to make sure that the airport even allows people to camp over.

SeatGuru – Extensive guide on airplane seating, in-flight amenities etc.

Provides detailed information or a seat map (best to worst seats on the plane), amenities (power chords, bathrooms, tv’s) for different aircraft models of over 40 different major commercial airlines. Simply select the airline followed by the aircraft model, and you are provided with general information on the airline (website, frequent flier partners etc) along with a seat map (you get a map of the seating structure of the plane- the best seats, what amenities are available on which seats etc).

TheBathroomDiaries- “Search the globe for a clean bathroom”

Submit, rate and search through over 12000 bathrooms across the globe, read about the world’s best-rated bathrooms etc. It gets even better, you can access the website rite from your cell phone. For readers based in the US, see MizPee.

Did we miss something? Let us know in comments. Enjoy!

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