Of course, those other tasks sometimes need to take priority. Texting while driving can be dangerous, and texting at work is often frowned upon, particularly at businesses where most employees interact directly with customers. Fortunately, the Auto SMS app for Android makes texting possible even when you’re not available.

Auto Reply

Arguably the app’s most popular feature, Auto Reply is the first option on the Auto SMS menu. What separates Auto SMS from most autoreply apps is the use of profiles. Each individual profile contains specific autoreply settings, and can be turned on or off whenever you’d like.

Let’s say you’re unable to text while driving or at work. When you hop in your car you could turn on your driving profile, which is active for an hour (the length of your commute) and informs those who text you that you’re driving and can’t respond.

Once you arrive at work, however, you can switch to your work profile. It lasts eight hours and gives those who text you a work number where you can be reached in case of an emergency. Not everyone should have your work number however, so you should restrict this text message to those who are in your contacts.

The use of profiles is what makes Auto SMS better than most other autoreply apps, which usually require that users input a new reply every time the autoreply is set and often have less tools for determining who does and doesn’t receive your automated reply.

Scheduling & Instant Texts

Sending replies is great, but also obviously reactive. If no one texts you, they’ll receive nothing in return. That works if you only need to let friends know why you’re out of touch, but what if you need to remind your roommate that rent is due today?

Scheduling makes that possible. Using Auto SMS it’s possible to input a specific text message and schedule it to be sent at any time you’d like. The message can be sent once or at set intervals (hourly, daily, weekly, etc) and even better, it’s possible to limit the recurrence to a specific number of repetitions.

What if you know you need to send a text, but don’t know exactly when? Don’t worry – this app still has you covered. The instant feature lets you input texts that can be sent to a specific contact just by touching send. Auto SMS saves the texts as well, so they can be sent more than once.

Read It Aloud

One final tool that may be of interest is Reader. This is a text-to-speech feature that can be turned on or off at will. Once turned on, the app will automatically cut in and read the incoming texts aloud, even if you are using a third-party SMS messaging app.

As with the other features of Auto SMS, scheduling options are available, making it possible to turn on text-to-speech only at pre-determined times. This is of course helpful when driving, since you’ll be able to receive messages without taking your eyes off the road.

Conclusion

Auto SMS provides a boatload of functionality and can make texting possible even when you’re not available to receive or send messages. Better still, the app is easy to learn thanks to an interface that’s straightforward and has clearly labeled features.

This app is available for free with ad support. A paid version without ads and a text backup feature is available for $1.92. You’ll need Android 2.1 or newer to run this app, and the app is known to be incompatible with most task killers.

Let us know in the comments how you like Auto SMS or if you prefer an alternative app.  Do you think apps like these are useful?

We here at MUO have published several articles about computer automation programs for the Mac, including Apple’s default programs, Automator and AppleScript. We know that in order to get the most use out of any computing workflow means learning how to automate redundant tasks so you can work faster and more efficiently.

My own Awesome Automation Guide for Mac Users introduces new and experienced Mac users to all of Apple’s smart technology features, such as a smart folders iPhoto albums, as well as Automator.

But let’s say you just want to schedule a few little daily or weekly tasks on your Mac and you don’t feel like hauling out Automator or figuring out a script in AppleScript. Well, a small utility called Task Till Dawn might well do the trick.

You can use Task Till Dawn to set up and run daily tasks for automatically opening files or scheduling iTunes to download the newest Podcast at a specified time.

Setting up automations in Task Till Dawn require less steps than are required in Automator, though the latter program could also be used in conjunction with Task Till Dawn.

How It Works

After you download and install Task Till Dawn, launching the program presents you with a fairly easy-to-use interface, in which you basically add a task, schedule it, and let it run. So let’s put together a simple automatic file opening task.

Launch Task Till Dawn and click the New Task button in its toolbar.

Click the “Select” button and select a file or application in your Finder that you would like Task Till Dawn to automatically open on specified days, at a specified time. Next, give your task a name. Providing a description is optional.

Now set a time for the task to execute. Task Till Dawn uses the 24-hour clock system. So if you want to schedule a file to open at say 1:00 p.m., you should type “13:00″ in the time input box.

Next, click the “Extended settings” button, and check the days in which you want the task to run. Notice you can have it run on a daily basis or a specified day of the month. You can also schedule how many times you want the task to be executed.

Click OK, and your task is ready to run on the specified time and days. But you probably will want to test it out. To do this, simply click the “Run task(s)” button in the toolbar and it should open the file or application you selected.

Notice also that Task Till Dawn provides a detailed description of when a task is scheduled to run, when it was last executed, and when it is scheduled to run again. There’s also buttons for editing and removing tasks.

You need to have Task Till Dawn running in your menu bar or Dock in order for it to execute tasks. It doesn’t run tasks in the background like Automator does.

You can also schedule Growl notifications, which of course will let you know that a particular task has been run.

Task Till Dawn does have its limitations. It can only run one task at a time. So you can’t set up a single task to launch several applications, one after another. You have to set up a task for each application launch. It also can’t quit applications at a scheduled time.

However, because of the program’s simple scheduling process, it might be easier to set up and run Automator applications via Task Till Dawn rather than using iCal.

Despite its shortcomings, Task Till Dawn is a great little Java-based freeware program for those with very basic automation needs. Let us know what you think of the program.

We have already shared a post on scheduling Facebook updates but most of the tools mentioned there (except for Hootsuite ) do not support page updates (you can only schedule updates to your personal profile).

Here are three fun ways to schedule your updates to the one (or several) Facebook page you are managing:

PostCron

The ability to send updates to a few Facebook pages at a time? NO

PostCron is a new web app that lets you schedule Facebook wall updates and has a look very similar to Facebook’s own submission interface.

To use it, authorize the app to post updates to your wall. Now, just create your update, select the page you want it to go to and the time when it should go live:

Here you go!

You can also edit or delete your scheduled updates while they are not live. Besides, you can “multiply” your update to go live on your page multiple times (I am not sure of the purpose of this feature though).

Use Selective Tweet Status + Schedule Twitter Updates

The ability to send updates to a few Facebook pages at a time? YES!

(Just allow access to several of your Facebook pages – see the instructions below)

Selective Tweet Status is a Facebook application that allows you to automatically post your Twitter updates to your Facebook wall or to the walls of your Facebook Page(s). Like the name suggests, it will only post selective Tweets: those labeled with hashtag #fb

To enable Facebook Page wall posting, you’ll need to grant access to each page of yours separately:

Once you are done, use your preferred Twitter scheduling tool to schedule the tweet which will be then automatically posted to your Facebook Page Wall (the Selective Tweet Application recommends using Buffer app by the way):

Here you go!

Post Updates via Email + Schedule Emails

The ability to send updates to a few Facebook pages at a time? YES!

(Just CC your email to several email addresses tied to your Facebook pages – see the instructions below)

There’s a nice built-in feature that lets you post to your page wall via email. To configure it, go:

Edit Page -> Mobile (click “Edit”) – be sure to keep this email address private:

• To update your status, write in the email subject line and leave the email body blank.
• To upload a photo, email the photo to this address and include a caption in the email subject line.

Now, just schedule your emails containing Facebook status updates!

LetterMeLater is a great free reminder service that lets you easily schedule your emails. Thus, you can post your Facebook wall updates and schedule them with LetterMeLater:

Just sign up for the service and connect it to your email account(s).

Then, using your email client, compose a message using the following format:

Subject: Your Facebook wall update

Attachment: Your photo (if you want to share a Photo update on your page wall)

In body:

To: your Facebook Page email address

CC: your second Facebook Page email address (if you want to schedule an update to several pages)

When: the time you want the update to go live.

The tool is very flexible and supports various time formats. Here are some valid dates:

• now
• next tuesday
• next year
• 3pm
• tomorrow 5:07 am
• 5 hours
• 35 minutes
• Saturday March 1, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Here’s a sample email:

Immediately after sending the message, you’ll receive the status confirmation:

And at the set time, the update will go live:

The beauty of this method is that it is very flexible and you can send updates from wherever you are (all you need is the access to your email inbox!)

Are there any other fun, free methods to schedule Facebook updates to your page wall? Please share them in the comments!

Image Credit:Flickr (koalazymonkey)

Unfortunately these methods do have their restrictions. For example, if you want to share a link with your friends, with all of these services, but one, you will be forced to include the link in your status update, rather than as a separate link as you can do directly within Facebook. Below is a list of a few of the free methods you can use to schedule your Facebook updates.

LaterBro

With LaterBro you can schedule Facebook status updates, while simultaneously updating Twitter. The service is as bare bones as it gets, simply allowing you to schedule updates. The disadvantage to using LaterBro is that status updates are limited to 140 characters, even though Facebook status updates do allow you 420 characters per update. While you can’t add images to your updates, you can include links, and LaterBro has a native url shortener. Updates can be scheduled every fifteen minutes, and you can also schedule certain updates to be repeated on a daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly basis.

All scheduled updates are visible in your account, and you can delete them before hand individually or in bulk.

The status updates on Facebook will feature a link to LaterBro.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck allows you to schedule updates to its supported social networks, including Facebook. When updating your Facebook status on TweetDeck, click the clock icon next to the button marked Send.

You can then enter the exact time and date when the update will be sent.

The update on Facebook will feature a link to TweetDeck.

SocialTomorrow

With SocialTomorrow, after granting the site access to your Facebook account, with a free account, you can then schedule Facebook (or Twitter) updates, but the free accounts do have their limits. With SocialTomorrow you are limited to 10 free updates per month. In comparison to the other services listed here, SocialTomorrow does also suffer as far as it’s interface is concerned. The design of the site feels very outdated, and there is nothing slick about it. That said, if you need a simple way to schedule a limited number of Facebook updates per month, the service will do the trick.

Another drawback to using SocialTomorrow is that all updates are appended with the hashtag, #socialtomorrow, which, while understandable if not a bit annoying on Twitter, it’s of course entirely pointless on Facebook.

HooteSuite

Using the Twitter and Facebook client, HooteSuite, you can easily schedule Facebook updates. While free accounts cannot schedule updates in bulk, you can still schedule as many updates as you like individually. When creating a new update, click the calendar button, and you can select the exact date and time you want the update to appear, and click OK.

Updates scheduled through HooteSuite will feature a direct link to the app.

Greeting Scheduler

The Facebook app Greeting Scheduler takes a different approach to scheduling updates, that isn’t available in the other services listed here. Rather than schedule only your own Facebook status updates, it allows you to schedule updates to be posted on friend’s walls. So if you’re a forgetful person, or don’t log into Facebook on a daily basis, but don’t want to miss the opportunity to wish a friend a happy birthday, for example, this is the ideal app to use. And of course, you can also use it to schedule your own status updates.

The first step is to determine which friends’ walls you want the message posted on, or if you want to post it to your own wall. After scheduling the date and time, you can then enter the message or status update before going onto the next step.

You then have the choice between entering a more elaborate message, with text formatting, or you can choose to share a link instead.

Unlike the other options listed here, when sharing a link using Greeting Scheduler, when it is posted on your profile, it will appear like other links shared through Facebook itself.

What free methods do you use to schedule your Facebook updates? Let us know in the comments.

The virtual daily planner is divided into five sections, Daily Tasks, Master Tasks, Compass, Goals and Mission. Even if you don’t have a need for all sections, you can get a great deal out of this nifty little app that is impressively available for free through the Mac App Store, and could easily replace the  native Mac calendar app, iCal.

Opus Domini gives you a more fun and visually appealing way to handle your schedule, as it is made to look exactly like a physical daily planner, which you can leaf through. The way it is laid out, it transforms itself into a useful tool which you can use to stay organised, and on top of both your daily and over all work tasks.

Automatically Syncs with iCal

If you’ve already got your entire calendar plugged into iCal, making the transition to Opus Domini is easy because it automatically syncs with the native Mac app. There is no need to do anything on your part – it automatically pulls in your appointments and events from all of your calendars, and performs a two-way sync with your default calendar. This is also useful for anyone who uses iCal to take their calendar on the go with them on their smartphone.

Calendar Display Options

With iCal you can take a look at your upcoming schedule by month, by day or by week. Opus Domini outdoes iCal by adding a 5 day planner and a weekend planner.

Task List

With Opus Domini, your task list is front and centre, whereas with iCal it’s little more than a side bar with a list of ToDo items, to which you ocan assign due dates, priority and an alarm to remind you when a task is due. There are two separate Opus Domini task lists. The first is a task list that is viewable by date. Click on any given date, and you will see your scheduled tasks, next to a calendar of scheduled appointments for that day.

The second task list is a Master List. This is useful for keeping a separate list of ongoing tasks that don’t have a specific due date.

With Opus Domini, while there is no alarm feature, you can mark tasks as being in progress, delegated or scheduled. You can also easily reschedule all tasks for another date by ‘forwarding’ them.

Another easy way to assign a due date to a task is by dragging and droppoing tasks onto the calendar above the task list. Overdue tasks are highlighted in red.

If you use your planner for reminders, iCal is the better option for you. If you use your planner as a way to give you a broader picture of what your tasks are, how they are being handled, and to keep you on track, Opus Domini will definitely be more appealing.

Notes & Weather

Opus Domini has a few extra features that makes it a more visually appealing and more well rounded app to use instead of iCal. Next to the daily tasks, you have a blank page in which you can write notes, as well as add images using the drag and drop method.

Above the notes, you can keep track of the weather in any given city, setting it up in the preferences. There is, however, a small glitch with the weather feature, as it displays the temperature in Fahrenheit only, despite there being the choice between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Compass

The Compass is another interesting feature that Opus Domini offers users, but it won’t necessarily appeal to just about anyone. It allows users to document Physical, Social, Mental or Spiritual items on a list, and track their progress.

Here you can record tasks or goals aimed at bettering yourself in any given way. You can also add your own categories to the Compass.

Goals & Mission

If you’re interested in the bigger picture, you can also use Opus Domnini to keep a record of your goals, and how they are progressing.

In addition, you can set down your mission statement, vision and values, to remind yourself of the driving force behind your work.

Opus Domini is only available for download through the Mac App Store, and so you have to be running Snow Leopard in order to install it.

Would you ditch iCal in favour of Opus Domini? What do you think of its features? Let us know in the comments.

** Update 26 March 2011 ** At the time of writing, this app was free of charge. It is now a paid app, costing $4.99.

Whether your events are large-scale or small-scale, this web application is a life-saver for all types of event co-ordinators. Any event which needs to co-ordinate a schedule for rooms, equipment or different types of forums within the event will find the Sched event scheduling software invaluable.

Sched is free for events with fewer than 100 sessions and the free account is capable of handling an unlimited number of attendees. With this flexibility, and a reasonable pricing system for more features, most events can easily use the free service to co-ordinate their schedules.

Sign-up requires that you enter the name and dates of your event. They say that it may take 24 hours to create your account and I suspect this is to combat spam events. However, if you need immediate access it’s possible to email them and explain the situation.

Check Out Some Other Events

Before you get stuck into organising your schedule with Sched, it’s a good idea to take a look at other people’s events to get a feel for how people are using Sched to their advantage.

For instance, there’s a session tag called “Event Type“. Some people use this to define whether it’s a workshop, a lecture, music etc. Other people have used it to quickly pinpoint the location-based zone of the session. This works well for events that have several themed zones and many smaller venues within each zone.

Personalisation

Your attendees can create their own personal schedule from your event schedule, making it easy for them to navigate your timetable and co-ordinate their plans.

Social Integration

Users create a login from the event they wish to attend, then link their login with Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, making it easy to import photos, identity and friends details. The login is reused for other Sched events to keep things simple for attendees.

Once an attendee has decided which sessions they’ll be attending at your event and others, they can share this information with friends via their favourite social networks, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They can also combine their schedule with their friends’ schedules in order to co-ordinate where they might see each other at the event.

Users can even co-ordinate one-on-one meetings with each other scheduled around your event sessions. This could be a very powerful networking tool at conferences.

Rich Media

All Sched event calendars can integrate picture, audio and video into the calendar, which is great if you want to give your attendees a preview of the speaker/performer’s work, photos of the venue or other useful background information.

Highlighting

You can make specific sessions easier to spot with different colours, bold text, starring or adding a highlighted border.

Tagging

As the event manager, you can tag the sessions with multiple tags to make searching for specific sessions easier for your attendees.

Calendar and Maps Integration

Users can automatically export an iCal feed for use in Outlook or Google Calendar. Google maps are automatically generated to create your event map.

Music Integration

Attendees can link their Grooveshark, Last.fm or HypeMachine accounts to generate a music playlist based on their personal schedule within your event.

Mobile Access & Printing

All Sched’s packages include a mobile formatted version of the schedule. This allows your attendees to socially schedule their sessions within your events. All Sched events have an easy-to-print view also, which makes life easy for the participants.

Listen to Your Buzz

Sched also makes it easy for event managers to track conversations on social media about their events, sessions and acts.

Easy Schedule Editing

Even if you make changes to your schedule at the last minute, Sched’s system will allow you to put those changes into effect straight away. Attendees with mobile access will be able to see the changes immediately.

Similar Products

There is plenty of event scheduling software designed to make room and calendar scheduling easier, but this is the only free, online software I have found. It also has some fantastic social features, so it’s bound to generate a lot of buzz and become more popular with time.

If you’re managing events, you might like to also check out these posts:

• Plan Events & Share Them on Plancast
• Live Matrix: A Schedule for Live Events Online
• PurpleTrail: Plan and Organise Events Online
• How To Easily Co-Ordinate Volunteers Using Volunteer Spot

If you’ve just started using Sched as an event manager or as an attendee, let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Using so many online tools and frequenting so many different websites, we tend to find our browsing habits quite hectic. Is there any way that could help us browse the web in a more organized way?

Let’s take a look at the three FireFox addons that allow you to get more organized (and productive) with your daily, weekly and even monthly browsing.

1. Morning Coffee

Morning Coffee is the oldest, the most reviewed and the most basic addon of all the three listed here. With it, you can set multiple pages to open all at once in separate tabs whenever you want (once you click “Load My Morning Coffee” from the bookmarks toolbar icon).

The addon allows the following options for effective daily and weekly browsing management:

• Set to open your most important pages daily;
• Set to open other sites (e.g. those that get updated less frequently or those that do not require as much attention) on a specified day of the week / twice a week / three times a week / on weekdays only / on weekends only

Simple and easy – just what many people are looking for in an addon!

2. Page Scheduler

Page Scheduler has very rich scheduling options (most of which you are unlikely to ever need though). With it you can schedule to:

• Load the page every “n” days;
• Load the page every weekend or every weekday;
• Load the page within the specified period of time;
• Load the page within the set time range;
• Load the page on the specified day of the week (e.g. every Monday) – in the “Weekly” tab in Settings
• Load the page every “Nth” week day of the month (e.g. every first Monday of the month) – in the “Monthly” tab in Settings
• Load the page on the set date of each year (e.g. on January, 1 every year)

3. My Weekly Browsing Schedule

My Weekly Browsing Schedule (we have reviewed “My Weekly Browsing Schedule” on MUO) is the most advanced addon here but then again, it all boils down to what your actual needs are. Besides that, it’s the only addon from this list which is available in FireFox 4 in the experimental release (so if you have switched, it’s the only options for you).

Quick note: The addon icon wasn’t visible immediately after the installation, which for me happens quite often, so you may have to navigate “View” -> “Toolbars” -> “Customize” to find and install the icon.

The addon allows you to:

• Load the selected pages on the specified day of the week at the specified time;
• Use the “Catchup” option that loads the pages in case you were not using the browser at the scheduled time;
• Use the “StartUp” feature for any page (this will open the page on the browser startup;

The tool also allows a few handy option to add pages to the schedule:

• You can add multiple pages from bookmarks (use Shift + Click to select multiple pages);
• You can use the Import feature to import a list of Websites from a simple text file

You can also organize your scheduled pages by groups and search through them – which potentially makes it possible to use the addon as the bookmarking tool that opens pages automatically.

Putting this all together…

Are you aware of any other FireFox addons that allow to manage, organize or automate your browsing? Do you know any similar extensions for other browsers? Please share your tips in the comments!