MakeUseOf » task manager

Trello – A Unique, Simple & Powerful Project Management System From A Good Home

Erez Zukerman — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:31:11 +0000

Does the name Joel Spolsky mean anything to you? If so, you’re going to want to read this post, because it showcases Spolsky’s latest and greatest project. And if not, you should know this is the man behind Stack Overflow, WebPutty, Joel on Software and several other notable projects.

His latest project is called Trello, and it’s a project management system that can be used by a single person or a team. It is original and very simple to use. Oh, and it’s free.

Product Introduction Video

Before embarking on our own tour, I wanted to share Spolsky’s view of the system, in an amusing demonstration video he created to show what it can do. Check it out below:

Trello In Reality

Once you create your free Trello account (or log in with your Google account), you will be greeted with a very gray-looking startup screen:

Trello works using “boards”, where each board is similar to a single project you’re working on, either on your own or with others. It starts you off with a Welcome Board that looks like this:

As you can see, the board is divided into three stacks of “cards”. Let’s take a closer look:

Each card can have a lot of metadata linked to it, or on its “back”, as the Trello metaphor goes. You can see that metadata peeking out, in the form of the little icons under the name of each card. People can vote for cards (say, for implementing features), a card can have a description (shown with the pen icon), comments, attachments, and more.

Let’s look at the back of one such card:

While the card management interface is kept simple, when you look at a single card, Trello’s power really comes to light. Above we can see an image attachment, as well as a description. Note that the attachment is timestamped. You can add labels to a card; these are not text tags, but simply swatches of color that may help you quickly find the cards in the board and filter them:

Another interesting card feature is the checklist:

The checklist is as AJAXy as they come. To add an item, just type it and hit Enter. You will see it on the card instantly. When marking an item as done, it is not removed, but crossed over. You can see the progress of the checklist at a glance, using the progress bar.

The Right Sidebar

The right sidebar shows who can view the board (i.e, who the members are in your project), and hosts several board-related commands. The “Board Profile” is an options dialog for the whole board:

It lets you toggle options on or off. You can open up access to the broad public for voting and comments, or close the board down so that only some people can see it and interact with it.

Searching & Filtering

The sidebar lets you live-search cards, but only by card name (not by comment, checklist item, etc.). You can also filter by label.

Activity Log

One feature that I love is the activity log, shown at the bottom of the sidebar (with a “View all” link for an extended version). The log makes it easy to see who did what, and what cards are new or have been changed. This is important when you have a large system with several participants working on different cards.

Final Thoughts

I really like Trello because I feel it manages to strike a fine balance between visual simplicity (the card metaphor, dragging and dropping) and features (every card has a lot of power). I think the system really comes into its own when used in a team setting, more so than for an individual person trying to manage their own projects. If they ever add Github integration, I could really see a team using it to manage an open-source project.

As it stands, it is fantastic for staying focused and understanding what everyone is working on and what the team as a whole is doing. It’s good enough to make me wish I was part of a team using it, which is a strong testament as any to its power. Give it a whirl yourself and let us know in the comments what you think of it. What new features would you like to see added that would make it even more ideal for you?

Getting Things Gnome Keeps Linux Users Organized

Justin Pot — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:31:19 +0000

Don’t just manage your tasks; deal with them. Getting Things Gnome, a program with an unfortunately stupid name, is a simple yet complete Linux task manager.

MakeUseOf readers know the web can be a distracting place. A good to-do list can help by reminding you of the tasks you need to accomplish. That’s not all you need, however; your task list should show you the things you need to do, but also be flexible enough to store notes about your various tasks. Getting Things Gnome offers this, along with a tagging feature of quick sorting. Organize your life and accomplish what you set out to.

Midnight Inbox, a task manager for OS X, recently became a free application. That’s great for Mac users; Getting Things Gnome offers similar functionality for Linux.

Managing Your Tasks

Fire up Getting Things Gnome for the first time and you’ll see a simple task list. Items in this list can teach you functionality offered by the program, so read them to really learn what’s possible.

Once you’ve read and deleted those items you can start adding your own tasks. Adding a task is simple:

Editing tasks is similar to editing any document, with a few specific rules. The first line of text is your task’s name; this is what you’ll see in Getting Things Gnome’s main interface later. The rest of the field can be used to store whatever information you like, such as contact information for people involved or a brief summary.

Use the “@” symbol, as seen above, to add tags to a given project. This can help a great deal in arranging your tasks.

That’s not the only organizational structure offered. It’s possible to make a certain task a sub-task. This is great for projects that involve several steps, as you can break these steps down into smaller pieces while keeping them part of a larger project.

Once you add a few tasks, you’ll have a basic to-do list:

From the main page you can complete a task, or open any particular task to edit it.

Want to quickly access your tasks from the panel? You can, with a plugin, make your task list into a drop-down menu like this:

The plugin is included; click “Edit” followed by “Preferences” to find it.

Use With Remember the Milk

Do you like the interface Getting Things Gnome provides, but you are already using online task manager Remember the Milk? Don’t worry; a plugin offers the ability to sync this program with everyone’s favorite online program. Find it under the preferences menu and a new button will be added to the toolbar. Click it and you’ll have to go through the confirmation process:

Of course, there are other ways to use Remember The Milk on Linux, but Getting Things Gnome is a great addition to that list. Sadly syncing is not instant, and will require you to remember to click the button on the taskbar, but I’m sure this will get better as the program continues to develop.

Installation

Ubuntu users, as always, are lucky; they need only click here to install Getting Things Gnome. Note that you’ll need Ubuntu 10.10 for that link to work! Users of other Linux versions, or earlier versions of Ubuntu, should read the installation instructions on the Getting Things Gnome website; everything is explained there.

How do you like Getting Things Gnome? Fill us in with your comments below, and be sure to recommend any other Linux task manager you may prefer!

Customize The Windows Task Manager To Your Liking with Task Manager Modder

Matt Smith — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:30:27 +0000

The Windows Task Manager is one of the operating system’s most useful utilities. It can be used to spot unwanted background applications, determine which programs are hogging your processing cycles and system memory, and shut down applications that have gone out of control.

What many users don’t realize, however, is that Windows Task Manager can be customized in numerous ways. You can even customize how it looks – if you don’t mind downloading a third party program capable of controlling the visuals.

Tweaking the Task Manager

Like any normal window the menu options at the top of the Task Manager controls additional available functions. What is easy to miss is the fact that these menu options change relative to the tab you have open in the Task Manager. If you simply took a quick look around the program without realizing this, you might miss out on some interesting features. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting features.

If you open the processes tab in Windows Task Manager and then go to View, you’ll find the Select Columns option. This will open a window that includes numerous options which can be used to customize the information that appears in the processes tab. For example, the Peak Working Set (Memory) option lets you see the peak memory used by a program, while the I/O Read and I/O writer categories let you see how often a program is performing read or write operations. There are too many options to discuss here, but Microsoft has a website that lists them all and what they mean.

Both the Performance and Networking tabs will give you a few options when you select the View option. You can select how quickly Task Manager updates, the way performance is shown (either as per core or a collective) and you can select Show Kernal Times, an option which displays the amount of time the processor spends in “kernel mode” (the core of the operating system). Changing the display so that it updates faster provides better real-time information but causes the graph to move so quickly that developing a picture of processor performance over time is difficult. Keep this in mind when deciding how quickly you want processor information updated – faster isn’t always better.

One final – and very handy – tip lets you get rid of the extra information surrounding the Task Manager. If you double click on the white border surrounding task manager, everything except for the core information will disappear. The result looks like this.

Further Customization with Task Manager Modder

The customizations discussed so far lets you tweak the information displayed. But what if you want to tweak the way Task Manager looks overall?

This requires a third party program called Task Manager Modder. This program lets you change the way the graphs look in the Performance tab, so you can customize it to something more agreeable (i.e. not neon green). This can be done by using the color controls at the bottom of the Task Manager Modder window.

In my case, I decided to go with a blue-and-white color scheme, as I find this to be very easy on my eyes. You can choose from pre-selected colors or, as I did, choose from a wide variety of hex colors. Once you’ve decided on a color scheme, you simply have to click on Modify Taskmgr. Task Manager, if open, will have to be re-opened. The results are very nice. These color changes also carry over to the Networking tab, but you can’t change the yellow axis on the left side.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these tips will help you become more buddy-buddy with the Windows Task Manager. It is truly a great resource for information about your machine, even more so than it appears at first glance.

Monitor What’s Really Going On With Your PC With System Explorer

Ryan Dube — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:31:56 +0000

One of the biggest problems with being addicted to new software is the tendency for “leftover” processes and files to remain throughout my PC – sometimes even viruses, adware or malware.

One of the reasons I was most motivated to write this article for MakeUseOf was because I found that my computer startup time was crawling, and I would always end up with two or three windows opening that I didn’t recognize. Annoyed with my inability to see everything going on with my computer, I decided to strike out in search for a killer application that would give me that power back.

I am pleased to report that the free utility called System Explorer will return power over your own computer back to you.

Use System Explorer To See Every System Detail

The reason that my own computer usually gets so muddied up with junk is not because I don’t know how to track down the running processes, identify the culprits and eradicate the files. The problem is that I just don’t have time to dig through the system to find dll’s, startup folders, services, registry keys and everything else.

Here at MakeUseOf, we’re always trying to offer advice on how to troubleshoot your computer problems. Bakari wrote a great writeup with 8 troubleshooting resources for Mac users, and Saikat covered how to troubleshoot Windows with MSConfig.

The beauty of System Explorer is that it collects, organizes, and rearranges all of the information you need about your system into one central location.

There are obviously a few items that you could see by just doing a quick Ctrl-Alt-Delete and opening your Task Manager. However, the Processes display is actually an enhanced version of the Task Manager processes list.

How is this view enhanced? Well, it not only lists every single process running on your machine, as well as all of the details about each process – but if you see one that’s questionable, you don’t have to try and guess what it is. If you click on the “Check” link, you’ll go to an online database of file type explanations and reviews from experts regarding whether or not the file is considered safe or unsafe.

Troubleshooting System Problems

Let’s face it, sometimes even the best antivirus apps will not pick up on some of the latest threats. Harmful programs eventually make it onto your PC. A good place the start is the System Performance display, which provides a graphical view of processor, network and RAM usage – and much more.

As you’re reviewing each process that’s running, you can also right click a file, click “File Check” and use either VirusTotal.com or Jotti.org to check if the file is a virus.

Is your network graph maxed out? If it appears that your Internet bandwidth has been hijacked, then click on the “Connections” option in the left menu and you’ll see every last process that’s accessing the Internet, the protocol being used, and the “to” and “from” domain addresses. This can help you identify applications that are sending traffic to questionable domains.

Clicking “Startups” displays every program configured to launch up on startup. This include shortcuts in your Startup folder, and items in your registry. See one that you don’t want? Just right click and disable or delete.

Other Cool Features

If you click “Additional Info,” you’ll find your processor speed, used and free memory, drivers, registered DLLs, and even every font that’s installed on your system!

When you’re satisfied that you have your computer cleaned up and things running smoothly again, you can perform a quick “snapshot” of your system. Later, when your computer starts acting strangely again, take another snapshot and compare the two. System Explorer will tell you files and registry keys that have been added since you took the first snapshot.

Even when you’re not using System Explorer, you can keep it running in the task bar. Just hover your mouse over the icon and get a quick look at the current behavior of your system, including CPU stats, memory usage and battery life.

System Explorer helped me to resolve my system startup issues, and I plan to use the snapshot utility often to identify any new issues that crop up.

Have you ever tried System Explorer? What do you think? Do you know any other similar free system troubleshooting tools like this? Share your insight in the comments section below.

How To Use A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog For Project Management

Nancy Messieh — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:31:20 +0000

There are a lot of great free and paid project management solutions available online for teams, but if you already host your own site, you could easily put together an easy-to-use project management system using WordPress.

There are several reasons to use WordPress. If you’re already hosting your own website, there’s no extra cost, unlike the more popular project management services. WordPress is easy to use and highly customizable with themes and plugins, allowing you to create your own project management blog to suit your needs.

Wordpress can easily be accessed on the go with mobile apps for Windows Mobile, iPhone and Android phones. And lastly, you aren’t at the mercy of another service, with the peace of mind and security of hosting your content yourself.

Choose A Theme

Once you have WordPress installed, the first thing you need to do is choose a theme. Theoretically any theme will do the trick, but there are a few themes that have been designed specifically with this concept in mind.

P2

P2 is a free WordPress theme that allows you to post updates from the front page of your blog. Users have the ability to embed images, audio files and videos all from a Twitter-like update box.

The theme’s customisations include a custom header and the ability to change the background colour or image. You can also restrict posting access and hide the comment threads by default.

P2 can be used as a means of keeping other team members apprised of your latest updates in any given project, by using categories and tags as a means of keeping the posts structured.

If you choose to use the P2 theme, and would rather keep your updates private, you will need to install the plugin Members Only, explained in more detail below, in order to toggle your privacy settings.

GTD Templatic

GTD Templatic is based on the P2 and it makes it even easier for a team to collaborate privately, sharing files and content, all from the front page of the project management blog.

Setting GTD Templatic up is painless. After you have installed and activated the theme, you can choose whether or not to display post titles, make the blog private, enable file attachments and enable email notifications.

Users can post updates from the front page, attach files to each post, and tag their posts in order to maintain an organized structure. However, if you would like to embed any media in your post, this will have to be done from the back-end of the blog.

One of GTD Templatic’s best features is the ability to selectively notify other members when you have posted an update.

GTD Templatic, like P2, is very reminiscent of Twitter, using a simple and minimalist approach for project management.

Prologue

Prologue is the simplest option of all, where updating from the front page is limited to text updates only. Of course, adding updates from the back-end includes all the standard WordPress options for posting.

Unlike P2 and GTD Templatic, where comments appear on the front page, each update has to be opened in order to view the comments.

Prologue’s customisation is limited to a custom header, and like P2, in order to limit access, the plugin Members Only must be used.

Adding Plugins

Once you’ve chosen your theme, there are a variety of plugins that can be added to your blog to enhance the experience.

CollabPress

CollabPress is the ideal plugin to use together with any of these themes, as it adds the much needed organization and structure to the back end of the project management blog in order to effectively outline projects, tasks and deadlines.

After you have created your project, you can create tasks, assign them to specific users, notify them by email of their task, and give them a deadline.

The CollabPress dashboard features a section with all recent activities, a section with your personal tasks, a calendar, and links to each project.

CollabPress settings include enabling email notifications and setting the level of access, which makes it the only project management plugin listed here that allows users who do not have admin privileges to access the plugin.

WP-Project

WP-Project is a useful plugin to use if you have several clients. You can create as many projects as you need, assign the project to a client, and add tasks, keeping track of your progress, marking each task as completed once it is done.

In order to have access to the WP-Project plugin, users must have admin privileges.

WP-Task-Manager

WP-Task-Manager can be used in conjunction with WP-Project if a more elaborate task management system is needed.

With WP-Task Manager, users can add tasks, assign them to specific users, and assign deadlines. Other users can also comment on the tasks, and mark them as completed once they are done.

Like WP-Project, a user must have admin privileges in order to access the Task Manager at all.

WP-Polls

If you would like team members to vote on various issues, you can install the WP-Polls plugin, and have polls featured in the blog’s sidebar.

After activating the plugin, create your poll and take note of the poll’s number.

Under ‘Appearance,’ select Editor, and choose Sidebar.php and insert the following snippet of code:

Polls


Polls

This will result in the poll appearing in the sidebar.

Members Only

In the case of P2 and Prologue, the plugin Members Only will ensure that no one else can view your content.

The entire blog will only be accessible to members who are logged in, and you also have the choice of redirecting visitors to a specific page on your website.

Post From Site

If you would rather use a theme of your choice, Post from Site is a plugin that gives you a quick link to creating a post from the front page of your site.

The plugin has elaborate settings, toggling the creation of posts, categories and tags, uploading images and enabling comments, amongst others.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, be sure to add the following snippet of code to your theme, where you would like the link to appear:

So for example, if you would like it to appear in your sidebar, once again navigate to the theme file, Sidebar.php, and insert the code in the file.

Clicking on the link will result in a window overlaying the blog, enabling users to add a new post.

Once you have your site set up, you are ready to start adding users. This can be done easily from the back-end of WordPress, and remember if you plan on using the plugins, you have to give your team members admin privileges. As you add users, their credentials will be emailed to the email address you provide.

If you need help getting started with WordPress, be sure to check out the MakeUseOf PDF Guide on How to Build Your Own WordPress Site. And if you don’t have your own self-hosted website, check out Jeffry’s article on how to get one for free.

Have you tried to use WordPress for team collaboration? Let us know what you thought of it in the comments.

Manage Your Tasks Online Using GTD with PlanCake

Varun Kashyap — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:31:27 +0000

Getting things done or GTD as it is more commonly known as, is a methodology that helps you get your work done and over with in a jiffy while attempting to avoid evils like forgetfulness, tensions and of course procrastination.

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done mentions that the best way to manage tasks is that one needs to move the tasks out of one’s mind onto some external source where they can be filed to be accessed later and appropriate actions can then be taken according to the tasks. This external source could be anything that works for you. From files to trays to Excel sheets – anything.

If you would rather use your computer for getting things done, PlanCake is an excellent candidate for the tool of choice. Designed specially with GTD in mind, you would need an account to get started. Creating an account requires only your email address and password, no additional details are required. Once you activate your account you can start working with PlanCake.

As PlanCake strongly favors the GTD methodology as the best way to manage tasks, it focuses on getting things off your mind and into the system. Your account’s homepage shows you a list of overdue tasks, and the tasks that are due today and tomorrow. You can quickly add new tasks using the “New Task” button.

So far so good but the real power of PlanCake lies in the fact that you can quickly dump in tasks (in other words get them off your mind) and then categorize or prioritize them later. The PlanCake inbox serves as the holding place for everything you need to do. PlanCake gives you a special email address, unique to your email account (find it under settings) and any email sent to this address will be stacked as a task in your PlanCake inbox.

So as soon as you get an idea, an invite or remember a task, shoot off an email to PlanCake with the idea/invite/task as the subject line and an optional description as the message body. The next time you are on a computer or can access PlanCake, you can take time and quickly prioritize and assign deadlines and contexts to all the tasks in your PlanCake inbox.

PlanCake also incorporates GTD’s other mainstay - the contexts. Contexts let you categorize your tasks based on where you are most likely to complete them. Making a call can have a “phone” context, shooting off an email can have a “phone” or a “computer” context and so on. You can assign contexts to your tasks easily with PlanCake simply by placing a check against the required context.

PlanCake also offers the magical %% operator. “%% computer” in the task name would add it to the “computer” context. “%% next monday” will set the task due date to the following Monday. You can find other useful shortcuts in the PlanCake user guide. You can also download and install PlanCake on your personal server if you so please. PlanCake requires PHP5 with MySQL. Other details can be found on the download page.

If you have read David Allen’s book and tried to cook up a system based on his ideas on your computer then PlanCake is a Godsend for you as one of the best ways to manage tasks. It does everything you could have dreamt of. If on the other hand you don’t know a lot about GTD, then we suggest you have a look at PlanCake’s excellent user guide.

PlanCake is great, works nice, has plenty of shortcuts to keep the nerds interested and makes managing your work and tasks even easier. The only downside I can think of is that the name reminds you of pancakes and you might feel hungry as a side effect of prolonged use!

Are you a big GTD fan? What software tools do you use for managing your tasks?

Spark App: A Lightweight To-Do List & Notes for Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:31:21 +0000

After forgetting many small things that I have to accomplish, I am certain that I need to implement a to-do list. I don’t need fancy things, just as long as I can have access to this list wherever I go.

I have my Mac at home, but what about when I’m on the road? Pen and paper is out of the question. Aside from having almost unreadable handwriting, I tend to lose pieces of papers easily. Since a mobile phone is less likely to go missing, I prefer to have my to-do list there.

So the requirements of my to-do list software is that it’s both lightweight and synchronize-able with iCal.

Small Sparks

In the comments of my previous article about Notational Velocity, a reader suggested an alternative note taking application called Spark (this app is, by the way, different from another Mac app with the same name whose function is to create shortcuts).

After taking a quick look, I concluded that this one is more to-do list software than a note-taking app. And it’s just my luck that Spark meets my requirements of a to-do list app. But I also found out that this useful app is still imperfect and buggy.

My first complaint would be about the non-availability of documentation. I can’t find the version number of this app. There is also no data about shortcuts that you can use. As a shortcut guy, I was a little bit disappointed. I managed to find several common shortcut keys, but not enough to navigate the app without the mouse.

The interface itself is pretty simple and straightforward. There’s the search field at the top of the window, the task pane in the middle, and the note area below it.

To add a task, you can click on the plus (+) icon at the bottom of the window or use “Command + N“. You can add notes to the task if necessary by editing the notes field. Deleting a task is also as easy as selecting one and then clicking the minus (-) icon or the “delete” key on your keyboard.

You can nest tasks under another task and make them as part of a bigger project. You can also drag and drop the project into another project and create big and smaller projects.

The next place to visit is the Preferences pane. Click the small gear icon at the right bottom of the window or use “Command + Comma (,)” to open the window.

There are several things that you can set here. Under the General preferences, you can tell Spark to open at login, hide/show the menubar icon, enable iCal/email syncing, set the font for the notes, and hide/show the Dock icon.

You have to restart Spark after choosing to show the dock icon before the effect takes place. The advantages of having the dock icon are the ability to see the dock badge (a.k.a: how many tasks left undone) and having the “normal” menu just like any other application.

There’s also the ability to add the due date. Just select a task and click the eye icon on the bottom right of the window.

You could also add a shortcut to quickly summon Spark under the “Preferences > Shortcuts“. I expected to find many customizable shortcuts because of the “s”, but there’s only one item there.

Wishlist

I personally think that Spark has the potential to be a good simple project and task management app. But to be honest, there are still many things to fix and add before it can achieve that goal.

After playing with the to-do list software for a while, here are my list of the things I wish the Spark developer could add, improve or repair:

Interface: it would be so much better if the task/project title is more visible. Please do not use grey above grey.
It would also be cool if the users could adjust the note color.
What about the ability to add alarms to a task/project?
The search function and the dock badge is still buggy. Some fixing would be great
Show some love to the keyboard: add more shortcuts to the level that users can put their mouse to rest.
And please add some documentation and information about the version number.

Have you tried Spark? Do you know other simple-free-quick-lightweight project and task managers for Mac? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below.

iPod Touch : 10 Cool Productivity Apps For Offline Use

Jessica Cam Wong — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:49:52 +0000

With 100,000+ apps in the App Store, we can find apps for a variety of uses, such as turning your iPod Touch/iPhone into a professional camera/photo editor (for iPhone), an external hard drive, a reference book, or a radio, yet productivity apps that integrate with Google services, which are free and which we can use without Wi-Fi are harder to find. Not every place we are in will have Wi-Fi, especially if we are on-the-go or commuting a lot. That’s when apps with offline capabilities come in handy.

Two productivity apps that come natively on the iPod Touch/iPhone can be used offline: Calendar and Mail. Updating the native Calendar app with an entry in your iPod Touch/iPhone and seeing the same updates on your GCal has been possible thanks to Google Sync, which also syncs your Contacts and Gmail from your Google Account. Since the Mail app downloads your Gmail messages, you can read them offline, and sync the read messages when you get a Wi-Fi signal.

Productivity, however, encompasses more than just using the e-mail and calendar functions. Some people may need task management apps, better note-taking systems, the ability to edit documents or read their feeds. Check these apps to help you stay productive on the road!

Note: Not all apps are completely usable offline, because for some, you have to gather and save your information when you’re on Wi-fi so you can enjoy it during offline mode.

TASKS

Reqall, version 3.1.2

One of the most full-featured task management (and memory jogging) apps offering exquisitely complete features on the free version (the Pro version has more advanced features for the power user, such as ability to add tasks by email, and to get your Shopping List texted to you), the Reqall [iTunes link, website] iDevice app conveniently has a Shopping List, in addition to a To-Do List and a Notes section (see the Notes apps below) to which you can easily add tasks in offline mode by pressing the “+” icon.

If you include a date when you’re adding a task, then you will also see it (in addition to the category of Shopping List or To-Do) in the Today, Soon, or Later lists in the Time tab, which is if you’re interested in seeing your tasks by dates, just like in a calendar. When you have a Wi-fi signal, the app will automatically sync to your Reqall account, so you can access your To-Dos, Shopping List and Notes on the web, IM, email, by phone (U.S., Canada and UK residents can call Reqall to add, be reminded of, or share tasks with their Reqall contacts), and even Blackberry.

Milpon (For Remember the Milk), version 2.2

Although Milpon [iTunes link] is a third party application (not developed by popular task management app, Remember the Milk), this app is a free alternative for RTM users with no Pro account (required to use the free, native RTM app). With Milpon, you can add tasks in offline mode to your Remember the Milk account by tapping the “+” sign and see them listed by due dates (Overview tab), categories of personal, study, work (List tab), and tags (Tag tab). When you have a Wi-fi signal, you can press on the Refresh icon to sync tasks.

Find more details and screenshots in Angelina’s article.

NOTES

Reqall, version 3.1.2

Reqall, also mentioned in the Tasks section of this article, has a spectacular Notes section where you can access your notes (that you might have added in the website or by phone, as previously mentioned) in full (regardless of whether you only have 2 or 30+) and even edit in offline mode. Your edits to existing notes will be synced the next opportunity your iPod encounters a Wi-fi signal while you have the app open.

Editing new, un-synced notes, however, isn’t possible till after you sync. Thus, either be as thorough as possible before you finish the new note, or copy and paste your words into a new note with your edits. To add a new note, just tap the “+” icon and start off with the word “note” (alternatively, you can also select Notes in the “In” tab to add it to the Notes collection). If you have an external 3.5mm iPod Touch microphone or a pair of earbuds with built-in microphone, you can also add notes by voice.

One more tip: Even though you can’t organize your notes, Reqall has a great, real-time search function that will find any notes you may have stashed in your account.

Evernote, version 3.2.1 [Requires Favoriting A Note While Online]

Evernote [iTunes link, website] is a multi-functional note-capturing tool that can accept your notes from a variety of sources, and help you a great deal in school. While offline, you can access the notes from your Evernote account and create new notes right from your iPod Touch, but if you want to edit your rich text notes (say, ones that contain more than one type of font), you only have the options of appending text to your note, which means you can’t edit the text present in your note before appending, unless you copy and paste the text from the unrevised note and add your edits to the new note. For plain text notes, you won’t have that problem and will be able to edit them (in the beginning, at the end, etc).

To access notes offline, you will have to Favorite a note (by tapping the star) when you’re still connected to a Wi-fi network. You can also add notes by voice again if you have an external 3.5mm iPod Touch microphone or one integrated with your earbuds.

Simplenote, version 2.51

Simplenote [iTunes link, website] has an incredibly clean app that works well for adding text notes. Creating an account through the app was easy and required no clicking of an email confirmation link. Right when there was a Wi-fi signal, the notes synced instantly (I was very surprised by the lack of waiting time) to your account so you can access your notes on SimpleNote’s web-based application, which has a similar look. Even when you’re not using the web app, you can still access all your notes right on your iPod in offline mode.

DOCUMENTS

Documents 2 Free By Savy Soda (Google Docs Viewer/Editor), version 2.0

GDocs viewing apps flow in the hundreds in the App Store, but one that allows editing GDocs for free and offline isn’t as easy to find. Documents 2 Free [iTunes link, website] is almost there, letting you download and view your documents and spreadsheets from your GDocs account, edit them and upload them to GDocs. Once you download though, viewing and editing can be done offline.

It seems too great for the price of $0, but be warned that you might have to rename your GDocs Word documents’ extensions to .txt and upload them to GDocs with that name because this app doesn’t seem to read (or create) .doc files. That’s my workaround for the sometimes-unviewable Word documents in the app. Besides editing your GDocs, this app will also let you create new text documents, spreadsheets (.csv) and even sounds (.wav), that you can upload to GDocs (yes, even sound files since GDocs now accepts any file).

Dropbox, version 1.0.1 [Requires Favoriting A File While Online]

Often-favorited file-syncing application, Dropbox [iTunes link, website] enables you to not only view your photos and videos, but also your documents (.rtf, .txt, .doc, .pdf, etc).

You’ll have to press the star to add documents to your Favorites, which is the collection of files you can view offline, just like in Evernote. While the concept of keeping synced files across devices is neat, especially for students, this app lacks certain basic functions, such as the ability to edit, among others.

READER

Stanza (E-Book Reader), version 2.0 [Requires Downloading While Online]

Save yourself from having to go to the library or the bookstore, because with the e-book reading app, Stanza [iTunes link, website], you will have access to the catalogs of free e-book sources (such as king of public domain books, Project Gutenberg) and bookstores.

If you’re not so sure about squinting at the small screen, try adjusting the font size (Stanza offers a lot of options so you can customize the look and layout of the book) or even the effects and tapping functions. Just download the free e-book (or paid e-book from the bookstores) from the catalog in the Get Books tab while you’re online and enjoy it anywhere, regardless of whether you’re connected or not! You can also transfer in e-books you have in your computer with Stanza Desktop application, available for PC and Mac.

Read It Later Free, version 2.0.1 [Requires Syncing While Online]

While Stanza saves e-books to your iPod/iPhone, the free version of Read It Later [iTunes link, website] saves web articles so you can view them offline. You do need an account if you want to view your saved articles on the web, and use the bookmarklet for your mobile Safari browser while online, that will help you save a webpage.

If you use Read It Later’s Firefox addon (which enables you to save webpages from your desktop browser), just open the app when you’re online so it will sync the saved webpages and you’ll be able to view those articles on your iPod later in offline mode.

NetNewsWire Free, version 2.0.2 [Requires Downloading While Online]

NetNewsWire Free [iTunes link, website] is a simple Google Reader app that downloads your feeds (this can take a while if you are like me and have lot of feeds and unread items) to your iPod/iPhone when you’re online. Once the app is done downloading, you can read all your GReader feeds in offline mode (just not the pictures accompanying the feeds’ articles), and mark items as read. Next time your device encounters a Wi-Fi signal and you have this app open, your GReader account’s unread items will be synced.

MobileRSS – Free Google Reader, version 2.2 [Requires Downloading While Online]

NetNewsWire is great if you just want to read your feeds, but if you want to add notes to feed items, manage folders, share your items by email, Facebook or Twitter, give MobileRSS [iTunes link] a try. Like NetNewsWire, MobileRSS will also download your feed items from your GReader account while online so you can enjoy them offline with accompanying pictures! After you mark items as read while offline, you’ll be able to sync read items in your GReader account the next time you get Wi-Fi. See more of this power app’s features in Nancy’s article.

Want to recommend another app? Hit us up in the comments!

4 Methods To Monitor Running Processes on Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:31:22 +0000

Have you ever wondered why there are times where your computer suddenly runs slower even though you have only opened one or two applications? It seems that the phrase “more than meets the eye” applies not only to a bunch of transforming robots, but also very true to describe the running processes on a Mac. There are many things unknown that lurk behind the scenes.

The ability to monitor everything that’s happening inside is especially useful for those with slower machines. They need all the juice they can get. Running applications – even if they are in the background waiting – eat up system resources.

Hours are wasted everyday just waiting for the computer to repeatedly get back to its senses. It would be very nice if you could know all the running processes on a Mac, pause the ones that you currently don’t need, and force some of them to quit if you need to.

An Ounce Of Prevention Is Better Than A Pound Of Cure

Sometimes people think they know what’s best for us. That’s why there are applications that take the liberty to add themselves to the startup list even though the users do not ask them to. What’s even worse, some do this quietly without letting the users know.

So it’s no surprise if there are suddenly tons of applications appearing at start up.

The first step in taking control of the running processes on a Mac is to filter these self-added applications. You can do this in Mac by going to the Accounts Preference pane. Open System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items and you can delete the ones that you don’t need by selecting them and press the minus (-) button.

Monitor The Madness

Mac OS X also provide its users with tools to monitor all the running applications called Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor).

Upon opening, you’ll see everything, along with other necessary information like the amount of memory used, percentage of utilized CPU power, number of threads, etc.

This is the window display when I consciously open only one application – Firefox.

Quickly Quit Or Pause

Quitting an application is simply pressing “Command + Q” or going to the “Quit” menu. But as a last resort – when your system has become unresponsive with all the open applications, you could force some applications to quit using Activity Monitor. Just select them from the list and press the “Quit Process” button.

You could also terminate major applications via Force Quit Applications window. Press “Command + Option + Escape” to summon the window.

But forcing the application to quit is not always the only answer. You can also try to pause the inactive applications and give the computational power to the applications that you are currently use. Later on, when you want to use those halted apps, you can easily activate them again.

This method is perfect for applications that take up a large amount of system resources, but you need them all the time and the process of quitting and relaunching them will take too long. Something like Firefox with lots of open tabs.

I couldn’t find any native Mac OS X way to pause/unpause applications. But I found an application called Pauser that can do it. It’s an old application, but it works just fine under Snow Leopard.

Pauser will reside in the menu bar. To pause any application, click on the icon and choose the application from the list. Clicking the item again from Pauser list will unpause it. The paused application will be in the not-responding state and take zero amount of CPU processing power. Unfortunately, pausing an application will not free the memory used by it.

Here are the comparisons beween active and paused Firefox.

Here are a couple of articles related to Activity Monitor you might want to check out: Macnifying OS X: Learning To Utilize Activity Monitor on Mac and atMonitor ““ A System Monitor On Steroids [Mac].

If you know another alternative to Pauser, please share using the comments below.

Image Credit: andresrueda

Collabtive – A Free Open Source Project Management Software

Abhigyan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:31:04 +0000

Managing projects can be tricky, time-consuming and confusing. It’s easy to lose one’s way when faced by a myriad of tasks, each with its own deadline. Project management requires a manager to be alert at all times. It is, in essence, the art and science of managing everything that is related to a project (be it tasks, team members, deadlines, etc.). When all aspects of a project mesh together without causing any disruptions, we have what we call a successful project.

Managing projects is not an easy task. In fact, the need to use project management software is increasing by the day. The need to structure and organise various projects/processes is become more and more dire. Offline and standalone solutions are just not good enough anymore. However, not everyone (or for that matter, every company) has the budget required to go for Microsoft Project or similar management solutions. And this is where Collabtive steps in.

Collabtive is open source project management software. It is a PHP based (which means it can be run on almost any computer, which has a browser capable of understanding PHP) project management system. Collabtive allows you to manage projects by setting up different tasks and assigning them to different users. The progress of these tasks can then be tracked using the easy interface of the application. The administrator can add multiple users to the application and each user can access the interface through his/her browser. There’s practically no limit to the number of users that can work simultaneously on Collabtive. Although it doesn’t provide advanced features such as Gantt charts, it does provide for a very simple and efficient mechanism to keep track of your projects.

In order to use Collabtive, you need to have PHP support on your system(s). I got that by installing WAMP. The installation process in itself is very simple and quick. After extraction, you just need to point your browser to the install.php file to launch the installer. Once installed, you are greeted with the following login screen.

Once you login with your credentials, you are greeted by what the Collabtive team call your Desktop. The Desktop shows you a list of all current projects, a tasklist, as well as a calendar showing your tasks and milestones.

Clicking on a project name takes you to the project page. This page is also called the Project Dashboard. The Project Dashboard consists of a calendar specific to a particular project. It also consists of a Timetracker, using which you can track the amount of time that you have spent working on the project. There is also an Activity Log, which contains a step-by-step listing of all the activities pertaining to the project.

This page also contains a number of icons at the top, which allow you to visit your Milestones page, review your Tasklists, access the Messaging system, as well as access the file repository for a particular project. There is also a User tab, which shows a list of all the users currently using the Collabtive system for a project.

The tasklist allows you to create tasks, which may be critical to the project. Each task can have an associated due-date and can be assigned to one or multiple users. These tasks, once completed, can simply be “finished” by clicking on the tick-mark next to them.

The Milestones can be looked upon as distinct phases in the project timeline. Each milestone may have a number of tasks associated with it. As and when tasks are finished, a status bar for the project under consideration keeps increasing on your Desktop.

The right hand side pane across all pages provides a search bar, a simple text-based calendar, and a list of users who are currently online. The search bar searches across tasks, milestones, as well as entire projects. Also, each user can fill out his/her profile page so that different team members have ways and means to contact one another.

All in all, Collabtive provides for a very elegant project management system. It may not be as power-packed as its commercial counterparts, but it provides more than a decent feature set to keep track of all the tasks and milestones associated to your project.

Collabtive can be used in a number of scenarios. It can be used to track curriculum progress in schools. It may also be used by manufacturers to track the status of various orders. For students, it can be an ultimate collaboration platform, where they would be able to share notes, homework, even entire assignments and research. And last, it can be used as a simple calendaring application.

If you are a a project manager (and hate the commercial Silicon Valley giants, just like yours truly), making the switch to Collabtive should top your list of things to do.