Monthly Archives: April 2008

Merlin Mann GTD Google Tech Talk

Hi All,

I had a crazy week last week exhibiting at InfoSec with RandomStorm. It was hard work both physically and mentally.

Got some more great ideas for this blog, and writing the posts is added as a task in OmniFocus as you would expect.

Anyway, just watched this great Google Tech Talk from the great Merlin Mann of 43Folders.com. This was recorded 31st March 2008 and has found its way to YouTube. It lasts for 35 minutes and is a great watch, if like me, you are into all things GTD.

43Folders.com used to be THE place for GTD info but the posts reduced and they all seemed to be written by guest bloggers. Recently Merlin has been writing some more good posts and it is great to see him back.

Anyway, rant over, and here is the video for you all to watch.

Great Review of GTD Software Applications

Kevin Crenshaw posted a comment on my post about the Mind Meister 2.0 upgrade. In the true spirit of blogging, this made me visit his blog and check out what he was up to.

Kevin runs a company and website called Priacta, and he is in the personal productivity coaching arena, offering both onsite and remote coaching.

The reason I am mentioning all of this here, is that on the Priacta website, Kevin has taken the time to pull together a great, and very comprehensive review of all of the major Getting Things Done (GTD) Applications.

There were 99 reviews when I started this blog post and I have now just checked and found 100 reviews.

The reviews are very good and cover Windows, Mac, and Linux Operating Systems as well as mobile and web based applications.

Anyway, check out the reviews and I hopefully you will find some value in the reviews.

MindMeister Upgrades to Version 2.0

MindMeister 2.0

You will all know that I love Mind Mapping, and I also love MindMeister, the online Mind Mapping Collaboration tool.

Well, the guys at MindMeister have just updated their software to version 2.0 and included a few cool features.

What’s New in MindMeister?

Our users often tell us that they like MindMeister because of its intuitive interface and overall simplicity. That’s why we try to add only the most necessary features in new releases – and still, this time it turned out to be quite a long list 😉

Oh, and don’t fret if you can’t find your pet feature below, in spite of all the talk about simplicity some more updates are coming soon!

Task information on ideas
As a first step to lightweight project management in MindMeister you can now add task information – priority, completion, due date and owner – to ideas. More to come!

Attachments on ideas
You can now upload file attachments to ideas and preview images through inline thumbnails. This feature is for Premium users only, but everybody can try it out for 30 days.

WunderLink and WunderNote
Try out these new functions to magically add links and notes to your ideas, using the wonders of the web. WunderLink gets its link from a little Yahoo! search performed in the background, while WunderNote uses a FreeBase database lookup.

Automatic text wraps
Idea captions will now automatically wrap at a certain length to avoid overlong nodes (you can keep the old behaviour by adding manual line breaks with Shift-RETURN)

More Geistesblitz features
In our constant quest to improve the Geistesblitz tools we have now added email support and a Geistesblitz Activity for Internet Explorer 8. With email support, you can send single Geistesblitzes or while mind maps just through an email.

Subsharing for maps
New option to allow collaborators to invite others when sharing a map – this will also work for already shared maps

Print and export enhancements
New option to center map on printout, PDF export of mind map now includes notes

Formatting and navigation enhancements
Apply text styles selectively to child ideas, nicer formatting of first level branches, ability to expand and collapse levels

More note and link enhancements
Advanced and larger note editor with more formatting options, new links widget in sidebar, “Show popular links” for idea

OpenID and Paypal support
Support for signup and login through OpenIDs and Paypal support when upgrading to commercial licenses.

Other enhancements
Nicer invitation and sharing emails, new user options, improved support for Safari and Opera, performance improvements through better script and image loading.

This is a huge upgrade with some rather cool features. Be sure to check out MindMeister as best of all, the basic version is free and easy to use.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.5

After waiting a couple of weeks to see if there are any issues, I have today upgraded to WordPress 2.5. I must admit that I am liking the new interface and I am going to spend some time looking into the new features and functionality offered by version 2.5.

Hopefully, I will not inherit any problems so please let me know if you find any.

Also, thanks to all who added me on Facebook and Twitter. Got quite a few of you now on both applications and I am looking forward to interacting with you all in the future.

Social Networking with Twitter and Facebook for Getting Things Done

Well, I have been using Facebook for around a year and I have had my Twitter account about the same. I got into Facebook after receiving many requests to join from other friends and colleagues. I find the groups great and there is even a global GTD Group that I am a member of.

So, for all you other Facebooker’s, feel free to add me as a contact on Facebook.

Now, Twitter is the next thing I want to talk about. I used Twitter when it first came out and didn’t really get it. I read other blogs such as Shoemoney and John Chow and I see that they are all getting back into Twitter so I thought I would try it again. I followed the advice of Robert Scoble and went out to follow quite a few people who I have heard of, and also people who they follow. The results are great. I am now presented with a great social network and I find it an amazing way of keeping up to speed with what is going on in the world.

So, Try this out for yourself and be sure to Follow Me on Twitter.