Sunday, September 9, 2007

Getting organized

There is a lot of of calender software out there, to do list software, task list software, alarm software.

And it is all disjointed. I will receive an e-mail in my Gmail, copy and paste its body into a Google Calendar entry, then start a Google Document, send the URL to my work mates through e-mail, then finally paste the URL to the calendar entry. Even working within a single constellation of software, my workflow remains jittery. As the information is copy-pasted around, I am responsible for keeping everything in sync.

I might as well use my inbox to keep track of my tasks. At least there, I can see everything at once. Which is what everybody ends up doing.

I am quite excited about the Chandler project. In their system, an e-mail is a calendar entry is a to do entry is a document. Which is a how it should be.

Chandler is sprinkled with the "getting things done" spice. Items can be either active now, deferred or done. Deferred items can have a tickler alarm, which naturally goes on the calendar.

It also serves as a sharing platform. You share a document by e-mailing the URL to it. There is no needful further login, knowing the URL is your password.

It seems like modern lessons in interface design were finally heard. I will try using it. Ask me how well it went in two weeks.

http://chandlerproject.org/vision
http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/PreviewDemos

1 comment:

Andrew said...

There's a great book on the development of chandler out there. The book details chandler's early development effort. It's good to read if you want to know about common pitfalls in witting software. It's called dreaming in code.

http://www.dreamingincode.com/