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melvbot

Its the New Year so back to work, back to normal and back to forgetting half the stuff I need to get done. Theres a few programs for Mac and Windows that will help you with this such as these for Mac

Getting things Done for MAC - iGTD

kgtd | Kinkless

Things - task management on the Mac

The Omni Group - OmniFocus

And some for Windows

Master your To-Do List with Tudumo - Simple GTD Software for Windows

Jello Dashboard For Outlook

ThinkingRock GTD

I looked at a few Mac ones and it just struck me as too much for what I wanted, yet another application Ive got to fire up to look at a list and see whats left to do. In short I wanted an easy way of reminding myself of stuff Ive got to do without getting bogged down with putting entries into a program and learning how to use it which is just more time wasted messing around.

Then I came across this post on a site I use

Geek to Live: Incorporate text files onto your desktop

Its a way of putting plain text on your desktop like this





And they do need to be plain text files.

The link is great for Windows users as its an easy step by step way of doing it. As you can see you can get all nerdy and have all sorts of system info displayed like memory usage etc.

With the "To Do" feature being just a text file its easy to update, find the file edit it and display the update. I havent used this so Ive no idea of how it updates, might be auto might be manual.

The good thing about this is it sits permanently on your desktop, doesnt look too flashy or distracting and if you forget something its likely to be one of the last things you see when you shut the computer down.

I'll do a Mac way of doing it next.

__________________
The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth

DaffyDuck

For iPhone, you should look into Things for iPhone, as well as the companion product for the Mac, Things.

Well integrated. Excellent design - there's essentially just two controls:

'+' add task
and 'done'

AntRobertson

What I really need is a bit of software that combines a 'To Do' list with a function that actually does all of the work on the list for me.

melvbot

As I mentioned I looked at the apps and its just as easy for me to forget to open the app and have a look at a list of stuff to do as it is to forget it in the first place, I need nagging to remember some stuff and for me this is a much better way.

Marmite the Dog

That looks pretty useful. Lets hope I can get it to work!

melvbot

Right, the Mac way. Im adding a disclaimer to this which is

Geektool is made for Panther and Tiger, not specifically for Leopard. GeekTool does/will work under Leopard but it has its quirks.

If you want a crack at it go to

http://http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/

Download and install it.

Ive done a screencast of how I got the file to display the same as the Windows screenshot here. View in fullscreen for a better picture.

Viddler.com - Geek Tool GTD - Uploaded by melvbot

As I said this works better for me, I'll show you why in the next screencast.

You might prefer one of the programs for Mac instead.

melvbot

I use Quicksilver for as many things as possible, it cuts out a lot of navigating through files and folders saving me loads of time for other more important stuff like surfing TD.

In the plugins section of Quicksilver there is a Text Manipulation module which when installed allows you to add text to a file from within Quicksilver, saving you having to open the text editor/document.


Viddler.com - GeekTool To Do & Quicksilver - Uploaded by melvbot

melvbot

When you add or remove text just by openeing the document things dont get refreshed automatically so until I find out how to do it automatically heres how I do it.

Viddler.com - Geek Tool Quirks - Uploaded by melvbot

This is why its easier to use Quicksilver to add items, you dont have to manually refresh it.

melvbot

Im learning this as I go along so bear with me. To get the file to refresh automatically you need to use the "shell" option instead of "file"

You can delete the first entry and start with a new one.

First you need the full location of the todo.txt file, to find this go to the todo.txt file, right click it and open it with a browser. This will give you the full path of the file and should look like this in the URL bar

Open GeekTool and choose "shell" and select the command button if not already hi-lighted.





In the text box copy/paste the file path from the browser URL bar with this command in front of it and a space so it looks like this



Above this text box is a small box with "refresh" this is the time in seconds it will refresh by so 60 is 1 minute.

Change the font colour and size if needed the same as before, now when you add or delete anything to the todo.txt file and save it, it will update at the specified interval in the "refresh" box. Cool !

Be prepared for more waffle about GeekTool as Ive now found a new toy to play with.

Bubba

I use this : Post-it® Software Notes Lite Version 3.1.1.1073

it's just a virtual post it note that sits on your desktop. Easy to use and does the job. I think it has alarms and things as well but I never use them.

melvbot

I might be throwing off the shackles of employment and going it alone. Me being me, I need something to organise stuff quickly as I tend to think of something, forget it then remember the same thing the next day when I can take any action on it.

I went looking for an app for my iPhone and stumbled across this

reQall: What's reQall

Not just for the iPhone, its for just about anyone who cares to use it.

The trick part is this, you can add events by voice, ooh I thought nothing fancy there, until I said "Payday, November the 6th" and it put the reminder/note thingy in the app on November the 6th. Voice recognition has come a long way over the years and so far this has coped with my iffy accent quite well, only the odd mistake or it cant quite understand what I said. It types text from your voice note so in my Events bit on the 6th November it also has "payday, Friday 6th November" on the list.

Ive got a new toy (for a bit)