To-Do List Software

Next in my series of reviews is To-Do List software. As I have posted previously I recently started keeping a list of the tasks that I needed to complete to help me get things done and most of all make sure that I don't forget anything. Having a to-do list made me more productive because I actually got things done, which in return made me feel much better. This inspired me to look at software to help me manage my to-do list, since eventually my Excel sheet was going to get too big and become too difficult to manage.

FruitfulTime TaskManager

Version: 1.0
Price: $29.99

- Download

Very easy to download, no questions asked and a download button is available on the front page so there is no need to click around the website to find the download link.

- Installation

The installation was done in 3 clicks, all you need to do is accept the license agreement, choose the install location and you're done. You can try the product free for 10 days, after which you will not be able to manage your tasks until you license the product.

- Features

The first thing you'll notice about FruitfulTime TaskManager is that it is easy to use and the UI is pretty straightforward. When you run the application the first time you are asked to set a password which you will need to enter every time you open TaskManager.

 
Each task you create can be assigned a priority of high, medium or low as well as a start date and a due date. Other properties that a task can contain are notes, reminders, and the progress which starts from 0% up to a 100%. One of the features that I really liked are the subtasks. For a task you can create as many subtasks as you like, so if a particular tasks is broken down into multiple tasks you can easily manage it with the use of the subtasks. Each subtask has all the properties of a task, so you can set individual properties for each subtask. Tasks can be categorized by assigning tags to them, which you can later use the filtering feature to filter out tasks by choosing which tags you want to view. Otherwise you can filter tasks by date and you will be able to view tasks due today, tomorrow, this week, this month and next month.

- Miscellaneous

There is no way to view all your tasks but group them by category. Once you have a lot of tasks on your list I can see the UI getting cluttered. I'm personally not a fan of checkboxes and this one seems to be filled with them, tagging, filtering, tasks, subtasks, I would rather be able to select multiple items from a list as I find that easier. I also ran into some bugs while reviewing this product, for example when I removed a tag from a task, and then filtered by that tag I could still see that task until I closed the UI and opened it again. Anther glitch was when I deleted some tasks and then created new ones, the new tasks had notes from the tasks I previously deleted. The UI is simple and quite easy to get used to, however it is lacking some features compared to the other products I reviewed.

- Rating  

Dextronet Swift To-Do List 

Version: 6.96
Price: $44.95

- Download

Easy to download, again no questions asked and no forms to fill.

-Installation

The installation is quick and it was done in 4 clicks. When the installation is complete a Quick Overview Wizard is displayed guiding you through the first steps you need to take to start managing your task list. It runs for 21 days in evaluation mode before you need to buy the product, when the 21 days were up it started throwing fatal errors when running the program.

- Features

With Swift To-Do List you have the option to create multiple databases as well as multiple to-do lists which you can assign a different icon to. I would be inclined to create a new database for certain periods of time, for example every 3 months. This will help in keeping your to-do list as manageable as possible. Every database can optionally be password protected, so more than user can use Swift To-Do List each having their own database(s).

Creating tasks is fairly easy and each task can be assigned a priority, type, due date, notes, reminders as well as attachments. I like the idea of being able to attach files to tasks, so if a task involves writing a document or you have references for the task you can easily locate your resources. Tasks are colored depending on the priority, and the colors can be customized to your liking, so you don't need to keep the red, green and orange/yellow that is usually assigned by default. Finding your tasks is also made easy, either by the search feature where you can search for the text in the tasks themselves and the task notes  with the added bonus of filtering the search results by state, priority, due date, date created and type, or else by filtering all tasks by the aforementioned properties. 

- Miscellaneous

In order to change the priority, type and due date from the main view you need to click on the task and edit its properties. It would be nice if you can edit these from the main view in an easier manner, such as a combo box to change the value.

- Rating  

 

VIP Simple To Do List

Version: 2.9
Price: $29.95

- Download

Another easy to download product and it downloads as a compressed ZIP file. I think companies are starting to realize that nobody likes to fill in forms to download a product and most of the time people enter invalid data anyways.

- Installation

The installation is fast and easy, it only took about 5 clicks to complete. You are able to evaluate the software for free for 30 days, the longest period of the three products I reviewed.

- Features

The thing I liked the most about Simple To Do List is the extent to which you can group tasks to view. Tasks can be grouped by any of the tasks properties, which can then be further grouped by said properties. For example I like to group my tasks by category and further grouped by the due date. Additionally you can create filters to view the tasks you want only, and the filtering available is by due date, status, priority, task name, date created, las



General options include minimizing to tray, automatically load Simple To Do List when Windows starts and optional password protection. You are also able to change the look and feel of the UI, that is change the color scheme used and style of the UI to your liking. If you fancy everything pink, there is even an option for that. Each task can have notes and the notes can be minimized so they aren't displayed or maximized so when you select a task the notes related to it will be displayed. Reminders of a due task can also be configured, either by playing a sound or by receiving an email.

- Miscellaneous

To create a task you need to click on the 'Create Task' button and fill in the task info in the dialog. I would have liked to be able to cerate a new task on the fly by creating a new row and entering the values in the cells.

- Rating  

 

I personally chose VIP Simple To Do List for the fact that you can view your tasks grouped by category. This made is very similar to my original Excel sheet, but with added functionality !

Etsy

I recently came over a site called Etsy and OMG I fell in love with it. Basically it is described as an "online marketplace where you can buy and sell anything that is handmade." There is so much neat stuff on that site that it makes me want to buy things and if I spend too much time on it I can make some real damage. The coolest part of the site is where you pick the color you want and it will search items containing that color for you. The search is actually based on the colors that the image of the product contains, so it's not just entering a color like "blue" and you get products that has been tagged with "blue". It is much more sophisticated than that, you get to choose a color from a color picker and images which contain that color are displayed, see what I mean here. Of course you might get an image where the background is blue and the actual item is another color, but it's far more accurate and fun in finding items in the color you want. I'll give you an instance where this comes in useful.  I have decided that I want to redo my bedroom, and I want the colors green and pink. I know that I have a while before I actually get to redo my room but I tried using this fun feature on Etsy to find neat things for my room. And oh boy did I ! There were so many things that I liked that I just wanted to start buying things, but fortunately I managed to control myself, because I know that by the time I redo my room I might have changed my mind on the colors. I guess I'm unpredictable that way, the good thing is that I know it. I *had* to buy something to make myself happy though so I settled on a Wristlet Keychain which I will post a picture of for you.

Click on the image to go to the seller's store on Etsy ! I had a hard time picking one because that seller has plenty of different designs and they are all so spiff. Oh and I have a reason for buying a Wristlet Keychain. I like to have these kind of key rings to hold my keys so it isn't hard to find and not easy to lose, here is my current key ring, I found one exactly like it on eBay.

  

I have had it for a while and by now you wouldn't recognize the color, so I thought it's time for a new one. That way I don't feel guilty for buying something that I absolutely don't need. The seller contacted me and told me that they will ship it on Monday, and I can't wait to receive the first item I bought from Etsy ! I'm pretty sure it won't be the last time either.

I know that this is pretty random, but I loved this site so much that I had to share it.

Book Archive

I introduce to you my new blog : http://bookarchive.blogspot.com.

I have, for a while now, wanted to have something where I can document the books that I read, but I didn't quite know how I would do that. I thought about creating an application, a website more like with a content management system that I could easily update. That would take some time though, time which I didn't really have so nothing ever came out of it. I detest handwriting, so I wasn't even going to attempt to keep something like a journal, besides who uses a pen to write anymore? Crazy people maybe. All I use a pen to write with is when I have to sign on something. Keeping a million Word documents or a huge document with all my reviews wouldn't really be ideal, that would be a bitch to manage. My idea was something where I could easily write a review when I finish a book and then be able to get back to it later on without having to manually search through all of the reviews.

Since I started this blog I realized how much I love reading, and that is where the idea cropped up. Make a blog ! And voilà I got what I wanted. Somewhere to dump my thoughts on the books I read which I could later easily get back to, with the added advantage that other people can read them, and even post their own opinions perhaps. Ok so that is a little far fetched because nobody would be reading the blog, let alone post comments, but there's always the option !

Now to make things clear, the aim isn't to provide deep insight about a book, but only to keep a record of what I thought about it and my feelings about the book.

Because I want everything in unity an structured, you will notice that the layout is similar to this one, because really if you have more than one blog their layouts should be the same style, in my head it sort of defines who that blog belongs to, if you get what I mean. I know it might sound crazy to some people, or most.

Now will you head over there and check it out?

Short Term Memory Loss

I have been trying to start writing this post for the last half an hour. I just have one word to say, Vista. That's the answer to my anger and frustration right now, because precious (or not) Vista has decided that all it wants to do is crash, crash and crash some more, especially the accursed explorer.exe. It crashed when I tried to sign on Windows Live Messenger, it crashed when I was opening Mozilla Firefox, it crashed when I tried to open Windows Live Writer, it crashed when I was saving an Excel sheet, and amidst all this it would not bring up Task Manager. Oh and have I mentioned that issue every time I open Control Panel, explorer.exe crashes. It's so frustrating when you just want to get something done but you can't because your OS just isn't letting you. I did a brief search about this Control Panel crashing explorer.exe and apparently I'm not alone. It is probably some *.cpl file in the Windows\System32 folder that is causing it to crash, and I have to check each and everyone one of those to see which one is the culprit. I want to like Vista and I want to use it, but geesh it just makes me want to run away from it when it acts like this. And you thought XP was bad.

Now on to what I wanted to write about, but I had to let that out before I got on to anything else.

I just finished doing a TODO list. There are so many things that I need/want to do that I keep losing track. I remember something that I have to do and then completely forget about it, until a week later when I remember about it, and then forget about it again...it's an infinite loop. That is why I decided to list all the things, and when I remember something I will add it to it right away. I have 15 items on my list right now, and I know I'm missing some others but I can't remember what at the moment. I am hoping that with this list I can actually get more things done, keep myself focused if you will, because sometimes I know that I have things to do, but they're just floating around in my head and I end up doing something completely different, and useless most of the time. The thing with having a list is that when you complete something and you get to take it off your list, you feel like you have accomplished something and it keeps you motivated.

I wonder how people deal with all the things that they need to do. Do they keep lists? I'm talking about day to day things here, nothing more, not some big project or anything like that. I wonder if people normally just remember things that they need to do, and don't need to write anything. Or I might have short term memory loss, because really, if I get ideas or thoughts or anything that I *need* to remember I have to write it down, otherwise it will be lost in a few minutes when I have other things on my mind. But then I can remember things that happened when I was 3 and 4 years old, so I really don't understand how my memory works. Maybe that's just another abnormal thing about me, but it intrigues me.

And before I forget....someone put me on their blog roll ! Wow I'm on Mack Your Mouth ! Sweet.

Blog Publishing Editor

For my very first review I will be reviewing Blog Publishing Editors. I cam across Windows Live Writer a couple of weeks ago and thought that publishing posts to you blog from your desktop was a great idea, it saves you from having to log on to the website and you get some additional interesting features, in other words it makes things easy. I liked Windows Live Writer, however I wanted to test others and see what features they include, and here is what I found out. My criteria for trying the software was that it has to:

1. Be free, as good as it is I'm not paying for something like this.
2. Work with Blogger, because that is where my blog is.
3. Work on Windows, because that is what I use.

So here we go, below are the three Blog Publishing Editors I chose to review.

Qumana

- Download

To download the installer you are asked to enter an email address. I naively thought that I will be getting an email with a download link or something along those lines, so I entered my email address. It turned out that the download starts right after you hit the 'Download' button, so now I hope my inbox won't be getting spammed.

- Installation

Installing Qumana was a breeze, it is very easy, took only about 4 clicks and the installation ran fast.

- Configuration

Configuring your blog is done through a wizard. In this wizard you need to enter the URL of your blog, the username and password and choose the blog you want to add. Nothing too complex, even my mother could probably make it work. 

- Features

The first thing I liked about Qumana is the Blog Manager. From here you can see all your blogs on the left hand side and when you click on each one the posts for that blog are displayed. When you click on each post it is then displayed in the bottom. This is pretty useful when managing multiple blogs.

 

What I would have liked to be able to do is edit the post when you select it. There is plenty of white space in the UI so it can be easily added without making everything look cluttered. To edit a post you need to double click on it and it will open in the editor. One advantage of this is that you may open more than one post in multiple windows.



The editor itself is also easy to use with the toolbars on top and the fancy buttons give it an attractive look. From me it gets credit for that. It's true that you would rather have something that is useful rather than look good, but I choose both, I like things to be functional as well as pleasing to the eye. In the editor you have two views, WYSIWYG and Source View. I found the Source View to be a little disappointing. Basically it's just a block of text which also includes the HTML tags. I would have liked to see something more structured, since as it is it would be a nuisance to find anything. The WYSIWYG editor on the other hand is decent, with an option to enable inline spell check.

Other features includes a *very* simple search in the Blog Manager, where you can enter a string of text and it will display all posts that contain the same text. You are also able to save your posts to your hard drive in HTML format. A little feature that I liked is that you can keep it minimized in your tray, which makes it very easy for you to open the Blog Manager or start a new post.

- Miscellaneous

The thing that disappointed me the most in Qumana is that the categories do not seem to work, at least for Blogger. This is the main reason that I would not use it, I need all my posts to have a category, and if I have to do it through the website each time I make a new post I might as well not use a Blog Publishing editor in the first place. Another factor would be that you do not have the option to upload pics that you use in your post directly to your weblog. I find this to be inconvenient, I don't want to have to keep uploading pics prior to adding them to my post. Something that would be nice to have is the option to add videos from the WYSIWYG editor, just the way you can add pictures.

- Rating

 

Windows Live Writer

- Download

You do not need to enter any info to download the installer. When you open http://writer.live.com you will see two big orange buttons that say Get It Free. Click on one of them and the download starts.

- Installation

During the installation you are asked if you want to install other Live software like Messenger etc. I find this a little annoying when installing software, because I just want to get the software I want installed, I don't want to know about your other software at this point. The installation also took a couple of minutes to complete, in fact I left it running and carried on doing something else while it was installing.

- Configuration

Adding your blog to Windows Live Writer is very easy, you need to enter the URL, username and password in one dialog and you're done. Lately I have been preferring this method much more than wizards, because while wizards are great, having one dialog where I enter everything required without having to keep click 'Next' is much faster.

- Features

The amount of features Windows Live Write includes are quite impressive. First off you have three different views to choose from, the Normal WYSIWYG editor, Web Layout, HTML Code and the Web Preview. I especially like the Web Preview which lets you preview your post in the context of your blog before publishing it. For someone like me that wants everything to look perfect, this is a great feature. You also have the option to use a single window, or else multiple windows for each post you open. I personally like to to keep everything in one window.

 

When creating/editing a post the categories are displayed at the bottom, with the ability to easily add new categories. This is one of the important features for me, as I want every post to have a category. Another feature that is, in my opinion, very important is that you can upload images directly to your blog. Additionally you also have the option to configure your FTP server so images are uploaded there automatically.

I also like how saving drafts works in Windows Live Write. You can save drafts locally which then you can easily manage. Drafts are displayed in the menu on the left hand side of the UI, where clicking on a draft will open it for editing and clicking on the 'x' beside it will delete it. Apart from that you can also turn on the option to automatically save drafts every N amount of minutes.

You can also find other plug-ins for Windows Live Write, so if there is a feature that you would like to see you might want to check the plug-ins page.

- Miscellaneous

If you manage multiple blogs in Windows Live Write, you have to select the blog you want to view from the menu on top. This means that you cannot list all your blogs in one window and you are only able to view and edit one blog at a time. In other words you can only edit one blog at a time, it is not possible to have more than one blog open in a single view. You can always have multiple instances of Windows Live Write for each blog you want to edit, however I would find it more practical to manage my blogs from a single instance.

- Rating
 

 

w.bloggar

- Download

When downloading the setup you have three options, the full version - Internet Explorer, the full version - Mozilla Firefox and a portable version - Internet Explorer. The portable version is meant for USB drives to allow you to blog from anywhere, where you can use a USB drive at least. I chose to download the full version - Mozilla Firefox. 

- Installation

The installation is both easy and fast with an option to install w.bloggar in five languages: English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.

- Configuration

 Adding a blog is done through a wizard where you need to enter the blog type (Blogger, TypePad, etc...), an alias for the blog, your username and password. An interesting option included in the wizard is the ability to create a completely new blog, which will guide you in signing up with one of the thirteen providers supported and creating your blog.

- Features

I found the layout of w.bloggar to be quite limited. You have two views available, the Editor tab and the Preview tab. The fact that it does not have a WYSIWYG editor bothered me and its Editor displays the HTML tags when you format text, plus there is no option to enable inline spell check either.

Your list of blogs is displayed in a drop down list, and you just need to select the blog you want to publish your post to it. The main thing that I didn't like about w.bloggar is the way you manage posts. Viewing previous posts you made your blog is not really practical, in my case it didn't display the title for the posts, so search for the post you want would would pretty much be a nightmare. I don't know if this is an issue with Blogger or all blog types, but Blogger is one of the supported services so it should not have this problem.

With w.bloggar you can save your posts locally in a location that you choose, and it also has an import feature where you can import a text file to the w.bloggar editor. When adding an image you can upload it to your FTP from the application, which also works with other file types apart from images, however you are not able to upload images directly to your blog.

- Miscellaneous

I though it was quite strange that I was not able to add a title to my post. I still find it hard to accept that this is not possible, so I am not excluding the fact that I might have missed it. If there is a way to add a title though it definitely isn't straightforward. This was disappointing for me as I don't like the idea of having posts without a title.

- Rating

 

Can you guess which one of these Blog Publishing Editors I'm posting from?

My aim was to write a review that covers the basic and main features of Blog Publishing Editors in a way that is both helpful and interesting so I hope that someone out there would find this review useful.

Major Rehaul

A big change just occurred to my blog. When I started this blog, about a month ago, I didn't really have an aim for it, I just wanted a place to post whatever I like. Well, it happens that I wasn't liking the idea too much, it just seemed like one big mess. Now if you knew me you would know that I need everything to be structured, aligned, matching, tidy, so my blog being a mess just wasn't working out. First thing I did was completely change the layout. Yep I just spent 2 hours or so trying to understand how this Blogger XML layout works, so now it looks better, nicer, neater. At least I think it is. I also deleted all previous posts, because they just didn't make sense. I left the one post from yesterday because it is actually part of what I want to achieve with this blog, and when I really decided I wanted to change my blog. I could have left all the posts there and started to write things that made more sense, but the way I am is that when I'm doing something and I'm not liking how it's turning out, I don't try to fix it but start over again. That's part of me wanting everything to be perfect.

So hopefully from now on there won't just be nonsense blurbing on here. Each post I make will have a label, which mainly will be under Blurbs, Updates, Gadgets and Reviews. Blurbs are random posts about whatever, Updates are posts about any updates to the blog, for Gadgets I will be posting pics of the various toys I own, and for Reviews I will be posting about anything that I find interesting i.e. websites, software etc. I have plans to add more but for now I'll just leave it at that. As long as it's not one huge mess that doesn't make sense I'm at peace.

The next thing I will be redoing is my Flickr account. I only have some 15 pics on there so that will be easy. I can't take pics to save my life, but I still want to post pics that I take on there. The point is that I still don't want to have ugly meaningless pics, so I will remove those pics and continue with the moderate pics.

Identify Me

Some weeks ago I decided that I want to start doing things that I like. This might sound easy enough, but I had a problem, what do I like?? I always start doing something then get bored in a *very* short period of time and drop it. This always makes me think what is wrong with me? Who doesn't know what they enjoy doing or who doesn't have a hobby? Starting this blog was one of the things towards this step, finding out what I like. It feels weird, like I am getting to know myself, except at 21 I think I should know already? I think it's what you're supposed to do while you're growing up, during your early teen years? Well I suppose it's never too late. My problem mainly is that there is no 'me'. I'm whoever people want me to be. If I'm around people that like anime, then to them I like anime. If I'm around people that like gaming, then to them I am a gamer. But in reality I am not really any of these things. And it's even scarier because I don't know myself what I am. I've realized that I spent half my life doing nothing. It seems the only thing I do well is daydream. It makes the time go by. When I'm bored at work for instance, or stuck on a plane for a few hours, or when I'm at home with nothing to do. I don't know if it's even called daydreaming. I make up whole stories in my head, with people that don't exist, or exist but modified in my own way, how I like them to be. I can make up whole lives thinking like that. Some people might even think it's warped. I don't like this fact, so that is why I have embarked on this mission to find me, myself, who I am, what I like.

So far I have learned this much.

I love reading and books. I sort of knew this because I always read a lot, but I never thought of it as a hobby or something I liked doing, I thought it was another thing you normally do, like eat and sleep. So I like reading. And I'm enjoying this DailyLit thing.

I love food of all sorts, and I enjoy cooking. I'm by no means a pro at it, but it's fun. Right now cooking is a big deal, I am walking with crutches and have to hop on one leg, so that makes things ten times harder, but that should be fixed soon and I will be able to get back to normal. Cooking is fun when you don't have to do it, when you absolutely need to cook so you don't starve, then it's not so fun, but other than that it's great. I am hoping that I can actually get better at this.

I made a Flickr account and started taking pictures. While it is fun to take pictures and post them on a website, I am just crap at it. I don't get the lighting business and I don't really know how to use my camera. I don't get what all the settings are for, for instance ISO 800 or 1200? What is ISO and what does it do? That's just one example for you. When I put my camera on Manual all I see is a dark picture, no matter what settings I adjust, light, color, nothing. That is the reason I leave it on Auto, and that doesn't really work. I know if I really wanted to learn how to take pics I could find out a load about it, Google would probably really help, but I don't, so I'll continue to take pics just for fun.

Well that's a start isn't it?