Week 8, Assignment #15 Online Productivity- A long post!

Week 8, Assignment #15 Online Productivity- this is going to be a LONG post!

"Create a blog post about your discoveries:How does the application you chose compare to word processing software you’re familiar with? What features did you like/dislike the most? Can you think of any ways the application you chose would be useful to you?"

So I am going to attempt to write this in Google docs, and then send it to the blog. We'll see how that goes.

Today I caved and went back to the 45 minute You Tube video of David Allen's "Getting Things Done". I actually took a few notes even. As I said before, there is a lot in this assignment, especially in the Resources and Discovery sides of things. I've taken several handwritten pages of notes, kind of ironic since this is supposed to be an online project.

Anyway for the Top 10 Productivity Sites
1. Tiny URL- I've seen it used by others, but never bothered myself.
2. Google Desktop- I know some people love it, but I never see my desktop so I'm not sure if it'd be useful for me.
3. Backpack- Sounds cool, but can't Google do all that?
4. Remember the Milk- again, I have Google.
5. Calendar Tools- GOOOOOGLLLLE
6. GMAIL- LOVE IT obviously.
7. Bloglines- I was introduced to this by the 23 Things. Still need to check in today. Need to check iGoogle too.
8. Google Docs and Spreadsheets- I've used these before for home and work, and like them a lot.
9. Joe's Goals- Cool! I wish I could find a practical use for them, maybe if I do a "43 things" (we'll get to that later). I think it would be great for someone losing weight, trying to get his/her degree, change jobs, or maybe for teens doing chores or trying to earn some reward from their parents or something.
10. My Stickies- I'm not sold on these. Clicking on "properties" on a bookmark does the same thing I think.

LifeHacker 46 Free thing list
No, I'm not going to list all 46 things!
#1 Firefox, #8 Gmail, #13 Google & #17 Thunderbird-- my lifelines
#4 Open Office- this is what I have on my personal laptop
#11 Picassa- I've used version 2, and finally got version 3. Still learning it.
#15 Gimp, on my list to learn about
#19 Dropbox- could be useful, haven't checked it out yet
Winamp, Google Apps, Google Calendar, Avast Anivirus-- use all of these
My father-in-law has been using Skype for quite a while.
And of course Linux... my husband is a Linux pro, but I refuse to give up Windows on my computers.


Moving on to David Allen and GTD... a lot of common sense in this video, and I won't rehash all my notes here. Interesting to think about though- You lose speed when you are not relaxed. That is so true. You really need to be "in the moment" in order to be productive. My most productive days are days when I have a lot to do and set my personal brain aside, and just focus. When work is slow I tend to work more slowly, and I get distracted more easily.

Onward to Discovery--

I had never heard of "Mind mapping tools" before. I had no idea what that meant so I was curious to check these out. I didn't really understand the Del.ic.ious/mindmapping thing, but maybe I just wasn't relaxed enough to absorb it. I did like Gliffy better than Mindomo. It looked more versatile, and I liked the room diagrams and things like that. Seemed like it would be useful for reorganizing office space, or home furniture. I didn't feel motivated to sign up for either one.

Personal Web Pages- Never used Pageflakes, but it looked easy enough. I do use iGoogle, although I don't check it often, and I have the Yahoo thing set up on one of my pages. Mostly I use it to look at the current headlines in the news and check the weather.

Not much use for the PDF Converters. Goign to skip right over that, and I'm skipping over the Sticky Notes too.

Online Productivity- As I've said repeatedly, I use Google and I'm happy with that. Zoho looked very similar and okay. Basecamp looked interesting for collaboration and Lazybase looked okay too, but I'm not sure if I need them. Maybe if I was in a collaborative project with someone I could, but I like one stop shopping, and Google pretty much has everything.

Going back to Goal Setting- I liked "43 Things". I thought it was just going to be an expanded version of "23 things" but it was different. At first I told myself "maybe later I'll come back and set up an account" but then I started browsing around, and saw other people's things, and decided I could contribute to what others were doing so I set up an account just to do that. Maybe later I'll go back and try to set up a long-term goal. In the process, I dug up some material that makes me want to vent elsewhere. So getting updated on an old interest of mine, is leading me to another thing to put on my "to do" list. Sigh. So many distractions!!!

So getting back to the original questions of the exercise- I like Google and it's many applications. I can be in GMail, and have my calendar and tasks there with me. I can set up iGoogle and have a whole range of things in front of me. Or I can simply click on "Reader" or "Maps" or "Documents" to get to what I need. Read the news, plan activities for the weekend, send a thank you note to a friend, write a grocery list, or itemize what I need to get done at work, I can do it all under a single login if I want to. Easy, convenient, user-friendly, and free. Love it.

Now let's see if I can get this into the blog.... I did, and only had to make some minor edits to the formatting. Yay!!