I’ve been doing some housekeeping on my blog email account. I seem to collect requests to try things out, or retry them out. And I’ll be honest with you, I just can’t do it. I can’t even get my research done these days, how am I going to do extra testing? Sigh.

So, instead of letting these suggestions languish, I’m going to list them out here. These are all things that other people have requested that I give a shot. If anyone out there would like to write a little guest-review, let me know. Failing that, write a review on your own blog and post it in the comments. (No more than 3 links in a post please, otherwise you’re targeted as spam!)

In no particular order, we have:

• Kelly W. has recommended Wrike, “more than a GTD tool, but I find it very convenient for applying David Allen’s method”. Supposedly it has: task start and due date, duration, quick search, good visibility of task context, allows tagging and building hierarchies.
• Kate Hudson has recommended a new website (beta stage as of 8 Aug) called Goal Organizer dot com. She says, you enter your categories (areas to improve), goals and steps (projects/actions). Then, the site suggests which step/action you should work on first. It also helps you create a balance among the various aspects of your life.
• It’s been recommended a couple of times that I check out Toodledo again, since it has upgraded its look since I reviewed it a while ago.
• Finally, Binny, the author of Nexty, has asked me to check out Nexty again. The new version has just been released, and supposedly many of the suggestions I had in my review have been incorporated.

Anyway, my apologies to all those who have suggested something for me to check out. I just don’t have the time or energy. But the rest of you, if you feel like checking one or more of these out, give it a whirl. You want to write a little something up - let me know!

I was recently asked to do a guest-post on gtdfrk’s Getting Things Done blog.  You can check it out here:

GTD Buzzwords: Advanced Common Sense : Getting Things Done

There were so many great comments and questions in response to my post about finding GTD Tracks and the subsequent one about what I liked about it so much, that I decided to address them all in one mega-comment here.

1.  Lyman signed up for GTD Tracks.com because the price was right.

@lyman: I’m glad the info helped.  I’ve been nothing but pleased with GTD Tracks - the owner is very responsive.

2.  Bdizzy was surprised he/she hadn’t thought of Tracks (Bdizzy has been trying to guess which application I was going to choose).

@bdizzy:  Hehehehehehe.  You should have seen the review by now; it’s here if not.

3.  Chris commented about his own experiences with Tracks, and how it didn’t work out for him.

@chris:  Thanks for the comment.  I’m noticing a bit of a performance dip when I’m downloading stuff.  To the point, where I shut down downloads if I want to use it ;)  As for the “only one next action”, I’m actually the opposite way.  Some applications died for me because they forced me into that paradigm.  But, you could probably get around it by using tags, as the forum post recommends.

4.  CWE asked why was Tracks better than Outlook or Excel.

@CWE: There really is no one solution that’s going to work for everyone.  I got along quite well with Outlook for GTD, especially once I started creating macros.  However, something was missing for me - perhaps a fun factor.  In addition, when I do get a job, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to keep using Outlook anyway, hence part of my reason to start searching for alternative means.

As for Excel - it’s a great program.  Probably the best database program I’ve ever used - because it’s so simple to use, and yet so powerful.  However, having done a lot of work getting my todo.txt and perl system going, I wasn’t in the mood to try creating another application from scratch, even with such a good platform to start with.  I just want to use something that’s meant to do what I want it to do, and does it nicely.

5.  Robert had a question about mobile syncing.

@Robert:  Unfortunately, that’s the one thing that tracks doesn’t do - there’s no syncing to the mobile.  I make do by downloading the text feeds and putting them on my palm, mostly for emergency purposes.

6.  Ryan suggests that I check out Toodledoo again, since they’ve made some changes. 

@Ryan:  I must admit, I really did like Toodledoo but was put off by the main screen.  I wish you hadn’t told me that had made some changes to the view - now I’ll have to check it out!  Sigh :)

7.  Michael asked if it was possible to create a next action in Tracks without a context.

@Michael:  Interesting question.  I tried it out, and no, there doesn’t seem to be a way.  However, you could make some sort of default/empty context, e.g., Inbox, to use when you don’t want to assign an actual context.

8.  Rue asked about syncing with my palm.

@Rue:  Sorry, as I said above, there’s no syncing between tracks and palm.  I do make use of the downloaded text feeds, but it’s not a true synchronization.  Wouldn’t that be cool though - to be able to do try syncing between Tracks and Palm.  Wow.  …wishful thinking here…

9.  Robert wanted to know what the $89 app was that had me looking for a new application in the first place.

@Robert:  Well, I’ve just posted about it tonight, so I can let you know - it was FusionDesk.  Read my post about the Tool That Almost Was to find out what the good, bad and ugly were about this application.  And I’ll give you a hint - the price tag wasn’t in the *good* category!

10.  Ewonk wishes that tracks could handle both hierarchical and/or sequential next actions.

@Ewonk:  Based on my research, some applications offer either a hierarchical approach, or maybe even a linking approach, where next actions can be viewed in relation to each other.  In my opinion, your example for the hierarchical approach could just be turned in a Project (rem that in GTD anything that requires more than one action is a project).  You do have a point about not being able to link next actions sequentially though - that would be a nice feature.  I think there would need to be another dimension in the database for that to work, e.g., action A becomes visible when action B has been marked complete, or something like that.

11. Luke Melia, a “committer on Tracks and the person who has implemented most of the differences between what you see on tracks.tra.in…and GTDTracks” notes that the Tracks user forum is where he gets a lot of his inspiration re what to work on.  He encourages us all to participate in the forum for bugs/features.

@Luke: Thanks for the comment - it’s nice to hear from somebody behind the magic.  I thought that GTDTracks was a new version, but I didn’t realize that tracks.tra.in was using the most *stable* release.  Interesting.  I’m already reading the forum faithfully (and have even posted) and am hoping that I’ll have more constructive things to say in the future, after I’ve used the application more.

And that’s it for the comments and questions re my using Tracks (GTD Tracks).  Thanks to everyone for taking the time to submit a comment or question.  I really appreciate the feedback :) :) :)

When I was waxing poetic over why exactly I like Tracks, specifically GTD Tracks, I mentioned that the main reason for my big search for a new GTD tool was caused by another tool that I had become smitten with.  Some of you are wondering, “what could possible smite GTD Wannabe?”  (Hmmm, maybe “smitten” and “to smite” don’t actually have the same root ;) )

Anyway, today I want to talk to you about the “Tool That Almost Was”.

The Tool That Almost Was

Way way back in May of this year, I was reading through my RSS feeds.  One of them mentioned an intriguing piece of software being offered by the Give Away of the Day site, specifically, a program called FusionDesk.  I was intrigued by the look of the software - very gooey - and the price was right - free for a mid-level version.

Remember, this was back when I was still using my todo.txt files and hand-rolled perl scripts.  I was so smitten with FusionDesk’s look at supposed functionality that I actually moved all of my data over and started using it.  I ended up using it for almost a month, before the honeymoon was over.

The Good

There are many things to like about FusionDesk.  Now, I was using a free version, called FusionDesk Deluxe, which is not actually offered at the FusionDesk web site.  Instead, there you can get either the free Starter Edition, or the not-so-free Professional Edition.

Here’s what I liked about the Deluxe version:

• love the look; you can even change the tinge - in the screenshot below, I’ve chosen a spring-like green
• you can have folders (for projects), contexts (even with their own @ tab), and tags for any action
• you can have deferred start dates, and due dates on items
• it’s actually possible to do most of your work with the keyboard only, as many, if not all, of the fields are accessible by shortcut
• there’s even the ability to set estimated times for a task, and then time your task
• you can set up specific views on your data, tweaking any and all of the following categories at once:
• status (e.g., not started, deferred, in progress, done)
• priority
• start date
• due date
• tag
• context
• assigned to
• you can associate files, folders, or URLs to an action, and add notes
• it’s possible to run the program from a USB key
• there’s even a way to set up a URL protocol in Windows, so that you can use the address bar (or say, SlickRun) to enter an NA without leaving your current application.

Not all of these things are available in the free version, but they are all available in the pro version, plus a little.  For a difference between the two versions, see the comparison page.

The Bad

Sounds good, eh?  Well, there are a few things that annoyed me a little:

• At least in the Deluxe version that I was using, you can create all sorts of interesting views, but you can’t move them around in the list.  A minor point, perhaps, but I like to keep my most interesting/important views at the top.  Or at least have the ability to sort them, just a little.  Instead, I would have to delete each and every view, and then recreate them, in the order I wanted.
• I couldn’t get the filter for priority to work.
• I couldn’t keep folders closed in the folder view, e.g., keeping unimportant projects closed.  Whenever I went back to that view, all the folders were open.
• No auto-archiving in this version.
• I would have liked some kind of count beside the folders, tags, and contexts, depending on the view.  That way, when I looked at the context tab, I would see right away which context had the most NAs in it.  Even better would be to grey-out those contexts/tags/folders with no Next Actions.
• Although you can filter by date, the options are kind of limited: yesterday, today, tomorrow, or some specific date.  No filtering by week, or month, which I would find really useful.

The Ugly

None of these things, in itself, was enough to sour me on FusionDesk.  But I’ll tell you what did kill the romance.

First of all, I’m all about customer service, especially with the price tag that the FusionDesk Pro commanded.  Yes, this is the application that is asking you to pay $89 USD for the privilege of using it.

So, given that price tag, I expect some customer service.  Freeware, shareware, dontationware, whateverware - I expect to have to wait for service.  I expect that the user forum will be sparsely populated.  (That’s what makes finding gems like EverNote such a treasure.)  In this case, if I was about to shell out $89, I wanted to be sure I wasn’t throwing my money away.

I checked out the support pages.  Not much there - a link to the forum, a newsletter, which I don’t think I ever received, a blog (a total of 7 posts, the last one being in Apr) and “articles”, which leads to an empty list - well, to be honest - there are two titles on it, but they don’t like to articles.

So, I checked out the user forum.  And let me tell you, it’s a ghost town.  There was one post in August.  June was a rocking month, with 10 posts.  Not much help happening there. 

As far as I can figure, the owner/coder/proprietor of FusionDesk is named Boris.  At least, that the board admin, and he sounds like he’s running things.  But I must admit, he’s not very responsive.  I sent him two emails in the month I was using FusionDesk, and never got a response, not even a “sorry, can’t help you out” response.

That alone was *almost* enough to kill it for me.  After all, I didn’t have to actually buy the pro version, I could just keep using the deluxe version.  But this would only last until the next time I reformatted my hard drive.

But I’ll tell you what really killed it for me.  It’s a minor thing really, but it drove me crazy.  It turns out that, while you can view your data in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, e.g., by project, by context, by status, by tag, by whatever, you cannot, repeat cannot add a new next action, or even delete an action, unless you are in the folder view.

This severely hampered my review process.  I review by looking through each context.  As I see a next action that can be marked complete, I’ll get an idea for what I want the next action to be.  I would try to add the action in the current view, but it was not permitted.  It’s like the majority of the views were read-only.  So, I’d have to move to the folder view, then create the next action, then go back to where I was, if I could remember where I was.  After a few weekly reviews, this irritated me so much that I decided that the software definitely wasn’t for me.

Conclusion

Normally, even when I find an application not exactly right for me, I’ll often recommend for you to try out.  After all, we all have different needs, right?  In this case, I cannot in good conscience to that.  It’s not so much the little things, like not being to add an NA in any view, or sort your filters as desired.  It’s more the feeling I get of this application just being something really really pretty, but with nothing solid backing it up.  I found the lack of activity in the support forum, and the non-response of the creator (?) to be less than inspiring.  If you’re interested in a really nice looking application, you could check out the free version.  But I wouldn’t be throwing $89 at anyone.

If you’ve haven’t been bowled over by the recent Apple announcement of an iPhone sans phone, you may have noticed that Google Reader now has search.

I’ll admit, I didn’t notice it. And I use Google Reader as my feed reader! But as soon as I read a post on it (say, these posts from Download Squad, LifeHacker, Solo Technology), man, did I notice it. Very cool. And about time.

Funny, no little “new features” highlighted in Google Reader though - kind of like a stealth release. The posts I refer to above mention some of the new key features, e.g.,

1. You can now search feeds with a text box at the top of your screen

2. If you click on the down arrow by “All items”, you’ll see something like this:

Basically, you can search on the following dimensions:

• all items (no idea of how far back these “all items” go - every item ever read in your reader?)
• starred items
• shared items
• any individual folder
• any individual feed

3. You can navigate to the search field with your keyboard - hit the “/” key to get there.

4. Instead of maxing out at 100 unread items, you now max out at 1000. So, when you have 899 posts to read, you’ll know it! (I kind of liked the suspense myself, waiting to see when I would read enough to get below 100.)

5. You an hide the side panel with a mouse click now. There’s a tiny little grey arrow midway down the page, between the blue side panel and the white preview panel. Click that to lose the panel. I didn’t realize it, but you can do the same thing with your keyboard, with the “u” key.

And, even after hiding the side panel, you can still get to the stuff therein, without opening it up again. There’s now a drop-down menu available:

6. You can use the back/forward keys when you’ve been navigating between folders.

7. Ajaxy goodness means that as you keep scrolling down in your search research, Google Reader will keep fetching new ones for you.

8. The little beaker showing you progress is gone. Replaced by the not-as-cute generic button whirlygig.

Get More Out of Search

Although Google Reader’s new search is a great step in the right direction, there are a few quirks that I noticed. Here’s what I noticed, and how to get around it.

1. Use the Keyboard

The button by “all items” and the Search button itself seem to be wonky. You can click on “all items” and start typing, say to enter your favourite tag. But then, hitting the search button acts the same as hitting the down arrow - your list shows up again. I’ve had to hit the search button a few times to get it to work properly.

My solution: don’t use the mouse. I use the “/” key to navigate to the search field. Type what I’m looking for. Tab. Type what tag/feed I want. Enter. Enter, again, if necessary.

2. Expanded and List Still Work

I haven’t seen it discussed yet, but even with the search page, you can make use of the Expanded and List views. You won’t lose your search results, but you’ll be able to either see all of of the posts (expanded), just the titles (list), or a googly summary (default search view).

Bonus tip: The keyboard works here too (at least in Firefox):

• Hit 1 to get to the Expanded view.
• Hit 2 to get to the List view.
• Hit 3 to get to the Search view. (Counter-intuitive, I know, since it’s first in line, but at least doesn’t break the previous 1 and 2 mappings.)

3. Searching Your Tags

As I said before, you can narrow your search down to any particular tag, sorry, folder. Now what’s the point of that. The whole reason I have a gazillion tags is because Reader didn’t have search, so I was forced back into the old “sort, don’t search” mentality. Now they want me to search again? But only one tag at a time? Yeesh.

I’ve got a way around it, but it sucks, especially if you have a lot of tagged feeds. Now, I’m not talking about the folder that a feed is assigned to, but rather, the tags that you assign when you see a post you really like. What I did was go through each and every one of those posts that I had added previously. And I added a new tag called “keep”, in addition to the other tags I had. Now, when I want to search something I tagged (because I usually remember that I tagged something, I just don’t know where), I do a search on the “keep” folder. Voila. Yes, I could just do a search on “All items”, but then I’d have to wade through all the dross that I didn’t think was worth tagging in the first place!

4. How Far Back?

Curious as to how far back the search goes, I did a little experiment. I did a search on items from my blog. I don’t post all that often, but reasonably consistently. It took a little while to get to the bottom of the list, i.e., the first post captured by the search, but that dates back to October 2005.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t been using Google Reader that long. So, obviously there is some magic going on that lets Google Reader read my feed that far back. Pretty cool.

As another experiment, I searched for “a” in all of my tagged posts. Surely I tagged something pretty soon after starting to use Google Reader for the first time. This brings me back to November 2006.

This date seems more reasonable. I thought I had switched readers in the past year or so.

5. Preview or Straight to Source

When you’re looking at the list of results returned in the search view, you can either choose to go to the preview of the post in Reader, complete with coloured highlighting of search terms. You do this by clicking on the title of the post. Or, you can go straight to the source web page by clicking on the double arrow on the right.

Still Needs Work

Don’t get me wrong, I love the new Google search. But there are a couple of things I find annoying.

For instance, I hate the fact that I can’t just search in all of my tags. I have to search through each one individually, or start using one “master” tag for all posts I want to keep track of (as discussed above). I’d like to see a way to search on say “folders”, or “manually assigned folders”, or something like that.

Secondly, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but once you’ve found something in your search results that you like, you can see the post, even with special highlighting of your terms. Very nice. You can navigate to the original post (but the “v” shortcut key doesn’t work here), you can star it, share it, email it, or mark it read/unread. The only thing you can’t do, the logic for which escapes me, is add a tag to it! I guess the only way around that is to star or share the post, and then go look for it, out of search mode, so you can then tag it. Strange.