As soon as I got to the map tab, I laughed. This? Quite familiar, for reasons entirely unrelated to work. That link? A screenshot of the log and map from World of Warcraft that tracks what quests your character is working on, how much you've completed, and where you need to go to complete them. Knowing how well that set-up works for optimizing time use in-game (doing geographically clustered tasks at the same time), this could be quite useful, if I needed to run a bunch of errands and wanted to map them out with a checklist. On the other hand, I'm not sure my life is complicated enough to need mapping out errands.
Further experimentation with the map quickly led me to discover that while it's Google maps, it's not. The map itself is there, but the data is not. You have to add any location you want to use. While this does let you personalize the map, it also means instead of just being able to add an event in Albany, NY, you have to manually add Albany to your map to do so.
Adding recurrence to a task was also not as smooth as I expected. I have a social event every Monday at 7 p.m. Entering "social event every Monday at 7 p.m." however, adds a task called "social event every" on Monday at 7 p.m. You can only use the recurrence syntax in the recurrence field after you've created the event.
The reminders options include email, quite a few instant-messaging programs, and text messages. I can't do the last - I don't have unlimited texting on my phone, and I'm in a family plan with grandfathered internet access ($5/month for my data plan - I really don't want to mess around with my phone options), so it's not as useful for me as it could be. Synchronizing with Outlook requires a pro account, so I won't be trying that out.
The task organization options are neat; there are built in lists (work, personal, etc.), but you can create your own to sort out tasks. If you have multiple kids, or multiple projects, you could create lists (or tags) to sort out pertinent tasks. (Take kid 1 here, pick up kid 2 here, stop at bank on the way between, or, project a needs x done tomorrow, y done three days from now; project b needs n done today, m done in two days, etc.) If you pay bills online but not with automated payments, you could create a list for all your bill payment reminders so they didn't get lost in the big nebulous list of stuff to get done and could easily see when everything was due, possibly tied in with budgeting. (I shouldn't buy a new x until after the 15th when I get paid again, because the y is due on the 11th and I'll have no money.)
This... might actually be great for my husband, who is on his own separate phone plan for work, and can do texting and all that. Hm...
On to the next tool!
Since I work with ILL and convert PDF documents to TIF formats for electronic delivery, I decided to try out Zamzar.
In theory, the free version of Zamzar just asks you to find a file, select what you want it converted to, enter an email address, and accept the terms of use, and the file will upload and be sent in its new format to your email.
Well, it's been a half an hour, and I haven't gotten either of my test documents emailed to me. They're not hitting the spam folder, either. PDF to TIF is really the only file conversion I make regularly that I can't do with the basic programs (Paint, Microsoft Office Picture Manager) on my work computer, so all these premium services (online file storage and management) that I'm reading about don't really entice me.
After 45 minutes, my files are in my inbox... or rather, there's a link to go download them. That makes sense, since the 400 KB PDF converted to a 43 MB TIF. The image quality is okay, but nothing special. The files in the free version supposedly hang out on their server for 24 hours before going away, which is okay for converting for electronic delivery, but if I send them out on a Friday and come back Monday morning to find out the Odyssey sending failed, I'm going to have to go through the conversion process all over again anyway.
Since I tend to send out my ILL articles just before I go home, 45 minutes is quite a bit too long to wait. Rearranging my day around a tool doesn't really seem efficient or more productive. (The typos in the terms of service don't really inspire confidence, either.)
So Remember the Milk seems like it could be useful, if I need to map out tasks or maintain sorted lists of tasks (otherwise Outlook tasks work fine for me). Zamzar, on the other hand, doesn't seem like it's worth the wait. There are other tools I can use for PDF to TIF that don't leave me hanging for 45 minutes.
Other tools listed that I had tried before:
- Tweetdeck, which I use regularly (constantly?) to monitor two Twitter accounts; if your library has an account, and you have your own account, you can watch both at the same time (just be careful which one you're posting to)
- Zotero, which I abandoned, since I don't keep track of my research like that
- delicious, which I occasionally use, especially as a bookmarks backup repository, but also if I want to, say, link someone all the web comics I read
- Google Docs, which frustrate me because some of my files are too large (thanks, Google, for rejecting my first novel >.<), but which are great if you need to share files among a bunch of people, and their forms are fantastic
- Google Calendar, which was too much trouble to maintain with two separate Outlook environments
- Not goo.gl, but bit.ly, which does pretty much the same thing (great for Twitter)
Not listed tools I've used before that seem to fit here:
- pbwiki, a scalable (free/pay) wiki site, which I've used for Circulation documentation
- screenr.com, a web-based screen-capture application that can be useful for making training materials
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