VanJohnson.com

Typically you have those applications you like and those applications you love to use but every now and then an application comes around that completely changes the way you work and those become the applications you can’t live without. For me, that application is Quicksilver from Blacktree on my OSX machine. Not sure exactly how to describe what exactly Quicksilver is. To say it’s just an “application launcher” would be seriously underminding everything Quicksilver brings to the table.

It took me sometime to get my mind around what Quicksilver was and what it could do. I am probably a yellow belt when it comes to using Quicksilver; I am well beyond using the basic features but still haven’t really scratched the surface of what it can do to really master it. I use a similar application for Linux called Gnome Do and one for my Windows boxes called Launchy but neither of them have the integration and do for me what Quicksilver does. Even the Apple OS X built in Spotlight falls far short in my opinion.

Quicksilver can be a tough application to understand and I personally hadn’t come across a lot of good instructions on how to use it. Been doing the whole trial by fire approach. But fortunately one of my buddies over at Splunk has put together one of the best Quicksilver tutorials I’ve seen to date. Check out Michael Wilde’s Blog entry on “Mac Productivity with Quicksilver”

I’ve been personally using an online service called Remember The Milk (RTM) for sometime now. It allows me to manage my tasks on-line where ever I am. It also ties into some great services such a Google Calendars, GMail, and Jott (all services I use). I’ve been using RTM pretty regularly for the past couple of years but still struggled with organization and tracking of tasks.

In conjunction with RTM I’ve tried other services and application based around the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) philosophy but none of them really stuck with me. Thanks to a awesome posting on the RTM blog, I feel I’ve taken a few huge steps forward in both how I use RTM and how I manage my GTD life. I strongly recommend this read to all my friends and colleagues. RTM is a free service but there is a Pro account that gives you a couple (but not needed) bonuses and “A warm fuzzy feeling” (there words not mine Check out the service and check out the blog posting.

Remember The Milk - Blog (Advanced GTD with Remember The Milk)

If you spend any amount of time on the Internet and are anything like me, you usually have a set of sites you visit on a regular basis. Here is a quick time saving tip if you use Firefox. Organize all your commonly visited web sites into a single “Daily Setup” file. I actually have two, one personal that opens all my favorite web sites that I usually read at least once a day and another for work which opens a bunch of work related sites. Then all you need to do is click on your Daily Setup bookmark, select the setup you want (personal or work), and click on “Open All in Tabs” and BAM you are off and running with your daily injection of Internet feed.

Hope you find this tip useful.

This is what Google does with their Gmail (email) and Google Talk (chat) products. When you log into Gmail, you have access to your Google Talk buddy list and can start chatting with them right there in the web browser. It’s been known to be convenient at times. Well it looks like you can now do the same thing with Yahoo which seems like a great idea to me.

I am always trying new mechanisms to help manage my extremely hectic life. There is an entire GTD world out there with application designed to help you manage task, email, and life in general. I’ve used a lot of them, from stand alone clients for Windows, Linux and Mac to web based, and maybe one day I will write about my experiences with them. Personally, as with most of the things I like working with, I gravitate to web based solutions and for the longest time I used a site called Remember the Milk but I was turned onto a new site today and I have to admit I have really taken to it. If you are looking for a good task management application I recommend you check out a site called Toodledo. Very nice tool
Here is a nice comparison chart of web-based to-do list

Check it out Toodledo.com