Moving On To Something I'm Passionate About

I've been writing on this blog for nearly 5 years. Lately it's slowed to a trickle and I think it has to do with two things:

1. Microblogging on Twitter and FriendFeed
2. The blog had no focus, it was just what ever

Because there was no focus, and I can microblog on Twitter/FriendFeed fast, blogging here just fell behind.

This year I'm really going to focus on two sites, GalacticWriter.com and MyCareerVoice.com. These are the things I'm passionate about. These are the places I think my writing will have an impact, and be therapeutic for me too.

I still love tech. I still write computer software, probably always will in some fashion or another.

I may occasioanlly write something here, but I doubt it. Plese visit my main website, ThomAllen.com for all that is new.

read more...

Happy Holidays One And All

I want to wish everyone a Happy Holiday season. I really appreciate everyone's help this past year, and I hope to return the favor.

read more...

iPhone Twitter Tip: Favorite Tweets For Later Review

[singlepic id=36 w=320 h=240 float=left]I read a lot of my Twitter (you're a Twitter user, right?) messages on the iPhone. I don't always have time to look at the cool links in tweets, so I found favoriting a tweet lets me go back later on the computer and look them up quickly. As you can see from the photo to the left, I use Twittellator Pro, and there is a cool little star that you tap, and its tagged. It's as easy as that.

What cool Twitter tips do you have?

read more...

Organize Your Crap

Advice from a seasoned IT professional.

Clean Up Your Desktop

Seriously, stop cluttering your desktop with icons. Shortcuts and documents are easily organized into folders, imagine that. Shortcuts are just as effective on the start menu. The computers I use have no more than four icons on the desktop. At home: Recycle Bin. At work: My Documents, My Computer, Recycle Bin, shttpd.exe. There's just no need to have 20 documents, 15 shortcuts, 22 favorites, and 10 PDF's. ORGANIZE YOUR CRAP.

read more...

Gmail Adds Tasks But Still Has A Ways To Go

Google Labs introduced Tasks as an add-on to their Gmail product yesterday. I've spent the past week looking for a good task manager, specifically one that works on the iPhone, and on the Web. So it was a timely surprise to see they added this feature.

The official Gmail blog gives some instruction on how to turn tasks on, and where you can find the task list. I'm not sure I like the list opening up in the same location as the Chat. That's part of the reason I don't use the Gmail web based chat tool. It's clunky.

However, the coolest part of tasks is I can select one or more email, and under the More Actions drop down, choose to create a task. Even Outlook doesn't support this nativley.

Here are a couple of other features of note:

• You can pop out the task window and move it around on your desktop. This should eliminate neededing to keep the Gmail screen focused in your browser.


• You can create different lists. A tasks list wouldn'e be complete without the ability to group items.


• Creating sub tasks is easy with an indent feature.


• The ability to add a due date and add notes. This is very cool. If you want to keep a running tab of things as you progress towards completion, the notes section is just the place.

I think I'll spend some to create a simple Getting Things Done (GTD) workflow using Gmail Tasks. Shouldn't be too difficult with the ability to create seperate task lists.

The biggest draw back, and maybe the deal killer for a lot of people, is that tasks are not support on the mobile platform yet. That is a real disappointment for me. Remember The Milk and many others have web/mobile combinations, and you would think Google would have made that combination a priority.

I suspect a mobile version will quickly follow once the features catches on. Makes no sense to use tasks if you spend most of your time on a mobile device.

One more feature I would like to see added are notification of uncompleted tasks sent with the daily events list.

[update]

Thanks to a great question from @utahcon, he brought up the fact it was difficult at first to find the Tasks link. So here is a picture of where you can find the link. Also, don't forget, use the keyboard short cut Shift-T when you have items selected to create a new task.

[image title="Taks Link In Gmail" size="medium" id="991" align="none" linkto="full" ]

read more...