Developing Upwards

I'm the kind of guy that hates the amount of time he spends considering, evaluating, and test driving new productivity software. Recently I had yet another surge of uncertainty over my use of Remember The Milk, and I tried a few other things. I gave a spin on Nozbe and Todo.txt, and I've come to a conclusion. For now... I have been a big fan of Remember The Milk, and I pay for a professional account. Even still, I'm not above admitting I might be wrong, so when a few things started to annoy me I sought out something new. I had heard Todo.txt talked up a lot on This Week in Google, given that the author is a host on the show. I had also tried Nozbe in the past, but new it had several large updates since then and wanted to give it another try. Remember The Milk I really was happy with RTM, so I want to make clear the things I do like about it! I really have been happy with the Android app, and with the use of smart lists to create filters that match different ...

I use desktop alerts to keep myself organized through the day, in various ways. There are things i want to do repeatedly and I don't have a good track record with keeping good habits, so I have found some ways to make tools fill in the gaps for me. There are some specific examples i can give. I have been using the great site 750words.com for almost a year, and I love it. I write nearly every day, and I'm getting better at that habit all nthe time. usaully I only miss it when something interrupts me. I remember with something better than an email reminder or a note on my calendar each day, which both i can build a habit to ignore. I use an alert program, which is KAlert in my case, but any alert program should work the same. Every morning at 5AM, it spawns a google chrome window opening the 750words.com write page, and so I wake up and sit down to my computer every morning to find the page already open with a blank page and a blinking cursor, and I start writing. I don't hav...

While ignoring completely that I was promised access to the FogBugz OnDeman 7.0 Beta program and just forgotten somehow, I'm going to come say that one day with the official release and I'm more excited than ever to be a FogCreek customer. Yes, I am still a card carrying free software nut-bag . I'm absolutely sure certain individuals will get grated at me, again, for not using Trac like a good geek. Call me a fanboy, but boy-oh-boy is this a sweet release. It is a shining example of knocking a release out of the park and impressing everyone (who could be impressed at all, and thus disregarding those who will never be impressed by a commercial, for-profit bug tracker, ever, no matter what, not in a million years). The experience is absolutely slick. Faster, brighter, shinier. Packing new features, improved features, and bug fixing in a new package is a great way to make the functional improvements stand out. Even if we have a good design, any product should take a note fro...