CallBurner’s Ten Minutes June 13, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in recording, voip.add a comment
Intro: CallBurner is a Windows program to allow recording of Skype calls. Free for 14 days, then you gotta pay $50.
Exec Sum: Works a treat, like its elder brother Skylook, but without the CPU overhead and need to have it running as an Outlook plug-in.
My tenminut.es: Easy to install — it dovetails pretty simply with Skype. You can configure it to record both sides of a conversation, or just one side, and to save the resulting records as either WMA or AAC files. Not just that: you can also opt to save each side of the recording as separate WAV files — bigger, of course, but good if you’re doing interviews or other broadcast stuff, or else you experience some latency in the conversation, where one side of the conversation drifts ahead or behind the other.
Details of all this are kept in a window accessed from a system tray icon which also allows you to make notes of the conversation and store it all for posterity. While the old Skylook did a good job of weaving all this into Outlook, I’d rather not have lots of plugins slowing down Outlook:
Verdict: Simple, well-designed, works. Recordings are pretty good, and payment mechanism smooth. If you use Windows and need to record conversations, check it out.
Score: 8 out of 10
Todoist’s Ten Minutes June 13, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in organizers, productivity, task manager, web apps.2 comments
Intro: Todoist is a bare bones, but surprisingly sophisticated, to do list that allows you to not only quick add and organize tasks but create tasks directly from Gmail. The creation of Denmark-based student Amir Salihefendic.
Exec Sum: If you use Gmail and you find there’s a gap between receiving an email and turning it into a task that gets recorded somewhere, this solves that problem. Well. It does other stuff too.
My tenminut.es: Signing up is straightforward. Like a lot of these things it works around projects, which can be added simply — indeed most of the tasks are mercifully free of pointless steps (a hallmark of any Web 2.0 app worth its salt.)
Adding the Gmail functionality is relatively easy (especially if you’re a Firefox user: just install the plugin). Click on reply and you’ll see an extra option/button in the top layer of the edit window:
Select a project, add a name to the task, and assign a day (if you want), and the the task will appear in the corresponding project, with a Gmail icon and a link to the original email:
This isn’t the only feature of Todoist, but it was all I could explore in ten minutes, and was enough to reveal its value. Other features worth checking out are a Dashboard widget for Macs, widgets for iGoogle and Netvibes, accessibility from a mobile phone, and other stuff.
Verdict: Nicely executed. If you use Gmail, check it out.
Score: 8 out of 10
Similar services: Ta-da Lists Vitalist, Remember the Milk, stikkit, gubb
Thanks to the excellent Read/Write Web for pointing me to this.
GooSync’s Ten Minutes June 9, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in calendars, connectivity, web apps.1 comment so far
Intro: “Goosync.com is a web-based service for over-the-air synchronization of Google Calendar with mobile devices, powered by Toffa’s SyncWiseLive synchronization engine.” GooSync will let you synchronize multiple calendars with your smartphone calendar and do it without fuss. Oh, and Toffa is from Wolverhampton, a city I once knew, vaguely.
Exec Sum: Does what it promises, adding great value to Google Calendar and meaning you can ditch Outlook entirely. Implications for the desktop.
My tenminut.es: Check your phone works with their system. Most do. Setting up an account is pretty simple — synchronizing one calendar is free, with some limitations. You also need to give your Google account details, although it’s possible to do it without giving them to GooSync. Once you’ve set up your calendar(s) you need to send an SMS to your phone configuring it for synchronizing. Synchronizing there depends on your model, but should usually be via one applet — over 3G or a WiFi connection.
Verdict: Always been a pain for me, synchronizing calendars. This one works great, and even the payment option for multiple calendars was a breeze, which almost never happens out here. If you use Google Calendar and you’ve got a smartphone, do it.
Score: 8 out of 10
