Anagram’s Free iGoogle Gadget’s Ten Minutes September 29, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in calendars, organizers, productivity.2 comments
Anagram is a program for quickly parsing copied text to fit into the correct fields of software like Microsoft Outlook. It does a pretty good job, too; I’ve been using it for years. But recently it launched a free online version of its software via an iGoogle gadget, allowing users to parse text into Gmail or Google Calendar (and Jigsaw, though I’ve not tried it.)
Verdict: Not bad, but needs work.
My ten minutes: You’ll need iGoogle—Google’s version of NetVibes and Pageflakes—and you’ll need to install the gadget. That’s easy enough: Click on the appropriate buttons and you’re good to go:
Now copy an address or an event and paste it into the gadget text box:
You’ll be prompted to allow access to Gmail:
And then, hey presto, the copied text should be in the relevant fields of Gmail:
You won’t see the contact (or event) until you refresh your Google Calendar (or Gmail) page:
This is not bad for free, and useful if you’re a big user of Google products. But it’s too many steps and browser windows for me, especially compared to the Anagram standalone app—one keystroke and you’re pretty much done.
And while Gmail is actually a very useful place to dump contacts, it’s not so good for getting them out—most synchronizing applications don’t take stuff out of Gmail, although they will put stuff in. So it makes more sense, for example, to capture contacts in this way and put them into, say, Outlook, and then synchronize those contacts with Gmail than try to do it the other way around.
Another grumble: It doesn’t seem to like it if you’ve already got a contact of the same name in your address book. An error appears:
And Gmail offers no easy way to merge contacts in your database so no hope there.
That said, kudos to the guys at Anagram for offering something of their otherwise excellent product for free.
Bottom line: useful if you’re a big user of iGoogle, Google Calendar and Gmail. Or, I suppose, Jigsaw. Otherwise, don’t bother.
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.
Ten Minutes With Egnyte April 16, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in backup, collaboration, editing, file sharing, productivity, web apps.1 comment so far
What is it: Egnyte describes itself as a “Web 2.0 content sharing solution that combines sharing, automatic organization and a powerful search capability. Using continuous synchronization, Egnyte seamlessly integrates the desktop with the web.” In English, that means a way to share, search and tag your documents with others online, keeping old versions and an audit of changes along the way. Its beta version was lauched April 15.
Executive summary: Promising quick and straightforward way of collaborating on documents if you don’t want to actually edit online. Not ready for primetime.
My ten minutes: Signing up is painless and requires no waiting around for an email confirmation. You’re then invited to upload files individually, or download an extra piece of software that will let you upload folders or bunches of files (obviously better if you’re planning on sharing a lot more files.)
It reminds me of Groove in the sharing idea, and the storing of version histories but it leverages Web 2.0 to add important extra features, including being able to search the content of files and tagging.
Uploading a single file was easy, following the instructions, although it is only possible to select one file at a time, and no folders. For that you need a widget, and that was when things started to go wrong for me. The widget loaded fine, and the process was self-explanatory, with the selected folder and subfolder but the folder and its subfolders acquiring a little orange ‘e’ to indicate they’d been “activated”, but that was as far as it went. Clicking the Done button merely took me back to the same page I’d been on, telling me I had to select folders. The system tray widget was no better: Clicking on “Upload now” merely brought up a message telling me an upload was in process:
replaced shortly thereafter by another telling me the upload was complete:
The folder in question never arrived alongside a file I had uploaded manually. Indeed, a second file I tried to upload manually suggested it was there, and yet upon closer inspection wasn’t. I still can’t see what I might have done wrong here, and if it was an important file I was sharing with my boss, I would be in a panic by now.
My verdict: The ten minutes rule doesn’t mean that if a product is broken it’s all over. Ten minutes, the theory goes, should be enough for a product’s qualities to reveal itself, not whether it works seamlessly. Egnyte, despite its frankly awful name, clearly has promise; the guys behind it have thought things through and it has the whiff of potential to it. But the problem is this: Online collaboration is fraught with peril, since you’re asking punters to entrust valuable documents to your servce. I’d say Egnyte needs another six months before it’s worth another ten minutes.
Score: 5 out of 10, but worth a second look.
Thanks to: StartupSquad (which has more details on features I wasn’t able to test.)
Ten Minutes With Mindomo April 9, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in collaboration, Flash, mindmapping, productivity.3 comments
What is it: Mindomo is “a versatile Web-based mind mapping tool, delivering the capabilities of desktop mind mapping software in a Web browser – with no complex software to install or maintain.” Anyone familiar with mindmapping, and MindManager, will recognise the terrain. The company behind it is Romania-based Expert Software Applications.
Executive Summary: If you mind map, another useful option. If you don’t, a good place to start.
My ten minutes: Mindomo opens in a separate browser window and is, unsurprisingly, a Flash app. The interface is simple, and borrows more than a little from Microsoft Office’s ribbon idea (or maybe it’s a licensee?) This works well although as with Peepel, it tends to reduce space on the screen.
If you’re used to mindmaps, and in particular MindManager, Mindomo will be very straightforward, right down to the keyboard shortcuts for adding subbranches and branches. In fact in some ways it feels smoother than MindManager, although I don’t know why. There is a generous array of features available, from being able to change the shape of branches to adding a rudimentary image here and there to brighten things up.
I did hit some snags. Flash prevented me from selecting everything on the page when I wanted to change fonts or layout, and my effort to register (necessary if you want to save your mindmap) failed. Neither was I able to export to PDF (one of the supported formats): the process seemed to work but the file could not be found. I also found that I wasn’t able to import a MindManager map.
For collaboration, it seems to be possible to save a map as either a public or private one, and, if public, to be able to set whether others can read, copy, modify or delete those maps. As far as I can see it’s not possible to set whether a map is accessible only by certain other users. I’m guessing that is in the works.
Verdict: Great promise as a quick brainstorming app if you don’t have Mindmanager, or Freemind, or just want something quick and dirty. But it needs some work.
Score: 7 out of 10
Ten Minutes With Peepel April 6, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in office suites, productivity, web apps.add a comment
What is it Peepel is an online office suite comprising a word processor, calculator and spreadsheet, operating within its own desktop environment inside the browser.
Executive Summary: Early days, but a promising idea. Needs design tweaks, offline capability (in the works) and collaboration features to compete.
My ten minutes: A webpage starts you off, accessible in Office 2007 style with a drop down menu from the top left corner giving you access to the programs. The word processor, or WebWriter, and the spreadsheet, or WebSheet, are also pretty straightforward, opening in their own windows within the desktop. Office 207–like bars or ribbons appear at the top of the window giving access to the usual functions — a nice touch, although they take up too much space unless you’re lucky enough to have a huge screen at your disposal (typical problem where software is designed by dudes with massive displays.)
Everything is pretty intuitive and familiar, especially to anyone who has played around with Office 2007. A nice extra is a column of icons on the left side of the screen allowing you to move easily through the documents and programs you have open within the Peepel desktop. Once again, though, this reduces the amount of space you have left to actually do stuff.
I couldn’t find any way to import spreadsheets or documents (dragging and dropping, however, works well with documents) but exporting stuff is straightforward enough. A workspace manager allows you to save all the open windows and files in a particular way, another nice touch. The icons, though intuitive, all felt a bit uninspiring and well, childish. Maybe that’s intentional. I couldn’t find any way to collaborate on documents.
Verdict: This would be good for taking short notes or building small spreadsheets you want to work on when you’re on the move, or if you can’t affort an office suite. Not ready for more than that right now.
Score: 6 out of 10
