Tungle is Awesome
Friday October 23, 2009 by Eric Allen
As a student, I have a lot of meetings. Class projects, clubs, stock market discussions with friends, etc. Setting up these meetings can be a pain, especially with more than two people. “Just send me when you’re available” breaks down pretty quickly, especially if you want to schedule something during the week.
That’s why I use Tungle. Meeting software is not new to me, and I was a fan of whenisgood.com and TimeBridge, but Tungle blows them out of the water. WhenIsGood is cool and all, but the lack of integration with my personal calendar made for a lot of double entry. TimeBridge stopped working when I upgraded to Snow Leopard, and it was too complicated for attendees, too. Not to mention TimeBridge restricted me to only five choices for meeting times.
Desktop integration, great web app, iPhone app, Tungle really has it all. Heck, schedule a meeting right now with me at http://tungle.me/epall. Slick, right? Tungle really is like having a secretary to schedule meetings for me, but it’s free! I love Web 2.0.
BubbleTimer
Sunday September 20, 2009 by Eric Allen
Every fall, the Learning Assistants (LAs) at RPI teach the freshmen how to manage their time. The cornerstone of this program is the week schedule. Everybody gets an 8.5“x11” sheet of paper with a week schedule on it. Each day is a column, and each hour is a row. You’re supposed to sit down with colored pencils and plan out how every week for the entire semester will go by blocking out particular times in this calendar. As far as I know, nobody actually does this.
How, then, does one efficiently manage time? I’ve found that the time my various activities demand can vary greatly from week to week, so a static schedule is out the window. I’ve gotten good at using Tracks to manage what needs to get done, but I still need something to budget my time with and ensure I’m following that budget. Aggressive proactive scheduling doesn’t work (at least not for me), but I’ve found a better solution: BubbleTimer.
BubbleTimer is a simple web application that lets me enter in a set of activities and then retroactively fill in what I spent time on in 15-minute blocks. I fill in my BubbleTimer as the day goes, and by the end of the day I have a pretty good picture of how my productive time was spent. I don’t track everything (that would be crazy!), but I track pretty much all productive time, as well as time I spend “chilling,” or recuperating when I could potentially be productive. This tracking functionality isn’t all that great by itself, but that’s where Daily and Weekly Goals come in. After reviewing my BubbleTimer data from last semester, I know I have about 15 hours a week to spend on non-school productive activities. I parceled those hours out into my different tasks with Weekly Goals, often with a range of acceptable time spent. During the week, I can see at a glance how I’m doing with respect to my budget, and plan accordingly.
While it’s not free, BubbleTimer is certainly worth the price for me. Without it, I tend to spend too much time on fun coding projects and not enough time on my other activities. Thanks to BubbleTimer, I have a much more balanced set of activities, and I can keep my more fun activities (like investing) to a reasonable level. Yes, I can go ahead and violate my budget any time I want, but without self-control what solution would work? BubbleTimer’s simple, flexible approach to time management is a critical piece of my workflow.
Evernote
Monday December 29, 2008 by Eric Allen
I really can’t say enough good things about Evernote, the online note-taking application I ran into a few weeks ago. It’s not just online, it’s on my iPhone, my Mac, my other Mac, the PC I rarely use, and I can even send notes in via email! I’ve finally found a place I can keep all of my random thoughts and notes that organizes them well and is accessible from anywhere. Oh, and as a bonus I can record audio and photo notes, and it even searches for text inside the photos! I can take a snapshot of a whiteboard from my iPhone, and have it searchable within minutes. Evernote does everything I could ask for, and more.
Let’s start with basic text notes. When I have an idea, a thought about a project, or some notes I need to take about what I’m working on, I launch the Evernote application. Command+N gets me to a new note, I throw a title and a few tags in, and I’m immediately writing a note with rich text formatting and checklists! The tags are a huge plus for me: I can organize all of my notes and index them without even thinking about it. When I want to go back and review notes about a specific project, I just click on its tag and instantly I have a list of what I want to see. I can select multiple tags at once to narrow the field even tighter. If Evernote just handled text notes and synchronization with multiple computers, I would be sold.
Nothing’s cooler than having an iPhone app, right? Well, Evernote’s app delivers exceptionally well. I hadn’t bothered to purchase a voice recording application yet, and boy was that a good move! Now, when I’m on the go, I can whip out my iPhone and be recording a voice note straight into Evernote in seconds. I can add tags and textual notes to make the audio easier to find in the future, and I’m on my way. I can’t believe how awesome this feature is. But wait, there’s more! In addition to handling text nearly as well as the desktop version, and making audio recording a snap, Evernote for the iPhone lets you take pictures of things as notes and search them later! It did an impressive job on a few of my whiteboard snapshots, and my handwriting isn’t very good. Evernote for the iPhone on its own is worth a few bucks in the App Store, but even it is free!
Last but not least, the synchronization is perfect. No matter where I am, I have all of my notes at my fingertips, and the interface is optimized for the device I’m using. The Mac client is a beautiful piece of software, the iPhone app is well optimized, and the web version seems almost as good as the Mac! Now I never have to think about where my notes are—they’re with me wherever I go. Awesome.
Evernote is already an amazing product, and I think it’s clear that it will only get better. They just launched document synchronization, so you can keep your documents with you everywhere, too! I’m already very happy with this free product, and I will have no qualms about upgrading to their $5/month plan if and when I need it. Thank you Evernote for making my life easier!
Wesabe vs. Mint
Friday February 8, 2008 by Eric Allen
I’ve been using Wesabe to keep track of my personal finances for the past year or so now, and I must say I love it. Uploading data is fast, easy, and secure. Viewing my transactions is simple and intuitive, and getting numbers out for taxes was a piece of cake. It doesn’t do everything, but Wesabe is a great tool for a young person with fairly simple finances who just wants to keep track of his money.
Now, a similar site started up a few months ago called Mint. Their software is much slicker, with window-esque overlays and fading page transitions. However, they lack two features I consider critical: they won’t support one of my credit cards, and they have no API. This means that not only can I not get all of my data in, getting my data back out is a pain. When I needed to file taxes this year, I was able to whip up a little Ruby program that downloaded and sliced up the information in a way that helped my file my Schedule C.
Wesabe gets a few things very much right for the kind of company they are. First, they interact amazingly closely with customers. If you join the “Make Wesabe Better” group inside of Wesabe, you get access to a forum with long conversations between users and developers about how to improve Wesabe. When I have a feature suggestion or a need, I know I can ask for it there and be heard. Second, they favor functionality over flash. Mint is much prettier, but Wesabe actually works. Not only does it work, but it works well and securely. That’s pretty awesome for such an early-stage web startup.
Basically, Wesabe is awesome and I highly recommend it to manage your personal finances.
