Corinna Sherman

I’ve been putting off getting a replacement for my Canon Powershot S500 for a long time. This photo, taken today, has convinced me I’ve waited long enough. Now if I can just find the broken camera adjustment layer tutorial for Photoshop…

What do e-mail, calendars, and to-do lists have in common? They all help keep my busy life running smoothly and efficiently. Or they would, if I could only figure out how to combine them in a simple, streamlined interface. So here is my latest attempt to unite my email, calendar, and to-do list in one place for maximum utility and minimal cost…

I first discussed Remember the Milk (RTM) in a previous post, but to refresh memories, it’s essentially a web-based to-do list. I like to be able to see my to-do items and my upcoming events in one place, so I’ve been investigating how to combine RTM with Google calendar. And since I set up Google calendar to email me reminders about things, I thought it would be even better to combine RTM, Google calendar, and Gmail into a procrastination-fearing Frankenstein of organizational applications.

Side note: This is possible thanks to some beta features in Gmail. Beta means these features have been released into the wild for testing purposes but could change, break, or disappear at any time. Hey, did I mention they’re free?

I started by venturing into my Gmail settings. There is a section in here called Labs that contains a collection of experimental features for Gmail. They are all disabled by default, so like an efficiency ninja, I swooped in and enabled a select few:

• Right-side chat
• Right-side labels
• Google Calendar gadget
• Add any gadget by URL

The first two features move the Gchat and Labels boxes respectively from the left side of the Gmail interface to the right. This wasn’t strictly necessary, but the left side is premium screen real estate (since as English-readers, our eyes are trained to go to the left first), and I’d much rather see my calendar and to-do items there instead.

Enabling Google Calendar gadget adds a Google calendar gadget to the Gmail interface on the left side where Gchat used to reside.

Add any gadget by URL makes it possible to add an RTM gadget beneath the calendar gadget, but it takes one more step to actually add it. Still in Gmail Settings, I went to the Gadgets section and entered the following URL: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/modules/gmail/rtm.xml

Now when I access Gmail, I see my Google calendar events and my RTM to-do items on the left, my email in the middle, and Gchat and labels on the right. Zzzap, zzzap, zzzap! IT’S…ALIVE!!!

There is an interesting article in The Atlantic about how the Internet may be shaping our thought patterns. The author makes the generalization (based on anecdotal evidence) that people tend to skim rather than read online, and that our ability to read with deep, sustained engagement becomes impaired as a result. He claims he cannot even read a long article anymore without getting distracted.

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but it sounds to me like the author is taking web surfing and multitasking to extremes. I get a lot of information from the Internet, but I don’t consider it a replacement for in-depth magazine/journal articles and books, and I still enjoy delving into a weighty tome for an hour at a time. Or several hours, if my newly arrived copy of Breaking Dawn has anything to do about it. People get information from a variety of media presented at different density levels, and that seems to me like a pretty healthy state of affairs. Sometimes we just want an overview, and sometimes we actually want to learn enough about a topic that we can carry on a conversation with others about it. How deep we want to go just depends on where our individual interests lie.

Admittedly, magazines nowadays (MIT Tech Review being one guilty party) are trying to appeal to the stereotype of a skim-happy public by encapsulating their articles in blurbs at the front of the magazine. Reading these predigested morsels in print, however, strikes me as a waste of time. After all, if I wanted shallow summaries, I could always go to the web site. (Well, actually, I’d check my RSS feed, but that’s beside the point.) If I have gone to the trouble of procuring a physical magazine, with pages I can stare at without getting computer monitor glow fatigue, that conforms to the shape of my grip and doesn’t mind getting rained on or stuffed into a bag alongside sharp metal objects like keys, I’m going to read whole articles. But maybe that’s just me.

I got an iPhone this weekend, and now I find myself swimming in a sea of Web 2.0 – you know, that lowercase, twitterific, round-cornered, how-is-this-making-any-money, privacy-what’s-privacy thing currently popping up like mushrooms all over the Internet? Yeah, that. There are so many shiny little logos to choose from in the iTunes App store. On which productivity-enhancing widgets will I squander my time on next? So far I’ve sampled urbanspoon, Remember the Milk, Jott, reQall, Bloomberg LP, Remote, and WordPress.

My favorite so far is the location-sensing urbanspoon. No more agonizing over which restaurant to choose – just shake the phone and go eat where it tells you to. Of all the apps I’ve tried, it is by far the most genuine time-saver. Plus, it kinda makes me feel like I’m at the Vegas slot machines when I use it. Come ooon, big dumpling!

Jott, reQall, and Remember the Milk are all web-based personal reminder systems. Jott and reQall are notable in that once you sign up for an account, you can call a phone number and leave voice notes for yourself, which their systems transcribe into written notes that get stored in your account. There’s no speech recognition training (thank goodness), and both services coped fairly well with my basic phone tests. Jott even boasts the capability to transcribe posts and send them directly to your blog. In my mind, that brings drunk dialing to a whole new level. You can also create lists and say which list you want a note added to when you call, so if you are on the go and suddenly remember you need to buy apples, you can call the number and save a reminder to your grocery list. Jott has more open-ended capabilities – sending to other applications like blogs, for example – while reQall can be clever and automatically sort your notes into lists depending on keywords it detects. So if you call reQall and say, “Buy apples,” it will know to store that note on your shopping list without you having to specify which list you mean.

I figured since I already dived in, I might as well check out Posterous, the blog service that lets you post to multiple places at once. Productivity-enhancing, right? Well, the name makes me giggle, anyway, because it looks like “posterior.” Or “preposterous”…but later. I haven’t found an iPhone app for it yet, but I’m sure if one comes out, the news will spread like wild (mushrooms on) fire.