I am a programmer, a de facto project manager and anal when it comes to organization. I code for a living, code on the side and I’m also on the board of a local young professionals organization. My life is quite hectic at times and tasks can come at me from any angle. Unfortunately none of the task managers at my disposal ever really met my approval.

My latest foray into this arena comes from REXwireless. Their todoMatrix application does not fail to impress. Task organization is very natural - your tasks are organized by “drawers” and then by “folders.” A task takes under a few seconds to create, this is a great deal quicker than any of the other applications I’ve used.

Why I Love It

Another nice feature they have is named “injection.” todoMatrix installs an injection option to the menus provided by your Blackberry. Injection allows you to take the text currently displayed into a new task, saving a great deal of time.

Those few things made me fall in love with the application, but one feature really clinched it for me - rexDesktop. rexDesktop allows full CRUD on your todoMatrix data from the web.

Quirks

todoMatrix is not without its quirks. It would be nice if there was option on the menu that displays the shortcuts available. I’m sure they’re in the documentation but I’m too lazy to read it and I couldn’t carry it with me.

Also, I find the UI to be lackluster. I’m going to break that comment into three separate parts - 1. The Main Screen, 2. The Folder View, and 3. The Item View.

A Lackluster UI

The Main Screen

The main screen displays a tree which contains all of your drawers and folders. Although you can configure the colors of the folders, it still feels clunky to me. In Rex’s defense, I’m not sure what more can be done with a tree.

The Folder View

This view shows all of the tasks that are stored under a particular folder. The top quarter of the screen displays information related to the selected tasks and the bottom three quarters show all of the tasks.

The task detail section is too small. So small that labels for the six data elements that are displayed contain acronyms. These acronyms, although logical, I can’t get their meaning as quickly as I’d like to. I’m forced to look at their values in order to determine what I’m looking at. It seems to me that there is room to expand this section or at least expand the label names.

The tasks displayed give you a hint as to their status but there are only two colors used - a light blue for uncompleted tasks and a light gray for completed ones. I would like configurable colors for each status or priority. I understand that this could lead to confusion for the user, but if the colors are configurable, then the user could use as many or as few as they like.

The Item View

The Item View suffers from the same problem as the top portion of the Folder View but at least there’s a line that explains the meaning of each label.

RexDesktop

This is probably my favorite feature of this application. Unfortunately, it too suffers from a UI problem - it sucks. In a world full of Ajax and flashy UI’s this web app still looks like something from the late 90’s. It is fully functional it just looks ugly. But I’ll still choose function over form.

Wrap-Up

Although I write a great deal about the things I don’t like, todoMatrix is a great application. I feel that its strong points speak for themselves. I can’t wait to see how this application matures in the coming versions.

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todoMatrix can be purchased at rexWireless.

When I initially setup a website for my consulting firm I decided to use Drupal. After months of letting the site lay dormant (I was too busy actually working) I decided to take some time to get it running. I must say that I am impressed.

What I Need

As with all websites it is important to have a clear idea of what you want out of the website. I split to split this into two separate lists - what I need now, and what I want in the future. In this post I will go into what I need now.

• Visitor Tracking via Google Analytics.
• Provide an easy way for prospective clients to contact me.
• Provide an easy way to update the site.
• A blogging mechanism.

How I Got There

Visitor Tracking via Google Analytics

Visitor tracking is important to any business. It provides a way to see a few things - Are people actually visiting the site? How long are they staying? Who is talking about site?

Setting up Google Analytics is easy enough - add some Javascript to the theme and be on your way. What happens when you want to switch the theme? You have to go back and update the theme. I don’t plan on changing the theme to often but why do it if I don’t have to?

The Google Analytics Project provides the ability to use Google Analytics without having to worry about the theme. It also provides lots of other useful features:

• Role Tracking - Only track the types of users you care about. Do you really need to track what your team is doing? Probably not.
• Profile/User Segmentation - This only works for people who have accounts on your site, but it’s still a nice feature. It gives you the ability to see which users did what or even track where the users are from!
• Download Tracking - If your site offers downloads, this is a must. Imagine the following situation: You post a PDF of the requirements for a project you’re working on. You can validate whether someone, in particular, the certain user (or users) has looked at it. Great to know if you’re worried about your project schedule.

Provide an easy way to prospective clients to contact me

Why have a website if the visitors can’t inquire about your services? I provide a simple page with contact details and mailto: links but that’s rather boring and doesn’t provide many features. So I wanted a form that users could use. Now, I could write my own form to do this but every time I wanted a new form, or I wanted to change an existing form I would have to update code. Being a programmer, this isn’t really difficult, but I wanted it easier.

The Webform module provides pretty much everything I want. With no programming involved at all I was able to create a form that collects all the information that I’m curious about. It also provides more nice features - it will automatically email the form, store the results in the database, and it also works with the Captcha project to prevent Spam.

Also be sure to check the Webform Report project. I haven’t worked with it enough to write it up, but it does looking like a promising reporting tool.

Provide an easy way to update the site

This feature is default with Drupal. I would go so far as to say that Drupal is simplicity. Don’t get me wrong, there is a learning curve involved but just click around inside of Drupal for an hour or so and I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.

A blogging mechanism

Another great feature of Drupal is its blogging mechanism. Again, it’s another feature that comes with Drupal. Each user can have their own!

Finalize

So far my experience with Drupal has been great. I have been able to find modules for all the things I’ve been trying to accomplish. And I’m certain that I could write my own module if I can’t, especially after looking over the Developer’s Guide.

Linked List

The list below provides an easy way to get to some of the websites that I’ve written about.

• Drupal
• Google Analytics Project
• Webform Project
• Captcha Project
• Webform Report Project
• Drupal Developer’s Guide

If you like reading about all things hype, but are sick of reading about the iPhone, check out Xobni. The website encourages you to “Take back your Inbox.” After using this application, I must say, I think it can help.

If you’re just looking for screen shots, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Backstory

While reading Paul Graham’s essays I first noticed a link to Xobni. The icon (which you find in the right hand column of this page) intrigued me. I’m also addicted to all things organization so “taking back my Inbox” sounded great. Although I was a little skeptical, I signed-up for the beta and even put the button on my web site.

I fought the Inbox, and I won.

On Friday I received an invitation to download Xobni and I was psyched. (Note: Xobni thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for not succumbing to invititis.) Unfortunately the application is only available for Windows users and only for Outlook and I use a Macbook at home, so I was out of luck. Yesterday, I installed it - boy was I surprised!!

The installation process is as simple as you expect - close Outlook, run the install, wait (up to 25min) for it to gather statistics about your email. The length of time it takes to install should not deter you, trust me, it’s worth it.

After Xobni is installed, a context-sensitive sidebar is added to the right hand side of the Outlook window. Simply click on an email, any email and watch the extra pane change. Simply awesome!

If you’re a stats junkie you will love Xobni! At the top of the Xobni pane it displays: how much email you receive from this person (by time of day), a rank (which is how much email you receive from this person in comparison to everyone else) and, using the menu, you have access to a plethora of other customizable reports!

It shows the current email as a thread, this is similar to how Gmail does it.

It shows all the files you’ve exchanged with the person.

It allows you to setup a time to meet. When I first noticed this button I expected it to create an Outlook meeting request, it doesn’t. This may seem wrong but what Xobni does is much better. When you click this button a new email is opened and it includes your availability over the next week. Highly useful, especially if the person isn’t a fellow employee.

It automatically updates contact information. Don’t get worried, this contact information is Xobni-only so there’s no need to worry about this application ruining your contact list. This is only feature that gave me a problem - it doesn’t accurately guess the phone number 100% of the time. This problem happened once out of hundreds of people, so I really don’t think it’s anything major.

It shows all the people that are “connected” to the person who sent the email. A connection between people seems to be made when they both are recipients of an email you send. By clicking on a connection you can see all the information about them.

Wrap-Up

Simply put - Xobni rocks! The UI is fantastic. The reports are great and the application very snappy. Be sure to download it at www.xobni.com!

By the way, if you’re looking for a job, they’re hiring. The only reason I mention this is because Xobni looks like a fantastic place to work.

Screenshots

Ever since I bought my first Mac earlier in the year I’ve been searching for a nice backup solution. On my Windows machines I use SyncBack SE from 2BrightSparks. I love the application and nothing I found for Mac has come close. That is until I came across Smart Backup from Free Ride Coding.

Smart Backup is simple to use and easy to setup. It works exactly like you would expect - here are the files/folders I want to backup and I want you to place the backup here. It truly is that simple. The application also supports scheduled backups.

Test Scenario
As part of writing this post I ran a backup of my own. I use a Macbook 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1GB RAM running Mac OS X (10.4.10). My backup consists of my whole home directory - musics, videos, documents, downloads, etc. This totals 46.12 GB or 73,278 files.

The destination is a Western Digital MyBook external hard drive. The hard drive is connected to the computer using USB 2.0.

While running the backup I still used my computer but not for anything too intensive. I did not look at videos, I didn’t try encoding anything or listening to music. Just normal internet browsing. Although most people will choose to perform the backup during off hours, I wanted to show the backup speed while the computer was in use.

Summary

In 3hrs, 55min, SmartBackup backed-up 46.12 GB of data.

Features I Love

• Simple to use
• Scheduled Backups.

Things I Hate

• I’ve run into “beachball” issues.
• The trial screen forces you to wait 20 seconds each time you load the application.

Purchase Information
Smart Backup costs $21.00 US (15 EUR) and can be purchased directly from FreeRideCoding.

Screenshots

Smart Backup - Registration/Trial Screen

Smart Backup - Main Screen

Smart Backup - Backup Screen