I just downloaded a new iPhone app; again. This app is Wordpress. The app allows posting to your Wordpress blog from your iPhone. I wouldn’t recommend it for multipage posts, but a quick blurb waiting in line isn’t hard to do. This is actually my first post using it. Maybe I’ll post more often now????

Task management or to-do lists are a very personal thing.  Everyone seems to have their own concept of keeping track of their “to-do” list.  Usually there is one common thread: a list.  How you shuffle it, organize it, or tag it, is the personal part of it.

I was excited to see the to-do option in mail.app with the release of Leopard, but that just never seemed to get off the ground.  Additionally I needed a list that moved with me on my iPhone.  I’ve been struggling ever since I gave up my Treo for my iPhone last year.  That is, until now. Now EasyTask seems to have come close to solving my problems.

EasyTask is created and maintained by orionbelt.com.  The version I’m reviewing is 2.0.  This surprises me as I’ve never heard of it before I stumbled onto their iPhone app in the iTune app store.  Their website is pretty sparse but there are testimonials dating back two years for the product so I assume it’s been around that long.  It runs on both a Mac and Windows.  The Windows version is listed at version 1.8.

The app’s todo list conforms to the ubiquitous Dave Allen’s GTD (or Getting Things Done method).  It has the classical 3 pane display.  With Projects, Contexts, and Catergories on the left, the list of things to do on the right split with the bottom displaying the selected tasks.  Each task can have a start, and due date, importance level of one to 5, status and notes in addition to the Project, context and category.  Additionally you can easily make the task recurrent and assign either an onscreen alert msg or email alert.   The recurrence is quite extensive, even allowing items like the 3rd Tues of the month or the 3rd Tues of every 4th month. All of this can be done quite intuitively.

Those familiar with the GTD method will be familiar with the contexts.  Contexts are how the todo should be acted upon.  Examples are email, specific people, etc.  All of this can be easily selected from pull downs or added on the fly.  The Inbox category servers as a stepping stone for further assignment to a context and or project.  It will also put your tasks into your iCal calendar of your choice.

The best part, which is what actually had me stumble upon EasyTask is the iPhone app.  It allows editing, completing, and adding of tasks just like the desktop.  It has simple views by context, project and Inbox / due date.  And all this is sync’d with your desktop via the Easytask servers.  You sign up for an account with your email and you’re off.  The iPhone app and sync feature are FREE to boot.  The combination of the two is great.  Jotting down an idea into my inbox either on the iPhone or desktop and then later syncing  and assiging the task into a context and / or project is simple enough to make it easy for me to do it.

There is also a third way to access your tasks: via a browser.  You can via your task online via http://www.easytaskmanager.net/.  There is even a scaled down version for Safari on your iPhone.

There are a few issues but they are minor.  They note on their web site Project and Context deleting doesn’t sync.  You have to do it individually on each device.   Also notes of each take don’t seem to always sync.  They promise a fix.  If I had to fix anything on the iPhone app it would be increase the font size of the input fields.  There are time when there is a single input field on the screen and the font is tiny.  There is no feedback when you press Sync now on the iPhone or on the desktop app.  And for some odd reason you have to press Online Sync and then sync now instead of a single touch on the iPhone.

With the combination of the desktop app, the iPhone app, the web interface and the sync between the all for the total of $20US, the suite is a bargain.  Comparing that with the $100 cost of the similar combo of Omnifocus, I’m surprised I had never heard of Easytask before.  Regardless of the cost the ease of use and the accessibility has sold me and I now have a better task management system than I did before I moved to my iPhone.

I was looking to buy a Mac mini.  As I sat down to price them.  I noticed that a MacBook was pretty close in price.  When I sat down and added it up it was much closer than I thought.  It was only just about a $125 to $150 premium for a portable computer. 

Will there be another iPhone price drop in 3 months? I was just checking out the AT&T site and I happened to notice the date in the price block in the upper right hand portion of their site:

There I go posting an “early” post, in my early adopter tradition and minutes after I post my complaint, Apple responds.

You made it right Apple. I appreciate that. And I’m taking my $100 and using it to stand in line for the next new item.

I’m happy with my iPhone. I love new gadgets. But I’ve learned a lesson. You can buy MANY more new gadgets if just wait a little over 2 months if you buy an Apple gadget. I’m an early adopter. I buy the latest, greatest. I deal with the bugs, the kinks and the cost of having the latest greatest and enjoy it. I bought the MacBook Pro an hour after it was announced. There have been revs and price changes but they didn’t come 68 days and weren’t 33%. I bought a 1st gen shuffle minutes after the announcement and I happily bought a second gen when it came out. I’ve got 3 generations of iPods. I’ve buy a lot of things when they first come out. Heck I’ve ordered new items and they’ve taken 68 days to come arrive!

I’ve learned my iPhone lesson. The Apple “hype machine” WAS a great thing. I’m no longer biting. I’m still buying but it’ll be months after. I won’t be waiting in any lines. I can be rewarded handsomely for not waiting in line. 68 days is not long to wait for a new item, again it’s taken 30-60 for some orders to come in, and to be rewarded w/ a 33% price reduction for waiting that period it’s worth it.

I learned my lesson. There will now be a 90 day waiting period before I buy any new Apple devices.

There are just pieces of software that just do what you want. Simple, yet they accomplish just about every aspect of the task at hand. And then to top it off they’re free!

Imagewell does just that. Ever need to resize that digital picture to post on a web page? Want to upload it to your ftp site? Imagewell does both simply and very well. With the latest version it will upload your picture not only to your ftp site but there are a few more options. It will now seamlessly upload it Flickr, Imageshack, smugmug, ftp, sftp, webdav, iDisk, or just save it to a local folder.

Basically it will do just about all need to quickly modifiy the image file to get it to the specs you want. It will allow you to resize, crop, edit and even watermark your photos.

The free version while it allows you to edit the image, with a $14.95 registration it’ll allow you to edit the image and draw more lines and shapes. The other “Xtra” features you get for your $14.95 include batch image processing, multiple images on your editing canvas, and templates for drawing objects and backgrounds.

You have the 2590 X 1920 image that you want to post on your web page or upload to a blog. This will fill most default screen sizes on most computers surfing your page. So a quick resize would not only make it more pleasant to your view it will also save them the download of what is a pretty big file.

Drag the picture over to the drop zone and use the slider to the 640 X 480 and click send to send it where you want. You can watermark it before you send it. Or you can actually draw little arrows on the picture to highlight things.

Want to grab part of the screen, want a full screen cap? It’s all there. It will randomize the file name for you to upload. It will add the html code for the uploaded file to your clipboard.

All and all a very handy utility that takes up little screen real estate and gets the job done. I had no need for the “xtra” features but I sent the $14.95 because the free version was worth it and more.

I was happy to hear that Apple was including a 3.5″ jack on the iPhone. There would be no having to lug around an adapter for headphones like I did with my Treo. Then i got my iPhone and tried to plug in my Bose noise cancelling headphones and they wouldn’t work. Close examination revealed the plug wasn’t all the way in because the jack was recessed! This may become one of life’s great mysteries as to why Apple designed it this way.

Then I started reading about people using exacto knifes trimming the plastic to get it to fit into the recess. I thought that would be too “rough” looking.

I remembered I had a Black and Decker Rotary tool, which I bought for working on my sons’ Pine Wood derby cars. Those days are gone, but I dusted off the power tool. I chose the wired brush tool pictured on the left here and went to town fixing all my jacks.

It was about 20 seconds of work on each jack and 100% worked flawlessly after I finished. And they didn’t look half bad either. Here’s a picture of a “modified” jack at the top and the same jack on the other end “unmodified”. Maybe I’ll setup a cottage industry modifying jacks to fit into iPhones.

There I am loving my iPhone. Talking and surfing. Talking and emailing. Then the fun starts to diminish. Talk, surf, crash. It’s like a snowball going down hill, getting worse and worse. It’s more like just talk, and crash.

Thinking it’s a mini OS X, I figure there’s got to be a “Force quit” or heck just a reset. Sure enough:

Force Quit: Press and hold the “Home” button for six seconds with that app being displayed. IE., if you’re staring at a Safari screen and nothing is happening. Just press and hold the Home button.

Hard Reset: This is the one that stopped my “snowball”. It reminds me of the Menu - Center button combo on my iPod for those iPod owners. Press and hold both the Power button (the black button at the top right) and the Home button, until you see the Apple logo. This should take about 8 seconds.

Back to carefree surfing. Hopes I hit a flash only site, strike that “carefree surfing” line.

I’ve just found this. It’s MacWorld’s list of what Apple did right and wrong. The best synopsis of plusses and minuses I’ve found in my opinion. Probably because I agree with all of them.