Dork Adore » Lifehacks

Organisation Dorkage: Getting stuff done with WunderKit & WorkFlowy

Amanda Foley — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:00:54 +0000

Feeling a little scatterbrained lately, my friends? Well, never fear, fellow disorganised dorks, because I’m here to help you achieve a little “To-Do” list zen with some nifty tools for getting stuff done. Read on!

WunderKit

Chances are you’ve heard of the incredibly popular task manager, Wunderlist. It’s a simple but effective personal task manager, which makes syncing your “To-Do” list across various devices a seamless experience, with desktop apps for Mac & Windows, and mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Well, as awesome as Wunderlist is, the folks over at Berlin-based startup 6WunderKinder have decided to bring even more awesomeness to our lives in the form of Wunderkit.

Wunderkit incorporates the ideas of Wunderlist and brings them into a much more interactive and collaborative workspace. Wunderkit is a social platform, a team task manager and a personal organiser, all in one.

The site has a beautiful, easy-to-use interface which is based around creating various “workspaces”. Within each workspace, you can create tasks, track team progress on projects, post status updates, collaborate on notes, and add more people to your workspace using Twitter and Facebook integration.

Wunderkit is currently in private beta, but sign-up on the website or ask a friend for an invite, and you should have access in no time!

If you want to know more about WunderKit, take a look at the beta walk through video below.

WorkFlowy

WorkFlowy (tagline: “Organise your brain”)is another fantastic way to organise your everyday life. One might say it’s a lot simpler than Wunderkit, but it’s no less powerful.

WorkFlowy is a list-maker. It’s also a wonderful planning tool, helping you to create detail-oriented notes, brainstorm ideas and manage your tasks.

Currently, it’s an in-browser tool only, with no desktop or mobile apps launched (though if you’re on a Mac, you can use Fluid apps to create one for you).

It is available on mobile browsers though, which makes it easy to access your WorkFlowy task list on-the-go.

There is a collaborative element to Workflowy as well, allowing you let others view or edit any WorkFlowy task with a unique URL for every task.

Check out WorkFlowy’s blog to see a bunch of cool tips, tricks and features about how to use WorkFlowy.

What are your favourite tools for task management and productivity lately? Anything we should know about?

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Organise! Flex by Filofax – Review

Tamsin Worrad — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:37:15 +0000

It might seen a little redundant in this age of technology, but I’m having a love affair with my Filofax.

Despite relying on technology for most aspects of my life, I’ve never got over my habit of relying on handwritten notes to myself: I can only plan things if they’re written down in an actual tangible paper diary.

My Filofax never leaves my side (it recently came to a festival in a field with me) and if I lost it I’d actually have no idea what I’m doing. My contacts are in there, my to-do lists, my shopping lists, business cards…most of my life.

It’s lo-tech geek and I love it.

I was pretty excited, then, when Filofax announced the Flex and sent me one over to try out. Separate to the Filofax, Flex is instead a totally flexible response to organisation, resembling a cross between a notebook, a diary and a wallet.

Basically, it’s the Swiss Army Knife of personal organisers.

Flex it!

The concept is brilliantly simple; a stylish textured cover into which multiple books and accessories can be inserted. This means you can create exactly the organisational system you need.

The pocket size is perfect for even the smallest handbags, but still has sections for all your cards, photos and other essentials. The Flex is beautifully made; the way it can come together into quite literally a million combinations gives me a purely geeky thrill.

I wouldn’t be without my Filofax, but I’ve heard many friends comment that its just too bulky for them to use on a regular basis. The Flex is the ideal solution, without losing any of the features beloved of personal organiser devotees. My only criticism is that there isn’t a strap to keep the Flex shut, but it has a pen holder that can cleverly use the pen to keep the covers together.

I’m genuinely very impressed with the Flex and if it can please an obsessive organiser like myself, it must be good!

The Filofax Flex is available in black, magenta and slate and prices range from £17 to £27.

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Top tips for a Zen-like computing experience

Katie — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 09:00:58 +0000

Whenever we invent time-saving devices we find a way to make them take up time. The computer was supposed to make us more productive, and yet we’re all still working long hours and staring at download status bars slowly installing updates.

But if you bring a little slow life to your work life, you can actually make yourself MORE productive, not less.

Zenware is a slow computing movement that’s all about removing distraction and making our computers function better.

Zenware and the art of clutter-free computing

Install a distraction-free writing tool. I’m using OmmWriter to write this piece. It’s a lovely zen-like typing tool that clears all the nav bars from your computer and gives you a blank writing space. It not only removes the temptation to check Twitter and email, it also encourages you to just type without over-thinking everything. Check Lifehacker for five of the best distraction-free writing tools — I used to love WriteMonkey when I had a PC and WriteRoom for Mac is great too.

Clean up your desktop. You really don’t need all those icons on there. Random downloads, shortcuts to apps you never use, and documents that should be filed away somewhere, avoiding a messy desktop keeps your brain clear and makes you feel more in control of your computing. Digital Frost has some great tips for creating a clear computer desktop.

Get a better browser. If you’re reading DorkAdore you don’t need me to tell you that Explorer is not fit for purpose. Chrome is a great zen-like browser with lovely minimal design. Too many plugins and toolbars just limit your browsing space. If you can’t bear to give up Firefox because you’ve got it all pimped out with add-ons, hide any toolbars you don’t need that often and have them open when you press a button. I wrote a guide to improving Firefox browsing a while back, which has some tips for tidying toolbars.

Stay focused — or don’t. I used to have a simple little applet on my PC that popped up every hour or so to remind me to take a break from the screen and stretch my legs. If you’re keen to stay focused, taking a break can be the best way to increase productivity. TimeOut will dim your screen when it’s time for you to give your eyes a break. WorkRave will also remind you to have a break.

Get Zenned up. Rescue Time is an app that will track your computer use to see where you’re losing time, allowing you to block specific sites or apps for a period of time so you can stay focused on your work. Meanwhile, Clutter Cloak blacks out the majority of your screen, leaving you with just the area your cursor is hovering over, so you can’t see new emails or Facebook updates popping up.

Recommended reading:

More Zenware inspiration on Slate.

Zen and the writer’s desktop: 7 steps to writer’s freedom

[Image: xQlusiveEvan]

Originally posted on Jorg&Olif – The Slow Life Company

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How to become a supreme being

Katie — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:30:29 +0000

Are you a supreme being? If you had Mary Poppins’s measuring tape, what would it say about you?

Much as I’d like to think I was practically perfect in every way, I suspect mine would probably just read “could do better”.

And yet I persist in attempts at personality makeovers. I’m always on the hunt for mindhacks that might make me a better me — which is why I’m quite taken by Habitforge.

Habitforge is based on the principle that forming new habits takes 21 days. You sign up for free, pick something you want to start doing or thinking or whatever, and off you go.

Every day you’ll get an email asking if you’ve stuck to your new habit. Answer yes and you’re on the road to a better you, answer no and you have to start your 21 days from the beginning.

I tried it a while back with the hope of being a bit less inclined to find the storm cloud in every situation. It certainly hasn’t made me all sunshine and smiles, but it helped set me on a less dismal path. I just need to do a few more personality tweaks and I’ll be even more marvellous.

Have a go and let me know how you get on. Habitforge.

Source: How to form good habits [Jorg&Olif the Slow Life Company]

Image: Bee and Rose (thanks!)

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How to green your website

Katie — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 16:00:41 +0000

The aviation industry gets a bit of a bum rap when it comes to energy consumption. OK, it’s hardly the poster child for energy efficiency, but there are other industries out there guzzling power without a care in the world.

The tech industry for example.

Now, it’s not gone unnoticed that web companies are sucking up energy just so we can check our Facebook wall and run some errands in Second Life (is anyone still on Second Life?? It must almost be time for a retro revival), but the web’s a long way from beating itself with birch twigs over its carbon greed.

But, if you’re getting *your* birch twigs ready for a spot of guilt-ridden flagellation, why not salve your guilt by greening up your site.

Slow Living site, Jorg & Olif (and makers of those nice Dutch bicycles) has some useful advice on how to cut your online carbon footprint, including cutting your gadget waste and offsetting your online emissions.

Tips for greening your site

Install Online Leaf – an energy-saving blog plugin that cuts back the energy consumption of your site
Stick to ENERGY STAR rated gadgets, which use less energy
Switch to a green web host. Make sure you check out green web host reviews before getting sucked into an expensive/actually not very eco-friendly after all service
Offset your website. CoC02 will offset the energy used to produce and run your site. The Environment and Greener Living government site is full of useful information about carbon offsetting, which is well worth a read.

Check out more green website tips on the Jorg & Olif site.

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How to broadcast yourself on the web

Dork Adore — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:00:59 +0000

Not content with making us more efficient at work and giving us the best tools for getting things done at home Darika Ahrens, high chieftain of social media, has gathered together all the best tools for broadcasting yourself all over the web.

We’ve come a long way since lonelygirl15 took to her webcam and broadcast herself to the world. Now, there are even more tools available to (borrowing a phrase from YouTube) broadcast yourself.

Here are some great tools that are out there and free right now.

ipadio

AudioBoo brought us phone-to-audio blogging (aka phlogging) and ipadio takes it one step further, live casting audio from your phone and via your blog, Facebook or Twitter.

This is one to watch.

Tip: Don’t get stung by freephone charges when calling from your mobile phone. This is one part of ipadio which should be improved by recognising most people will be blogging/phlogging from their smartphone device.

Slidecasting with Slideshare

By far the easiest way to create an online video if you don’t have a lot of technical knowledge and/or can’t be bothered with video editing software.

Once you’ve got a Slideshare account you just upload your slide presentation (PowerPoint, OpenOffice, and Apple Keynote are all supported) then, once loaded, click “Make Slidecast” and upload any MP3 audio file (most laptops have built in microphones these days).

A super simple editing window appears where you just drag audio markers to match individual slides. This seems quite business-focused but you could play around with uploading holiday photos or even making your own video stories for children like one of my clever friends does.

Slidecast widgets share your creations to Facebook & LinkedIn.

Tip: Traditional video rules still apply here, keeping it short and sweet is the key to keeping viewers watching. Also, once you’ve uploaded the audio file there is no facility to edit audio so you either have to record it in one take OR edit the audio in some audio software first.

Jing for Screencasting

Camtasia is by far one of the most recommended screencasting software around but here’s a sneaky trick – creators TechSmith also have free service Jing for all your screencasting needs.

Some cool features include the useful screencast.com URL allowing you to capture a screenshot, edit it down, and quickly post the link into an IM conversation or email (“No mum click on THIS tab!”)

Those who upgrade to the Pro version can also capture video from webcams so you can include video of yourself, or others, talking to camera.

Tip: If you run a software- or technology-based company this is a must-have for the now commonplace video demos most sites have on their homepage and as part of their Help resources.

SoundCloud

For wannabe musicians or even established music pros SoundCloud is for storing and distributing music and I think/hope will drive a nail in the coffin of those hideous band promo pages on MySpace which, let’s face it, were mainly used for their music player more than any real fan engagement.

Why? The whole look and feel of SoundCloud is polished and functional. It gives you one centralised point to host your music and then allows it to be streamed across the web. There’s also a customisable widget you can embed pretty much anywhere.

Analytics help you track where it’s being played and provide interactive stats and comments. If you make or download music this is definitely something you should check it out.

Tip: Don’t just think music, SoundCloud is excellent for the budding podcaster too.

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Five of the best sites to customise your life

Emma Cossey — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:12:25 +0000

The internet is a pretty wonderful place to shop for the objects of your desire. Filled with every kind of retailer you can imagine, you’ve got a pretty unlimited array of options for clothing, food, transport and well, anything really.

The greatest advantage of shopping online has to be customisation. Worried about turning up at a big family event in the same dress as your Aunt Glenda? Design your own online. Need the perfect present that shows someone how much you love them? Get clicking.

So, fancy pimpin’ up your life a little? Here are a few of the best customisation sites.

StyleShake

Fancy playing fashion designer for the day? StyleShake allows you to design your own dress, choosing the fabric, trimmings and style. You can either browse the current galleries, or start your own from scratch. They’ll even offer free alterations if it doesn’t quite fit you.

Prices depend on the design, but they vary from around £49 to just under a £100. Check out the gallery for some examples.

Upper Street

At the higher end of the price scale, Upper Street offers you the chance to create your own pair of designer shoes. You can choose from an assortment of materials and colours, and cover it in as many embellishments as you desire.

Like StyleShake, there’s an inspiration area if you fancy tweaking someone else’s design.

Prices are around £200 for a style like the red one above, so they’re not cheap, but they’re useful if you need matching shoes for a wedding or event.

Eyes Lips and Face

A much more budgetable way of pimping your life is by introducing a customised make-up palette into your collection. ELF Cosmetics lets you create your own compact from a selection of custom eye, lip and face colours for on the go makeovers.

The compacts are £1.50 and each custom colour is £1.50, so you’ll get the whole customised compact for £7.50.

FoodAdo

There’s plenty of sites around that allow you to put together your own food package or hamper, but FoodAdo is particularly great as it allows you to order and have it delivered by mail order Parcel Force. It also offers an extensive range of products from small artisan food producers, so it’s more about special purchases and treats rather than your usual weekly shop. It’s a bit like browsing a quaint little food market from the comfort of your sofa.

MyVelo

Finally, you can pimp your ride (without inviting the soul-destroying Tim Westwood to your home). MyVelo lets you personalise a bike with your choice of frame, colour and components, and delivers to you in three weeks.

Prices for a bike with all the trimmings, like the pimpin’ Dork Adore bike above, come in at around £375. You’ll get all the eco-friendly benefits too (and time saving benefits for anyone relying on public transport). If you have a generous employer, you might want to talk to them about the Cycle To Work Scheme.

So, there’s a few ways to customise your life. Any other additions?

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Five more Firefox addons for bloggers

Emma Cossey — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:00:09 +0000

Late last year, Katie put together a list of the best Firefox addons for bloggers, and plenty of you added your own favourites in the comments.

Personally, my favourite Firefox addon from the list was Pixlr , which saves so much time in grabbing and editing images online. Chris Lee’s suggestion in the comments section for Wordtracker SEO Blogger has also become an essential tool for getting the most out of my posts.

Still chomping at the bit for more addons to enhance your surfing? Here are five more suggestions that I use on a daily basis.

Feedly

Bloggers and editors tend to be slaves to their Google Reader, but the layout can be a little uninspiring at times. Feedly lays your Google Reader into an easy to read magazine format, and integrates your Twitter feed into the right hand side. It also allows you to share a post on all the relevant social media and bookmarking sites, or to recommend it for other Feedly users.

For me though, the main benefit is the search function. If you search for a particular term in Google, Feedly searches through your own sources and followed blogs, and the results pop up in the right hand corner.

Morning Coffee

Morning Coffee is a simple addon that allows you to program in your favourite sites for each day and then opens them all up in tabs for your reading pleasure. So, if you like to read the news sites, open up WordPress and browse Dork Adore (natch) each morning during the week, but prefer to stick to cinema listings and Facebook at the weekends, it’ll remember them and open them for you.

Read It Later

If you’ve seen last week’s Frackulous omnibus, you’ll have already seen Susi talking about Read It Later for the iPhone. Read It Later is a addon that does exactly what it says on the tin. Once installed you can save any web page or blog post to read later through the icon in the address bar or by right clicking. The links are saved to a button in your toolbar for easy access, rather than clogging up your bookmarks.

Tweetbeat Firsthand

A more recent discovery is Tweetbeat Firsthand, which works in a similar way to the Skype addon. It adds in a tiny blue Twitter icon next to those on the social networking site in the webpages you visit, which you can mouse over to see their latest updates.

Useful for finding new contacts and checking their feed without moving away from your current page.

LeechBlock

LeechBlock is there for those times when you have a deadline to work to but Facebook/Twitter/your favourite time wasting sites are just too distracting. Add the sites you wish to block and specify when you want to block them and you’re free of temptation! You can create up to six profiles which is great for different time periods, and you can even put a limit on how long you can spend on each site (for example, 10 minutes for every hour).

Got any more to add to the list?

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Hunting down Easter Eggs: Konami codes and more

Emma Cossey — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:00:15 +0000

Whilst browsing Mashable this weekend, I came across a post on Easter Eggs in popular websites, based on the Konami code for retro game cheats. The concept is that by tapping “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start” upon visiting certain sites, you’ll get access to a hidden feature.

Oh so geeky and oh so addictive.

Easter Egg codes have achieved a huge following, and have become particularly popular on DVDs for hiding those hidden extras for die hard fans to find. Some Easter Eggs don’t require a code, and can simply be spotted by eagle-eyed viewers (Pixar in particular love to pop in subtle references to other movies) Their popularity has led to a number of sites launching that are dedicated to hunting down and revealing the latest Easter Eggs.

Fancy finding some Easter Eggs yourself? Here are a few more sites to track down the secret content.

EEggs: A simple, if slightly dull, database of Easter Eggs. Regularly updated.
DVD Easter Eggs: Film fans can browse the Easter Eggs here for hours. The site itself hasn’t been updated for a while, however the forums are still thriving.
EggHaven: Lists a variety of Easter Eggs in software, DVDs, music and websites.
Tips & Tricks: Play Snake on a YouTube video
Robert Accettura has some incredibly geeky Easter Eggs hidden in the HTML of some huge sites.

Know of any more sites? Or any super-Easter Eggs? Let us know!

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Best tools for Getting Things Done. Pt II: Life

Katie — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:05:28 +0000

So, the social media marvel that is Darika Ahrens already shared her tools for Getting Things Done in her Work. Now, it’s time for her to tell us how to run our private lives more effectively as well.

BEST TOOLS FOR GETTING THINGS DONE…IN MY LIFE:

Gentle Alarm for waking up

I wish I could wake up as ready to meet the world at 7am as a child is on Christmas Day but most mornings that’s not the case.

After hearing loads about the Sleep Cycle iPhone app I went searching for an Android equivalent and found the Gentle Alarm which does a similar thing.

Basically, Gentle Alarm wakes you up gently by playing a pre-alarm which gets louder and louder over 30 minutes until it’s at full alarm volume at your requested hour — by which time you’ll be ready to calmly open your eyes and go and switch it off.

I liked it so much I actually upgraded to the paid version making it my first Android app purchase. Best of all you don’t have to go to bed with your phone on your mattress in some bizarre modern day take on the Princess & the Pea fairytale.

Tip: This app did have some problems conflicting with other operations running on the phone. Make sure you update to the latest version and maybe use your normal alarm for the first few days as a back-up just in case.

TripIt

Let me say first off that despite a brief dalliance with Virtual Tourist in the early noughties I have no interest in social networking around the theme of travel.

But TripIt does one really cool thing that makes me love it.

By simply forwarding your travel confirmation emails to the service it will automatically build your itinerary. Hotels, flights, car hire etc will all be collated into a complete travel overview and fill in handy details like a local map and what the temperature is in the place you’re visiting.

Tip: Invite friends to edit your itinerary if you’re sharing the responsibility for booking a holiday and send the URL to friends/family who might want details of where you’ll be or are even expected to pick you up from the airport – TripIt pulls in real-time flight info.

ShopSavvy

For some reason having to make a purchasing decision, even for something I’ve specifically gone to the shops to buy, sends me in to a state of paralysis. It’s something to do with the parting of cash. I don’t know why but there’s always a voice in my head that says “Is that the best price? Could you buy it cheaper elsewhere?”

If time is money, I need to start calculating the amount of time I’m wasting on aborted shopping trips and days of online research before just buying something.

ShopSavvy is a barcode scanner which identifies a product then shows you best prices online or at local stockists. While I’m kinda freaked that it’s the death knell for many retailers it means that I can choose to buy a DVD box-set I see on sale because it really is the cheapest one in town or click through and buy it online cheaper if I’m prepared to wait.

Darika Ahrens is a Social Media Consultant and Sales and Marketing Manager for Tempero. You can follow her on Twitter too.

Previously: Best tools for Getting Things Done. Pt I: Work

Have you got any more suggestions for tools to help you Get Stuff Done?

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Dork Adore » Lifehacks

Organisation Dorkage: Getting stuff done with WunderKit & WorkFlowy

WunderKit

WorkFlowy

More stories like this

Organise! Flex by Filofax – Review

Flex it!

More stories like this

Top tips for a Zen-like computing experience

Zenware and the art of clutter-free computing

More stories like this

How to become a supreme being

More stories like this

How to green your website

Tips for greening your site

More stories like this

How to broadcast yourself on the web

ipadio

Slidecasting with Slideshare

Jing for Screencasting

SoundCloud

More stories like this

Five of the best sites to customise your life

So, fancy pimpin’ up your life a little? Here are a few of the best customisation sites.

So, there’s a few ways to customise your life. Any other additions?

More stories like this

Five more Firefox addons for bloggers

Got any more to add to the list?

More stories like this

Hunting down Easter Eggs: Konami codes and more

More stories like this

Best tools for Getting Things Done. Pt II: Life

BEST TOOLS FOR GETTING THINGS DONE…IN MY LIFE:

Gentle Alarm for waking up

TripIt

ShopSavvy

Have you got any more suggestions for tools to help you Get Stuff Done?

More stories like this