Get On Task Tuesday: Google Calendar
Posted by melting on Jun 9, 2009
As an engineer and computer scientist I am both lazy and exacting. I look to find tool to help me do everything. One tool that I have looked for throughout the years is a great task list or todo list program. I will save what I want in such a program for a different post, but be rest assured that no ordinary task list would suffice.
Today while I was using Google Calendar I noticed a new feature. They tend to pop up at the top menu in red.
TASKS!!!
I know, you say Google has been playing with tasks in GMail and iPhone for awhile now, but it is a completely different concept when they add it to calendar. First it says that this is not just a side project in the labs of GMail just to be ripped away at any moment. Well then again it is Google.
All of your tasks are added to the daily summary at the top of the day and can be checked off individually. Just as expected you can drag them around to any day that they should be completed. Editing is simple and adding is as easy as selecting event or task. If you are already used to the nested tag list in GMail, well it can show up on the right.
As you would expect I have not fallen in love over this new feature either. First all of your list show up as only one calendar to show or hide as needed. My task tool needs to work for home and for work. Well a different way to accomplish this is by select which list from the tasks menu on the right. This might work if you have just one list for work and one list for home but not many for each as I do.
One last issue that doesn’t make sense to me. If you put a due date for an item that has sub-tasks well only the items that have a due date will show up on the calendar. This destroys the whole part of breaking a task into smaller pieces.
Google is now currently in the lead for my favorite task list, but mostly due to convenience. Perhaps it will be replaced by whatever is next in my somewhat weekly post Get On Task Tuesday.
Fit to search…Bing
Posted by melting on May 28, 2009
In the last week search seems to be on peoples mind. Well in all honesty search is on almost every web traveler all day long. With the internet came gobs of data available to the masses. This data was fit to consume, if only you can find it. Thus the birth of the search engine.
In the beginning, they were bad…very bad. I would spend hours trying to find a specific nugget of information. Having the knack for coming up with that perfect search term made you are person worth knowing. That all changed when Google came around and made the world searchable.
Fast forward to today where Google has blown away all of the players and left only a few left to pick up the scraps. Enter Microsoft. Microsoft has branded its search in many ways over the years and are now branding it once again. Microsoft has announced Bing. To be fair this does seem to be a bit more than a rebrand. This even seems like something I would like to check out.
I will check it out for a couple reasons. One of the trends that people dub web 2.0 is a simplification. Making all the data that the internet has brought easier to use, manage, and interact with. Search seems to only have taken on the pastel colors and perhaps the dynamic suggestion bar. Bing seems to be embracing that some information isn’t worth clicking multiple times. Some of the ways Bing will try to do that is by bringing weather, directions, and travel all into the search window.
I think the concepts are sound, but as with anything that seeks to bring information in the user interface has to be impeccable. I will save my skepticism for a later post when I can actually use it.Until then I will see what other ways WolframAlpha can impress me.
