Webware

Outlook alerts have regularly saved my professional career. I also use a scheduled alert to wake me up in the morning that's successful as long as I change it up every few weeks. Some people need a little more though, which is where a service like the freshly launched Alerts.com could be a life saver.

Alerts lets you set up your e-mail, home and mobile phones to get alerts for just about anything. Some of the more useful ones include weather and gas prices, but there are entertainment ones as well, like the horoscopes and daily tidbits which are essentially factoids. You can go in and tweak which ones you want to receive, and with what velocity throughout the day. The service also has a scheduler to keep you from receiving alerts at certain times during the day and week, along with an away mode that can be toggled remotely to stop all messages entirely.

There are currently just 10 alerts to choose from, but there are many more coming in the near future like one that pulls in RSS feeds and another for watching the prices of goods you're tracking online. All of them are partnered with other sites to provide the data, like the job hunting widget which will hunt down jobs for you based on keywords and geographical proximity using a database from Jobster. Developers can also build their own alerts with an API that plugs into the site's architecture. To make money off this, small ads are tacked on to the end of messages as space allows--a business model I don't think works very well when you're trying to squeeze news into 140 characters to begin with.

Competing services include Yahoo Alerts, Google Alerts, 4Info, and the now defunct Down2Nite.

Pick from a shortlist of alerts you can set up to get e-mailed or sent to your phone as a text message with Alerts.com.

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We've looked at quite a few mind mapping tools here on Webware. Most recently, Webware's Rafe Needleman checked out a half dozen services that do the job one way or another. Nearly all of them require you to build and develop maps in a giant 2D space, something I think most people will spend more time trying to figure out rather than simply getting ideas down, which is where Text2MindMap is quite handy.

Instead of having you build out your ideas on some huge network of nodes, the tool lets you simply write down a list. Whenever you place indents, it will separate the bundle of items into a node, with little sub-nodes below each one. It makes it delightfully simple to put together huge mind maps in a very short amount of time--and without futzing about with any special control schemes or overly ambitious UIs.

Missing are some advanced bits, like special icons to help categorize what each node is, or a way to zoom around the canvas once your work becomes a giant storm of items. The key thing here is simplicity.

When done mapping your ideas you can save it as a JPEG file. You can also simply save the text list for later. One thing I'm not too keen on is that if your list is more than about 18 lines you've got to scroll back and forth to see all of your text items. If you're seriously ambitious about creating a large mind map you can come back to and collaborate on with others, this is not the best service. The upside to that is that it's great for creating small shopping lists of items you need to get from certain stores or locations. For that, it beats out the old paper list if you've got a printer handy.

Thanks for the tip, CJ!

Turn lists of text into easy-to-make mind maps with Text2MindMap. Seen here is a grocery and call list I made in about a minute. (Click to enlarge.)

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Getting things done service The Class Connection is nowhere near as exciting as The French Connection, but potentially useful for students looking to organize the whirlwind of planning and information sharing that getting a modern day education entails. The service combines calendaring, messaging, flash cards, and social networking to help students manage their work and daily schedules alone or with others. The hope is that students can become better organized, and if everyone in the class uses it, they'll have a centralized place to share files, notes, and study materials with one another.

The most useful part of the service might be its flash card utility, which lets you put together two sided flash cards and quiz yourself on the contents. You can take the finished product and share them with others, or simply keep track of your scores and time progress as you memorize what's on them. Each set of flash cards can be linked to the classes you're in, and other students can make edits or add their own to pre-existing sets. It's a nice feature, although Quizlet, a flash card and testing service I checked out early last year offers a several different ways to approach the same content which ends up being better studying tool.

Also useful is the class scheduler which breaks up what you've got cooking for each class in different tabs. The same information is relayed over to the calendaring tool, letting you keep an eye on what's ahead with color coding--making the heavy days (the ones where you have a few classes, study sessions, and more) stand out from the rest.

Given the choice of using The Class Connection over a service such as Google Groups, I would probably go with the latter. The other harsh reality for some of these start-ups trying to tap into the educational market is that many colleges (not necessarily high schools) offer services like these already. Their services may not include the shared file storage, but there are plenty of schools with shared calendars and scheduling utilities to help students in need of some organizational panache.

Related: Motivation management with GradeFix

Track what's going on with your classes using The Class Connection's built-in calendaring tool. Busy days are darker than the lighter ones, and you can filter what you see by what classes you're taking.

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Microsoft Live Labs has a new "technology preview" for you to play with. It's called Listas and it's basically a social bookmarking service for keeping track of content you come across while browsing the Web, and sharing it with others. Users can make their own containers full of all sorts of links, and supplement it with text, images, and RSS feeds using a WYSIWYG editor or by just pasting in entire Web pages from their text clipboard. The service is being billed as a way to make lists, but I think its core appeal will ultimately end up as a Web clippings service.

Oddly enough, Microsoft has had their TagSpaces service kicking around since April. TagSpaces gives users a bookmarklet to tag any item they've come across while browsing, and drops it into a giant pool of tags for everyone. Listas is clearly a more advanced effort, and one designed to handle media and collaboration a little better.

This is what a Web page looks like when it's copied and pasted into Listas. All the links and pictures you see open up outside of the service.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Similar to other social bookmarking services, Microsoft has included a toolbar to help Listas users speed up their list creation. The toolbar borrows the idea of taking entire clips of Web content from services like Yoono, Clipmarks, and eSnips. For every little bit you grab, you can assign it to one of your pre-existing lists, or add it to a new one. There are two caveats about the toolbar though. For one, it's Internet Explorer-only. Secondly, there don't seem to be any plans to give users a Javascript bookmarklet to use like what they've done with TagSpaces (something which would add crossplatform functionality). It's also worth noting that you can accomplish the same effect of the toolbar by doing a copy and paste into a list item, which will include things like pictures, links, and embedded videos (which incidentally don't play without jettisoning you off the page).

There's something to be said about Web services that have been set up to help people coordinate things in the least stressful way as possible. I dig sites like CircleUp (coverage) that offer a way to set up polls, or to solve quick logistical questions within a group, without requiring the creator or the users to agonize over the interface and execution. That's why MyPunchBowl's new checklist feature is pretty much the best addition to a party-planning service yet.

The idea is simple: you, as party creator, make a list of things you need for the party. This list is just for you, in a GTD sense. You can hit one button to add items to your "potluck" list, which is made public to all your invitees. Your party guests can then assign themselves to which items that they'll (hopefully) bring to the party, or add their own items. This helps you avoid making harassing phone calls or e-mails to coordinate the details.

The new checklist feature was launched along with several other updates. The service is continuing its foray into the world of themes with about two dozen Halloween templates and a new duplicate party feature that lets you clone and reuse a party page you've already made--which is helpful if you want to recycle things like a guest list and directions. There's also a bounced e-mail notifier to let you know if your party invitations never made it to your addressees' mailboxes.

I'm still waiting for a feature that will track your recipients' past replies to flag those who say they're coming and never do--and one that flags guests who show up without replying--to let you know when a call, personalized e-mail, or bouncer is in order.

Previous MyPunchBowl coverage:
MyPunchbowl adds themes, public events
Easy event planning with MyPunchbowl

Make a party checklist and indicate the items you want your guests to bring. They can add their own, too.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

David Allen, guru of geek productivity and author of the best-selling book, "Getting Things Done," was the keynote speaker at the Under the Radar conference last week. His system has inspired millions to strive for an in-box with zero messages in it, and I wanted to know if he could help me achieve this nirvana. Allen didn't offer any magic solution, although his organizational tips do make sense for those of us suffering from perpetual information and communications overload.

I asked Allen if there were any software or online tools he recommends for keeping the lists on to which we're supposed to offload our plans. Allen does not seem to be a fan of GTD software (for a good list of options, see "Spawn of David Allen," on the Under the Radar blog). Any list manager will do, he says. The truly devoted might want to check out the official Getting Things Done Outlook plug-in. What does Allen himself use? In his keynote, he revealed that his to-do list manager is Lotus Notes.

Finally, here's a Web 2.0 app that I like today: Vitalist. It's a to-do list manager. Yawn, you say? Not so fast. With such a simple concept, the story is purely in the implementation. And Vitalist does it right. It's simple to use, and it's fast. Most features are blindingly obvious. And it has a lightweight version for accessing your list from your mobile phone instead of your computer.

Organize tasks by project and location

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What makes Vitalist work are the different ways you can organize tasks. Discrete items you need to get done are just entered as tasks. You can also associate tasks with projects, to group them together. And you can associate tasks with "contexts," such as "phone," or "home office," so when you sit down in one of these contexts, you can see all the items that you can get done there. You can drag tasks to projects and to contexts in some views, which is a neat trick for a Web service. You cannot, unfortunately, do so from the overview "dashboard" screen that shows you a list of all of your tasks.

The basic package is free. Paid versions add security and collaboration features. And yes, you could force Outlook to do everything Vitalist does. But it wouldn't be pretty.

Like the famous Franklin Covey system, Vitalist is based on an overall school of time management, in this case the Getting Things Done or "GTD" scheme, which is very big among techies right now. (See 43Folders.) It's a solid system, and if it makes sense to you, you'll probably find Vitalist a useful Web-based implementation of it.

See more to-do list coverage on Webware. Also see another new task organizer, Nozbe.