markwiltshire.com
The web, contracting, travel and tech
Nozbe – Get Organised Easily !!!
May 19th
As someone who was constantly writing to do lists, I came across a great book, Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen .
Getting Things Done (GTD) is a simple but very effective method to manage, commitments, information and communication. Nozbe is an indispensable way of organising your tasks and projects into manageable items using GTD.
Nozbe has a fantastic, feature rich, web interface which allows you to organise and prioritise tasks easily, being able to share projects and tasks with multiple people.
There are also
Andriod
iPhoneversions that allow you to keep up to date, while on the move.
Nozbe has full integration with Dropbox and Evernote, ensures that you can track your tasks and supporting information all in one place.
There is also, for Mac OS X users, a very useful Bookmarklet and AppleScript, which allow you to add tasks directly from your browser !!!
I am new to GTD but find is easy to manage my tasks and to do lists using Nozbe. SInce using it, my productivity has really increased, and I am certain less worried about missing things, as I know when I have a task, I simply add it to Nozbe, therefore allowing me to concentrate on the task in hand.
To support you there are very useful and active:
Michael and the team at Nozbe have done a fantastic job, and if you, like me, are swamped by to do lists, this is an excellent way to organise them.
To get started, I recommend signing up for a FREE account and try it yourself.
If you are interested in Getting Things Done (GTD) David Allen’s book is excellent.
GTD® and Getting Things Done® are registered trademarks of the David Allen & Co.
Garmin nüvi 3790T first impressions
May 18th
Having finally had enough of my TomTom 720 not working properly, (No full postcode search, very slow…)I decided to try a Garmin and last week purchased a Garmin Nüvi 3790T.
So why the Garmin, well it is one of the few that allow you to load US maps on a separate card, it has voice commands, it’s very thin. I also had Garmin forerunner 405 which I was very happy with.
So what do I think, well it is excellent. It certainly doesn’t have the same functionality as the TomTom, changing settings, marking map corrections, changing colours, turning off key tones, etc. And after initially being frustrated about not being able to do these things, it actually works really well.
Navigation is clear and precise, although sometimes the traffic avoidance redirections (turn next left, then follow parallel road for 20 yards, and then turn right), can be a little stupid. It does pick up traffic well, and as long as you ignore the minor detour, it works well. Full postcode search works well, and the camera free trial (1 month, I think it’s £30 per year) is good, although it’s not clear which are fixed and which are mobile camera (you have to read the small text) the speed is clearly displayed and if you are over it turned red.
Favourites are easily added, although it’s a little annoying you have to save address, as the road name, then edit this to change name to ‘Diane and Bobs’
Voice control is excellent, and can be very useful when driving. Simple commands with easy to read prompts on the screen make it a doodle to use.
Bluetooth connection to phone is excellent too, and microphone and speaker seem to work well. You can view you last calls, and make and receive calls. Although you can make call by voice command, haven’t been able to answer using voice command yet.
There is an interesting Eco tool, that tracks your mileage and fuel usage, it gives a display on the screen with Red, Orange or Green leaf showing how economically you are driving.
You then click ‘at the pump’ to input the fuel used and cost to keep tabs on your mpg. It seems to work well and does make me think when I am driving to dry more smoothly to keep the leaf green. Have yet to fully see the mpg, but it sounds like a great idea.
Overall I am very impressed, and after 2 weeks, really like it and don’t miss the TomTom at all.
I had heard very bad stories about Garmin support, so I hope I will not need them 
Open Source CMS / Portal
Sep 29th
Started to look today at options for Open Source CMS / Portal tools.
The company I am working for currently is looking to move to a simpler, and more up to date platform to manage there on-line presence.
Core functionalities required are:
- Ability to build custom portals as and when needed, for specific needs, styling and layout could be different on each portals needs
- Ability to build changeable navigation around each portal, with different channels and pages
- Ability to register and administer portal and administration users
- Ability to add / edit / manage content of the following types
- Editorial (News / Features / Articles)
- Links – adverts and links to either internal to the site / between different sites / to external sites
- Ability to manage visibility of content based on configurable user rights (I think we may eventually move to LDAP to source this information, but currently this is sourced in customer DB tables
- Ability to manage SEO data
- Ability to personalise content based on the user
- Ability to allow end user to customize there portal.
There seems to be a whole wealth of Open Source Tools out there now, and it seems a little difficult to get the core information about what each one provides.
I have found the website http://www.opensourcecms.com which lists and has user ratings on these, and am using this as my current source.
2 which I am trialling now are
I have just managed to install the above for now, but will update when I have more information on my experiences.
Upgraded WordPress to 3.0.1
Sep 29th
Upgraded wordpress to 3.0.1 today.
The Automated update fell over in a big heap. Was left with the Maintenance message.
Tried to remove the /upgrades directory as mentioned on other blogs, but this didn’t work. So I downloaded the zip and manually upgraded the files following the steps documented here
Now all working fine, had to also upgrade a number of plugins, and themes, but they all worked using the upgrade in the dashboard.
I would recommend not upgrading using the auto upgrade for the 3.0.1 upgrade, and do this manually, it will save a few panicked minutes !!!
iPad first impressions
Jun 3rd
I now a new wi-fi only iPad, first impressions are very good, it, like all apple products, looks really good and feels good too. Activation in the apple store was easy and when I was back at my laptop it was simple to sync
Although it did sync all the iPhone apps I had automatically, which when you see them running and you then hit the x2 button to zoom in, some of these apps even though they run fine don’t really work well on the iPad so I have now deleted them.
It would be nice in the sync to see which apps where ‘true’ iPad apps
I then searched on the iTunes store for some new iPad apps and there are some good ones, I have used so far:
I am using this now to update my blog from my iPad. You have to enable XML-RPC Remote Publishing on the blog, but so far so good. Comments in iTunes said the app was flawed but I have to say so far so good. A couple of niggles but seems to be working ok.
Would be nice to have a more WYSIWYG editor but it’s great to start things going
I might have a look at Blogpress too, but the wordpress version is open source
Free iPad version of newspaper, unlike £9.99 per month Times!!! it looks great on the iPad only one page, but great content, videos pictures.
Another nice app, News, Pictures, currencies, Markets and Stocks
guardian eyewitness
Looks great on the iPad, I use ever note lots for capturing content reminders and notes, which I then organize using nozbe (iPad out for that soon).
Will let you know more once I have lived with it a few days
Bugzilla Upgrade to 3.6
May 20th
I installed Bugzilla at my current contract, over 2 years ago, and we use this to track all our issues and development tasks.
After the usual resistance to change, we were tracking issues in a multitude of spreadsheets, the technology side of the business has taken it on well. But business users always found the forms and interface ‘complicated’
I have just finished upgraded from version 3.2.3 to version 3.6, the latest version out.
This is a significant update, as far as business users is concerned, as the interface has been greatly improved these include:
- New improved ‘quick search’ form home page
- Simple browse bugs interface
- Improved login from banner menu
- New Home page, guiding users into the activities that they most commonly want to do
Will have to wait and see what the business thinks? But good job Bugzilla team
My First Post – WordPress Install
Mar 31st
Well it was far less than 5 minutes install. WordPress looks fantastic, easy to use and navigate, intuitive, themes and plug-ins to keep everyone happy. Looks great.
Install Steps
* Download from WordPress
* Login to my domain hosting control panel and add MySQL database
* Phone up my domain hosting company and find name of database server
* Copy files to webhost via FTP
Thats it.
