Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Control for team projects

I've been test driving a web-based project management tool called Projjex, and it is pretty cool. I'm using the free version, which is limited to a single project (but supports multiple users/participants for that project). Even with the single-project limitation, the free version of Projjex does a nice job of showing off the UI and features of the tool.

The user experience is very straight forward, and I can see myself using this to track progress on more complex personal projects, as well as using this for group collaboration.

Easy setup

Projjex makes it easy to set up a new project, add users, and begin adding and assigning tasks. If you want to migrate from an existing project management tool, they offer easy imports from Microsoft Project, Basecamp, or a CSV (comma-separated value) file.

The most common functions are easily accessible from within a project, via a straight-forward Edit menu (at right).

There are also so very good video tutorials in the product so it's a snap to get going.

Easy management

Projjex provides a clean dashboard to monitor the "next action" or "next in line" tasks and their owners (click the image below for a larger view - you may have to click it again in the window that pops up to get it to fully zoom).

The dashboard makes it very easy for a project manager to use for tracking and bugging people with due or overdue tasks.

There is also a good interface for scheduling and timing meetings, including distributing attachments along with the meeting invitation. However, I wish it had a bit more functionality to record meeting notes and associate them directly with meetings, as well as providing built-in functions to track open and resolved items, meeting objectives, etc. Perhaps in future versions... (though you can probably work around this with their powerful, collaborative Notes features).

Room to grow

For more projects and additional features (like time & cost tracking, and more disk storage for storing and sharing documents), you can upgrade to a higher level package. There are 4 fee-based subscriptions available (Team, Professional, Corporate, and Enterprise), each with a progressively higher monthly fee so you can scale up as you begin to use Projjex for more projects.

Check it out for free

As with many other web-based apps, this one is easy to try for free. Head on over to Projjex and sign up for your free account, or at least go through the Projjex overview tour if you have projects to manage. And you might want to keep an eye on these folks - they seem like they know what they're about.

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Xobni - a very interesting Outlook tool

I have been kicking the tires on a product called Xobni for the past week or so, and am fascinated by this useful tool. Xobni (inboX backwards) is a "plug-in" to Outlook that integrates seamlessly with Outlook, providing a real-time "dashboard" for Outlook (you can see what it looks like in the video preview at the end of this post).

Xobni provides some very cool capabilities, such as:

  • Very fast email search.
    • It's limited to items in Outlook, but it provides some very robust (and visually clear) search results.
  • Email analytics.
    • I'm a stat geek at heart, so I was jazzed by the reports you can get about your email habits (example graph below - click for larger view).
    • A particularly interesting aspect of their stat function is it ranks your senders based on the volume of email sent and received (and it shows their rank along with the picture form their contact record, if you've got a picture in there).
  • Discover the "network" of people related to your contacts.
    • Xobni analyzes the other people cc'd on your emails to & from others, and gives you a view of the other people in their email network.
  • Quickly see good information about your contacts.
    • Xobni will pull phone numbers out of peoples signature blocks and show them prominently in its sidebar, and will call out people assistants and other useful information.
  • Quick attachment summary.
    • If you can remember who sent an attachment to you, simply click on an email from them, and you'll see a time-sorted list of attachments in one of Xobni's panes - then you click on it to open.
Check out this video walk-through to Xobni - it is pretty amazing. And, in real life, it works just like the video.

Xobni is free (used to be an invite-only beta but it's wide open for a free download now) and supports Outlook 2003 and 2007 on Windows platforms.

I really like this tool, and will keep using it for a while. The only gripes I have are that occasionally slows my system down, and it doesn't fit too well on my laptop because I have a lower resolution display (1024x768) - however, it is easy to collapse or turn off the Xobni pane without impacting the other functions of the product.

If you try it, let me know what you think.

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Eluma: Browse, organize, and share

I do a lot of online research on a variety of topics - work, personal, etc. However, I'm not very methodical about cataloging the links I find. As a result, I have a lot of unruly bookmarks (favorites) that I've accumulated. I save some of them "just in case," others I intend to check periodically (but often forget), and still others were bookmarked for a short term need but they hang around even though I'll probably never click on them again (tracking pages for orders, for example).

I recently found a tool that seems to be helpful in taming these bookmarks while making it easier to organize and share the "finds" I unearth while online. The tool is called "Eluma," and it's free.

Organize as you browse

Eluma makes it easy to flag, file, rate, subscribe, tag, and "compartmentalize" the sites and pages I discover, by providing a user-friendly toolbar.

Additionally, you can attach notes to a page for later reference.

From a higher level organizational perspective, you can organize your information sources in a number of ways - by source type, by topic / category, you can use tags, and you can create your own Collections. The Collections aspect is very useful - more on that later.

Track and get reminders

I follow a lot of topics - some by looking at web pages, some by subscribing to RSS feeds, some through searches, etc. The challenge is remembering to look at all these things so I don't miss something I'm interested in. I have solved some of this by using things like Google news alerts and that sort of thing, but the problem is that I still have a number of things to check - email alerts, an RSS reader, manual perusal, etc.

Eluma makes it easier to bring all of these different sources together (plus a few more) and set up customized searches and alerts so I am notified when something new comes about in one of the sources I'm monitoring. I've only been using Eluma for a few weeks, but the aggregation and alerting features have already saved me some time.

Read about the topics you're following

In this area, Eluma is quite a bit like any other reader - you click on the source you want to read, and it presents you with the latest information from that source. It will track what you've read, what you haven't, and you can configure the time horizon to tell Eluma how long to keep the news items.

One thing that is nice - it collapses into a "mini" mode, which reminds me of an IM client (see screen grab of the window, at right). When you click on a topic, it creates a "sidecar" windows that contains the content associated with what you clicked on. This is a nice compromise of using minimal screen real estate when you're not actively using Eluma, but expanding to give you lots of on-screen data when you are using it.

As I've mentioned in the past, one of the criteria for a suitable feed reader for me is that it must handle offline reading so I can catch up on my feeds when I am on a plane. I'm happy to say that Eluma handles this pretty well, and I've been in touch with their developers and they have plans to make this offline functionality even more robust and flexible in the future. The added functionality will allow you to flag a feed for special treatment so that Eluma will not only cache the feed content, but will cach a certain depth of links beyind the feed items, as well.

Share what you've found

One of the cool aspects of Eluma is that it is associated with a sort of "community" of other Eluma users. As you find interesting items and information sources, you can rate them and share your ratings with the rest of the community. This can help separate the wheat from the chaff when you're diving into a new topic, and tap into the power of the community.

I mentioned Collections earlier. This is a notion that allows you to create predefined "groups," filters, and profiles of information sources. You can, of course, use these to help you organize your information flow, but you can also publish these to others - either the whole community, or to individuals you invite to share them. This is pretty nice - I'm just getting into them, but I think this could be one of the power features of Eluma, transforming it from an organizational tool to a collaboration tool.

Way more than I can cover here

My summary here is just scratching the surface - Eluma is a very feature-rich and flexible tool. It's free to try, and I rcommend it if you're someone who likes to follow a lot of online information and are tired of turning to a huge number of tools to get the job done. Find out more at Eluma's web site.

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Juicy apple bites: Mac and iPhone scoop

I have a couple of interesting, Apple-related tidbits to share with you - and they might be interesting whether you use a Mac or not.

  • First, Mozy has released a Mac version of their online backup product (see my earlier review of Mozy, which I use at home). In honor of this new release, they are offering a discount on new signups through May 8. Simply enter the promo code "MACMOZY" for a 15% discount, whether you use a Mac or not - a pretty sweet deal.
    • After May 8, you can also use the May monthly promo codes: "MAY" is the 10% off promo code for annual signups and "MAY2" for 10% off biannual signups.
  • Second, I have been Jonesing for an iPhone, but have decided to wait until later this year when they release a 3G iPhone. Since I'm chomping at the bit to get one, I sometimes dig around the internet for hints about features, pricing, etc. In the course of a search today, I ran across some really interesting reading on Apple's strategy around the iPhone, MacBook Air, and other products. This comes to us by way of an AppleInsider-posted Piper Jaffray analysis of Apple's 15 unanswered questions about Apple's product strategy. This is just excellent work (the iPhone stuff starts on page 2).
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A deal on NitroPDF Professional through May 7 (or maybe a bit longer?)

For a long time now, NitroPDF Professional has been my top recommendation for creating, editing, annotating, and combining PDF files. I reviewed NitroPDF in full a couple of years back, and I like their latest version (v5) even more than when I started using it back in the day.

I just got an email offer from V-Com/Avanquest to get NitroPDF Professional at a special price of $49 (that's the price I originally paid, as mentioned in my review). The email invited me to pass it on to my friends, so I figured I'd share the link to the offer and the promo code (NITRO30) here -- just in case you're interested in picking up a copy of this excellent tool.

Don't sit on this too long -- according to the email, this offer is only valid for one week.

Note from May 10: I just tried the link to see if it was expired, and it looks like it still gets you the same discount - pretty cool, but I don't think it will last forever...

Here are some of the feature highlights from the email (and there are more details on their site):

  • Easy PDF Creation: Create PDF files from more than 300 file types and use our one-click functionality to quickly convert commonly-used file types such as Microsoft® Word, Excel®, PowerPoint®, WordPerfect and more.
  • Convert PDFs: Quickly convert PDF files for reuse in Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice and more. Extract all text and images in the one process
  • Edit PDF Files. Use intuitive editing tools to directly insert or edit text and images in PDF files.
  • Secure Your Work. The built-in security features give you exceptional control over the PDF files you create: encrypt files to prevent unauthorized access, restrict sensitive operations, and more.
  • Intuitive Commenting and Review. Add feedback in familiar and intuitive ways with sticky notes, highlighters, underlines, and more. Comments and feedback are attached directly to the material being commented on, so nothing gets lost.
  • Fill In and Create PDF Forms: With its form design tools, you can easily turn flat PDF documents into fillable, interactive PDF forms that contain text fields, buttons, checkboxes, JavaScript and more

Enjoy!

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