Productivity and Self-improvement by Gutata

If you use Microsoft ActiveSync for your mobile device, you might have noticed constant clicking sounds coming from your computer. That’s the sound of ActiveSync doing something - who knows what - on your hard drive. It won’t do anything bad, but it’s really annoying, and if you’re using a laptop, it drains the battery life. To stop it, you have to kill ActiveSync (aka wcescomm.exe) through the Task Manager. Then remove it from Microsoft’s Registry so that the process doesn’t always start up:

• Run regedit.exe
• Delete “H/PC Connection Agent” entry under My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

The trouble is that you’ll have to restart wcescomm.exe manually the next time you want to sync. By default, it’s installed under C:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync.

Was that confusing? Yeah, I thought so. Shouldn’t things be getting simpler as software gets better?

I find this company’s product description very inspiring:

“Our programs are affordable, fully supported, well designed and carefully crafted to bring a smile to your face when you use them.” -Shirt Pocket

This is a statement that all great software companies (and any company for that matter) should live by.

Ok, another Squinto update. I’ve added import and export features. You can backup your todolists, import them from other software, or synchronize them to your desktop applications. With new time fields, you can record how much time a task will take and how much time you’ve spent on it. Finally, I’ve cleaned up the navigation quite a bit. Before, there was a lot of scrolling to view or edit a todo. Now, we keep your todo in focus. Try it out.

Shared hosting with Webfaction has been painless and uptime has been great. With Dreamhost, things were slow and their servers often unavailable. I strongly recommend them if you’re looking for Django hosting. The owner, Remi, responds quickly to support issues and forum topics. He also provides tips and screencasts to get up and running quickly.

About a month ago, I wrote about Firefox bloat. Guess it was pretty obvious. A related story made it on Slashdot.

Squinto’s hierarchical todos are great for breaking things down, but once they’re completed, there’s no summary of what you learned or what was done. Just some loose notes on vague ideas and the process taken to finish your task. Most likely, the completed todos are deleted.

To help collect information from your todos, I’ve added a Notes section where you can keep notes on… well, anything! Think of it as a Wiki, but integrated with todos. I think this is a powerful combination to getting things done and organizing your information. Enjoy!

I just upgraded from Firefox 1 to Firefox 2. It’s slower at start-up and noticeably slower than Internet Explorer 6. That’s enough to keep me using it for debugging only. That doesn’t mean Firefox is a bad product. Its extensions are what I think separate it from IE, but I wish they’d go back to the original plan. Keep Firefox simple and fast.

For the past few weeks, a new version of Squinto has been out. There have been major tweaks to the interface. Perhaps the most important is that the todo notes are attached beneath the todo title. Click the title, and the notes are displayed below. The intent is to reduce clicks and browser refreshes to make you more productive.

Squinto is coming along nicely. You can now sort by priority or date and Squinto remembers your sort preference. I added this because sometimes I have hard deadlines for certain tasks, but those tasks aren’t necessarily at the top of my list. So I usually end up sorting by priority. Since tasks with known due dates are usually of high importance, sorting by date is the default.

Oh, and Squinto is now 20-30% faster. You probably couldn’t notice since the pages are usually delivered in under 0.1 seconds, but the code is more organized and more efficient, which means you can get your life organized (.03 seconds faster). Yay!

Online todolists are great for keeping notes, breaking down tasks, and in general, getting yourself organized. It’s amazing how difficult it is to find online todolists that support priority, due dates, and hierarchical listing. So I have made my own and have been trying to improve the interface. Here are some of the fixes and new features:

• Top todos are shown. This is great if you have more than a few lists and want a snapshot of your highest priority tasks.
• Completed todos are moved to a separate area. Think of it like an archive. This will help keep your lists short and clean.
• Fixed sorting by date so that they are descending (i.e. earlier dates appear first).
• Fixed an issue where the todos can disappear.
• Updated text display so that it doesn’t disappear. Now any browser should have a nice display. Let me know if you don’t.
• Added color to priority setting.

Enjoy! And Happy Christmas and Merry New Year everyone!

Since I can’t work on Prrice any longer, I’m releasing a new product called Squinto. It’s a simple but efficient todolist application designed to help you breakdown larger tasks into smaller ones and prioritize from there. It’s sort of an anti-Web 2.0 project that lacks any Ajax, Flash, or other cutting edge technology. Just your plain HTML with a focus on getting things organized. To get a feel for it, try the demo, or sign in with your Gmail account. No registration needed. Hope you like it!

Big thanks to ToDoList and Dan for Squinto’s inspiration. ToDoList is a great piece of software that I’ve been using since it started and after trying out several other applications that didn’t work as well. Unfortunately, I’ve been using Linux lately and ToDoList is Windows only. Also, having one place to organize my life and access from almost anywhere is a huge convenience. Not even the mighty paper can match that.

Excuse the “under construction” status of my sites. Been trying out a new host and will hopefully have things back up soon and running smoothly.

Sorry for not posting. I know that the millions of people who read this blog (heavy sarcasm here…) have been waiting for something… anything! After a few weeks of coding, I put together a new and simple deal site that helps show how good a deal is by organizing review summaries and price history. It’s all based on user generated content. Try it out and let me know what you think. I hope you find it useful.