I owe half of the applications I use on a daily basis to my friend, Pete. He’s the early adopter. I let him test everything out and then hope for information on the gems he’s found worthy. He comes through every time. Peter shakes his head every time he gets his hands on my computer and iPhone (both set up by him, thank you very much, Peter!). Inevitably I haven’t upgraded something I needed to or my desktop is too “messy”.
But, thanks to Peter, I am now proficient in several applications I think every small business owner or entrepreneur should know about. Skip over those you’re familiar with but those you’re not, take a closer look – they’ve all been given the “Peter” stamp of approval, which says quite a bit.
1) The Hit List. This is a souped up “to-do” list by Potion Factory and loosely based on David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done” (or at least it works well with this system). I’m seriously not sure what I’d do without The Hit List. First of all, it’s free to download in its beta edition. So there’s that. Then it allows you to organize your work by projects (imagine that!) and sublists under each project. It allows for recurring events and provides fields for start and stop dates. And here’s the cool part. You can look at your tasks by project or you can focus on what’s due “Today” or “Upcoming” based on the due dates you specified. It also has great search functionality and allows you to categorize by tag or by context. So you can mark task by @phone and then pull all your @phone items and know who you need to call when you have those extra 15 minutes near a phone. I admit, I don’t use this function nearly as much as I could! Here’s a quick screenshot of a few of my personal projects for example’s sake:
2) Evernote (http://www.evernote.com/). So Evernote is another very, very cool application. It’s essentially a virtual notebook – that you can share with other people. So, what if you’re working on a project and come across a website you like? Simple! Just click on the little “Clip to Evernote” bookmark in your browser and it asks you to which “Notebook” you’d like to save either the URL or the website contents or both. It allows almost any input you can imagine – from webcam shots to generic “notes”, in which you enter data manually (or copy and paste from another document). And of course you can tag everything so it’s easily searchable. You end up with an online repository of information around a given subject. And then, if you so desire, you can share it! With your project team, with family members, with the world at large. Evernote puts an end to emailing ad-nauseum. Planning a family vacation? Put all your options for lodging and activities on Evernote as you find them and presto! Everyone has access (everyone you invited, that is) to the same information. Or what if you’re researching a particular component of a project with a team and you’d like everyone to be updated on new research that’s identified? Simple – keep it all on Evernote. It’s brilliance lies in its simplicity…share your project notebook with the people with whom you need to communicate.
These are just a few of the tools in my arsenal that I owe to Peter. There are many more! To be continued tomorrow….
As long as we’re talking tools, here are a couple of my favorite features that I couldn’t live with out in each of these apps.
The Hit List — Tags & Smart Folders. These two go hand-in-hand. I have a loooong list of tags to further differentiate and catalog my tasks, even further than by context (@Phone, @Groceries, etc), or project. Then, I create a smart folder that allows me to further filter these tasks in easy-to-read lists. So, maybe I have a context that’s @shopping, with items in the context tagged #grocery, #shoe, #rattery, and a smart folder that pulls only the items I’ll need on my next trip rat shopping. I have a very large THL library now and without these further filtering techniques, I’d be sunk.
Evernote — Encryption & Text Recognition. By default, Evernote syncs your libraries to a central server so that each entry can be processed and synced across all your devices (computers, phones, etc). But what if you drop an item like a password in an Evernote note that you don’t want others to be able to accidentally stumble across? Just select the text, right click on it, and select “Encrypt!” You’ll be able to lock that text with a local master password so that you’re the only one that will be able to open that note later.
But the best feature in Evernote, the feature that got me using it in the first place, is the supremely cool text recognition. I remember the first time I used it. I wanted to buy a book I’d seen at Barnes & Nobel for my wife, but I was in a hurry. I opened Evernote to write it down for later and saw the image note button, thought I’d give it a shot. Took a snap of the cover of the book, it uploaded to the Evernote server, and I was off. Later, I opened Evernote on my computer and, not really thinking, typed the title of the book into the search field in the application. Boom — there it was. The IMAGE I’d taken of the book cover, with the text in the image actually highlighted. I didn’t have to type anything. I’ve since uploaded full PDFs, images, signs… the works. Stunningly cool in action!
Thanks for the platform to spout off on favorite features. Keep em coming!!