Journal

Nokia and getting organised

  • Posted on: March 14, 2005
  • In: Personal
  • Comments closed

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I’m pretty disorganised and as my collection of things, which help me organise myself - computers, diaries, phones etc - grow, the less organised i’m becoming.

At home, we have have calendar on the fridge. Although I generally don’t add many things to it. I also have a whiteboard in the study which I regularly scribble on. So far so good. So, how come I forget things all the time then? Information overload? I blame RSS.

Anyway, this brings me on to phones and in particular my new Nokia 6230.

I've had quite a few mobile phones now, since I succumbed in 1998 - 4 Nokias and 2 Sonys. My last phone was a Sony Z600. Pretty chunky silver clamshell. Nice phone, shame about the size. I never really got on with it's operating system though. Nokia have spent a huge amount of money testing the operating system. They make great phones that, most importantly, are easy to use.

The new phone is pretty good so far. It's feature packed:

  • Bluetooth
  • 640x480 camera
  • Radio
  • MMC media card (32mb supplied)
  • The usual polyphonic tones etc
  • mp3 player

Getting organised

I've decided to now use this phone to help me organise my life. Here's how:

  • Use iCal at home and work: I now use iCal for my home, and freelance, calendar. These are then published to my server, I then subscribe to both of these from the day job to keep myself up to date.
  • Use Phone Director to integrate iCal and Address Book on my Mac: This application is great and certainly helped clinch the decision to buy this phone. You can edit your sim & mmc card, download / upload mp3's, images and files, which is great because with a 128mb card which I bought my phone can now act as a mini storage device.
  • Use Basecamp for freelance work: I'm giving Basecamp a go. Hopefully this make sure my clients can keep upto date with projects but also it helps me organise milestones etc.
  • Begin to use iBiz for freelance work: For keeping track of time, budgets and invoices. Cheap, useful bit of software - includes iCal and Address Book integration.

You can probably spot a pattern here. iCal and Address Book. These two applications are becoming central to me organising myself - all of the above applications integrate pretty seamlessly with iCal, that means I can create and subscribe to calendars and have them available on my mac at home, at the day job and on my phone. At least that's the theory, the danger it all becomes too much of an effort to keep up to date!

Bluetooth to the rescue

I'm impressed with Bluetooth. Or should I say i'm impressed with the way the mac handles bluetooth. The Bluetooth utility made it sooo easy to recognise the new phone, pair with it, then upload and download information. the hardware dongle is so small I can carry it around with and simply blug it into the keyboard at home and work. I love it when Apple makes things a no-brainer!

So, what do you use?

What apps do you use, if anything, to keep yourself on top of things? I'm particularly interesting in any applications which you use to help with your business - time-keeping, invoicing - that kind of thing.

Comments

The problem for me isn’t keeping track of these things while I’m at my desk. If I’m sitting in front of my Mac, when I arrange a meeting, I just pop open iCal, then iSync carries these events to whatever device I choose.

The problem for me is helping me keep track of things at my desk, and a large variable in that problem is the ability to enter things into my calendar or contacts into my address book or notes into my...notes… while I’m not at my desk. For this reason, iPods and phones don’t work for me. Neither does the numerous gimmicks I’ve used to help me remember to enter things or jot things down.

I’ve used a Palm device since, well, since the original Palm Pilot, manufactured by 3Com. I tried the only-iPod thing for a while and the only-phone thing for a while, and I keep coming back to Palm.

I’ve recently switched to a Treo, which in my opinion is the best handheld device I’ve ever used, and it saves me a charger and a device in the bag by consolidating the phone and the Palm.

I wish iSync’s Palm conduit wasn’t as stupid as it is, but until the iSync people at Apple decide that it is, in fact, helpful to translate Address Book groups and iCal calendars to Palm categories, I’ll take what I can get.

Narayan's Gravatar

Narayan
Mon 14th Mar 2005
at 4:15 pm

At the moment I am using Filemaker Pro to keep track of how many hours I’ve spend on a particular job. When needed I can export that amount to create an invoice of it. All my addresses of my clients are also handled by Filemaker. For managing my todo’s I use OmniOutliner Professional. I have a SE P800 phone that can do a lot but I have to say that I still prefer the simplicity of Nokia interface.

Veerle Pieters's Gravatar

Veerle Pieters
Tue 15th Mar 2005
at 2:06 pm

Narayan - That’s an interesting point, being at your desk or not really does make a difference. I’ve never used a pda, but I know people who carry them around with them all the time and it becomes the hub of their organisation really - phone, pc/mac all talk to each other through the pda.

Veerle - I used to use a Filemaker Pro application about 8 years ago in a design studio I worked. It was pretty good for timesheets and client / project management and that kind of thing. The really annoying thing was, probably because it’s quite a few years ago now, that only one user could use it at once and it didn’t have an audit trail built in - once changes were committed to the system, that’s it!

Mark Boulton's Gravatar

Mark Boulton
Tue 15th Mar 2005
at 9:34 pm

I use one of those palm thingies, carry it around with me all the time. In fact I have two, but the one doesn’t work so well. The memory is minute, only holds about 16 characters, 32 if I writereally small and go a bit up my wrist. Data corruption is another problem, the darn things crash all the time, usually after a shower or washing the dishes. Backing up to Post-It Notes regularly mitigates the frustration somewhat. I should really look into some of these devices you guys are using, they sound infinitely more useful.

Nigel's Gravatar

Nigel
Tue 15th Mar 2005
at 10:25 pm

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