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Archive for September, 2007

Still Looking for that Integrated Contact, Calendar and ToDo Tool

Published by
Ken
at 29 September, 2007 in Hosted Applications, Editorial and Business & Productivity. 6 Comments

One of the tools that has eluded me all these year is a nicely integrated suite of Contact Management, Scheduler/Calendar/Organizer and a ToDolist.

Having tried many tools - from standalone applications to hosted applications, none of them lasted a month. I’m using some tools of course but I’m not settled down with them (like the way I switched to Open Office and never look back).

My requirements are really simple

  • Open Source or Free would be perfect
  • Would also consider hosted application and pay a small fee
  • Integrated, for example
    • a date (like birthday) in the contact list would appear in the calendar and could also be a todo (send birthday card)
    • a schedule like “Meet with XYZ” will link to XYZ contact information
    • similarly a todo like “Call XYZ” will link to XYZ mobile number
  • Able to import and export to some standard formats
  • Must support Chinese character input

So help me. If you know THAT tool, leave a comment.

And if you still have time, read on for a chronicle of tools I had tried.

Continue reading ‘Still Looking for that Integrated Contact, Calendar and ToDo Tool’

Popularity: 43%

Using Portable Applications for easy OS reinstall

Published by
Ken
at 15 September, 2007 in Portable Applications, Tips & Tutorials and Business & Productivity. 1 Comment

With the wide spread use of removable storage devices (like usb thumb drive, portable hard drive, iPod etc.) came the idea of portable applications.

The idea behind portable applications is simple - store applications on your removable storage devices and run them anywhere by just plugging-in the storage device.

A number of portable applications suites had popped up as a result. The most widely known is PortableApps, but there are also others like

I was attracted to the idea of portable application during the recently re-installation of my notebook with Vista. Through numerous reinstall of operation system over the years, I took note of the necessary steps to backup and restore data for my favourite applications. However the process is still a major hassle - backup data, reinstall applications and restore data.

Portable application side-stepped that hassle because applications are not installed but just copied to folder on a drive. So during a reinstall, I just copied the folder - application and data - to a new drive. Viola! Everything continues to work as before!

After this reinstall exercise, I’m certainly going to convert most of my applications to a portable version. Luckily most of the open source/free applications I had introduced here are available in portable version.

If you reinstall OS often or is just looking for an easily way to move your favourite programs and data around, give a serious look at portable applications. I’m surprised I took so long to get it.

Popularity: 38%