Week 12 Extra Thing: TeuxDeux and other list-making tools

What's the problem, chum?
It's an increasingly busy world that we live in, and we librarians know this better than most, as our profession encompasses many diverse tasks and duties.

Luckily for us, there is a huge variety of web-based tools which aim to eliminate flurries of paper reminder notes and guilt-inducing emails from people that you've forgotten about...and thanks to some kind people on Twitter* (get me, using another of my newly acquired Things), here are a few of them, tried and tested by librarians and shambrarians alike.

Where teux start?
All the applications featured here took seconds to register for and to start using, so I won't be presenting a 'how to' for each one. Instead, here are the main features of some of the available applications, and please don't hesitate to get in touch or to comment on this post if you have any questions at all.

TeuxDeux is one of the most well-known list-making applications around, and was presented in Cambridge by Suz at the March Teachmeet.

It's a very simple, clean-looking application which allows you to keep a virtual to-do list for each day and tick things off as you go along. You can view a week at a time, with days in the past in grey, today in red and future days in black. There is also a section at the bottom for "someday", that is non-urgent things that could be looked at any time. It really is that simple!

In addition to its simplicity, the calendar format of TeuxDeux is useful for spreading tasks evenly across the week and keeping track of particularly busy (or slow) days. Teux Deux is also available as an app for most different platforms, keeping you organised on the go. However, if you find it a little stark, new kid on the block Wunderlist does a very similar job with a slightly prettier interface, which looks something like this:

A similar kind of idea is found in the form of Remember the Milk, which is also compatible with most platforms and can be logged into using your Google account.

It has a slightly different format which allows you to organise your tasks into tabs such as personal, study, and work - maybe useful for any part-time or distance students? You can also tag your tasks, set reminder dates and attach locations and other information to them. RtM does have a habit of automatically alphabetising your tasks, but for those tag-fiends amongst us, RtM provides a multitude of organisational solutions.

For something completely different, which may appeal to Post-it devotees (I'm thinking of you, Jenny...), the Japanese-designed LinoIt (no, it has nothing to do with wipe-clean floor coverings as far as I can tell) may offer a colourful and kitsch solution.

With LinoIt, you can add a variety of different coloured Post-it notes to each 'canvas' - as a default you have a main and a 'someday' canvas - choosing to pin the particularly important ones. You can add dates to them and also add pictures, which are a nice aide-memoire for predominantly visual learners. It is also possible to open canvases up to groups, both across the internet and to invitees only, which could be useful again for distance learners, but also teams which work on similar projects from different locations.


There are also a number of Things that we've already explored which have built in list functions, such as Google Calendar, Evernote, Netvibes and Diigo - so if you're trying to keep your subscriptions to a minimum, it might be worth checking out the Things you're already using in order to maximise their functionality.

So what will you put on your TeuxDeuxWunderRememberListIt first? Number 1: List lists. Number 2: Blog about lists...

Best of luck!


*That's you, Annie, Katie, Aidan, Ange, Tina, Lynne and John...and anyone else I may have forgotten, thanks!

Week 7, Thing 12: Bookmarking tools

Ever had the frustrating experience of bookmarking a webpage on your computer, only to find the next time you want to access it that you are on a different computer? This is where online bookmarking tools come into their own - here is a whistle-stop tour of a three bookmarking tools.

Delicious

Perhaps the best known is Delicious . Delicious has undergone a period of change in the last year. At one stage it looked as though Yahoo might close the service down. In fact another company AVOS has taken it over. Therefore anyone who had an account prior to 31st July 2011 needs to re-register to the new service or risk losing their bookmarks. (Hopefully this won't have an effect on this blog entry, as naturally I had to write it prior to the August 1st changeover!!). To see what can be done with Delicious it is worth reading this brief overview

The easiest way to bookmark articles is to add a button to your toolbar in your browser by going to the tools link. The easiest being the 'bookmarklet for any browser' which in many cases just involves dragging a link and dropping it in your toolbar.

Once you have set-up your account - you can start to create your page as you would wish to. To see your bookmarks either click on "your bookmarks" to the right of the home logo, or pick my bookmarks from the bookmarks tab at the top of the page. The screenshot below (click for a larger image) shows my choice of display options. Personally I find the briefer list easier to negotiate - but others prefer more details.

Play with the various display options till you find one to suit. If one chooses the med, or high detail level, the tags will be visible in the list without the need to click on the link to see them. When tagging a page you only need to leave a space when filling in the tag line to separate tags).

The figures in the blue boxes are the number of other people who have also bookmarked that link. It can be interesting to see who else has bookmarked similar articles, and to see what tags they have given them and also what other items they have bookmarked. Your tags will also appear ot the side of the page, and you can put them into bundles of like items (my husband's hobby is flying model aeroplanes - hence the plane tags!). Tagging is of course optional but can be handy for retrieval. Bookmarks can be shared by Twitter, E-mail or delicious itself.

It is worth looking at Emma's excellent instructions from last year's Cam23 programme for more information.

If you would like to see how various libraries make use of delicious, have a look at this article from the Library Journal "Tags help make libraries del.icio.us". Although from 2007 and so somewhat dated, the list of links to libraries using delicious is worth accessing to see how this tool has been used in libraries.

Diigo

Diigo is a similar tool to Delicious . This is how Diigo compares the two tools. Signing in is simple enough - then you just need to wait for the e-mail before activating the account. Again there are a number of ways of accessing Diigo - either downloading it, or the more basic option of dragging the button to your toolbar.


The basic option limits the applications you can use - however one can still bookmark a page, highlight sections and add 'sticky notes'.- more infomation and their video tutorial can be seen here . After that it is worth looking at the features in the Help Center at the bottom of the page - Take a tour - research, share and collaborate.

Readitlater

People tend to bookmark items for one of two reasons - either because it is a useful piece of information to which they wish to refer to again and again, or alternatively they have been given a link to a page which looks interesting, but which they don't have time to read immediately. It is for the later use that readitlater was designed .

Firstly go to the SignUp at the top of the page (I am not choosing 'add to Firefox' as I don't wish to download it to my computer). The following page appears with more information.
The bookmarklets just drag to your toolbar and you are ready to start.




Choose a page to save and click the read it later bookmarklet.
There is no doubt that is has been saved to your list!!







After you have save a few items click on the reading list button - your list of items will be there.
These can then either be viewed by clicking on the link of the page - which brings up the webpage, or the T which brings up a text view of the page (though thankfully even in this view one can still click on any links).
Clicking on the red 'mark it as read' tick removes it from your list. All these bookmarking tools have more features to explore, for example the ability to read the pages while offline. Some of these extra features are dependent on using the downloadable version.

For other bookmarking tools it is well worth looking at the article Phil Bradley's blog post "28 delicious alternatives to delicious"- This was written when Delicious appeared to be on the point of disappearing -and provides a useful introduction to a selection of tools .

Next time...
You will be looking at Library Thing.