Probably I’m obsessed by this word: synchronization.
But if I’m not the only one who tries to keep all calendars, emails, to-do lists, files, contacts in sync, then I would like to share some of my considerations and some of my experience with a pretty good cocktail of tools I regularly use. Truly enough, I would love to hear similar thoughts and experiences from anyone.

First of all let me say that I’m a great fan of David Allen‘s GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology and that I love to be organized, efficient and productive. Second, I must admit that I’m also fascinated by new technologies and not very keen anymore to use paper and pen.. Oh, and I’m a Mac man.

What I would like to share are some experiences, workarounds and ideas I came up in the last years in order to try to keep my life (and work tools) in sync.

1. Files: it is since I first discovered Dropbox a couple of years ago that my file sync and disk backup has become a game. Dropbox is a wonderful application which automatically syncs your files on multiple computers. Each time you are connected to the Internet the latest changes on your computer are reflected on all other computers (including iPhone). This is also a wonderful method for backing up all your file, forgetting about it!
All your files are stored both on your computer and on remote servers. This means opening and saving files is as fast as before, plus you can access and change all your files also through a web interface if you’re not using your computer.

2. Calendars: many have tried to imitate it.. but I think there is nothing like Google calendar (read more). Clean, web 2.0 interface and hundreds of features it is really one of the greatest tools from Google. Obviously there is nothing to sync from one computer to another since it is all remotely stored. But there is some work to do in order to sync with your iPhone. Here is how to do it.

3. Tasks: if your life is (or tries to be) organized using task managers, then this is another piece of life you need to keep in sync. You cannot write down a note or to-do on your mobile device while on the go and then don’t have it on your pc!
If you are satisfied with what a web 2.0 interface can give you, then I would suggest web tools (such as Remember The Milk) that obviously don’t need any sync, since all data is remotely stored.
If you prefer stand-alone applications, you might want to try Omnifocus and Things. While OmniFocus comes with a pretty good sync process using MobileMe or any WebDAV server, Things does not: you need to have your computer and iPhone/iPad on the same wireless network and do the sync manually

4. Contacts: having a Mac, I think you basically have two options for syncing your contacts. One is using google contacts and selecting the “sync with google contacts” from iTunes or Address Book. The other option is to buy a MobileMe account! While the first option is free, the second is 79$ / year.
Syncing your address book with Google Contacts now works much better than in the past, but still I think there are some issues like duplicates or wrong first and last names in your contacts. Also the type of info you can sync is restricted to  Google contacts.
Obviously using MobileMe I did not find any of these issues: all contacts’ infos are perfectly synced (including photos) and it also works in near real-time.

5. E-mails: even though it is probably unnecessary to mention, email sync is very easy today using IMAP.
Configuring your accounts with IMAP you can have all your emails synced in real-time with all your clients. One suggestion: forward all your email accounts to a Gmail account. IMAP on Gmail works great with Apple Mail or any other client. In this way you will have an advanced catch-all account which you can read from your Mac, iPhone, iPad, having all in sync!

For those of you who think can keep all your activities and To-Do list in your mind, for those who still rely on paper and pencil, for everyone who does not believe that technology can improve your productivity… stop reading this article. For all the rest I hope this helps!

Given as requirement that I’m a Mac user and GTD (Getting Things Done, by David Allen) passionate, I will try to illustrate several options I have personally tested for To-Do lists and task management.

OmniFocus
OmniFocus is a complete (and maybe a bit complex) task management tool. Calling it a to-do list would be a bit reductive. It has everything you need for complete organization of your work and private life, both if you use or don’t use the GTD methodology.
Different views, contexts, tags and projects makes OmniFocus a complete way to manage your activities.
Probably the weak point is the user interface, not very clean and very crowded.
On the other hand, a very powerful feature is the sync over-the-air funcionality which makes it easy to sync tasks with more than one Mac and/or with other devices (iPhone app available for 15$).
The cost of OmniFocus is 79$ for single user license.

Things
Things is the real (and maybe unique) competitor of OmniFocus. It has most of the features of OmniFocus, but with an excellent mac-style user interface. Probably this is the most noticeable strength and it is what has brougth Things to fame.
Even if it lacks some of the features of OmniFocus it is probbaly suited for the majority of people working with task management.
The “assigning” feature is pretty intereseting, even if it is only a virtual assignment since there is no real “sharing capability”. You basically work by yourself and remind yourself someone else has a task in charge.
The real missing feature is syncing. You can only sync (between Mac an Iphone) on a wireless LAN and you have to do it manually! Things for Mac is $49 and iPhone app is $7.99

RememberTheMilk
RTM has a totally different approach: it is totally web based, hence it automatically syncs all your computers and mobile devices (support for symbian, iphone, ipod, ipad, android, blackberry..)
Even though the UI is a very clean 2.0 web app, obviously it is not as advanced as its stand-alone apps competitors.
The iPhone App though is very celan and works perfectly well.
Tabs, tags and other interesting search features make RTM a suitable task management system even for the most demanding “organizers”. Using tabs you can easily create multiple projects, create deadlines (which will will have a push notification on iphone), assign tasks to people (really sharing or sending the task).
RTM is free or $29/year for a Pro account. iPhone app is free when buying a Pro account.

As a conclusion I can say that the first two tools are for a more personal task management, with no real need for sharing tasks with a team and for those who are really focused on user interface.
Remember The Milk is a bit of a paradigm shift, moving your tasks to the cloud and using at its best all the cloud computing advantages. No need to sync: all tasks are stored remotely and you will see them up to date when you use your pc, iphone, ipad.
Also sharing tasks is as easy as sending an email to colleagues and friends, who will find the task in their RTM Inbox and can then move it to a specific folder or project.
Oh and finally, RTM can obviously be also used by PC users

A successful executive is one that solves bigger problems than he/she creates.”

— David Allen

I’m definitively an iPhone fan. I bought it the first day it was delivered to stores.
I also must admit it has increased my productivity and pleasure in using such a device.

BUT, although it has been around now for several years, the operating system is now in its release 4.0.1….  yet I still believe there is one huge deficiency: VOIP. While most of other smartphones provide this feature in someway, the iPhone seems to ignore the VOIP industry.
Many VOIP app developers are struggling in trying to upload their applications on the Apple store, but I believe everyone is still far from what a true VOIP phone should look like.

I’ve been using Nokia smartphones in the past few years also and I think the way Nokia handles the service is way more mature. If you have any E-series Nokia phone (and in some cases also N-series) you have the possibility to register your phone with any international VOIP provider that is using the SIP standard protocol. Basically, you can have you local land-line number on your mobile device (without any transferring charges) and make local calls from anywhere in the world. Also, you can receive calls on your local number (home or office) independently if you are travelling to Singapore or are right in your office. The service works both on wi-fi networks but with a reasonable quality also on 3G, with a few easy configuration steps.

During the launch of the new iOS 4 for iPhone, Apple had pushed a lot the “new” voice over IP features of its operating system. We also assisted to the live demo of the new version of Skype working in multitasking mode on iPhone 4.
Yesterday Skype has released the new version of its application on the Apple store. Finally, we can see it running on the background and you can always be online on Skype. BUT, I believe there are still some pieces missing in this VOIP puzzle:

1. Skype is not really what we may call a VOIP standard application. Even if you are now able to buy from skype a local land-line number, Skype does not use SIP standard protocol and you cannot register another number you already have with some other VOIP provider.
2. Assuming that VOIP = Skype, I think the phone itself is not yet integrated enough with skype. Multitasking is a great thing, but if you are talking on Skype and you receive a phone call, still your conversation will be dropped to let you answer to the cellular incoming call (and vice versa). Using Nokia integrated SIP VOIP feature your mobile gives a busy signal to incoming calls if you are talking on you VOIP number (and vice versa).

So what I suggest while waiting for Apple to integrate Skype fully into its iOS 4, is to try two very well made VOIP apps:

1. Fring: one of the first multi-channel IM client (also available on Symbian OS), lets you register on any VOIP provider using standard SIP protocol and lets you sign in with almost all Instant Messaging channels.
2. Nimbuzz: very similar to Fring, I have found to work a little bit better in handling incoming calls over VOIP while the app is running in the background.

In both cases, your conversation will still drop if you receive a call on your mobile number..

There are some times when you just have to decide which project to pursue. You can’t just go for every project/opportunity you encounter on your way.
A project may be a new customer, an investment opportunity, a familiy project (such as re-painting your bedrooms) or an ordinary company project.

Simple enough, I have found pretty useful to use a Project Evaluation Model for all the cases above.

When choosing which project to go for, just have these elements clear:

- the criteria you are using to judge your project
- the importance you are willing to give to that specific criteria
- the score you assign for that criteria (low, medium, high)

This will create an easy to read table with some numerical evaluation of your project.
Of course, many situations need some personal thoughts and instinct.. but this could be a solid base on which to build your thoughts.

Download a sample Project Evaluation Model.

It might seem obvious but I found out that a lot of people don’t know you can sync your Apple iPhone with your Google calendar.
So here is a very short how-to.

In order to sync your iPhone’s calendar with your google calendar you must create a new Microsoft Exchange account under Preferences:

1. Open the Settings application on your iPhone.
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap Add Account.

Now add your account settings:

1. In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address.
2. Leave the Domain field blank.
3. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username.
4. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.
5. Tap Next at the top of your screen.
6. When the new Server field appears, enter m.google.com.
7. Press Next at the top of your screen again.

If you have multiple calendars you have to visit m.google.com/sync with your iPhone’s browser and select which calendars you want see in the calendar application.
Be careful in giving appointments quickly, since it takes a few seconds to update your phone’s calendar, unless you have Push enabled.

I’ve  used several social media applications in the last few months, all with great capabilities and features. I was basically not deciding which one to use for all my social media accounts.

Hootsuite has definitely helped me in deciding.
Hootsuite is a web based social media aggregator, with no need to install on your computer.

You can manage all your twitter, linkedin, facebook and foursquare accounts from one place. Each of your social media accounts will be a tab in the web 2.0 interface, where you can see the home stream, the direct messages, the posts you have sent, etc. You can also schedule your tweets and have Hootsuite notify you by email when the tweet has been posted.
Since you have all in one place, you can decide to post the same tweet to all your accounts simultaneously.

Also, the very well designed user interface makes it easy to see all twitter direct messages or mentions and reply to them from inside the stream.

One feature that has been really improved after the last update is the statistics interface. You can see stats for single messages or as a summary of all the messages you have posted. But most interesting thing is that you can view statistics compared to your google analytics account, in order to match tweets and web stats.

Meeting minutes are very often forgotten, or even worst, not considered to be important and therefore not taken.

This document is crucial for project success and for the work that should be carried on after the meeting has taken place.
It is an important document where all the outcomes of the meeting should be recorded for future consultation.
Also, every good meeting should be arranged only when a clear agenda is in place and when everybody has clear WHY the meeting is arranged and WHAT decisions should be made during the meeting. All this should be recorded in the minutes.

Moreover, every participant should have clear what are the next steps and what tasks these involve; these tasks should have a clear owner and deadline recorded in the meeting minutes.

Just as an example, here you will find the template I use for meeting minutes, which takes many inputs from the PRINCE2 standard methodology.

I still have to find out why today’s sophisticated email clients don’t have a scheduling option for emails.

I have tried several excellent software apps a, with incredibly useful features but none of them seem to support deferring and scheduling emails at given date and time.
Since I’m an Apple user, I’ve find a few scripts that do the job using Apple Mail but they are not very user-friendly nor reliable.

One interesting web app I think is DeferredSender.
After an extremely easy registration process, you are bale to send emails using your preferred email client or web service (such as Gmail).
You simply write an email to Deferred Sender with a body that starts  like this:

“to john.doe@domain.com
cc john.doe2@domain.com
friday 13:00″

and then write you email message after the above heading.
DeferredSender will take care of sending the email and notifying you about delivery.

Unfortunately there is still no software application that can handle your emails.

I’ve seen some interesting prototypes but still nothing usable.
Maybe one day, a Gmail 2.0 add-on will read your email, move unwanted messages to your “not now” folder, schedule meetings in your calendar if the sender invites you to one, and highlight emails from your wife (or maybe mark them as spam ).

Until then, an interesting alternative is ActiveInbox: GTD based work-flow add-on for Gmail which lets you “handle email as a flow of actions”, as the developers say.

Its main objective is to make the zero inbox rule a reality.
This rule is part of the GTD process by David Allen, which illustrates how to bring to zero your inbox and file all your messages in the right place.

With ActiveInbox you can better focus on high priority emails, track emails that you are waiting for a reply to, file emails into projects for easy retrieval. All this with user-friendly dropdown menus right into your Gmail account.
With a simple to use add-on for Gmail you will see an extra menu on your left column, showing contexts, projects and ToDos. With one click you can see all your emails to a given person from which you are expeting a reply. Or you can check, project by project, which are your next actions.

ActiveInbox comes with a free version and a premium account for $24.95/year.