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Ask Slashdot: Life Organization With Free Software?
BigZee writes "For many years, I've used a page-a-day diary as both a planner and a method for taking notes. While not perfect, it's proven to be an approach that's worked fairly well for me. Conscious of the limitations, I want this to become more electronic. In principle, I want to be able to use my Nexus 7 for this function. There are some limitations: My workplace uses MS Outlook. However, I am not able to use Evernote (or similar) on my workplace machine. This limits possible integration along the lines proposed with GTD. What I want is to be able to take notes that are organized by date as well as being integrated to a calendar (preferably Google). Additionally, I want to be able to prioritize my work along lines similar to GTD. I'm not averse to spending money for the right software but prefer to use free software where possible. Can anyone suggest what could be used?" The above-linked Wikipedia page lists some relevant Free software as well as closed-source options. If you use such organizing software, though, how do you use it, and how well do you find it works?
http://www.activeinboxhq.com/index.php/ works with GMail to bring GTD into your email. It works really well, but if you're stuck on outlook then it might not be suitable for you. You can use it for free or pay for more features.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Why do you need the source code?
Just slap Microsoft OneNote to your Nexus 7 and be done with it. For your work PC, it comes bundled in MS Office.
I know this goes contrary to what a lot of people here will think, because it ignores the technology aspects we're all so obsessed with.
Me, I still use the same black lab-books for persistent note-taking I've been using for 20 years.
I've got a stack of them, numbered and with dated pages. Every time I've looked at an alternative, I've found it cumbersome and less useful, and sooner or later you discover whatever technology du jour you're using has gone away, and you're left finding yet another alternative.
By all means, apply technology as you see fit. But for some things, many of us have found that old fashioned pen and paper is still superior. Everything else is a temporary solution which will eventually fail on you or go away completely.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'm able to use Evernote through the website without having to do any configuration. Other web clients, such as Spotify's, have choked on my work network's proxy settings, but Evernote does just fine.
Your planner and notebook dont run out of batteries, work when (mostly) wet, are readable in sunlight, and offer many advantages over electronic forms. Analog is sometimes better than digital.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
http://www.mailboxapp.com/ looks promising, but for now is iOS only.
I have been using Google Keep. https://www.google.com/keep While not great it is adequate. Integrates with google account, although better integration with calendar would be cool. Works with google drive. Posting because some organizations are more open to letting you use google apps. Google keep is relatively new and seems not a lot of people have found it. Here is a pretty good review of Google Keep. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/google-in-the-enterprise/five-things-worth-noting-about-google-keep/
If you want to get things done, I don't think you will give a hoot about shelling a few bucks for proprietary software. I recently achieved task list Nirvana with 2DoApp (http://www.2doapp.com/) with Toodledo Synchronization. You can use your keyboard legerdemain for all the task gymnastics in the Toodledo online app and you can sync the tasks with your smartphone for availability. Best of both worlds!
I don't even think I've used the desktop or phone app. That said, I don't know why you'd want to use Evernote as a calendar/organizer. It's great for taking notes but worthless as a calendar as far as I can tell. Is there some type of integration app I'm unaware of?
I wonder about using XenDesktop and Citrix Receiver on the Nexus 7. This isn't as good as a dedicated application, but it is good enough to allow one to use work related stuff, but still have some data separation between the company machines and a BYOD tablet.
It's really a "geek only" tool but emacs org-mode is great for me for organizing my work. The big plus is that the format is plain text so you can use version control to manage it. I use drop box and leave the files on there. I usually use one per project and then a master file.
Here's a specific guide to using it with GTD: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-gtd-etc.html
http://igtfy.com/?q=using+gtd+with+google
Is pretty much exactly what you want, it's not great but it's not bad. I do wish it had offline capabilities. http://getontracks.org/
Free software people have a life?
If you're using Outlook I assume you've got Onenote too. Create a daily meeting in outlook titled diary or whatever, and when you want to take notes open the meeting for today and use the meeting notes feature to take notes. The only issue I see with this is that it might not organize the daily notes by date in Onenote, but there are decent features for moving pages around and reorganizing them. Plus everything is searchable and if you want you can save the whole notebook in skydrive and open them from your phone. Say what you will about MS, in my day-to-day work OneNote is the best thing since sliced bread.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
If you really can't use Evernote on the work PC, for policy reasons, then use it on your Nexus 7 at work.
- Windows PC at work, using the Resoph Notes client
- iPhone in my pocket with the official SimpleNote app.
- Mac at home with the client
All these tools and the service are free for basic usage. nvAlt is open source; the other clients are probably not, but as long as my data is in a format which is not application-dependant, that's enough for me.
Zim is a great FOSS note taking app. Saves to text files, so can be read on any device.
TiddlyWiki is a self-contained app stored in an HTML file that you can store on a USB, Dropbox, or elsewhere. People have written GTD add-ons for it and it is easy to write your own customizations. There is an Android app to help run it on Android systems and the new version uses HTML 5 with option to use node.js to make it even more powerful.
I use the Zim Desktop Wiki http://zim-wiki.org/ plus Dropbox.
Zim is a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages. Each page can contain links to other pages, simple formatting and images. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a nonexistent page. All data is stored in plain text files with wiki formatting. Various plugins provide additional functionality, like a task list manager, an equation editor, a tray icon, and support for version control.
If you need version control, Zim supports Bazaar, Git, and Mercurial as backends.
Zim is not network aware, so I just keep its ~/Notes files in my Dropbox folder, install that and the desktop Linux/Windows/OSX Zim client as needed and I'm good to go.
Unfortunately, there is no smartphone version of Zim, but I have little need for a smartpone app of this sort. I do email myself info as needed to integrate into Zim later.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I have tried several solutions and find org-mode to be the most useful one. I have it set up in essentially a GTD structure, with TODO items in one big list, a separate list of active projects, and a third list of potential future projects.
org-mode is extremely configurable, which is a definite plus for software you intend to organize your life. I recommend the following add-ons as well:
Now you just take text notes in emacs and org-mode does the rest. I happen to write LaTeX and some code, and org-mode also supports literal programming. This is an extremely useful feature since I can write rich outlines of all my projects in org-mode and have the TODO items be placed naturally where they would have gone in my hand-written notes.
For a simple example of how this might work, suppose I'm drafting a research paper and don't remember some detail I don't care about currently. I might write, "Smith first published this theory in the 80s * TODO Look up the year for Smith". org-mode will find these todo items and tell me about them when I look at my todo list. Then when I find the appropriate date and want to insert it, it will take me directly to where I put the TODO item so I can insert it into the draft with minimal effort. In this way, outlines naturally progress toward finished projects, just as GTD wants them to.
ownCloud.org is free and open source software (PHP) that you can install on your server or shared hosting account. It's compatible with a lot of calendar formats and web browser based. I've synced Thunderbird with it (very easy) and it's supposed to work with Outlook, Google, Apple, etc. It's also recently introduced basic support for OpenOffice/LibreOffice document editing, it plays audio and video files online, and is great for secure file sharing.
They also have links to companies that provide hosted/managed versions for organisations and individuals. Would that work for you?
BTW, I have no affiliation with them, I just like the software.
Recutils (http://www.gnu.org/software/recutils/) as a flat file database with foreign key support and orgmode together make a perfect mix of flexibility and automation.
I'm currently in the process of setting up something like this.
Kolab is a FOSS groupware server that can synchronize emails, to do lists, calenders, notes, etc. across multiple devices. You can access it from the included web interface (roundcube), the recommended client (Kontact), or via Outlook with the connector installed. Android support is available via ActiveSync, and I believe Kontact Touch will be ported to Android now that Qt 5 supports it.)
If you're not interested in running your own server, there're also sites like this which sell accounts.
Here are some notes on my experiences setting it up, for anyone interested:
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
250 page, college ruled, spiral bound notebook. $5.00 per year.
Last week I dropped my notepad on bare concrete. To the surprise of absolutely no one it still works like new. My e-reader didn't fare so well a couple of months ago.
Perhaps this old Paper Technology might still have some advantages over these newfangled devices that are obsolete before the delivery guy drops them off.
This freebie is an absolute gem. It can synchronize your Android device (calendar, notes, to do list, contacts/calls/texts if applicable) with its own built-in PIM software, Outlook or Thunderbird/Lightning via USB/ADB, wifi or Bluetooth. It includes a notes and to do list app.
I've only used it with phones, but I can't see any reason it shouldn't work on a tablet.
http://www.fjsoft.at/
I use a wiki. Specifically, I use OpenWikiNG, http://sourceforge.net/projects/openwiki-ng/ , however, any wiki software would work. My reason for using OpenWikiNG is that I largely use windows and the software is ASP based and can work with a simple Access database. The way I have it setup, and in hindsight, I would do this differently now, is that I use the personal web server that comes with Windows on my personal home desktop. With the access database, I don't have to worry about some heavy database engine. Since I'm the only user, this has been a very stable setup and trivially easy to migrate to a new machine when needed. Another reason I use OpenWikiNG is that it's open source, very simple, and somewhat easy to hack. It works for me, and that's all I care about.
With wake on LAN capability, I can VPN into my home network and wake my machine if I need remote access. And since this is a wiki, I don't have to install any software on any other device. All I need is a web browser.
In terms of usage, I have my wiki start page as my browser's home page. I have links to site I visit often, some RSS feeds, my daily schedule, even some emails and phone numbers. I use the wiki as sort of a second brain. I have pages where I put my ideas, pages where I put things that are important, things I might need, and all sorts of other resources from computers to food. My personal wiki is a much better bookmarking system than what any browser could ever come up with. I can easily annotate information that I add, and most importantly, I can search.
To give the benefit of my hindsight, I would probably want to use a dedicated LAMP server on my home network. And I would consider something with better file and image management, as OpenWikiNG really sucks at that. To really find something that would suit one's personal taste, I suggest looking at http://www.wikimatrix.org/ to compare them. I have a lot of stuff in my personal wiki, and converting it to some other format really seems like a hassle. So, if you do this, pick a wiki you're comfortable with. The more time you spend using it, the more you lock yourself in.
Time-stamped text files in Markdown format, synched through Dropbox work adequately for me. Advantage of being greppable, and viewable on my phone and tablet from anywhere in a pinch. The free versioning you get with Dropbox is a nice bonus (and a real lifesaver)
Steno Pads, Goldfibre, 120 pages, Gregg Ruled. Write your original stuff on the right side of the page, follow ups on the left. Day and date across the full page at the start of each day, highlighted in Yellow.
Been working for me since 1976.
Use what works! YMMV!
Emacs + LaTeX = diary (with a Perl script to generate each day's date in the year)
Emacs text file = daily log of what I'm doing, so I can search and reference problems and issues from years ago
Small Emacs text files = instructions on how to do specific things, including URLs, commands, and procedures (copy + paste into buffer)
Best news is this is completely cross-platform (any of Linux, Mac, Windows, etc has the tools) and plain text for searching with grep.
I couldn't imagine doing any of this on the Nexus 7.
Sometimes a proprietary software package is the optimal solution. As much as I prefer open source and free/libre software if a situation arose such as the case of the article submitter then I would chose Microsoft OneNote without hesitation. However, I use a BlackBerry smartphone and Microsoft refuses to develop a OneNote client for these smartphones.
I think your confusing a terminal application called finger which offers a plan feature. A more full-featured diary application is available in GNU emacs (shudder): http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Diary.html
works well unless you need to change something. You cannot erase content in LiveScribe. But it is good for note taking and electronically capturing those notes. I think there is a new version available now although I am not certain whether they have improved the ergonomics of the pen yet. The current pens are too bulky and over-sized like a novelty pencil in a dollar store.
It's funny to see comments praising OneNote as the best thing since sliced bread...
Don't get me wrong, I like OneNote, and use it at work. But in a moment of snark I dug up a copy of Lotus Organizer 6 (from 1999) and installed it on my Win8 work machine. Lo and behold, I can keep notes in a multi-tabbed interface. I can format them all kinds of ways, add pictures, embed doc and ppt files, share the org file with other users, and generally do anything OneNote can do. I can keep a full calendar, manage contacts, track tasks, and keep linked notes. .. And then there are the things Organizer does that OneNote couldn't do... until v2013. In OneNote 2010, if you pasted in a table, you couldn't even select a column to format it -- OneNote mishandles it as line text. Track changes (which Organizer doesn't have at all) broke all the time in 2010 and doesn't survive more than a couple users in 2013; OneNote still totally trashes style data from other Office products, so you can't roundtrip text from a mildly complex word doc back into that doc without hosing the final. Embedding a ppt or xls table into OneNote would consistently get corrupted from editing collisions on a shared .one file. But Organizer would defer to the linked file and survive multi-user editing. Hah, funny.
Everything old is new again, with Redmond's fresh coat of pastels and waaaaay too much whitespace in the UI. Then again, these products are sinkholes for data -- from the latest .ONE file format back to the decade-plus-old .ORG-.OR6 file formats -- it's difficult to extract your stuff in usable ways when the format dies. Not that Microsoft, Google, IBM/Lotus, or other big companies would do that. Repeatedly. Predictably. Dependably. (E.g. Microsoft Office has trouble importing ... Microsoft Office files from 15 years ago, produced while working *at* Microsoft, FFS.) Tho it's much more limited to notes, Zim is really attractive in that regard: everything is saved in an open/documented non-binary format that'll be readable/recoverable when there's time to dig thru this crap when I'm old/near death.
Meanwhile in the real world, for just making notes and getting crap done quickly and effectively, the ubiquitous lab/moleskine/black notebook is the way to go.
I think not...(*poof*)
http://todotxt.com/
has client for any device/software I use
is a text file
has a syntax I like
Have you considered using a personal Kanban board? I tried a number of personal organization system including GTD before I finally settled into a personal Kanban board (it is even simpler than GTD in my opinion). You can user whatever you like to implement it, I set up a board using kanbanflow.com and it has been good so far but you could easily use a notebook and post-its to do the same thing. The book 'Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life' - http://www.amazon.com/Personal-Kanban-Mapping-Work-Navigating/dp/1453802266 helped me get started, and so far it is working for me but your mileage may vary.
Can Organizer run under WIne?
I recommend any of the impressive tools that round-trips text nicely (Sublime, Notepad2, gedit). Just plain text with minor format annotations.
It's easy to lay out simple graphs which I use for financial summaries that I will be able to access for years.
Text is a massively-entrenched standard format with universal comprehension rules (unlike other standards like HTML). Just be sure your editor makes sense of either line ending. You can use many tools including those that can write directly to a RAID0 device, an FTP server, etc for safety.
Integration has some positive factors to consider:
- Copy-paste of text into a calendar works great.
- Filesystem tree layout is handy for archival purposes (and is also deeply entrenched).
- Naming in year-month-day-subject.txt consistently will allow filesystem search to find the note you want, and dates are retained despite the copy tool used.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Yes.
Iirc running Org 97 thru 6.1 (on Wine on Mint 14-15) there were a few artifacts -- maybe once every 15 minutes a border would render a pixel off, or something like that -- but no functional or data handling problems. Because it's so small, it'll also run ok under some iffy win32 emulators -- just for giggles I once got it running on my N900 phone. Let me know if you try it on Android.
I think not...(*poof*)
The first time I got an Android, I was utterly appalled that there was no note editing app in the base install.
I went looking for combined note/voice-note/picture/calander organizing apps. Most had too many strings attached (specific cloud-service sync options, or whatnot.) All of them lacked the ability to quickly procrastinate a task. You'd think that would be an obvious feature, but no. I went back to just remembering stuff with wetware. By the time my wetware starts to wear out, hopefully there will be something suitable.
Someone had to do it.
Seems like Chandler, Kapor's follow-on to Lotus Agenda, would be the ideal product for the OP. However, it looks like it is discontinued. Anybody know the scoop on Chandler's demise?
I use the free version of treedbnotes:
http://www.mytreedb.com/treedbnotes_free.html
Read up on what the pro version does here:
http://www.mytreedb.com/
I especially like the fact that is accepts pasted pictures.
If you're willing to consider alternatives to freeware, I recommend taking a look at NoteTaker ($24.99). I've been using it for about five years and I find it meets my note keeping needs. NoteTaker's design is essentially a lab book, but being electronic, it permits a wider range of media in addition to text, including jpegs, pdfs, audio, and video. And of course it's searchable.
Each 'book' can be organized into sections and subsections, and there are tabs for easy access to each section. You enter notes as snippets ('entries') which can be one-liners or multiple lines with a figure, etc. You can customize fonts, colors, and some aspects of layout. Also, you can export books to PDF.
Aquaminds offers a free notebook reader (NoteShare), so you can share your notebooks without forcing others to pay for the software. And there's a 30-day free trial version.
I know I may get modded down for suggesting payware, but given the positive comments about lab books, I decided to throw it out there. And it's not expensive. I use NoteTaker to keep track of academic research projects and work I'm doing for clients (I'm a bio-statistician). I'm pretty satisfied with it, so I hope the company doesn't disappear any time soon! But if it does I can convert my existing notebooks to PDFs, which makes me feel less vulnerable.
I use GTD and have found Thinking Rock's free version (http://www.trgtd.com.au/) to be very useful. WRT to not being able to use Evernote on your desktop, if you use Linux, you can use Everpad (http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/everpad-evernote-client-ubuntu-linux/) to sync with your tablet Evernote app. If you just need a good application to journal and tie ideas to dates, I don't think it gets any better than the RedNotebook (http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net)
I've used outlook, onenote, evernote, played around with google keep and a bunch of other programs over the years for GTD capture/process systems. OrgMode works much better in my opinion than any of these. There is a mobile client for Android and IOS, but I simply use ssh and a 256 color terminal and a small bluetooth keyboard.
Look through the various outliner software packages out there. There are flexible enough to be used in anyway you can think of, and allow you to build a structure/taxonomy that works for you. Store the file in Dropbox and install the client on all your computers and you're good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner#Desktop_outliners
Of a Livescribe with a paper diary and then sync up using the software to something like Onenote if you can't use Evernote.
Works for me anyway...
If you like GTD, the best organizer ever is Emacs Org Mode. Because Org Mode uses plain text files for storage, you can use git for storage and have very meaningful history tracking and sync across devices. There are even tools for syncing to third party calendars (i.e. Google) and devices.
-- $G
What are other slashdotters Åsing for your SMS (slave management systems)? Also wsms (white (slave management systems)?
A-M-E-N (and I'm an atheist!)
Google has failed at their "don't be evil" moto for years, regardless of what googlers say. I have a few friends working there ... they are niave.
Anytime the data it captured and held, whatever that data is, it will eventually be used for harm.
Heck, I don't even want google knowing about my pizza orders and I think people who don't see that as an issue have a mental disorder ... just a slight one, not nearly as bad as belief in imaginary entities, however. THAT is a terrible mental disorder that requires immediate medication.
How about just using 2 different apps? I use the Notes app on my iphone for taking notes and gmail as a calendar. I can also use both of these from any web browser. Looking around it appears that you could use the Gnotes app for note taking and gmail for calendaring.
Trello is an interesting cloud-based system: basically you create boards with pages that contain detailed items organized into lists and such. You can check off work as it progresses, and retire pages and boards that are done.
Best High Annonymous Big Proxy list free
I have a similar need and have found nothing FOSS that qualifies. Everything either has insane library dependencies, or opaque storage formats I can't customize or back up, or is limited to an insufficient number of platforms, or can't handle repeating appointments or tasks well. So, for now, I still use an ancient Palm as my master calendar, and remote into my home PC to store to-do lists of various kinds. But what I'm hoping to do is to write my own simple but flexible PIM, primarily Web-based, with no dependencies on the client side and none on the server except Python and Sqlite. Milestone 1: easy and flexible storage and searching of contact information and notes/memos. Milestone 2: Ability to create appointments and tasks, including repeating ones, with a reasonable degree of flexibility as to scheduling (e.g., "every Monday," or "last Sunday of the month," or "the next Saturday after the previous instance was completed." Milestone 3: Creating a text- and voice-friendly interface, so that it can parse and handle things like, "Doctor appointment for Eric on Friday, February 30 at 9pm" or "Remind me to clean the fridge every week starting tomorrow at 5." Milestone 4: Add ability to notify by e-mail or text, also to process e-mailed notifications. Milestone 5: Secure it enough that I can actually use it. Milestone 6: Add sufficient interoperability with other tools my family uses (probably GMail, Yahoo mail and calendar, iOS, Android, and for now at least (yuck) Palm). I cannot say for sure that the tool I come up with, even if I manage to finish it, will be of general usefulness to others, but I'll probably throw it out onto Sourceforge or Github anway, and people can decide that for themselves.
Nonaggression works!
Hiveminder.com is a freemium task tracking service with an IMAP interface available.
It's pretty nifty, and means many criteria, although I no longer use it because I found
myself spending too much time managing task relationships. That's more a manner
of how I was using it though, I think...
Were that I say, pancakes?