Archive for August, 2005

upcoming.org and centralization of life data and web services and me rambling nonsensically

August 18th, 2005

So . . . I’m reading “Getting Things Done” and I’m all about organizing my life and having everything synchronized. I feel that the pieces are coming together on the table, but it may take some time to get them to fit together. Ok, so here are the current pieces on the table:

  • Web Hosting (dreamhost) – centralized storage of whatever I want (and also my websites)
  • TaDa Lists/Backpack/Basecamp – I don’t know if these will work for me, but they’re cool
  • Upcoming.org – it’s the opensource/geek evite! that’s right, evite is now lame, I’m calling it. upcoming.org has community features (yay web 2.0), a simple interface, and iCal and RSS feeds – it’s cool, check it out.
  • Mozilla Sunbird/Calendar – I think sunbird can replace Outlook at home for me – it syncs with upcoming.org (via iCal) and can host a calendar file remotely (ah, so nice to have web hosting now). And, I grow ever tired of microsoft programs, so if I can avoid one, even better. Also, I’m not using my PDA anymore (no pocket room for it, plus it’s getting older and slower) and I want to replace the features it provided (i.e. syncing home and office)
  • Cell Phone and SMS – all I need to carry with me is my phone (and maybe a pen and some paper) and I can either jot notes or SMS myself a note – then the next time I’m at a computer (which is all the time) I can put the notes into my GTD lists (next actions/todos) (no more PDA?!?)
  • GTD inspired lists – todo lists that have all my next tasks and projects and thoughts and they’re hosted on my dreamhost and wherever I am I can access the latest and view/edit them

there they are, now I just need to organize them (and I’m sure there are other pieces on the table too (i didn’t mention RSS and Sage/Firefox)). All these places to put my data, and webservices to make that data sharable with tools that make the data readable and editable.

so, this is totally a geeky post (but, hey, what did you expect) and maybe it should have gone on my tech blog, but oh well, so be it. I just felt like getting these thoughts out on a blog (ha, hence the sloppy writting style (once i get my todo lists in order, I’ll add to reread The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition and also to read Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (and I love parens within parens (is that because I’m a programmer? — yes, yes it is (and probably worse because of Scheme))))(oh, oh, count the parens . . . bam, two more — )) (done)(ha!). (i’m almost too lazy to add the links, thinking of adding a disclaimer to just google this stuff if you’re interested, but no, I’ll add the links — enjoy them )

dreamhost ru|3z

dreamhost ru|3z