StefanSmith
September 18th, 2004, 10:10 AM
Not a criticism I would just levy at Iambic, but it seems to me that not one single company other than perhaps Microsoft (with Outlook) grasp the full extent of personal information management. So my suggestion has to be Task Management...like proper task management!
When I survey the PDA market in general and 3rd party software offerings, even successful apps on the Pocket PC platform fall well short. Everyone seems intent on developing about a 1000 different ways to view their Calendar. Well, I am sure I am not in the minority here, but my day is not filled with appts and I have no wish to see 3 zillion different icons.
My day is full of "I must do that", "I must assign this to XYZ" and so on. If I have a meeting it invariably requires things to be actioned. If I have a phone call...yes, something then has to be done. If I recieve an email...again, I need to do something.
Microsoft have grasped this with Outlook. You can email status reports (i.e. the text is copied into a nicely formatted email); I can drag an email and make it into a task.
No one - from the Blackberry to Palm/PocketPC/SymbianOS get this! Email on a small device really could benefit from flags, filtering mechanisms...you're working on a small device!
Same to for task management. Tasks are way more important than meetings. People don't go to meetings and that's all they do. They have to prepare things, come away and do things and I rely heavily on PIM for recording, monitoring and tracking tasks.
Task Management is everybit, if not more important, than calendar management. At the very least I would like to see at least one developer actually make a product where I can send tasks to others (not as a vcal attachment but a la Outlook style so it is totally platform independent - cut and paste doesn't cut it - in other words, as raw text in a nice email format). I need to do this to delegate and update people on what's going on. Equally, I would love the ability to convert various things into tasks.
Email to tasks is critical. And even notes (jotter), incoming phone calls etc. etc. etc.
It would also be nice (but less important) to actually have tools to manage tasks. Plan days, plan weeks. I'm not getting into full blown Franklin Covey type stuff. But the ability to manage tasks (e.g. change multiple tasks to a different category; change the due date across multiple to'do's, stuff like that).
Rant finished
When I survey the PDA market in general and 3rd party software offerings, even successful apps on the Pocket PC platform fall well short. Everyone seems intent on developing about a 1000 different ways to view their Calendar. Well, I am sure I am not in the minority here, but my day is not filled with appts and I have no wish to see 3 zillion different icons.
My day is full of "I must do that", "I must assign this to XYZ" and so on. If I have a meeting it invariably requires things to be actioned. If I have a phone call...yes, something then has to be done. If I recieve an email...again, I need to do something.
Microsoft have grasped this with Outlook. You can email status reports (i.e. the text is copied into a nicely formatted email); I can drag an email and make it into a task.
No one - from the Blackberry to Palm/PocketPC/SymbianOS get this! Email on a small device really could benefit from flags, filtering mechanisms...you're working on a small device!
Same to for task management. Tasks are way more important than meetings. People don't go to meetings and that's all they do. They have to prepare things, come away and do things and I rely heavily on PIM for recording, monitoring and tracking tasks.
Task Management is everybit, if not more important, than calendar management. At the very least I would like to see at least one developer actually make a product where I can send tasks to others (not as a vcal attachment but a la Outlook style so it is totally platform independent - cut and paste doesn't cut it - in other words, as raw text in a nice email format). I need to do this to delegate and update people on what's going on. Equally, I would love the ability to convert various things into tasks.
Email to tasks is critical. And even notes (jotter), incoming phone calls etc. etc. etc.
It would also be nice (but less important) to actually have tools to manage tasks. Plan days, plan weeks. I'm not getting into full blown Franklin Covey type stuff. But the ability to manage tasks (e.g. change multiple tasks to a different category; change the due date across multiple to'do's, stuff like that).
Rant finished