First, everyone was waiting with baited breath for Google to release Wave. Google Wave was supposed to be the solution for all of our messaging and social media needs. It would replace FriendFeed, email, Twitter, Facebook, shrink Kanye’s ego, and solve world hunger. Once those few elite who got invites started to use it, we all realized it was no such solution. It’s a collaborative communication protocol and is not very well suited to replace your favorite social network just yet. It’s not even suitable to replace you email. Some might even go so far as to say it’s a solution looking for a problem, which would explain the many posts floating around about use cases for Google Wave.

Now, Mozilla announces the release of Raindrop. Let’s get something straight from jump: the two have just about nothing to do with each other except that they deal with communication and have names related to water. I’m not sure why everyone wants to mention them in the same breath. While Google Wave is a communications protocol, Mozilla Raindrop is actually a communications aggregator. It’s goal is two-fold:

1. To aggregate all of your messages from across all of your inboxes on various services in one place
2. To organize those messages in such a way that that email from Mom is given higher priority than your umpteenth invitation to play Mafia Wars

Currently, you need an invite to get into Google Wave and you access it via your browser. To get into Mozilla Raindrop, you have to download it, compile it, and run it on your own system. You still access it via the browser, but it’s really more of an application than a 3rd part service. Your stuff is all stored on your own computer.

To review, comparing Google Wave directly to Mozilla Raindrop is like comparing a single book (Wave) to an entire library (Raindrop). Both projects are still young, though. I’m quite positive that they will mature and converge in some way. For instance, Raindrop developers could create a module that pulls in updates to your Waves. The Google Wave team could create modules to import your social activity and email accounts (although, Wave’s interface might make this difficult to deal with).

Either way it goes, I’m hoping these projects and others like them will help to change the way we message each other online. Email and inboxes in general are inefficient and annoying to deal with. How long have you had those hundreds of emails just sitting in there because you don’t feel like dealing with them? Between Wave and Raindrop, maybe we will start seeing our inboxes work for us instead of against us.

Doit.im is an Adobe AIR application that is closely tied to the original Getting Things Done techniques. The goal is to provide one simple interface that will help you hit the main GTD principles: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do. It’s a simple to use application with a clean interface and may be exactly what you’re looking for if other productivity solutions turned you off somehow.

When you start Doit.im, you will be prompted to login. If you don’t already have an account, simply click “Sign Up” to create your account. This account is necessary in order for your data to sync with the Doit.im servers. This lets you access your tasks from any other system running the Doit.im client. One very important factor in making sure your productivity system is successful is for it to be accessible from anywhere, so this syncing ability is definitely a step in the right direction. To actually sync your tasks, click the double-arrows at the top of your menu (looks like the refresh button on your web browser).

Collect

Your Inbox is where all new tasks will show up. You can create one by clicking the New button at the bottom, or using the input box at the top. This is the area where you will do your brain dump. Just think of all the stuff you need to do, no matter how random or unsubstantial, and add it here. This is not the step to agonize over the importance of things, just get them down.

Process

Now is the first step in making this huge list of random stuff look a little less imposing.

• Is this something that will take you less than 2 minutes to do? DO IT NOW.
• Is this something that needs to get done today? Drag it over to Today to schedule it.
• Is this something that will take more than 2 minutes, but there is otherwise no reason you can’t get started on it? Drag it to Next.
• Is this something that someone else actually needs to handle at this point? Hit Forward, put in their email address, and they’ll see it in their own Doit.im Inbox. (they will need to already have an account, which is unfortunate)
• Is this something that really isn’t pressing, but you might consider doing Someday (ie. learning Japanese or sky diving)? Drop it in Someday and don’t worry about it for now.

I won’t go too much into detail here about GTD specifically, but you can see how dragging and dropping your tasks makes it simple to get them in the right place and positioned for you to get them knocked off your list. Each task can have a specific Due Date, Tags for finer organization control, Notes to add random details, and you can set a task to Repeat.

Organize

Doit.im pretty much handles your organization step for you during the Processing stage. One thing you have to watch out for are projects masquerading as tasks. Any task that can be broken down into steps is actually a Project. Create a new project in Doit.im and add the individual steps there as tasks using your nifty drag-n-drop abilities.

Review

Periodically, you need to review your tasks to make sure everything still makes sense and is relevant. The primary places you’ll need to pay attention to are Next and Scheduled. At the end of your day, you might find it useful to drag a few tasks over to Tomorrow so that they will be in your view the next day. On a weekly basis, take a look at Someday to see if you can make these seemingly far away items a present reality.

Do

This is the area many of us fail at. You have to actually complete your tasks to get anywhere in life. Those Someday/Maybe tasks will never be feasible if you don’t handle your immediately actionable items. Another problem we run into is getting sidetracked or distracted. If it’s not on your list, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. Drag your tasks to Completed once you’ve done them, or check them off and click Complete.

Xpenser is an expense tracker that focuses on immediately recording expenses so that you can promptly forget about them. Keeping track of where your money is coming from and where it goes is the first step in making sure you start to keep more of it. It’s a simple concept and can be applied in many other areas, including tracking your diet when trying to lose weight. Keeping track of things is usually boring and tedious, which is why most of us fail at it. Losing track of those basic details ultimately puts us off target for reaching our goals.

Just as your system for being productive and organized needs to be ubiquitous, the same goes for your finances. A ledger is cool and all, but useless if you’re out doing big things and it’s at home on your desk. Xpenser provides a few simple methods for adding entries using natural language like “Airfare $458 San Francisco to Atlanta, Blogalicious” that make it one of the best solutions I’ve seen for keeping an eye on your money.

• Email – Send an email to e@xpenser.com or to r@xpenser.com if you’ve attached a photo of a receipt. Your new expense will be added, along with the image of the receipt.
• Instant Messaging – I’m not a big IM user, but I know many people who are. Simply add Xpenser as a friend on MSN or Google Talk to get started here.
• Twitter – After you have registered your Twitter account, you can submit expenses by sending a direct message to “xpn” describing what you did.
• SMS / Text Messaging – If you’re like me and you don’t have the entire Internet in your pocket at all times, the SMS option is probably for you. Add your phone to your account and you can text your expenses directly to Xpenser.

If you are the type of person that likes to actually talk on your phone, you can link your Xpenser account with Dial2Do or Jott. Then, just call in and say “expenser” followed by a brief description of your expense. For example, “taxi 34.50 from airport to Boston office.”

Xpenser also provides you with a more advanced keywords feature that allows you to do some special processing. Using the keyword “deposit” or putting a plus (+) in front of the amount will treat it as a deposit, starting balance, or some kind of positive value: “consulting +500 for client x.” Attach an expense to a specific report by including the reports unique identifier: “lunch 54.03 w jack rclientx.”

You can also use keywords to track mileage, perform currency conversions, and for time tracking. The time tracking feature is quite powerful in that you can do something like “time 25 mins contract review” if you know how much time you spent, but you can also say “time start client X” and then “time end” when you’re done. Xpenser will even calculate how much you’re owed if you specify your hourly rate.

There are probably thousands of different services and software you can use to track your expenses, but most are entirely too complicated or just don’t cover everything you need. Most are nowhere near as easily accessible as Xpenser. Providing an open API, Xpenser has opened the door for developers to create some cool stuff. Expect to see applications for the iPhone, BlackBerry and other smartphone devices in the near future.

How do you track your expenses? Is it as easy as Xpenser?

Meme is a Tumblr-like service recently launched by Yahoo. Many have called it a Twitter clone, but the similarities are pretty minimal. The only things they share are those basic features you would find with any microblogging service. Meme is basically a blog where you can post random stuff. There is no 140-character limit, but you probably wouldn’t want to use it for lengthy blog posts.

Your home page on Meme will include your posts as well as anything from the people you follow. If you have no idea who to follow and you’re tired of staring at your own posts, you have a couple of options:

• Popular – You would think that this page would show you the most popular items, but i’m not sure that’s the case as the headline on the site says, “What’s being posted recently.”
• Find – This page allows you to easily browse through existing Memes so that you can subscribe or follow new people. I’m not sure why Yahoo has chosen this terminology, but your blog on Meme is called a Meme. I’m all kinds of confused about that.

Posting to Meme is pretty self-explanatory, so allow me to explain:

• Text – This is just basic random text.
• Photo – You can upload a photo from your computer or paste a link to a photo and include an optional caption.
• Video – Post a link to a YouTube or Vimeo video to add it to your Meme. You cannot upload videos from your computer, which makes sense.
• Music – Add a link to an mp3 file here. You cannot upload an mp3 directly to the site. Meme will create a nifty embedded player for you.

Choosing not to host music and video seems to make sense if Yahoo is trying to keep this service simple. This also eliminates you having to upload your video to yet-another-service. I would like to see them support more video services, though.

Each item on Meme shows you how many times it’s been reposted. There is a focus on resharing items you find interesting into your own feed. Avid Tumblr users will find this very familiar. You can also add a comment on any item. There is no “Like” feature, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they add it later.

Meme is currently invite-only, but if you know someone with an account, they probably have a spare invite. I’m not sure where Yahoo is going with this service, though. It’s not really anything new and I don’t see any killer features. There are also many services available that provide similar functionality (FriendFeed, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.). I won’t go in on it too hard, though. It’s still private and I’m hoping they are planning to do something exciting in the near future.

Tom Rielly, partnership director of TED (Technology, Education, Design) Conferences introduced BlackWeb20.com to this amazing young man, William Kamkwamba. William is barely 20 years old, a former school dropout from a small village in Malawi, Africa, and proof positive that technology knows few boundaries. Watch this video about William and note that his next endeavor has a little, ahem, something to do with Internet access.

Ever since it’s launch last year, Gmail Tasks has been gradually improving. Not only have there been improvements on the back-end to increase responsiveness, but we’ve seen some important feature additions, including:

• Mobile and Gadget interfaces
• More advanced methods for managing and editing tasks
• And Google Calendar integration

Tasks quickly became one of the most popular Gmail Labs projects and recently graduated from Labs at the head of it’s class. You may have noticed that new “Tasks” link right under “Contacts”  and above your Chat. It’s no longer necessary to activate Tasks via Labs.

The newest feature introduced to Tasks is the ability to share tasks via email. Although it’s not a very advanced or immediately useful feature on the surface, it can help you in a few ways. It also shows that Google is thinking ahead and possibly contemplating deeper integration between Tasks and Gmail itself.

Here are a few ways you can make the most of this new sharing feature:

• Email your grocery list to your phone (assuming you don’t have mobile internet)
• Delegate a project to someone. They would be able to see which tasks you’ve already completed.
• Provide a detailed progress report to your boss or a client
• Let your editor know what topics you’ll be covering on the blog for the week
• Share your birthday or xmas list with grandma

I could go on and on, but you get the point. If we’re talking about task sharing and delegation, this is definitely not on par with Remember The Milk or Manymoon. That’s to be expected at this early stage, though. I would definitely like to see Tasks improve to the point where sharing tasks is more than a simple email. It would also be cool to be able to add tasks via SMS or even email.

There are many people that swear by Google Tasks, but I’m still on the fence. As much as I’d like to have all my GTD and productivity needs met by one software suite, I think I’m going to stick with what I’ve got for now. What do you think?

The absolute hardest part about getting things done and remaining productive is actually using the system you have in place. Your system must be available to you at all times or it is useless. Let’s take your task list as an example. No matter where you are, you need to be able to see what tasks are outstanding and have the ability to add new tasks. Text messaging (SMS) is my primary method for task management because just about everyone keeps their cell with them, but not everyone has a fancy data plan. If you haven’t chosen a task list app yet, this will be a good chance for you to see what’s out there.

TwTask

If you want a simple task-management system that works via Twitter, TwTask may be the solution for you. It’s easy to add tasks via Twitter, which also means you can add tasks via text messages right from your phone.The problem with this solution is that you can’t retrieve your tasks through Twitter. You’d need to visit the web interface.

Remember The Milk

Follow @rtm on Twitter, and you have two way interaction with your task-list. This is a complete solution where you can completely manage your tasks remotely. To manage your tasks, just DM @rtm.

• Add a task – “call jimmy at 5pm tomorrow” adds a new task with the specified time and due date
• Complete a task – “!complete call jimmy” completes the specified task (shortcut: !c)
• Retrieve a list – “!getlist personal” gets tasks from the specified list (shortcut: !gl)
• Retrieve a tag – “!gettag @errands” gets tasks with the specified tag (shortcut: !gt)

Want to do more? Get the full list of commands.

Gubb

More than just task-management, Gubb provides a method for adding tasks and retrieving tasks via email. Most phones will allow you to send a text to an email address. Simply send a blank message to “username-listname@gubb.net” to retrieve the tasks from any list. To add a task, just text the description to the same email address. You’ll need to add your mobile info to your preferences first.

What task management apps do you use? How do you keep track of stuff on the go?

One of the most annoying things is someone pinging me and asking me a question whose answer is readily available to any and everyone who has access to a search engine; especially Google.  I know I’m not alone   So for those of us who have this annoyance and who also have a sense of humor go ahead and bookmark Let Me Google That for You since it is sure to get lots of play.  Let Me Google that for You is quite simple, just type in a question…any question and click one of the buttons.

What transpires after that is pure magic   Let Me Google that for You creates a URL (with an option of getting a tinyURL), next either select go or send the whichever URL to the person asking the question and your steps to conduct the search are animated in two steps prior to redirecting the actual search result page on Google.  Simple.  Or you just tell someone to “Google it!”

Manymoon is a collaborative online project management solution. Many of us use social media tools on a daily basis to stay connected, organized, and to get things done, but are still primarily using email in the workplace. Manymoon provides a simple solution to keep up with your tasks and projects while also allowing you to coordinate with your coworkers, partners, and customers.

The Bulletin

This is where you track your organization’s activity. You can update your status to let people know what you’re working on and broadcast it to your company, all of your contacts, or a select group. You may also just choose an existing task or project as your status.

Whenever you or anyone you’re connected to makes changes to tasks and projects, adds files or links, or makes any other updates, you will see it in the bulletin.

Files and Links

Manymoon’s tight integration with Google Docs makes adding documents to a task or project a snap. It retrieves a list of your documents and you just pick which one you want. You can also upload documents directly from your computer or choose a document you’ve previously added.

You can share links with your company, contacts, or select group as well. These links can also be attached to a specific project or task.

Collaboration and Projects

One of the coolest things about Manymoon are the projects. Create a project and start inviting people. They don’t need to have an account to be invited. Share documents and links, set milestones, assign tasks, and more.

Manymoon also has a pretty advanced contact management system which includes people within your organization and outside of it (e.g., customers, partners). You can quickly assign tasks, share links, and invite contacts to projects. You can also import contacts from other sources.

The Manymoon team is very responsive and I actually got a chance to sneak onto a conference call with Amit from the Manymoon team to provide feedback on the new interface before it launched (see Manymoon and Me for details).

This is definitely an app that I’ll be investigating further, especially given it’s tight integration with Google.

What tools do you use to make sure your organization is getting things done?

For growing sites the possibility of your site going down for any period of time can likely send you on a rollercoaster ride or make you develop a nervous twitch.  Many of us get notified via email if our server goes down so the likelyhood that we get it to our mobile device in an instant is high, especially if you own a Blackberry.  However, if you have a smart phone or other mobile device that utilizes push email, like the iPhone, it could be several minutes if not longer before you actually get an email about your server being down.  For those of us who are slightly OCD and feel the need to constantly monitor our site (or have it monitored by a service) there is no shortage of options available while you figure out the best way for your site to scale. @ybpguide recently told me about a service he uses called “Are My Sites’ Up?“  There are a few different plans available depending on how many sites you need to monitor and exactly what you need, one of which DOES include a free plan   ‘Are My Sites’ Up’ recently launched an iPhone App as well for those of us who feel an itch to “check-in”.  The app, though simple, certainly gets the job done and offers piece of mind.  The only drawback to the app is the need to be a paid subscriber to access it.  The app is free to download however to use it you much choose from the 3 paid plans.  Check the video below to see if the investment is worth it: