I went to the shop when it opened, fought urges that were bordering on primal, and just checked on books that were on display. There aren’t computer or technology books yet. Members of the Power Books staff said these were still coming.

PAPERBLANKS NOTEBOOK. The pages of this handstitched notebook are acid-free and are held together by coptic binding. Paperblanks and Moleskine products are now available in Cebu, at the Power Books outlet in SM City’s North Wing. Click on photo to enlarge.

Last Sunday, I came back.

The store’s middle counter is a vortex. It drew me in. Around it were displayed several exquisite notebooks. For the first time, Moleskine (official pronounced mol-a-skeen-a) and paperblanks products are sold in Cebu. I went round and round the small counter, picking one notebook after the other.

I wasn’t able to find paperblanks’ back pocket mini, or any of it’s embellished mini notebooks but I got one of its handstitched products, the Handstitched Bamboo. It has as cover the painting “Listening to the Bamboo” by Wen Cheng-ming (1470-1559).

It is exquisite calligraphy for my cacography.

I do not write, I scrawl. My handwriting is so bad and it gets worse when I’m writing fast. At times I, myself, have a hard time deciphering my own interview notes. I guess I compensate for the ugly writing with the beautiful notebooks.

TABULA RASA. A hundred and twenty-eight pages of acid-free, archival paper held together by handstitched coptic binding await my jottings. Click to enlarge.

The notebook is held together by “handstitched coptic binding.” What’s great about it is that the pages are divided into sections, which makes it ideal for segregating notes.

I take notes extensively using a TiddlyWiki or my Scrybe account (if you want a Scrybe invitation, ask for one in my post here). I use these applications to organize online research notes or web clippings.

But for article ideas and plans, I keep paper notebooks handy. Some of my article ideas percolate for weeks as bullet points in my notebooks. Many of them get published as blog posts, when I do find time to write. Some become subjects of my weekly column. Others are shelved for working on later.

Power Books also gives away a well-designed paper organizer if your purchases exceed P2,500 (P2,000 if you have their Powercard). When I leafed through the organizer that my wife and I got with our purchase, I was impressed by the design of the pages. It looked good and I thought it would do well as base for a blog design.

FREE ORGANIZER FROM POWER BOOKS. Power Books will give you this beautiful organizer if your purchases reach P2,500 (P2,000 for Powercard holders).

Related posts:

1. When a blogger strips
2. Throw away those index cards, use your own wiki page
3. A better hipster PDA

For more than a year, I’ve been trying one service after another in an effort to get my e-mails sent as text messages to my mobile phone. The answer, you might say, is simple: buy a Blackberry.

I’m not, however, prepared to spend thousands of pesos for the device and its mobile e-mail solution when I have only very specific alerts in mind: website availability and tasks reminders. For regular e-mails, I am perfectly satisfied with the GMail for mobile Java application.

ONLINE PLANNER. My current online planner of choice, Scrybe. The free service allows me to manage my tasks and get alerted of deadlines via SMS messages sent through Smart TextMail. Click on photo to enlarge image.

I run and help oversee several websites and need to know whenever the servers where these are hosted encounter problems so that I can work on fixing it or submitting a support ticket. All the sites I run are monitored by free web server monitoring services that check every few minutes or so whether these are available.

Whenever the monitoring services I use detect any of the my sites to be down, it immediately sends an e-mail to alert me of the problem. I wanted to be able to get that message as an SMS alert. Sure many of these services offer SMS alerts, but for a fee.

Tasks management

I also manage my tasks online. For projects where I work with other people, I use ProjectPier or Basecamp. But all my tasks—whether work-related, blog-related, or personal—are managed from a single online application.

I tested one application after the other, looking for one that offered SMS notification of deadlines. Google Calendar offers SMS notifications for the Philippines. The listings page says you can enable notifications for Smart, Globe, and Digitel. I have a Smart phone but have never been able to enable it. The settings page gives me an “invalid carrier” error message after I enter my Smart number.

I then decided to use Remember The Milk, a free online tasks manager that offers SMS reminders to Philippine phone numbers. The problem was that in several instances, the SMS messages came late, several hours after when I wanted to be reminded of a task. Remember The Milk is also limited to task management. I’ve also tried Backpack and it’s great for managing tasks but again, some SMS alerts are received later.

I found a better service with Scrybe. I say it’s better because it also allows me to manage my web notes. Scrybe is a really cool service for managing tasks and storing notes and it has an interface that’s such a joy to use. (Blogger’s note: I’ll write more about the service later.) Scrybe is an invitation-only service so if you want an account, leave me a note below and I’ll send you one.

Scrybe and SMS alerts

I transferred my tasks management to Scrybe because with it, I did not need to use another service for my notes whenever I need to do web research. The only problem with Scrybe is that it doesn’t offer SMS alerts for Philippine phone numbers. What it offers is sending alerts to a mobile phone e-mail address (your mobile phone number@your provider’s web address). For several months, I wasn’t able to use its SMS alerts.

E-MAIL, SMS ALERTS. Scribe notifies you via e-mail or SMS of deadlines of your tasks. I was able to activate SMS notification by using Smart’s TextMail service. Click on photo to eenlarge.

I knew the best solution was Smart’s TextMail but for several days of playing with the service a few months back, I couldn’t activate it, not even when a tech support staff from Smart guided me through it. When I still couldn’t activate the service, I gave up trying and made a mental note to try it again after a few months.

Early this month, I tried Smart TextMail again and found that it had been improved. I was told that it’s now being managed by a content provider, Mobile Arts (warning: the web site plays horrendous music so you better turn off your speaker.)

Registration

The service has also been transferred to www.mySmart.com.ph. I tried registering for the service about two weeks back and in no time, my mobile e-mail address was set up. If you don’t explicitly register for a username, your mobile e-mail will be your Smart number @mySmart.com.ph. The mobile number is in international format so if yours starts with 0918, it will be written as 63918.

To get your own personalized Smart TextMail address, send REG USERNAME PASSWORD YOURNAME to 200. The username you enter will become the first part of your e-mail address. After registration, add the e-mail address of the servers that send you alerts so that their messages are immediately sent to your phone.

If you get a message from someone not in the address book, the server just notifies you of the message and asks you to reply with G if you want to get the entire message. In my case, I added to my address book the e-mail addresses of the senders of my website availability notices and the e-mail address Scrybe uses to send reminders.

In using the service for more than a week, I find that I get the alerts as soon as these are sent. I now know immediately whenever any of the web servers I use is down. With the alert, I can then check the site and send a support request to the web host.

Scrybe notifications for tasks deadlines are also received on time and I’m now able to fully take advantage of it’s task management service.

I’m just using some of my TextMail account’s services. It is a full mobile e-mail solution if you’re comfortable with managing e-mail using text. It even generates access numbers for e-mail addresses. Any text message you send to these access numbers are processed and sent as an e-mail message to your contact. The SMS alerts are free but you are charged P2.50 each time you send a message.

I just hope that Smart TextMail maintains this quality of service. It has become an indispensable tool for me.

Related posts:

1. It works: Gmail mobile app on SE K750i and Smart connection
2. Get things done faster on your mobile phone and PC with FMA
3. Smart launches mobile TV service

COREL WORDPERFECT LIGHTNING. The free note-taking software is easy to use and comes with an online collaboration account that allows you to synchronize notes.

But a link in del.icio.us not only reminded me that I once used WordPerfect and that the software suite still exists, it also pointed me to a cool free product that I have been testing for days now–WordPerfect Lightning.

Corel WordPerfect Lightning is a free lightweight word processor and note-taking software. It aims to fill “a gap between today’s existing desktop and Web-based productivity tools.”

Corel got the “lightweight” claim part right. The initial installer download is less than 1MB albeit it downloads more files as it installs the software. This setup is puzzling because Corel says “WordPerfect Lightning is simple, free and doesn’t need a Web connection.”" You may not need a Web connection to use it, but it appears that you need one to install it. I couldn’t find a standalone installer. Still, the whole installation process took less than 5 minutes in my PLDT WeRoam connection.

JOYENT CONNECTOR. WordPerfect Lightning users get a free Joyent Connector account with 200MB of web space and the ability to invite two more users to the online collaboration suite. Click on photo for larger image.

WordPerfect Lightning is also quick to load, so quick that I’m comfortable letting it auto start both in my office PC and in my laptop. I can’t say the same thing of Accomplice, the task manager I wrote about earlier and which I sometimes use to organize notes. After several days of slow loading on startup, I decided to disable auto start for Accomplice.

WordPerfect Lightning helps you take down notes and collect information. I’ve been using it extensively to test the ease by which it can be used to organize notes and in the several days that I’ve been using it, I’m impressed. The screenshots I took were captured in the early phase of the test and my WordPerfect Lightning installation now contains more notes.

What’s good about the program is that it also comes with a free Joyent Connector account. Joyent is an online collaboration service that provides a suite of services for backups, bookmarks, calendars, contacts, and e-mails.

When you open an account with WordPerfect Lightning (you need one before you can download the software), you also get a Joyent Connector account with 200MB of storage and the ability to add two more users so you can collaborate online. Joyent says “files, notes, and Web clippings associated with Corel WordPerfect Lightning will be automatically backed up to Joyent Connector, and available to view and share through Joyent Connector.”

ONLINE BACKUP. Corel WordPerfect Lightning gives you a free Joyent Connector account, which you can use to back up and synchronize notes. Click on photo for larger image.

I tried synchronizing WordPerfect Lightning notes created in my office PC with my laptop installation and the process was flawless and took less than a minute. The problem with this type of synchronization–on-demand instead of automatic– is that you really have to make sure that you’ve downloaded the latest version of the data before you start editing notes. I haven’t lost data by making a mistake in synchronization with WordPerfect Lightning but knowing how forgetful I can be, I fear that one of these days I might make the mistake of losing data through synchronization errors.

I hope the synchronization process will still be improved. After all, Corel didn’t place a save button in WordPerfect Lightning because the software automatically saves changes you’ve made.

Related posts:

1. Manage your tasks with Accomplice
2. Transferring my notes wiki
3. FEAC2006: technical notes

EASY TASK MANAGEMENT. Accomplice helps you manage your tasks easily and collaborate with other users. Click on photo to view larger image.

With Internet connectivity deteriorating to the level of the days when flickr would have been dismissed as a wrongly-spelled word, I managed to download several personal information managers (PIM) and tasks managers through the only reliable connection I had left, the office PC, for use at home and in my laptop.

I initially thought of using Sunbird, Mozilla’s calendaring software, in conjunction with Google Calendar. But after searching for possible solutions, I still couldn’t find a way to synchronize Sunbird installations in multiple PCs using Google Calendar. I’m crossing my fingers that Sunbird’s coming version will be able to not only grab data from a Google Calendar account but also add entries to it.

I then tried Chandler, the open source PIM released by the Open Source Applications Foundation, but its hardware requirement is rather steep: a processor with a speed of at least 2 gigahertz and 512mb RAM.

The PCs I use meet these hardware requirements but just. I tried running it at the office and it wasn’t that slow, just not as responsive as I wanted it to be. The software is still in its early version, though, and I’m definitely keeping an eye for newer releases although I am pessimistic they will have a version that can run well systems with less resources.

I next tried Essential PIM. I installed the free version and for several days, it organized my tasks, in the meantime that I couldn’t access my activeCollab installation as often as I needed to. But since the software (the free version at least) can’t share data over the Internet, I was stuck with one installation and a Pocketmod for tasks and notes that occur to me whenever I’m not using my laptop.

I would have stayed on with this setup had I not spotted Accomplice in my del.icio.us inbox. Accomplice is the free offline task manager that I’ve long been looking for. The free version includes ads on a portion of the screen but for software like this, I really don’t mind.

ADDING NOTES. You can add notes to specific tasks in Accomplice. Click on photo to view larger image.

Accomplice does task management well. The interface is intuitive–making adding, editing, and managing tasks easy. I’ve included below a short video clip of the first steps I did after installing Accomplice in my office PC so you can see how it’s so easy to use.

What’s great about Accomplice is that it allows you to collaborate with other users. With the software, you can share tasks and notes with other registered users. I do not use Accomplice to collaborate on tasks with people, I use activeCollab for that. I do not need 24-hour access to these types of tasks so I can afford to wait until I get to the office to check on pending matters in activeCollab.

But I use Accomplice’s collaboration feature to share my tasks list and notes between my office PC and laptop. These are data I need access to anytime.

This schizophrenic way of sharing tasks with myself (using different email accounts) has one side benefit: I am able to specify tasks that need to be done on the terminal I am on. For instance, the Accomplice installation in my office PC contains all work-related tasks–deadlines to meet, communications to answer, and projects to be finished.

The Accomplice installation on my laptop, on the other hand, contains personal and blog-related tasks–posts to finish writing, personal sites that need updating etc.

But the two installations, share a group of tasks that I deem urgent.

I give Accomplice high marks in the more than a week that I’ve been using it. It will do a lot to unclog you tasks inbox as it did mine. The software can even link with your e-mail client but I haven’t tried this feature yet as I no longer use POP e-mail.

Here’s a short clip of Accomplice in action:

Related posts:

1. Use activeCollab to manage your projects online for free
2. Take digital notes with Corel WordPerfect Lightning
3. Finally, a perfect TiddlyWiki to manage my notes, tasks

If you use WordPress to run your website, at the minimum, you need to be on the lookout for new releases (one has just been released as a write this) of the blogging engine. You also need to regularly check updates on such things as your theme and the plugins you are using.

WORDPRESS BLOG CHECKLIST. My checklist for tasks related to running a WordPress site. click on photo to view larger image.

I used to keep track of these tasks using an installation of activeCollab, an open source project management software that mimics Basecamp. With the recent Internet connectivity problems caused by that earthquake in Taiwan, I decided to track blog management-related tasks on paper. This way, I can prioritize whatever time I can spend online on really important tasks.

I created this blog maintenance checklist as reminder of tasks I need to do as well as tracker of such things as version numbers of plugins and themes.

I have a huge volume of spam comments in this blog and most are caught by Akismet. While Akismet deletes these comments after 15 days, I make it a point to delete them manually every time I log into my blog. This is why I included the deleting of spam comments in my daily tasks in the checklist.

SPAM COUNT. If I skip just a day in deleting comments identified as spam by Akismet, the numbers hit the thousands.

I also included in the regular tasks the checking of bandwidth and storage usage. My site was unavailable several times in the past because I exceeded my web hosting package’s bandwidth allocation. I used to think this was a “pleasant” problem because it means your traffic is increasing. It isn’t pleasant at all. In fact, it’s frustrating.

The only way to guard against this is to monitor your bandwidth usage and be prepared to upgrade your plan if you consistently hit at least 90 percent of your hosting package’s bandwidth allocation.

What other tasks do you think should be included in the list? Drop me a note and I’ll put up a new version of the checklist.

Related posts:

1. Anti-spam plugin Akismet updated
2. Nice work if you can get it: Ella sings and WordPress blings
3. Installing Akismet to deal with comment spam

Wink is an easy to use free software to capture videos of your screen activities and it’s great for creating tutorials. My only problem with it is that it doesn’t offer an option to capture screen activities in video format (i.e. mpeg or avi) so that it can easily be uploaded in video sharing sites like YouTube, Metacafe, and Revver. Wink outputs the screen activities in .swf and .exe formats.

My previous screencasts– one is on how to turn any web template into a WordPress theme–are in .swf format and hosted in the Internet Archive. I’ve had complaints on its playback quality and how it can be slow at times so I decided to try hosting it other video services. These services, however, do not accept .swf files so I spent days trying one application after another to convert the files into .mpg or .avi formats to no avail.

I gave up on the conversion and instead decided to do the screen capture again, this time using another software. CamStudio, which is also free, is another piece of software that can capture screen activities. What’s great about it is that it offers the option of rendering the video into .avi format. It doesn’t have, however, the editing capabilities of Wink, which allows you to edit by frames. But for my needs, CamStudio is more than sufficient. I first tried it for my short demo on using ActiveCollab to recreate my Wridea blogging workflow.

TiddlyWiki, on the other hand, is a useful piece of software for keeping notes. I’ve extensively used it and its adaptations for months. I’ve been showing it off to people I know and I find that many get taken to it once they see how easy it is to use TiddlyWikis. Here’s the video introduction to TiddlyWikis. I’m still looking for ways to display a bigger version of the tutorial:

Related posts:

1. Using a TiddlyWiki: a video guide
2. An easier way to write tutorials on how to use software
3. TiddlyWiki evangelization: An introduction to TiddlyWikis

I had wanted to manage my tasks using groupware applications hosted on my server. I don’t do a lot of projects and the bulk of my time is spent on newsroom tasks. But often, I have to deal with different groups of people or even a separate department for some of my personal and work-related projects. I wanted to simplify and centralize all these tasks in an online task manager.

I gave up on installing a script in my own server and instead used Basecamp’s free account and even PBWiki for projects that required me to work with other people.

In July, however, I read a post in TechCrunch about a Basecamp “clone” that was released as an open source project. I immediately checked the site out and fount that activeCollab required a PHP 5 server. Since I was on a web host that only had PHP 4, I just bookmarked activeCollab and made a note to try it in a local server.

I’ve since transferred web hosts after I took over a project. My current host, A Small Orange, offers PHP 5 support but uses PHP 4 by default. After recovering from a bout with the flu, I attempted installing activeCollab and found it exceedingly easy to set up. In fact, I successfully installed the program and without a hitch on my first attempt.

activeCollab is an open source, hosted alternative to the Basecamp project management service. Click to enlarge.

The installation isn’t as easy as that of WordPress’ famous five-minute install but it comes close to it. After reading the ASOwiki on how to use PHP 5 in its servers, I was able to install and run activeCollab.

If you’re on a web server that has PHP 5 but uses PHP 4 by default, just create two files a php5.fcgi and a .htaccess file with the following codes and placed these in the directory where you want to install activeCollab

php5.fcgi

#!/bin/sh
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=2
export PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=500
export PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS
exec /usr/local/php5-fcgi/bin/php

.htaccess
AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php

Just open the URL of your activeCollab directory and it will give you a notification that you still haven’t installed the software. Create a MySQL database for activeCollab and just follow the on-screen instructions for installing the software.

The developer pledges an equally easy upgrading system albeit I still haven’t tried it since I’m using the latest version.
I’ve been using activeCollab for three days now and I find it so easy to use that in that short time, I’ve transferred all my task lists and added a lot more to my installation of the software.

ActiveCollab makes managing projects online and collaborating with other people or organizations easy. It allows you to use the software for a variety of projects without having to worry about breaking need-to-know issues because you can set permissions on a per project basis. When you add people to the system, you can specify what they can or cannot view, access or use.

What’s even remarkable about the software created by student Ilija Studen is that it isn’t even version 1.0 yet. Since this is an open source project, you can expect more and frequent improvements on the system. Already, there are a lot of great features lined up for coming versions.

Related posts:

1. Goodbye activeCollab, hello ProjectPier
2. Using activeCollab to manage blog posts, article ideas
3. Manage your tasks with Accomplice

I am also a long-time TiddlyWiki “evangelist.” Any chance I get to introduce TiddlyWiki, I’d show it off.

TiddlyWiki is a great script to manage your notes and task list. It’s a single page that you can edit with your browser. Although it is very easy to use, TiddlyWikis can be confusing to some people, especially those not familiar with wikis.

I find that if I show people how to edit a TiddlyWiki, they immediately get the idea behind it and you can leave them on their own, a new TiddlyWiki convert.

Here’s a video tutorial on how to use a TiddlyWiki. It was done for those still unfamiliar with the script.

Related posts:

1. Moving to another TiddlyWiki adaptation
2. TiddlyWiki evangelization: An introduction to TiddlyWikis
3. Protopage vs. serverside TiddlyWiki – which works best for you?

I’d then work on the post in the office, right before the newsroom goes into overdrive chasing page deadlines and after I’ve finished my pages and while waiting for pages assigned to me for line-reading. I’d then publish the post at home, after my early morning meal–that’s dinner for all you morning people.

Most of the time, however, I’m working on several projects that can generate several blog posts. These projects are experiments on content management systems, blogging, wikis and anything that might be of use in a newsroom environment, particularly that of a small community newspaper.

I keep my technical notes on these experiments and my to-do lists in various personal wikis, including a txt file in my K750i. But for blog post ideas, I may have found the best notes repository, for me, in Wridea. (Click on photo to view larger image)

Wridea is a free web service that helps you organize your ideas. It’s a great system to use as a container for notes of pending blog posts you are working on. I’ve been using it since early this week and I find that it really helps me organize my thoughts on blog posts I’m working on.

Wridea is an extensible service that you can even use as a simple project or task manager. It’s not in any way revolutionary as there are a lot of comparable free services online. Basecamp and Backpackit
(referral link) may even be better. But there’s just something about Wridea that makes it a great system to keep notes for my pending blog posts.

I really like its user interface and find that it helps me keep my notes for blog articles organized. If you write for or maintain several blogs like I do, you’d love the ability to group “ideas” into pages. I created one page for my blog (the page that’s active in the screenshot above) and another for blogs at the Sun.Star website.

Adding an idea for a blog post is easy. Just go to the page you want to add the blog post idea to and then click on Ideas then Add New Idea. Don’t worry if you mistakenly add the blog post idea to the wrong page, you can reassign ideas to different pages.

When the note loads, just click on the A New Idea title in the left sidebar and replace it with your blog post idea. Add notes below the title by clicking on the dummy text placed there: “This is a new idea waiting to be editted,” it really is waiting to be edited.

You can use Textile for formatting your notes, just click on Help to read how you can render bold text or include photos or links.

Related posts:

1. Using activeCollab to manage blog posts, article ideas
2. Improving blog headlines: lessons learned offline
3. Sign up for a better blog tracker with Measure Map

The interface is intuitive and adding an appointment is easier than writing an email, which should be the case. To add an entry, you simply click on the box beside the time in the day column and type the details. You are not forced to configure the event like set up reminders or enter such details as venue or attendees. You can configure these things only if you choose to do so.

Google Calendar sends reminders of the events, 10 minutes before its start is the default configuration. The reminders come in the form of an e-mail or a pop-up window. You can even choose to have the service send you an e-mail of your daily agenda. Google Calendar can send reminders through SMS messages but this capability is still limited to US phone carriers.

What’s really astounding with the service is the ability to drag calendar entries around to reschedule events-it’s almost a visual representation of the way you rearrange your life. Other calendar services make you go through several window screens in order to edit a calendar entry. Not Google.

Google also allows you to have multiple calendars. This is very helpful if you want to segregate events. What I did was I made two calendars, one is private, which I use for personal and family-related tasks, and another is public, which I use to organize tasks related to my job or blog. This way, I can choose to display and share my tasks without letting everyone now that I’m going out on a date with my wife.

Google Calendar offers data feeds for your entries. This would make it possible to republish your calendar into your blog or to share it via RSS readers (of which Google has probably the best offering: Google Reader.)

Another great thing that Google promises for the service is its ability to recognize invitations and schedules in your GMail account and display a link that will allow you to easily add it to your Google Calendar.

I say this is a promise despite Google’s announcement that this is already active because after sending myself five invitations, I still have to spot the link. I sent various types of messages hoping to trigger the link—with the schedule and time of meeting specified in the subject field, with a full agenda included in the message-all to no avail.

Google Calendar may be late in the game but it’s off to a fine start. Yahoo had been offering a calendar service for years but I never got to use it for more than a month. I revisited Yahoo Calendar an hour ago to compare it with Google Calendar and found it way behind the current search engine giant’s offering.

Related posts:

1. Forget Windows Live, get a Goowy account
2. Get a beta free personal website: Google Page Creator now live
3. Re-installing my life: the perils of keeping everything online