A similar concept has been employed (much earlier) in SmartMoney’s Map of the Market:
Both of those are good tools to deal with information clutter, although I think the Map of the Market is more useful in real life due to several levels of depth (you can drill down to individual sectors).
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You then maintain the list as any common to-do list but the points done each day are tallied automatically and can be displayed as a chart.
I think it’s a great idea especially for people whose time is somewhat flexible and some measure of productivity is important: especially when there is a big difference between “Check data on slide X” and “Set-up a structure for a presentation”.
One suggestion for improvement would be custom legends (e.g. 2 points=”My Action X”) because having to maintain mental mapping of actions to points can get bothersome and kind of defeats the original purpose of Printable CEO.
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You get 1 point for completing a “do” and -1 for completing a “don’t” and get to share the daily score with your friends (not sure I’d want to though 
On a more conventional note, for work I’m a heavy user of a very simple Backpack by 37signals.
Update: Seems there’s already slightly more complex version of Joe’s Goals as a Win/Mac application: Sciral Consistency
]]>It’s actually barely usable for any serious kind of work (which is where most of the cash in Excel cash cow comes from):
In my humble opinion, this is a case of just too much blogosphere hype with little real substance.
Update: iRows seems to be more useful, though less sleek than Google Spreadsheets: autofill, charts are included. And it supports collaborative editing to boot.
]]>Although it’s well known that most of the time Excel is used for fairly basic tasks, most of the biggest users (consulting, corporate finance, investment banking) use a very wide subset of functions including:
Which Google Spreadsheets is unlikely to offer in the short term (although I’m willing to be proven wrong). Most importantly, data that ends up in the spreadsheets is of confidential and/or proprietary nature and wouldn’t be on an online service.
That doesn’t mean that Google Spreadsheets won’t have its users, it’s just not a threat to most of the core Excel customers.
]]>Doug McClure wonders whether this represents an underserved business niche for some new start-up explore. I’d say hell, yes!
Presenting information has a lot of know-how and it’s definitely transferable. It doesn’t matter whether you’re displaying sales of widgets or inventory of beef cows, time series is still a time series and the thing people making decision want to know is the same. It’s the “so what” or “why do I care”. And typical enterprise reporting interface sucks at doing that.
One could easily imagine a start-up staffed with people who know how to extract the “so what” from a data dump, people with interface design skills and yes, some graphic designers to make looking at it all much less a chore.
Any takers?
]]>Talkety will connect any two phones, cellular or landline, by number. With ease and effectiveness, all one must do is type in his number, the number he wishes to dial, click “connect” and let Talkety do the rest.
The caller’s phone rings. By answering, the call is triggered, and the second phone rings at the other end, connecting the two individuals with clarity.
No software or hardware needed and rates are fairly competitive (e.g. 5 cents per minute Mexico-U.S. and 3 cents U.S.-France vs. zero and 2.5 for SkypeOut).
Some people have commented that you still need to pay your local phone service fee but that’s only an issue 1) if you live in a country/area where naked DSL is available or 2) you’re not using it mainly for long distance calls where the savings usually are greatest.
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The only issue is that I couldn’t get search for streets to work (it searches for places such as stadiums and parks just fine) which somewhat limits its usefulness. If someone knows what I’m doing wrong, feel free to comment.
]]>Read/WriteWeb is the other blog with interesting analysis of other parts of presentation
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Results page is a pleasant surprise with easy keyboard navigation (Up, Down, Enter) and page thumbnail fairly quickly displayed on the right side. Based on few searches I did, results quality is not bad at all and seeing a preview of the page helps immensely.
Update: Wisdump wrote a very nice review of Snap, including some very valid critique
Tags: web-20
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