A "Baker's Dozen" Productivity Tools

Mindjet MindManager Pro

MindManager gives users an unprecedented 3 to 5 hours a week in productivity gains by streamlining how information is captured and utilized. MindManager improves time management, meetings, communications and knowledge to dramatically improve personal productivity. 

Free 15 day trial (www.mindjet.com)  with single user copies available from Innovabiz Pty Ltd. 

To get a flavour for Mindmapping on your PC, try out the free copy of Mindman Personal Edition, available from Innovabiz Pty Ltd.

This is IMHO Microsoft’s best product, a 60 day trial is available from their site (www.office.microsoft.com/onenote).  It is an electronic notebook with some outstanding features, including the ability to link pages to one another via URL type links embedded in pages, and also integrates very well with other Microsoft Office products. 

You can for example export emails, contacts, notes and tasks from Outlook and build links back to the original location.  You can set actions, with flags or Outlook tasks within OneNote directly from your notes. 

Microsoft have a 60 day trial version on their website, it is well worth a look.

Most people read at between 100-150 words per minute.  Rapidreader (www.rapidreader.com) is unique software that automatically converts MS Word docs, web pages, text files and even PDF and batch e-mails in Outlook for high speed reading with a single click.  You set the reading speed between 100-950 words per minute!

Audacity (www.audacity.sourceforge.net) is a very powerful audio recording and processing tool.  A little known feature of Audacity is its ability to speed up audio files (MP3, WMA, OGG and many others) – podcasts, audiobooks without changing the pitch. 

At the 150% tempo you save 20 minutes for every hour of audio material you listen to. Your mind can easily handle the faster tempo, since you can think far faster than anyone can naturally talk.  

If you want to speed up many mp3 files, you might like to use MP3 Speed Changer (www.crazyboomerang.com)

FastStone Capture (www.faststone.org)  is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages.  

Version 5.3 is free for non-commercial use.

Finding Files on Your PC

If you are like most people, you have many Gigabyte worth of data files on your PC and in a variety of folders.  Unless you keep this file structure very organised (and even if you do!), it becomes very time consuming to find things amongst all this data. 

Two excellent (free) search programs are Google Desktop (www.desktop.google.com) and X1 Professional Client (www.x1.com).  

X1 enables you to search and instantly find information, preview it in its native format and take action on it immediately regardless of type or location.  It also finds Outlook items (email, tasks etc) that are stored in Archives. 

Google Desktop will search all your webmail applications (X1 won't), but doesn't search your Outlook Archives.

Personal Information in Electronic Wallets

We have a lot of information that needs to be frequently accessed, or, that just doesn't have a "logical" storage place where we can easily retrieve it.  Searching for such information can be a big time waster. 

Having a safe and central storage location for personal identification information (such as usernames, passwords, account numbers, and PINs, credit card information, software serial numbers, drivers license, passport etc) can save significant time.  Ideally, this information should be easily retrieved and fully secure. 
 
An ideal way to do this is to use one of the "electronic wallets" available for desktop and handheld computers.  An excellent application for such information is Iliumsoft's eWallet (www.iliumsoft.com) .  This software safely stores (under password protection and high level secure encryption) personal identification information on your desktop computer and can synchronise with your handheld devices.  eWallet is available for PC platforms and for a variety of handheld devices.
 
Splashdata's SplashID (www.splashdata.com) is another excellent piece of software for this use.  It is available for both PC and MAC platforms as well as a variety of handheld devices.

Orla (www.orla.org) is an innovative email and time management program  that makes life easier for people using Microsoft Outlook.  It consists of a user-friendly interface for Outlook making it easy to plan and organize all of your work within Outlook, a sophisticated survey system to measure improvements in effectiveness and productivity as a result of changing to Orla and a comprehensive portfolio of learning activities designed to make you more efficient and effective.  The Orla system is available through Innovabiz Pty Ltd.

Xobni (inbox spelled backward) (www.xobni.com) is a free add-on, currently in public beta, for Microsoft Outlook. This useful tool allows you to look at your e-mail inbox from a whole new perspective. The add-on improves management of messages and contacts, one of Outlook's biggest shortcomings.

It provides functionality that Outlook should deliver natively, and does so without affecting the e-mail client's performance.  You can use Xobni for simple searches within Outlook, too, and it often returns results much more quickly than Outlook's search does. 

Xobni also goes far beyond speedy searching, providing logical social information and extended functionality that Outlook simply doesn't.  Instead of treating mail conversations, contacts, and calendars as separate entities, Xobni weaves them together in a responsive, intuitive interface.

Allway Sync