Ed Eubanks over at Low End Mac has written a great article on the “Getting Things Done” school of work-flow productivity.

He talks a bit about the GTD system and getting yourself organised in general, then reviews nine web-based GTD solutions.

They are not the same as the ten I picked out. In particular, I would have added GTDGmail, a triumph of interface hacking and adaption.

Still, the fact that I can quibble about little things like this shows the abundance of Mac implementations we enjoy these days and how stimulating a list Ed has put together.

Well worth a read .

He has just posted a second part on twelve desktop GTD apps, which is worth reading too. Easy Task Manager wins the GTD app shoot-out for him.GTD, getting things done, mac, apple, productivity, web 2.0, tips, reviews

Is the official .Mac blog out of ideas or just trying to engage more with the .Mac community?

Whatever the answer, it is asking for ideas :

Is there a cool trick you’ve discovered in iWeb? Have you found some new use for Photocasting that isn’t mentioned in the instructions? Is there an advanced feature in iCal you’d like to know more about?

Or it doesn’t have to focus on features. We’re always curious to know how .Mac fits into your life.

Here are a few pointers, if you are stuck for something to suggest:

• Apple/Google Mash-up. BusinessWeek Online offers some ideas on how Google and .Mac could work together better.
• Rui Carmo spanks .Mac. Rui takes the hatchet to .Mac.
• Do it yourself .Mac. Matt Simerson decided not to wait for tips from the .Mac blog. He’s making a better .Mac service for himself.
• Four more suggestions. Four interesting manifestos on how to improve .Mac’s value for money.

.mac, dotmac, apple mail, mail.app, google, mash-up, web 2.0

MyTicklerFile is a web service that offers an electronic implementation of the “Tickler File” concept, part of the “Getting Things Done” workflow management philosophy.

A Tickler file is a set of 43 folders (geddit? ) into which you can file future events that will require your attention later but which don’t need to sap your energy right now.

There are ways to get a tickler file going inside Mail.app itself using MailTags or AppleScript, but for those who prefer a web-based solution, MyTicklerFile will do the job nicely.

A upgraded version of the service was launched today. It adds Projects, time-tracking, syncing with iCal and Basecamp for paying customers and new daily, monthly and project views.

Also new is the TicklerCal, an “iCal-like” representation of all your ticklers:

Click image for a full-sized view

MyTicklerFile offers a free plan with one project, 15 ticklers and 10 Backpack-style reminders, and two paying plans (USD 9/month and 19/month) which include more projects, ticklers and reminders and other extra features.

Head over to the site, read its blog and look at some sample screenshots.GTD, getting things done, tickler file, productivity, projects, reminders, web 2.0

WebnoteHappy has been updated. This clever app with an unfortunate name is a bookmark manager that allows you to tag and annotate your links.

The new version (1.2) brings support for syncing your bookmarks with your del.icio.us account, adds hot key support for Firefox and Shiira, clickable hyperlinks in the notes field and more.

All the fields in a WebnoteHappy webnote are now editable, including the URL itself.

The app sells itself partly as a native Mac OS X interface for del.icio.us and it does look nice:

You can read the full list of changes in the release notes .

WebnoteHappy is shareware (USD 24.95) and is available from the developer’s web site.bookmarks, delicious, URLs, tagging, Web 2.0, firefox, internet, not apple mail

Pukka is a posting client for del.icio.us that can be activated quickly by a bookmarklet on your browser toolbar.

It automatically loads the URL and title of the active web page into its interface. All you have to do is tag it, type a description if you want and post it. Highlighted text on the page is added to the description field. Very quick. Very smart.

And it has just got smarter. Version 1.3 released over the weekend adds support for private bookmarking through a new option in the app’s preferences pane:

Holding down the option key when posting now prevents the app from resetting.

The new version also adds full AppleScript support.

See it in action in a screencast. Pukka is shareware (USD 5) and available from codesorcery’s web site .delicious, URL, bookmarks, posting, bookmarklet, applescript, private posting, web 2.0, social

Tools to help Mac users with Getting Things Done (or “GTD”), David Allen’s work-smart philosophy, fall into three camps:

1. Email clients, where most of the stuff that needs to get done arrives in the first place, tweaked to do the job.
2. Dedicated GTD apps like kGTD or Easy Task Manager provide more focussed collection and processing buckets.
3. Web-based solutions offer platform-independent tools for getting things done, especially good if you use a Mac at home and a PC at work.

After the jump, you will find some of the best options in each category.

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Web 2.0 sites like Flickr are massively over-hyped out of all proportion to real usage patterns, according to a survey conducted by HitWise this week.

Although Flickr seems to be on the lips of every high-impact blogger, the survey of photo-sharing sites concluded that Flickr ranks only sixth (5.95%) by market share (hits), a long way behind sites like Photobucket (43%) and Yahoo! Photos (18.3%):

Why is this so? Much comment revolves around a perceived social hierarchy among bloggers. The Register, who claims that mainstream media aggravates the situation by only listening to blogging royalty, prints the following opinion:

Photobucket is all over Myspace and LiveJournal, and it gets the hits, but the San Francisco myopia only sees their web 2.0 darlings.

HitWise analyst Leann Prescott suggests that the results reflect the cultural habits of the hoi polloi at LiveJournal and MySpace:

Photobucket, Slide, and Imageshack are all image hosting sites, and MySpace is their primary source of traffic. In fact, MySpace was responsible for 76% of Slide’s traffic in May 2006, 56% of Photobucket’s traffic, and 50% of Imageshack’s traffic. The growth of Photobucket and Slide go hand in hand the growth of consumer generated content and social networking sites…

Demonstrating exactly the elitism (or intelligence, depending on your point of view) under examination, Marshall Kilpatrick at TechCrunch agrees that the aristocrats and bloggerati may be out of touch, but says it’s all in a good cause:

High-authority bloggers appear to write about Flickr about 3 times as often as they (we) write about Photobucket. The blogosphere as a whole uses the word Photobucket 3 or more times as often as we use the word Flickr. (TechCrunch has used the word Flickr 11 times more often than the word Photobucket.) Does that mean high-authority bloggers are out of touch with the bulk of users? It may; it may also mean that being interesting doesn’t equate with mass adoption.

It seems an odd debate to me. First, “hype” is obviously about what’s coming not about what is. If everyone was using Web 2.0 services like flickr, the hype would be about Web 3.0.

Secondly, hits are a very crude measure of importance. They only tell me what people are visiting. They tell me nothing qualitative, nothing about how interesting, useful, stimulating, innovative (or not) the destination is, only how popular it is.flickr, web 2.0, blogging, internet culture, hitwise, survey, not apple mail