A
Armand
Guest
Hi,
I'm currently implementing GTD into my life, and as a way of both really *thinking* about what I'm reading and grokking it, as well as learning some new technology(I'm a software developer), I'm trying to build a web service/personal planner site that encapsulates as much as possible of the GTD-philosophy into one central system, keeping as much stuff in one place as possible outside the physical world.
It's just a fun hobby project, and I'm not under the illusion that it's possible to create anything close to a catch-all solution even with an unlimited budget, but from looking at all the common Personal Information Manager software packages and services currently available, and how people seem to tweak a number of various pieces of software, paper models and gadgets to fit the GTD philosophy rather than the other way around, I feel there's a gap that could be filled, given a good approach with a followup trial-and-error to see what works.
I'm wondering, is there anyone else that has done this, thought about this, attempted this and learned something in the process?
Here's where my initial thought process is at:
- An easy to navigate and edit calendar with time-specific actions, day-specific actions and day-specific information, with export possibilities to ical/PDAs, for those times you're not around your computer.
- A *loose* project planner, that takes you through the five steps of the natural planning planning model as described in the book, without too much of confinement to a rigid structure, and helps you organize it as flexible as possible.
- A searchable addressbook, again with pda-export-possibilities, birthday reminders, possibly with links to both upcoming meetings as well as a meeting history (based on data taken from the calendar).
- A virtual in-basket for non-physical matters, or notes pointing to physical ones.
- Checklists. Ability to create arbitrary checklists for important processes.
- Lists. next action lists, notes, someday/maybe, etc, with hierarchical folders.
- /some/ kind of method to help prioritizing, I'm not certain yet how.
- Possibly a virtual file folder for secure uploading and downloading documents to a server, optionally connect to projects, for easy access from anywhere there's an Internet connection.
Technical aspects:
- Web service, with user registration/signon.
- AJAX, to make the interface as close to the speed of native desktop
applications as possible (same technology that's powering GoogleMail and Google Maps), and key-bindings.
- Export of data-subsets in at least the iCal format, to make it easy to put on PDAs.
- Possibly importing data from PDAs/iCal, but I'm not certain yet whether it would be possible to do so in a good enough way.
Any thoughts on whether I'm onto something, whether I'm focusing on the wrong things, any ideas for the service? I've got no prestige vested in this at this point, even if I won't make it available or even use it myself, both the technological as well as the personal learning experience will make it worth it, but making something that ended up being useful for more people would be even more rewarding.
I'm currently implementing GTD into my life, and as a way of both really *thinking* about what I'm reading and grokking it, as well as learning some new technology(I'm a software developer), I'm trying to build a web service/personal planner site that encapsulates as much as possible of the GTD-philosophy into one central system, keeping as much stuff in one place as possible outside the physical world.
It's just a fun hobby project, and I'm not under the illusion that it's possible to create anything close to a catch-all solution even with an unlimited budget, but from looking at all the common Personal Information Manager software packages and services currently available, and how people seem to tweak a number of various pieces of software, paper models and gadgets to fit the GTD philosophy rather than the other way around, I feel there's a gap that could be filled, given a good approach with a followup trial-and-error to see what works.
I'm wondering, is there anyone else that has done this, thought about this, attempted this and learned something in the process?
Here's where my initial thought process is at:
- An easy to navigate and edit calendar with time-specific actions, day-specific actions and day-specific information, with export possibilities to ical/PDAs, for those times you're not around your computer.
- A *loose* project planner, that takes you through the five steps of the natural planning planning model as described in the book, without too much of confinement to a rigid structure, and helps you organize it as flexible as possible.
- A searchable addressbook, again with pda-export-possibilities, birthday reminders, possibly with links to both upcoming meetings as well as a meeting history (based on data taken from the calendar).
- A virtual in-basket for non-physical matters, or notes pointing to physical ones.
- Checklists. Ability to create arbitrary checklists for important processes.
- Lists. next action lists, notes, someday/maybe, etc, with hierarchical folders.
- /some/ kind of method to help prioritizing, I'm not certain yet how.
- Possibly a virtual file folder for secure uploading and downloading documents to a server, optionally connect to projects, for easy access from anywhere there's an Internet connection.
Technical aspects:
- Web service, with user registration/signon.
- AJAX, to make the interface as close to the speed of native desktop
applications as possible (same technology that's powering GoogleMail and Google Maps), and key-bindings.
- Export of data-subsets in at least the iCal format, to make it easy to put on PDAs.
- Possibly importing data from PDAs/iCal, but I'm not certain yet whether it would be possible to do so in a good enough way.
Any thoughts on whether I'm onto something, whether I'm focusing on the wrong things, any ideas for the service? I've got no prestige vested in this at this point, even if I won't make it available or even use it myself, both the technological as well as the personal learning experience will make it worth it, but making something that ended up being useful for more people would be even more rewarding.
