Dec
15
Written by:
host
12/15/2009 7:00 AM
Two of the biggest challenges many Christian educators have are a) staying on top of the latest news and b) keeping on top of their To-Do lists. Tech-based solutions abound for both of them, but many people find the solutions overwhelming or too feature-packed for their needs. For example, RSS readers are a marvelous tool for following multiple blogs and getting the latest news, but they tend to work best for those who have a more serious need to follow lots of blogs for professional purposes. Applications and strategies abound for managing to-do lists and projects, ranging from the popular paper-based daily planners to various GTD (Getting Things Done) systems that take more time to figure out than they're worth for many people.
So, here are two terrific tools (Alltop and TeuxDeux) that simplify both of those tasks. Perhaps they'll help you to get organized in the new year!
Alltop - All the Top Stories
Alltop is the brainchild of Guy Kawasaki, one of the top marketing experts of our time. It's a news aggregator, or a filter of sorts of some of the top news stories in various categories. An Alltop page contains the last 5 news stories from each of the various blogs or news sites that the creator has chosen. Hundreds of topics are available, from Accounting to Zoology, so there's undoubtedly a few topics that will interest you. The benefit of Alltop is that you can scan the headlines really quickly, just clicking on those that catch your eye. Alltop only allows in sites that are frequently updated and have great content (and not to brag too much, but The Daily Voice is one of the featured blogs in the Christianity section.)
Once you've got the hang of Alltop, you can create your own page for free. Then, you can scan just the topics that interest you the most, or you can create a page with topics that will be likely to interest your congregation members, civic organization, friends, and so on. For example, you'll now find our Alltop page on our website's Learn tab. Bookmark it for future reference.
There's more you can do with Alltop, and you'll find new uses for it all the time, but go ahead and give it a try. The only thing you can't do with it (at least not yet) is add to it any blogs that are not "approved" by Alltop, so you'll certainly find some of your favorites are not there. When that happens, be sure to encourage that blogger to apply to be included in the Alltop listings—it's super easy, but it does take a few weeks (in our experience, anyway) to be included.
TeuxDeux - helping yeux manage all that yeux need to deux teuxday
Here's a truly elegant (and free!) solution to managing your to-do list: use teuxdeux.com to keep you organized and on task. TeuxDeux is not filled with bells, whistles, or anything unneeded. It does these things and these things only:
- Show you 5 consecutive days at a glance. (Initially, it will show you today as the first of the five days.)
- Allow you to enter and delete tasks.
- Allow you to cross off completed tasks, as well as remove the strike-thru line if you decide you still need to do a task.
- Move tasks around, up and down or from one day to another.
- Keep undated tasks in a "Someday" section.
That's pretty much it. Sure, some people will wish it had more features (e.g. a printing feature, clickable calendars, management of group tasks), but it may fit the bill for you. And now that I've written this, I can now cross "Write about TeuxDeux" off my own list!
~ by Tim Gossett
Copyright ©2009 Different Voice
1 comment(s) so far...
Re: News and Teux Deuxs
Congratulations on being listed on AllTop! YEAH!
By Mary Alice on
12/15/2009 9:08 AM
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