Moving to a Digital Lifestyle
I’ve found a bunch of tools recently that have made organizing my life a lot easier, especially with integrating labwork into the rest of my life.
First up is Remember the Milk, which is a free, online to-do list manager. It’s simple, but very useful. I can create multiple lists, tag each list item, and create smart lists based on searches. It’s all done very well, including lots of AJAX-y goodness and keyboard shortcuts to boot. For FireFox users, it has nice integration with Google Gears for offline access. It also integrates into Gmail and Google Calendar, though I’ve used those features less. The only caveat I have with RTM is that I wish its keyboard shortcuts mimicked those in Gmail. Gmail’s shortcuts seem much more intuitive than RTM’s, such as using “x” instead of “i” to select or deselect items.
Having an online tool is really handy, as sometimes I don’t have my computer with me, especially in lab. My To-Do list, however, is only an internet connection’s away.
Next is Gmail. Yes, many people use Gmail, but I especially like to use Gmail to shuttle little bits of data back and forth as attachments on drafts of letters to myself. Very handy! And Gmail’s recent introduction of IMAP has made it a lot easier to keep track of my email from both my home computer as well as a lab computer.
Another amazingly useful tool is Google Calendar. It’s very handy to be able to check my schedule from any computer, but the main problem is that I like the way iCal is integrated into the rest of my system! It picks up dates and times from email read in Apple Mail, it integrates with the Address Book, and alerts are simple to create, making it so much easier to manage my time at my home computer.
So I use BusySync. The 2.0 beta (as I write this) includes Google Calendar synchronization, which is an absolute godsend. The synchronization is seamless!
RTM combined with Google Calendar + BusySync + iCal is a killer combination for me; I can keep track of experiments, time points, appointments, meetings, seminars, classes, and even the rest of my life regardless of what computer I’m on! And now that I use an electronic lab notebook published online (though under a password), I can access data and procedures from home, too, so that I can plan out experiments or process data and record it wherever I am. It’s glorious!
Alas, the only thing I can’t do is pipette my reactions or maintain cell culture from home…Hey Honda, any chance you might come out with an ASIMO Laboratory Rat model?
