In Thoughtboxes you work with Trains of thought. If I got it right, those implement the Areas/Roles of responsibilities part of GTD. Each Train of thought contains Boxes. A Box is like a project, or list and it contains your thoughts (or tasks).

I have to admit, I loved the user interface as much as I enjoyed those refreshing metaphors for the old dull project management words. There are cute boxes and small smiling faces and bright colours in a clear display.

Thoughts can be moved around easily, to change order or to be transferred to another box and can be starred to stand out from the others.
Trains of thought can be also shared with other users, a feature for premium users which I did not test.

While Thoughtboxes is an incredibly well designed and super fun application, it has only a really basic set of functions. I truly wish the developers will add some more functions in the future and it will definitely stand out from the competition.

Free users can have up to three Train of thoughts while premium users ($3/month) get unlimited ones and sharing/collaboration features.

https://www.thoughtbox.es

The Bullet journal is a methodology created by Ryder Carroll and it can help you structure a notebook in such a way that all the things to do, events, topics, notes and log have their place. The system doesn’t have many things in common with the GTD style of handling things, but it focuses on people who prefer simpler methods and don’t have hours for weekly reviews.

Ryder’s instructions are very clear and analytical and the system implementation may seem simple, but it’s very effective and requires only a bit of time every day to update it.

Just watch the video and the beautifully designed website for more information.

www.bulletjournal.com

Read also

• My week with Bullet Journal
• Bullet Journal: could paper be the best productivity tool?

1. Turn starred emails into todo.txt items
2. Add emails with todo label to todo.txt
3. Calendar to todo.txt
4. Add Todo.txt Item by SMS
5. Forward an email to IFTTT and edit the subject to create new todo.txt items
6. Add Weekly Grocery to todo.txt
7. Add todo.txt item via IM

It has been a while since my last release, but after dealing with some bugs and adding some new functionality, I have uploaded a new Jello version. But don’t expect many new additions. My main focus is to keep the project working since both Outlook and Internet Explorer become a very restricted environment for non-real add-ons like the dashboard.

In the latest release you will find some new stuff in the jelloapp.hta helper application:

1. An easier interface for setting and un-setting the Dashboard into your Outlook using the jelloapp.hta which runs automatically after the installer finishes.
2. Exporting of data in a tiddlywiki web page.
3. Exporting of data in a todo.txt file.

Both exporting functions were developed in various times and I’ve decided to add them to the release to enable users to get their data out of Outlook for their convenience. I would also like to add that this version was tested in Outlook 2013 and Windows 8.1.

Many thanks to all friends who mailed me, helped me tracked bugs and keep using Jello Dashboard.

Please visit the Download section of the site to get the new version.

In the area of mind mapping web tools, there are still a few applications if you’re a visual person and prefer your information spread in front of you.

SpiderScribe.net is such an application. Designed as a cool flash enabled web page, simply lets you create mind maps with ease.

SpiderScribe is not a new application, it’s been alive for a good two years. It is well designed, pretty fast when your mind-map is fully loaded (that can take a few seconds) and pretty pleasant to work with.

The application’s mind-maps are pretty simple compared to other full-scale applications, but I think it focuses mainly on simplifying that process.
Users can create five different elements (stencils) to build their maps: Text, files, images, maps and events. The elements can be created by dragging them on the board and easily connected with each other with arrow lines.

Mind-maps can be shared, printed and exported as images. There is also a good search capability. I only wish there were more stencil types to choose from!

The application is free for personal use (limited to 3 private maps, unlimited shared ones and 3MB of space) and there are also paid plans for professional use.

http://www.spiderscribe.net

IQTELL is a really ambitious project. And when your tag line is “The best productivity app in the history of doing” things are getting pretty serious, especially for an application specifically designed for GTD.

I admit that after applying for an invitation to test IQTELL (it is not quite open yet, but I received mine in less than 24 hours) and logged in for the first time, I thought it would take me ages to write this post. There were pending options to link my google and Evernote account and a full screen interface complete with tutorial videos I had to watch.

After the initial shock, I mean I have never seen an app to integrate two of my favorite tools Gmail and Evernote, I connected both of my accounts. It took a while for the initial sync and everything went OK. So I soon had all my calendars, contacts, my emails and notes ready before I even begin!

Seriously, these features are really strong for a productivity application, but it could easily be its doom because things can get quite complicated for users.

Working in IQTELL

The application is quite well and lightly designed with monochrome icons and a tall sidebar on the left side containing links to all that you can manage within it. You can navigate to your calendar, contacts, projects, tasks, your notes from Evernote and tags which is a mix from the application’s and Evernote tag lists.

Actions and other GTD entities can be easily added via a textbox at the top of the screen just by pressing enter and next actions can be set and unset using a star button, two features I love and use into my own Jello Dashboard application as great time savers.

All screens a user opens, stay as a tabs at the top of the screen, so  one can navigate easily between the most frequently used and the dark toolbars help to perform actions in selected items in Outlook like lists, where columns can be sorted, reordered and change width just like any desktop application.

One of the great powers of IQTELL is the management of the email messages. Lots of different providers are supported, and you can literally do everything a mail client can do, plus create actions of your messages and put them away. This is exactly what Inbox Zero is all about. Add up a big number of shortcut keys to the mix, and you got yourself a really fast message processing system.

I also liked the dedicated GTD views for Waiting for items (yes, you can delegate actions to people on your contact lists!) Someday, Ticklers and of course Inbox. A good addition is a weekly review list, where you can create an entry with the classic review checklist for GTD and know when it was the last time you did it.

Tagging is a bit strange, since I got the notion that if I use an Evernote tag for an Action I could see all item types together, and I could not find a list of my contexts anywhere. Projects are a bit hard to manage – I could not find a way to assign actions to projects without being into the project properties – and the subtasks also, a bit different from what I’m used to.

In conclusion

IQTELL has the ability to be the best GTD application ever made, in terms of functionality, and richness of abilities. There are not many applications that can handle your emails, calendars and reference items so you won’t need to use any other tools for your workflow. If we take in consideration the mobile phone applications which are available for iOS and Android, I don’t think there is much left to ask from a GTD application except from some more effort to reduce the complexity of some elements which will probably drive new users away.

Fortunately there is a full help system available, full of tours and tutorials, and a frequent newsletter of the service for user education about the application.

http://iqtell.com

KanbanFlow is a task and project management web application based on (well, you guessed that right) the Kanban workflow and scheduling system in which, you have a stack of cards containing your projects or tasks and you move them around a board.

The board metaphor is a really strong one, allows users to quickly decide on what to do next and have a wide view of the pending items.

The KanbanFlow application is simply designed, containing just the essentials to get your things done. It is fast and it has a quick registration system followed by a brief tutorial showing you all there is to know in less than a minute.

I was really able to start adding my tasks right away, since there are a few controls which are self explanatory like clicking on the green cross icon at the top of each section and add your next card.

Each card can contain a good deal of information, like notes, labels, time estimates, due dates, subtasks and comments.
I loved the multiple due dates ability for each card, enabling you to define a date when a card should be moved to a specific section (like in progress) and also a later date to move it into the done section. That way it’s easy to have a semi automated in progress section without the need to move all cards manually. Cards can be also copied making it easy to have templates of often used information.

Of course there is multiuser support, and each card can be assigned to another user, cards can have different colors and there is no need to archive them since the done section always show the last 20 cards moved there.

The sections can be customized and each user can create more boards for different uses. There is a customization screen which is great in terms of functionality, letting you change lots of options for a specific board, but it is a bit hidden and displayed as a bullet-list of options, something that the developers should consider making more prominent to the users.

A good touch is the pomodoro timer which is embedded into the system and can be easily used providing you with useful statistics about your habits (pomodoro technique).
As for other functions, there is support for printing and the ability for desktop notifications for the free version of KanbanFlow which also gives you unlimited boards and users.

Users of the premium plan ($5/user monthly) can take advantage of extended functionality, including filters & searches, file attachments, user roles, time management, analytics and API access. In my opinion a basic search function should be available to free users as well.

There are no apps for mobile devices but their mobile site https://kanbanflow.com/m is supported on most smartphones.

In conclusion, KanbanFlow is a good application following the under-implemented Kanban scheduling system, it is easy to work with and provides great functionality, especially for premium users. The only thing I would recommend would be a more focused and unified design effort for the GUI.

https://kanbanflow.com

Available elements

Working with Bitrix24

 In conclusion