Full Circle Magazine FR

DoIt For those of you familiar with the GTD philosophy, DoIt is an application that implements the concept. GTD stands for Getting Things Done, based on the book of the same name written by David Allen. At its simplest, DoIt maintains lists of things to do - task lists, if you will. Tasks can optionally be organized by context or by project. Tasks can be scheduled or not. It's a very flexible system and quite intuitive even if you haven't read the reference book (but reading the book will help you manage and organize your life). The bad news is that there is no native Linux version of DoIt. The good news is that it works out-of-the-box via Wine. No special wine options are required and the program works quite quickly on my laptop. There is also a web-based version of the app (accessible via http://doit.im), and even an Android version. They all synchronize nicely with each other. DoIt is probably the first program I run every morning, preparing me for the day's tasks.

Evernote One of the most popular programs around is Evernote. From their website: “Evernote makes it easy to remember things big and small from your everyday life using your computer, phone, tablet, and the web.” I use it for keeping notes about everything. I have a folder for work notes, and a separate folder for personal stuff. I also have a folder where I keep credit-card and bank statements that I have downloaded as pdf files. What's really cool is that I can search my notes (including the pdf files I attached) for any text. Entire web pages can be saved using Evernote browser extensions. This includes text, links, and images. If you're an MS Outlook user (yes, that's a Windows product), then Evernote's Outlook extension can automatically capture all or part of any email. Similar to DoIt, there is, unfortunately, no native Linux version of Evernote available. But, similar to DoIt, Evernote installs and runs easily through Wine. There are also web and Android versions of Evernote.

Moneydance Once upon a time I was a user of the very popular personal financial software called Quicken for Windows. I used it for a number of years until, one day, the software notified me that I needed to download (and purchase) an upgrade version as my version was too old. As I had already been moving my personal computer activities to Ubuntu Linux, I decided to look for a good, free, financial package that would run on Windows and Linux. I looked at a number of different packages but none of them held my interest. In the end, I opted to spend some money and bought a commercial product. I cannot recall what I spent originally on Moneydance, but today it costs $49.99 (they also accept Euros and British pounds). The product works on Linux, MacOS, and Windows boxes (it's written in Java). I originally used Moneydance on a Windows laptop. When I switched to Linux, I only had to install the software on my Ubuntu machine (no extra cost for switching platforms), and copy my data files. It worked flawlessly. Today, I use Moneydance to manage my checking accounts, credit-card accounts, and investment accounts. I'm quite happy with the product; they update it fairly regularly.

Manilla Unfortunately, Manilla is available only for users in the USA (or who have financial accounts based out of the USA). This is a web-only based product, and so is platform neutral. Since their website says it so much better than I can, here is what they say the product does: “Manilla gathers all of the information you need to manage your bills and other important accounts, and puts it in one easy, organized overview, available 24/7. With one password, Manilla also lets you know when anything is coming due with automatic reminders. Say goodbye to hassles and late fees!”. Before Manilla, here is how I handled my credit-card, utility, and other bills: A bill would come in the mail (or via email). I would note the amount owed and when the “pay by” date was. My note would contain the bill account, amount, and “pay by” minus approximately 7 days. I would then use DoIt (see above) to note that I have to pay one or more bills by the date that I noted. It was clumsy but it worked. Then my wife and I built a second home in the mountains of Maine (where I tend to work from as much as possible). Now, I had the problem of having to forward my mail periodically. Just remember this: the best definition of the word “oxymoron” is the U.S. Postal Service. Too often, I would end up paying late fees. The mail wouldn't arrive on time, or I would forget to note the amount and date of when the bill was due. Manilla has made my life a lot easier.

The scary thing about Manilla is that you have to trust them, as you obviously have to give them your username and password - along with the answers to any and all challenge questions to all of your accounts. It doesn't work with all of my accounts (there are still 3 accounts I need to manage manually). But they now track my mortgage payments, all my credit-cards, gas, phone and electric utility bills (both homes), as well as my checking and saving account statements. What's really nice is that the statements or bills from each of these accounts can be stored indefinitely on their site. I no longer need to keep a paper copy in my file drawer. Nevertheless, I decided not to take advantage of this feature. I download all account statements (as pdf files) and store them inside of Evernote. By having an unique Evernote tag for each account, I can conveniently see all statements for a particular account with one click of the mouse.

Thunderbird For email, in my opinion, this is the best product available on the Ubuntu platform. I won't really discuss it much as so much information is available about Thunderbird. When I originally started using Ubuntu, my first email client was Thunderbird. So many articles spoke of the wonderful features of Evolution, I decided to give that program a try. I stuck with it for almost six months. In the end, the frustration factor was too high, and I switched back to Thunderbird. It's not perfect, but I use it for a significant amount of time each day, for both email activity as well as for reading RSS/ATOM feeds.

Dropbox This is such a cool app! It runs on Linux, Windows, Macs, and smart-phones. You define a special “dropbox” folder, and place whatever content you want into the folder. This can include pictures, documents, music, etc. Dropbox automatically synchronizes the equivalent folder on each computer that has Dropbox installed on it. For example, whenever I purchase an ebook, I place that book in a sub-folder of dropbox called “books”. I can then read that book from any of my computers including my Droid-X smart-phone. This way, I always keep my library with me. I also have a separate folder wherein I store the Password Safe / Password Gorilla database. So if I add a new entry on my personal computer, it will be automatically updated and made available on my work computer. Note that Dropbox is not inherently safe from prying eyes. I would not store any personal information in my Dropbox folder that is not encrypted by me. For example, I would not store my Moneydance database in Dropbox. There is also a limit as to how much you can store for free. By default, the limit is, I believe, 2GB. If you get other people to sign up, that amount will increase. For $99/year, you get 50GB.

Zotero I've been using Zotero for several years now. Zotero is a plugin for Firefox, Chrome and Safari, that captures any and all information about a web page. A new version of the application runs as a stand-alone program on all platforms, including Linux. As their website says, “Zotero collects all your research in a single, searchable interface. You can add PDFs, images, audio and video files, snapshots of web pages, and really anything else. Zotero automatically indexes the full-text content of your library, enabling you to find exactly what you're looking for with just a few keystrokes.” I frequently snapshot news articles using Zotero, knowing that the articles will soon-enough disappear from the hosting news site, and this will be the only way to keep copies of those articles. Six months ago, I discovered Evernote. Personally, I'm in a bit of a quandary, not really knowing if it still makes sense to use both Zotero and Evernote or not. They're both high-quality applications, and I'll leave it to the reader to decide which if not both applications to use. In summary, the above programs (in addition to Firefox) probably represent well over 90% of what I do with my Ubuntu-powered laptop. I hope at least one of these applications has piqued your interest and will also make your life a bit easier.

Since I can’t give away free party hats, or slices of cake, I thought I’d spend a page (or three) showing the process of how an issue of FCM is made. Week 1 - The Deadline Usually the first (or second) Sunday of the month is the writers’ deadline for the regular folks. But, roughly two weeks before the deadline, I send out my first nag-mail reminding writers about the deadline. I’m pretty sure it’s ignored, but I do it anyway. One week before deadline, I send out another nag-mail telling the authors that time’s getting on. I’m pretty sure they ignore this one too, but I can’t prove it. As time passes, I’ll start to get articles coming in. Not so much a gush, more of a trickle. I have to compile: I Think, Letters, Editorial, My Desktop, Closing Windows (just the Windows and KDE parts), and now the GIMP tutorial. Then, two days before deadline is my final nag-mail. It’s around about this time that the writers start panicking and email me their finest excuses about how the dog ate their laptop, or something similar.

Week 2 - The Proofreading Once I have all the articles, I put them in a folder on Google Docs and set the proof-readers loose on them. It’s usually messy, and it’s here that they catch who’s using UK spelling instead of US spelling (usually me), and who still doesn’t understand how to properly use a comma (me again). One week after releasing the proof-readers, they’ll have pored over the articles, fixed all the spelling snafus and grammatical goofs, and tweaked any sentences that need clarification. At this point I invite Jens and the translation teams to the Google Docs folder so that Jens can begin making the epub edition and the translators can begin translating the text while I’m making the PDF. Speaking of which…

Week 3 - The Scribus This is where Scribus comes into play, and I lose my entire weekend. I usually copy last month’s Scribus folder, rename it, and use it as a template for the new issue. I always start by editing the issue number, month, and year first, then start from Command & Conquer and work my way through the issue removing the old text, adding the new text, inserting images, formatting text, and generally trying to make things look pretty along the way. Along the way, I’ll take a rest from Scribus and head over to the Google Currents Producer page and import the articles from Google Docs into a Google Currents edition. This doesn’t take too long (couple of hours at most), and, once it’s done, I can queue it up for release on a particular date and time. Once I have a 90-95% complete PDF, I upload it to Crocodoc, and invite the proof-readers to a game of spot-the-inevitable-mistakes that I’ve introduced along the way. They’ll highlight text/sections which they see as needing fixes, and I’ll make those corrections before releasing the PDF.

Week 4 - The Release Once the PDF is 100% complete, and (hopefully!) free of errors, I’ll upload it to the FCM site and announce it to the world. First via the mailing list, which I hope you’ve all signed up for. Then, I’ll inform the Ubuntu News mailing list of the new arrival, which they put in the Ubuntu Weekly News. I then announce it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and on our Ubuntu Forums section. Once that’s done, there’s still work to do. I have to package up the Scribus files and put them out for our beloved translators to grab. By this time, they’ll have most of the text translated and begin their side of things, Jens will be busy with the epub, and I’ll go to Google Docs, create a new folder, and the whole process begins again…