elusivemind

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm a huge fan of Apple's Products. They're well thought-out, well designed, well executed, and the last a long, long time. I have an iMac, MacBook, iPhone 3G (iPhone 4 coming next week), and an iPad. Perhaps the product I had the most initial buyer's remorse over was the iPad.

I had heard all the criticism. Everything from "It's just a big iPhone" or "It doesn't have a desktop operating system" and even "it's too big". None of these kept me from standing in line with my 10 year old daughter to buy one the day it came out. It was only later that I questioned what I could do with an iPad. Sure it has some cool software on it that plays movies, takes notes, manages photos and allows you to read books - but none of those things were really all that appealing to me considering that I had all of that in an iPhone - and frankly didn't use it much there either.

It has only really been in the last few weeks that I have really tapped into the power of the iPad and I've come to realize that it isn't the device itself that is so revolutionary - but the innovation it unleashes in the way of third party products and services. Simply put - it's the apps stupid.

Of late, I have been inundated with work both at my regular job and with my freelance work. I've been loaded up to the gills working 10 - 12 - 14 hour days just to try and stay reasonably ahead of the curve on everything coming in. I really had no way, aside from email, to keep track of the numerous tasks, jobs and small jobs that had to be done as part of my day to day work life.

Trying to track tasks by email sucks. Your inbox becomes bloated, you have conversation chains of forwards and replies that take sometimes hours to sift through, you have conflicting messages from different sources related to the same project, to say nothing of the sheer volume of mail that comes to my mailbox on a daily basis. All I wanted was a place I could digest the tasks coming to me in a priority order, schedule them to be done on certain dates and let some program - ANY program do the work for me.

A search of the app store produced one of the singularly most useful organizational apps that I've come across in a long time: Toodledo. Toodledo is an iPad app that integrates with a web site portal to allow you to schedule specific tasks for specific dates and times and track whether or not they have been completed. You can even track the time spent on particular tasks (not something I use, as I have Cashboard). You can enter new tasks in the app or on the site and they will synchronize automatically.

When you have completed a task, check the box next to the task in the app and it marks itself as completed and removes it from the list. This is a tremendous way to see what tasks you have coming up, which have been done, and which are overdue. When taken to meetings, you can enter in new tasks, reliably provide supervisors with estimated completion dates and go over full project scheduling with a few gestures.

And at $2.99, the application itself more than pays for itself in terms of how much it will save your sanity. The web site portal is free (there is a premium version available at various yearly rates) and includes synchronization between the web site and the application.

This application has breathed a new sense of purpose into my iPad. Where as it spent many days in my bag unused, it has now become a central part to not only me regular work day, but to planning meetings, scheduling sessions and client lunches.

But there is more to life than work right? It's nice to have a device which can serve more than one master and that is exactly the case with the iPad and the applications you can buy for it.

For the last two months, I've been on an aggressive exercise regiment. Walking 4-5 miles a day on a treadmill and eating far less than I have in years past. Well it can be very boring walking on the treadmill. It used to be where I had to load TV shows or Movies on to my iPad to watch them while I was exercising, but those days are in the past thanks to AirVideo.