Improving on a to-do list

Tags: Design,  Mobile applications
August 22, 2005 by Barbara

Lately I've started using Life Balance, a sophisticated task list that helps users understand where their time is going and keeps different aspects of their life in balance. It is available in Palm, Windows, and Mac versions, and the mobile version will synchronize with the desktop version.

There are lots of reasons why this software is becoming an intimate part of my life, largely surrounding the concepts of nested task items, prioritization, fuzzy task duration, and tasks that may be without due date, recurring every so often, or due at a specific date and time. However, this is a blog about mobile technology, so I won't wax poetic too much on the feature list.

What is amazing from the mobile front is that I am currently using a PDA (a Palm LifeDrive) - one without a phone in it - and I still find myself going to my PDA all the time. For me, it's a killer app. I imagine that others would find an excellent music player to be a killer app, but that's not me.

I look at my PDA maybe 50 times a day. This usage has spilled into other places - once I've picked up my PDA to look at Life Balance, I am likely to use one of the other applications on it. Because I'm going to be carrying the thing around, I bothered to load my daughter's pictures on it. I even loaded a toddler game on it for emergency entertainment. Now my daughter wants to look at my PDA when she sees me pick it up.

Perhaps carriers should take note: if you make the phone indispensible for a product or service that is not your money-maker, your other services will get a boost in use.


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