Neat GTD App for Palm: NoteStudio

Despite the bashing Palm sometimes receives, including my recent comments, many people still use Palms effectively and, just like Windows Mobile and BlackBerry owners, like to have good time-management applications. Hence, this post.

In addition to my Dell x51v Pocket PC and T-Mobile Dash Smartphone, I still have a Palm TX. It is incredibly easy to use and it is reliable. Despite the negatives that have been put forth against Palm, at least the PIM is easy to use and the alarms always work. There have been times when the latter could not be said for Windows Mobile devices (every operating system seems to have its own set of problems). Here are some facts that I find interesting about Palms:

• When I first got my Treo 700w last year, I soon noticed that its alarms were not working. This is a problem that had existed with earlier versions of the Pocket PC operating system and I was infuriated that it crept back into a Windows Mobile device. Note: I’ll soon write a post on how to overcome the alarm problem with such devices.
• So, until I found a fix for the alarm problem on the 700w, I carried around my Palm TX to help ensure that meetings did not sneak up on me. This was especially important when I traveled as I would often have back one meeting after another for several days in a row.
• As I mentioned recently, David Allen, the king of GTD, still uses a Palm for managing his time.

Anyway, enough in defense of Palm, and on to a neat GTD application for Palms. I wish this application were available for Windows Mobile devices!

Here is a screenshot of NoteStudio:

The wiki-like interface makes this software easy to use and it enables you to have a huge repository of information at your finger tips. Just like with any wiki, all you have to do is click a hyperlink to go the subject of interest. If you want to look at your Projects list, just tap “Projects” and you would get something like the following screen:

Then, just tap the project you are interesting in viewing/updating, and you would get something like the following snap shot:

You can edit the “wiki” on either your desktop or on the Palm, and the material syncs nicely both ways. (You do have to set up the options to enable syncing of a particular “wiki” [or "book" as they are called in NS terminology], but that is just a matter of checking a checkbox.)

Another really neat feature: if you tap and hold (for a second or two) on a category, such as @Office, it will show you all the items in all projects that you have assigned to the that category. Pretty slick.

People have been begging the developer for some time to develop a Pocket PC version of NoteStudio. Not sure where he is at with this. There is a plugin to allow viewing of the “books” on a Pocket PC, but not editing. If you are a Windows Mobile developer, you might want to consider developing something similar to this neat application.

In my view this is a great GTD application. I’ve shown the bare bones of it, but if you really get into it, you can get a lot out of out. Very powerful application.

Your thoughts on this application? Any other really neat GTD applications you’ve seen for either Palm or Windows Mobile users?