Anyway, in my search for greater productivity, I came across a couple of great little apps and programs and tools and I thought I would recommend them for anyone who is into that kind of thing.

ReQall
The first is Reqall, which you can get at www.reqall.com and which has a great accompanying iphone application, which is also great. It’s effectively a speech to text to do list. SO, you open the app, click + and say “Reminder to call John about new song today at 4pm” – It uploads the audio to the interweb somewhere, then it sends you and email of what you have said and adds it to your to do list as text. Put on push notifications and you get a reminder half an hour before your task is due and you can also set it to send you and email or text reminder. Genius. The only problem I have with the whole thing is that syncing between other things like google calendar or pocket informant. It now syncs with google calendar, but only syncs about once an hour, and only to-do’s with specific times are synced. So if you have a general to do, it doesn’t but if you have a to do due tomorrow at 4pm, then it goes into your google calendar as an appointment. That bit is a bit frustrating, but otherwise this is a must have productivity app in my book. I bought the pro version (because I’m a sucker like that) and also downloaded the firefox toolbar plugin which is handy as fook!!

If you have an iphone, go get this now!

Dial2Do
I have to say, this service absolutely blew me away. Go to www.dial2do.com and sign up for the free version and you get 30 days free of the full pro service. It’s supposed to be a hands free assistant, again in the speech to text vein that Reqall above is. How this works is that you set up your account online, and then you’re given a local number to call in Ireland when you want to do something. You can write emails, send texts, update facebook and twitter, listen to emails and texts, all kinds of things. There is a huge amount of intergration with other websites and services also.

I was sceptical, but used it to update this blog (test posts, which I have now deleted), update twitter and send an email and it worked perfectly. If you go to their website you will be able to see exactly how it works and watch an example video (the company is Irish and the girl in the video looks very familiar, must know her from somewhere). But you basically call the local Dublin number from the mobile number you have registered with. The computer voice goes “What do you want to do”, You say “Update twitter” or “text orla” or “email paul” or whatever you want to do, then it says “Start after the beep” you say whatever you want to text, email or update, then it goes “that is done, now what would you like to do” and that’s it!!! And it works. Perfect if you’re on the road a lot and have a car kit (which I now have). I’m not sure about it’s uses outside of a hands free environment, but I just couldn’t get over the technology and how well it worked, I highly recommend giving it a go.

The only problem with dial2do, and every other comparable service I have found, is the time restriction. I was hoping that I could use dial2do to update my blog with posts like this one, but unfortunately the most audio you can use is 30 seconds, which is fine for updating twitter and sending a text, but means very short emails and blog posts. I am going to email the company to see if there is any reason this 30 seconds couldn’t be a few minutes, or whether it is purely a monetary issue.

What I would love to find is a speech to text program that meant I could use my iphone in the car to effectively dictate blog posts during my commute into and out of work. Dragon Naturally Speaking have a new ihphone app, but it’s only available in the states, and jott.com is similarly also only available in the states and canada. If anyone knows of any good speech to text programs and apps please let me know!!

Other names that pop up a lot when talking about productivity are Toodledo and Evernote – I saw Graham Linehan on twitter saying that once he got into Evernote he thought it was amazing. Neither have done it for me yet, but to be honest I’m trying not to spend much time getting to grips with them so I can spend my time doing what I’m supposed to be doing to start with, like typing this!!