At Fri, 8 Jan 2010 14:45:58 +0000, Chris G wrote:
Yes, I know that's a bit of a broad requirement! :-)
I'm after an application of some sort that will help me keep track of what I suppose is a project (buying a boat in France). I'm open to any sort of idea really as, at the moment, I'm a bit lost as to how to do it.
Straightforward calendar applications don't quite cut it as I want it to be a bit more 'textful' than that, I also want easy ways to link to web pages and other information. I might be persuaded that something like Sunbird/Lightning or evolution is the way to go though. Can one put links into sunbird entries?
A blog *might* do what I want but I need easy ways to search and/or browse through entries by date and a way to remind myself to do things. I don't think blogs usually allow one to create future entries and or planning sections do they?
I suppose a project planning utility might be what I'm after but they often seem a bit too much oriented towards large multi-person projects. I will go and do some looking on this front though as it isn't a way I've thought of going before.
My biased opinion would be org-mode http://orgmode.org/. It's very "textful" (as you put it) and doesn't impose many restrictions on how you organise your stuff. Essentially, you just make (structured) lists and can tag items. Org-mode provides built-in semantics for tags which are dates (scheduling or deadlining), and for TODO and DONE statuses. It also provides methods for viewing and searching your notes based on various criteria (such as date, TODO status).
You do need to be quite comfortable with Emacs, but that's never a bad thing.
There are numerous tutorials available, including one by me! It covers Emacs, org-mode, David Allen's "Getting Things Done" method, and using org-mode for GTD. http://musariada.mus.uea.ac.uk/~richard/orgmode-gtd.pdf