5 things 4 Things

As mentioned in my previous posts, I chose Cultured Code’s Things as my GTD tool. The Mac / iPhone combination makes it really versatile and after about a month of using it, I’m still loving it. Therer are, however, a bunch of improvements required for Things to become truly great. These are the 5 features I consider “must have”s. Everything else would just be “nice to have”s to me as of writing.

I proposed these features directly to Cultured Code. Since I want to share the ideas with you and maybe even get some reader feedback (a man can dream, can’t he?), here’s a copy of the eMails I sent to them (most important first).

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Digg.com feature idea: longish story filter

Just a quick little idea that crossed my mind, I can live without it but maybe it’s inspiring… and since Kevin Rose always claims his job evolves around new Digg.com features, this little idea is for him.

First off,

Digg.com’s technical abilities are awesome! Page crawling on submission, scanning for potential story images, guessing duplicates and what not. So that little feature shouldn’t be too much of a problem for the geniuses behind it… 😉

Alright so here’s the deal

Adding a filter for longish articles!

Detect an article’s length (either automatically or by letting the submitter graphically choose the div tag containing it), and compare it to a per-user-configurable length threshold. Articles exceeding that threshold are filtered. Add a quick on/off switch in a corner of the digg.com website and voila…

Why would I want to use that feature?

If you’re like me, there are days where you’re just lazy. On these days, I just have to open an article written in a small font, taking up more than a few screens and I’m out. So why not implementing a filter that does exactly this, right on digg.com?

iPhone Wishlist

Since Friday, I’m the official “iPhone User” at work. So it wasn’t long till someone here found an article entitled “50 reasons to back off of the iPhone” and sent it to me to hear my opinion about it. So I took all my Monday evening and commented on each of the author’s complaints.It’s in German but for the sake of completeness, here’s my response: 50-Gründe-widerlegt

Some of his points were simply wrong, others utopistic but with some he was totally right. That’s why I decided to wrap up the discussion and compile the iPhone users’ wish-list. Don’t get me wrong, personally I’m really satisfied with the iPhone, so this should just be an inspiration for Apple’s roadmap 😉

In no particular order:

• Copy & Paste / Clipboard
• Calendar alarms should recur until acknowledged by the user
  Currently, honestly, it’s too easy to miss them.
• Calendar event search function
  “When was that dentist appointment again?”
• Undo
  Ok, not a killer feature but would make sense in some cases.
• (More) direct File system access
  To save mail attachments or use the iPhone as a USB Drive (just like iPods)
• Syncing of Notes
• Video recording
  Ok, might be enabled by 3rd party Applications but should be an out-of-the-box feature, shouldn’t it?
• Add landscape support in more apps
  For some people, it’s more comfortable to type in landscape mode (bigger keyboard), so why would that feature by reserved to Safari?
• Option to always show today’s calendar events on the home screen
• Bluetooth stack should be more open / extended
  The iPhone should handle standardized Bluetooth devices like sound devices, other cellphones, computers in general etc.
• Realtime – Synchronization
  As long as the iPhone is connected to the Mac (/PC) through wire, changes on the Computer should be instantly reflected on the iPhone and vice versa. So if my iPhone has been connected for a few hours, I shouldn’t have to click “Sync” before disconnecting it to ensure that the data I have changed while the iPhone was connected is synchronized.

Digg if you agree 🙂