WordPress for the iPod Touch and iPhone is now available and I’m using it for this post.

The software seems quite polished without being overly complicated. The software enables offline writing (for out of range iPod or roaming iPhone users), tags and categories are no problem. The only limitation I have found so far is that photographs seem only to appear at the bottom of the page.

As I noted on other posts (ah, just realised hyperlinks and pings are not straight forward), I quite like the idea of blogs or diaries for encouraging and sharing critical reflexivity when traveling, especially on field trips and other academic excursions.

More than this, with most modern phones having quite good sound and image capture a whole stream of citizen journalist activities is enabled. It will be interesting to see how they develop.
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PS: Tapping away on the bus is a tad frustrating.

I have spent some time this last week thinking and playing with to-do list management methods and software (and, perhaps more importantly, thinking about how to manage different tasks across different projects).

I have for some time been using OmniFocus. The application builds on the (famous) “getting things done (GTD)” method of having contexts for work and projects. I’m experimenting with the method in a slightly unusual way, having created a number of contexts that relate to my mode or mindset for work (such as administration, teaching and research) or personal activities (such as shopping (for grocery and household goods).

These contexts contain activities that i can do in clusters reasonable efficiently (e.g., admin typically contains tasks that I can do at home or office, on the computer with each requiring relatively little concentration). Teaching tasks are much the same, but require a different mindset (focused on pedagogy, use files in a different part of my computer, etc). Some projects require tasks to be undertaken sequentially others in parallel and this can me noted.

For each context, I am developing a view (or perspective) so that they are grouped and sorted in logical bundles (with admin sorted by due date, research by project, shopping by category of goods, etc).

I am also trying the iPod Touch / iPhone version of the software, which syncs with the copy on my Mac so that I have my to-do list with me to add tasks and mark them as complete as necessary.

I have yet to fully explore the follow-up capabilities. This is important when we either depend on others’ actions before we can continue, or where we need regular contact with people (who are likely to be as busy as we are). I have marked some activities as periodic, so I’ll see how that works.

I wandered to the local o2 store today to get an iPhone. I was reasonably keen to get one because I have been without a mobile for some weeks (my Nokia keyboard died while I was in India after some months of misbehaving) and have put off replacing it waiting for the new iPhone.

The store was due to open at 8:02 AM and I got there about 30 minutes early. I was the sixth person in the queue. About 10 more arrived after me. About one third of them already had iPhones and were, I think, upgrading to 3G and GPS.

However, the systems failed to operate. Only two customers managed to leave the store with their iPhones (after about 30 minutes) after being processed manually (i.e., paper forms and phone calls) before the store stopped processing all iPhone sales. In addition, there was no stock of 16GB iPhones (some customers appeared to have reserved them earlier in the week). My name was taken and I have been promised a call when 16GB models are in stock and the systems are running.

I’ve also been trying to get a BT line for my broadband (I like to use Zen Broadband, which runs over BT, because they offer public IP addresses) . Unfortunately, its impossible to know how this is progressing, BT’s ordering system was down Saturday through to Tuesday. I placed the order anyway (I presume they simply noted my details). Today (this is now 7 working days since the system went down), I called and the ordering system was still not available to check on the status of my order.

It doesn’t give one much faith.