Plaxo Toolbar for Outlook

I use Microsoft Outlook at work and at home for managing contacts, tasks and memos. I've tried various approaches to keeping these in sync. When I regularly carried a Palm, I would sync to the Palm from home and work. But this was inconvenient and I would often forget. I also tried Yahoo Intellisync for a time, but found it to be buggy, reporting errors that I couldn't trace down and fix.

After reading Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen, I began relying upon Outlook Tasks even more. So I needed to find a reliable approach to keeping these uptodate and in sync. I have been using Plaxo for a while to keep my address book uptodate, and discovered that their Outlook Toolbar allowed you to sync Outlook calendar, contacts, tasks and memos with the Plaxo server.

So by simply installing this both at work and at home, I am now able to keep in sync. So far I have found it to be 100% reliable, and have had none of the strange errors or duplicates that plagued me with both the Palm and Yahoo Intellisync approaches. At first I had it prompt me each time it wanted to create or delete an entry. But after a few weeks of never needing to correct it, I've since checked the box so that it can just go ahead without prompting.

I still sync separately with my Palm and my cell phone, but these are now 1-way synchronizations from Outlook to the device.

Digital Voice Memo Recorder

I wish I knew the brand/model of this device, but I bought it on eBay and it has no identifying marks. It says "Made in China" and "AG13x4" on the back (indicating it takes 4 x AG13 batteries), but nothing else. I've remove the batteries, and nothing under there either. I've even taken it apart, and there's no marks inside.

I've tried to find a supplier on the internet, but there's a million and one key chain voice recorders out there, and I wasn't able to find one that looked like this. So I'm going to write about it, but if you want one, the only thing I can suggest is trying the same eBay supplier. If you do happen to know the brand of these things, please let me know.

I was looking for a voice recorder for those occasions when I couldn't make notes in the small pad I carry for that purpose. For example, on my daily commute. I'm always thinking of things, and forgetting them by the time I get to my destination. Since I started following the organizational techniques in David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) I realized this was all the more important.

Digital Voice Recorders seem to fall into two categories. The $100+ professional models that can record hours, and the <$15 models that are integrated into key chains or pens and record <20 seconds. I just needed something that could record a few thoughts on the drive, so I didn't need the professional model. But some of the cheap models got really bad reviews about sound quality (for example, the integrated pen model that Radio Shack sell) and others only let you record a single memo.

This model let's you record multiple memos upto a total of 20 seconds. Voice quality isn't great, and a couple of times, when there's been a lot of background noise, I've not been able to tell what the message I recorded was :( But in general for what I wanted it for, it's been great. Very simple to use, with one button for play, and one button for record. They record one after the other, and there's a button for rewind to go back to the beginning to play or record over.

I don't know how long the batteries will last (no problems yet), but for what I wanted, it's been great. Just wish I knew what brand/model it was.