Wedoist is a very simple project management tool to organize and delegate tasks. It is developed by the creators of todoist, a personal todo-management tool. Currently wedoist provides just basic project management features like:

• Task managment
• Multiple user management
• Settings for tasks like delegate to a person, due date, comments
• Group chat
• Status updates of team members etc.

And even more: You can setup as many projects as you want for free. But if you pay 5 Dollar per month and project you get the feature to upload files and to apply them to single tasks and you are able to modify the interface style. Thats why wedoist is a Basecamp alternative for me.

Very simple, very effective. If you want to try wedoist, simply check it out here.

Mind mapping…

Mind map created with Mindmeister

And here is the reason:

Tony Buzan (“Speed Reading”) is the man who coined this technique, and he supports this type of information illustration in his statement that there are single connection points in each piece of information in our brains. The more connection points that are present (or one thinks of!), the easier it is for someone to remember that piece of information. Thus, mind mapping works well in putting information down on paper.

There are many opportunities to implement mind maps:

• Brainstorming
• Sketching/planning presentations
• Test preparation
• Recording meetings
• Creating weekly schedules
• Collecting ideas/planning outlines for blog posts

There are people who use mind maps as a daily to-do-list. That is a little too involved for me, though, because it requires several clicks on each platform before you can even get to the list. However, I use them, for example, to organize long and short-term goals.

Why Mindmeister?

Of course, it’s best to draw mind maps by hand, but that didn’t work out so well for me (it takes too long). So, I looked for a program to do it for me. I tested at least 10 tools and finally decided that I liked Mindmeister the best. Here are the reasons why:

Use – The functionality of the program is convincing. You can style the maps any way you like or add pictures and icons to make things easier to understand. You can also drag and drop individual points or the timeline of changes, and it also allows for the potential to export the maps, but more about that later.

Online, offline, and mobile – Mindmeister is primarily an online application—which, thanks to Google Gears, can also be used offline. On top of that, the iPhone app is useful, since it retrieves your existing maps and syncs them. The iPhone app is, of course, not very convenient to create large mind maps, but it’s enough to jot down a few ideas which you think of away from your computer.

Constant Updates – Mindmeister has been under constant development over the last 12 months since I began using the service, and their support system has answered quickly and provided helpful information.

Collaborative Work – Apart from being able to share your mind maps with others, it is also possible to work simultaneously with several people on one map. I often use Mindmeister with my wife to collect ideas for our online business or to plan vacations. Also interesting: In the platform itself there is a collection of all published maps on which you can participate (à la Wiki).

Export – Last but not least… You can easily export the mind maps you have created in many different formats: PDF, MindManager (mindjet), image files, text files, etc. There is pretty much every format you need.

By the way, Erica published a nice video about how to create mind maps with mindmeister.

What is not so great in Mindmeister?

What is missing for me in Mindmeister is the ability to modify mind maps to make them more comprehensive. One of Tony Buzan’s theories states that the connection lines between individual points should be the same as they are in your mind. This means that thoughts from “Level 1” to “Level 2” should have a thicker connection line than connected thoughts from “Level 7” to “Level 8”, since these ideas are farther away from the main idea. If the “branches” were represented in different colors, it would make the map much easier to understand.

There are still more functions in Mindmeister like the dashboard widget for Macs, API, e-mail to Mindmeister, etc. However, since I have yet to use these functions, I will not discuss them here.

Cost

Mindmeister provides a free account which allows you to create up to 3 maps – which is enough to test the service. If you want more, you will have to set up a paid account. At first I was reluctant to pay the approximately 5 dollar a month fee, but now that I use mind maps practically every day, I have no qualms with the price.

If you would like more information:
Try Mindmeister now

Or just write a comment with your question.

Reliable and free

First of all Gmail is a pretty cheap solution, it’s free. And it provides a lot of space, tons of features and is a reliable service. By using Google Apps for business you even can route all your emails directly to gmail and using your own URL in the e-mails address. There are two services: standard and premier. Use standard, it’s free too.

Labels, labels, labels

In our system we use labels to classify e-mails to whom they belong, if they are answered, resolved or urgent. The labeling makes it very convenient if you have several people who handle the customer requests. So you can create for example a label for “Billing” and then everyone knows which e-mails to process. At the end of the post you’ll see how to let Gmail label your mails automatically.

Canned responses

Usually a lot of people ask the same questions. A very big time saver to cope with that is the feature to insert predefined texts into an e-mail.

“Canned responses” is a feature of the Gmail labs. Simply enable it there and go to “Compose message” and write your first predefined text. As soon as you are done click below the subject field on “Canned responses” and choose “New canned response…”. That’s it, next time you want to use this text-snippet you can simply chose it from the “Canned responses” dropdown.

Filters – start to automate your customer support

Filters make Gmail very flexible. You can forward certain incoming emails directly to your account. Or you can mark messages “as read” that is useful if you receive automated messages from other sites like your autoresponder-system which is notifying you about new subscribers.

Magic labeling and answering

If you combine the labels together with filter, you will be able to define rules, which will apply the labels on mails with certain characteristics. By time you will see how your customers write and that will let you create rules for automatically labeling. For example you can create a rule to add the label “Finances” if an e-mail contains the phrase “refund”. Well, let’s hope you won’t get too many such e-mails, but you get the idea.

It is even possible to send automated responses after a certain filter rule has been triggered. So it is possible to send to every e-mail a message to confirm, that the request has arrived and that you will answer it within 24 hours or something like that. You are very flexible to create rules for all kinds of messages.

What are your experiences with customer support systems? Do you already use Gmail too?

Have you ever got lost while browsing online?

What happened?

Especially when you browse on portals like digg, Techmeme or similar sites with a wide range of topics it is very easy to get distracted and – click! – you are into something else, that you didn’t intend to do at first place and you begin to waste time.

Filter and outsource procrastination

A simple, but very effective method helped me to get out of this dilemma:
Always when I browse for information on certain topics I have an empty text file open in the background. And whenever I get tempted to check out a website, that has nothing to do with my current goal, I copy the URL or a thought right into this text file and release it out of my mind. And that works because I know that I placed the “interesting” distraction at a secure place and as soon as I reach my goal (the one I set at the beginning) I take the file and go through the list of the “distractions” with a guilt-free feeling.

There is also another method to “outsource” that problem. Read It Later is a service that provides you the ability to store website adresses into a list with just a click in the bookmark bar of your browser. And it is possible to read that list afterwards on your iphone or any other computer – even offline. Check it out too.

How do you avoid distractions on the net?

Link in the description text

Unfortunately, it is not possible to set direct links to external websites in Youtube videos. But it is possible to set a link in the description text. The best position for that is the beginning of the description text and if your description text is long enough it makes sense to add a link to your website at the end too.

Hint the link

Youtube allows to integrate interactive elements into a video after you’ve uploaded it. One is the speech bubble. It can – properly positioned – be used as an arrow so the user gets animated to click on the link in the description text. Of course it is crucial that it looks appropiate and appealing.

Here’s a 10 seconds sample video on youtube.

Of course this method has also a downside, if the video is embedded into a website or watched in HD on youtube, the visual hint to the link won’t work anymore:

But you get the idea.