Jewish World Review March 14, 2003 / 10 Adar II 5763
By Mark Kellner
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
It's estimated that between five and six million people carry a paper-based
Franklin Planner, the paper-based tool that lets you schedule your life,
track your goals, keep up with contacts and so forth. Those users can be
found in eighty-two of the Fortune 100 companies, more than two-thirds of
the Fortune 500 companies, and dozens of government agencies and non-profit
groups.
After today, it's a mystery to me why anyone would want to do this ever
again.
That's because FranklinCovey (stet), the company behind the system, is
releasing version 2.o of its "TabletPlanner" (stet) software, a $170 program
that incorporates all the features of the paper Planner, links to Microsoft
Outlook, and runs on a Tablet PC, allowing you to digitally "ink" entries
and either index these or - voila! - translate them into electronic text.
Put another way, who needs paper?
That may seem like a bit of hyperbole, but think about it: Tablet PCs, the
devices pioneered by Microsoft Corp. and now being sold by a number of
hardware makers (Acer America, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP and Toshiba among them).
The devices feature a version of Microsoft Windows XP that allows for pen
input - using a special stylus - and FranklinCovey is taking full advantage
of this to create a digital version of its popular paper product.
While Tablet PCs aren't as thin as a legal pad (in some cases), and
certainly weigh more than paper, having built-in wireless communications,
they are still lighter than my paper Franklin Planner, and yet can do a lot
more. For besides running the TabletPlanner software, of course, the devices
also run the full range of Microsoft Windows applications, and can work
wirelessly in offices equipped with IEE 802.11b (and, now, 802.11g)
networks.
The new TabletPlanner software, available today (March 11) for purchase and
download from www.tabletplanner.com, offers number of advantages over the
paper version. Like most daily planers, there's a page for tasks and
appointments, and one for notes. In the paper version, you'd need to add
pages to add notes; the TabletPlanner software lets you have an almost
endless supply of note pages for any day, limited only by your PC's hard
drive capacity. For those of us who use a day planner as a journal of
important items, this is a vital feature.
Equally valuable is the way the "daily task list" is handled by the
software. Assign a priority to your task - the most important is "A1," the
least important, "C3," let's say - and you will see the software sort those
tasks in order. Check one off the list, and a small line through it appears;
gimmicky, perhaps, but also very satisfying.
You can enter, or edit, contacts and appointments using your handwriting and
have the system "read" and translate your entry into computer-usable text,
which in turn can be synchronized with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft
Exchange-based systems. You can link an appointment to a contact or to-do
item, and you can drag-and-drop a to-do into an appointment, which is a
rather neat trick. The result: a more concrete, easy-to-follow record of
your daily work, one which is tracked electronically, and which can be
backed up and stored on a CD-ROM for future reference.
Another advantage found in the new software is the ability to import, index,
highlight and store a variety of documents, including Adobe PDF files, for
use as part of your daily work. These could be articles, policy manuals,
price lists, what-have-you, but now they're accessible electronically and
quickly.
Up till now, I've had to assemble my Franklin Planner with paper, ink and a
seven-hole paper punch. What's more, it seems as if the "Monarch"-sized
planner I prefer (8-1/2 by 11 inch page size) seems to be slipping away from
the FranklinCovey product lineup. But no matter: the screen of the Tablet PC
is comparable to a letter size sheet of paper (albeit a tad smaller), and
one can print pages, if desired, on letter-sized paper.
While there will probably be further enhancements to the software
-"sharpening the saw" is a FranklinCovey maxim - this is one application
which not only is a really useful tool, but also demonstrates why the Tablet
PC has a bright future, in my opinion.
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JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here.
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