Blended Living

Gmail recently added a tasklist in their labs section.  Its a rudimentary attempt and is pretty good for a first try.  Its nice to have this every time you open your email.  With some time maybe they will integrate it better with the other tools available, like calendar, etc.

Remember the Milk, or RTM for short, is another free website to load all your tasklists.  It has a strong following, and if you use firefox there is a nice plugin to better integrate it with Gmail and Gcal. They also have a Pro version for $25 a year with a sync program for iPhones, Blackberries and Windows Mobile phones.

I’m fairly new to using an online tasklist consistently, as I have been using a combination of paper and PDA for this function, but realizing recently that I’m about 95% of the time within arms length of WiFi, I thought I’d try an upgrade. I like what I see with the combination/integration of RTM, Gmail and Gcal.  There are numerous keyboard shortcuts and some nifty features.  I’ll see how I feel after a month or so.  It should be easy to GTD-ify also.

I almost pulled the trigger on that Radio Shack deal for the Acer Aspire One netbook and ATT mobile broadband, but the $60 a month for 5GB data is just too limiting.  This however might be a sign of the future, subsidized tiny laptops, or netbooks with data plans.  Give me a more realistic data plan and I’ll be there to buy it.

Seeing that the news is replete with horrible economic news I thought to add some ideas for frugal fun.  Low or no cost activities to keep your mind sharp and off all of those layoffs and news of recessions.

I learned to play chess at around 5 and its been a game I return to now and then.  One day I’d like to get past my all time level (which is probably around the 16-1700 rating) and one exercise is to do chess problems.  There are thousands to choose from and they are categorized from Novice  through to Difficult and even Fiendish.

Chess problems

If you are new to the game here is a site that takes you from the very beginning: How to setup the board, what the pieces are, to how they move, to basic strategies and openings.

Have fun!

Want a radio station that caters to your musical tastes, exactly?  Well, there are a couple sites that I have played with a bit:

http://pandora.com

http://last.fm

Basically, you register, let them know what music you like, giving them artists and song names and they take it from there.  If they stray off your preferred musical highways, you let them know by clicking on the “ban this track” or “thumbs down” button.

Happy Listening.