Some tasks like getting a man to the moon are complicated and the systems needed to accomplish them are complicated. But some things, like keeping track of the things you need to do, are not complicated and the software you need to manage them should also be uncomplicated. ToDo from Omicron Software Systems is just that kind of software, uncomplicated.

The basic functionality of ToDo is simple. Create multiple lists of items. Each item can have a priority from 1-10 or can be marked as done. Lists are kept sorted by priority with different color priority numbers marking high, medium and low priorities. You can quickly re-prioritize or select items using keyboard shortcuts. You can also drag items from one list to another in this clean Cocoa interface. If it did nothing else ToDo would be useful.

But ToDo has just a few more tricks up its sleeve. If you want to see what your top priorities are across all your projects you can click on the ToDo icon on the dock which will display a list. You can use that menu to navigate to the todo items. The menu can be displayed in one of 5 different formats.

You can import your existing todo items from iCal to get started. Registered users (the program is $15 as shareware) can also download “ToDo X to iPod Notes” to synchronize their todo list with their iPod and a script called “Mail to ToDo X” that will allow you to turn an email into a todo item.

One of the programs that I keep on my doc that is very helpful in updating my blog and my podcast with pictures is a simple and free program called ImageWell from Xtralean Software. ImageWell is a simple image editor that lets you resize, annotate, edit, resize and publish images.

Simply drag an image onto the ImageWell icon and it will open up the program’s small main window. This window let’s you rename, resize and publish an image. Images can be published to a folder or a web site. To publish to a web site the web site needs to support FTP or WebDav (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) formats. ImageWell can also publish the image to your .Mac account. When you send the image to your web site the HTML to display that image is added to the clipboard:

<img src="http://chris2x.com/wp-content/test.jpg" width="320" height="240"/>

You can go and paste that code into your blog or other HTML document. If you are adding this picture to a discussion board instead, you can also configure the program to send the bbcode style syntax used by many discussion boards (such as the Amateur Traveler Podcast forum):

[img]http://chris2x.com/wp-content/test.jpg[/img]

ImageWell will also allow you to edit the image before publishing. You can crop, add text, add comic strip style caption balloons, add arrows or annotations.

ImageWell can also rotate, add shape masks like a heart (not quite as useful for your blog unless you are a 14 year old girl) and/or add a watermark.

ImageWell is not PhotoShop and will not replace it for general purpose photo editing but when you want to quickly publish a photo to your web site and reference it from an HTML document or a discussion board few programs will compete with the ease of use of ImageWell.

What do you do when you have a lot of little pieces of information: passwords, notes, ideas of what to blog for MacCast, show ideas for your podcast, frequent flyer numbers, receipts, etc. The shoe box under your bed has gotten full and using the Stickies application only gets you so far. One option for managing this collection of information is SOHO Notes from Chronos. SOHO Notes is an updated version of an older program from Chronos called Sticky Brain.

The simplest way to put information into SOHO Notes is to open up the application, choose a folder in your hierarchy and then select new note. You can then find this note again by browsing the hierarchy of folders you have created or by searching for it (very quickly) from the SOHO Notes search icon on the menu bar of your Mac (or using Spotlight). So far so good, but not worth the $40 that this program will cost.

But SOHO Notes will allow you to store and retrieve more than just rich text notes. You can also store bookmarks, web archives, PDFs, images, movies, audio, and other attachments. But, you say, I can already create all of those types of files in the file system and search for them using spotlight. Go ahead say it, I’ll wait.

Here is what SOHO Notes adds:

• The ability to publish to blogs that support the Atom API (e.g. Typepad, Blogger)
• A dock that sits on the right side of your screen in a drawer that can be opened or closed to get pieces of information into or out of SOHO Notes simply
• The ability to sync notes to your iPod and/or Palm
• The ability to set alarms on particular notes
• The ability to sync this information to multiple Macs using a .Mac account
• SOHO Notes can be used as a shared server on your local LAN for a multi-user database
• Notes can be made private to protect them with a password
• Notes can be linked to other related notes
• Notes can be linked to a person or company in your Address Book

SOHO notes is not a perfect solution. It lacks some things I would like in a personal information manager like prioritized lists and integration with the calendar (which Chronos does using a separate package called SOHO Organizer). The interface for linking a note to a person is not intuitive. You open up a Address Book browser and can link or create new notes from that window. But if you need some help getting yourself organized SOHO Notes can be a powerful tool.

One of the utilities that I wonder how I ever got along without is called Jumpcut by Steve Cook.

My day job is working for an internet company so I live in my browser for hours and hours everyday. I am constantly copying or cutting and then pasting a piece of information from one place to another or more likely more than one piece of information. For example, before Jumpcut if I had 3 pieces of information to copy from someplace into a form I would have to do this one piece of information at a time, often switching windows or applications in between. Jumpcut lets me paste in any of the last 25 things that I cut or copied into the clipboard. Instead of doing a paste with command-V, I use control-option-V to pop up a transparent overlay that shows the current clipboard. If I hit the arrow keys while continuing to hold down the control and option keys then I can scroll through any of the last 25 clipboards. When I am done, I have pasted the information and also changed the current contents of the clipboard.

The following video shows how Jumpcut works:

Jumpcut is free. Get your copy here.

iPodulator Pro 2 from ThePlaceforitAll.com is an application for taking content form a variety of sources and making them available as Notes on your iPod.

The interface for the program is fairly simple to use although not rising to the level of elegant. The first thing you do is change your iPod settings so that it can be used as a disk and then select that volume from iPodulator.

Then using iPodulator you can add in content from either:

• a webpage
• an RSS feed
• an individual note
• one of a series of text based quiz games included with the program

iPodulator can be set to update at a particular interval to fresh more recent content from the webpages and RSS feeds selected.

Since the iPod has a length limit for notes, larger pieces of information (like loading in the latest MacCast website) will be broken into a series of notes:

Clicking on one of these notes form the iPod (shown here on a nano) will bring you into a simple text based note.

The advantage of having some information as close as my iPod is immediately obvious to me, even if what data I would want to carry with me and what the best source of that data is not. With my involvement in a travel podcast I can imagine carrying information about online travel guides, current exchange rates, etc. Your preferred data set will no doubt vary.

Is iPodulator Pro 2 worth the price being charged for it? Well, currently the price is free so I think the answer to that would have to be yes. What data would you carry on your iPod?