Topic: Mobile version?

I’ve put together a mobile-web optimized interface to Highrise using the API. It’s called WhoBook

It provides access to your Highrise contacts, companies, and tasks via mobile-web and SMS.

Try it out (it’s free forever) and let me know what you think.

Topic: I Want Sandy

Big +1 for me on this one. I posted something similar a while back in regards to adding reminders via SMS. But email would work equally as well. I absolutely LOVE the way Backpack sends me reminders. I just wish it were easier to get them IN to Backpack.

Especially for mobile users…a quick SMS containing something like “r: go to the store 2/24 9am”, or a quick email with a subject of “Reminder” and a body of “go to the store, tomorrow 9am” would be so much easier than having to always access via the web, use the menus, etc…

Topic: I Want Sandy

Me too.

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

I solved this problem (nearly) using the API – what I did was set up a script that sits on my own server and basically trawls each page in my account for a list called ‘next actions’ and prints out all the ‘open’ items in that list. It would probably be horrible to run on an account with lots of pages, but it does what i need it to do.
I did a little fiddling to print out links to the project page, if you were feeling extra adventurous I guess you could add basic editing features to check things off or whatnot, but if you are doing a lot of this kind of thing you might be better off with a basecamp account?

Topic: Alphabetize lists

Perhaps a sort function would be in order. Like alpha, and reverse alpha.

Topic: Alphabetize lists

I agree! Also would be great to be able to show a “contents” at the top of a page

Topic: Mobile version?

An iPhone or any mobile interface would be welcome soon since this has been a topic of request since March…come on 37s, we need it now:)

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

I posted a feature request: http://forum.37signals.com/backpack/forums/18/topics/4199 to get an open task query.

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

YinHong, thanks for your tip.

Unfortunately it does not work for me. I’ll post a feature request for showing all open actions.

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

Rheuven – this seems to be clearly a problem with Backpack’s fundamental search function. I guess we will have to wait for it to be fixed.

However, in the meantime, I’ve found that by going to the Page(s) (its not normally more than 2) where the search hasn’t revealed the next actions, it somehow rebuilds the search index and Backpack’s search function will then find them all.
It might not work for you, but it’s worth a try.

Topic: Mobile version?

Hi there. You may remember me as the guy in previous posts championing the idea of a mobile version for use on a Treo. I was dead set against the iPhone, swore I wouldn’t get one. I went into the Apple store in Pentagon City last weekend and was blown away by it. I bought one and couldn’t be happier. I do miss the “Documents to Go” on the Treo, but not as much as I thought I would. (For reading email attachments, the iPhone is much, much better.) Other than that, it’s an amazing device. Best of all, the phone works beautifully. Simple and elegant, but with so many helpful features that I had third-party apps on my Treo trying to do (often unsuccessfully). IMAP email works great. With WIFI, I’m getting good speeds on internet, and cannot believe I tried to use the Treo for web tasks. Reception on AT&T has been better than expected.

Sooo – I love the iPhone optimized version of Ta-Da Lists, and while I can access Highrise nicely on the iPhone, an optimized site like Ta-Da Lists would be even better, mostly for the tasks.

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

I like GTD and I like backpack so I love to ocmbine the two. I have separate project pages, so getting all on one page by searching a searchstring sounded good.

I prefixed all individual actions with “NXAC”. Great. Now when I search it still doenst give me all my next actions… I get bits of the actions and not all of them.

Topic: Mobile version?

+1 for iphone interface and a separate stripped-down “baby”-interface for others.

OT: but campfire desperately needs some updates for iPhone, at least formatting so we don’t need to resize. (it wants its own forum as well.)

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

I’ve just found the problem with search too – its not always completely accurate. I too hope that this gets fixed soon.

Regarding problems 1 and 2, I have started to implement this solution: Instead of having a list called “Next Actions” with a number of next action items, I have started to prefix each individual next item within the list with NA, which stands for Next Action.

Using this method, bringing up your complete list of next actions merely requires changing your search string from “Next Actions” (without quotes) to “NA”. This should solve problem 1 -since no matter how long your next actions list per project, if every one is tagged, then it’ll bring it up; and problem 2 – since you probably don’t have any other places where you have NA by itself, thus only the relevant matches will be shown.

2 things to note:

1. This may seem cumbersome at first, to prefix all your next actions, but it is more than worth it in my opinion. Plus, it’s only two letters!
2. If you like using Covey’s four quadrant system – Important and Urgent, Important and Not Urgent, Not Important and Urgent, and Not Important and Not Urgent – you can easily extend this by changing the prefixes to NAIU, NAIN, NANU and NANN. This is what I do, since I like to filter by the Urgent stuff and Important stuff.

Topic: Mobile version?

+1 for a mobile interface… Or heck even a few tweaks to make the site at ALL usable on smartphones.
I use my BlackBerry Pearl for web surfing all the time (am writing from it now, actually!), often using Google’s mobile parser to render most pages I need to visit quite usable.

The problem with accessing Highrise is that even when I navigate to the contacts page, it is cumbersome because I cannot use the Ajax search. Thus the only way to find a contact is to scroll and scroll and scroll, or use the blackberry browser’s own text finder… If the contact is on that page of course.

Even the simple addition of a by-letter classification like you’ll find in.. Oh… Every other contact manager ever created… would make this type of task doable in a pinch on web-capable phones like the BB.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Highrise, and we pay for it, but business people are mobile and we should be able to access our HighRise info on the go. IPhone users, as a previous poster can attest, do not have the problems we have accessing the site because it runs a mini version of safari. Much better spent resources in this space would have been to create an interface that is semi mobile accessible for the rest of us (the majority.)

Cheers

Topic: Mobile version?

+1 iPhone

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

Update:

Now I tried it and so far, so good. The ability to search for newly entered items seems quite good (almost immediately), and I found all my test items.

Two problems, though:

(1) You get only a part of longer lists displayed as a result. Usually you shouldn’t have lots of items in your next actions list per project or context (I use a mix of context and project pages), though, so that’s probably of minor importance.

(2) When I looked for “waiting for:” (without the quotes), I got the desired results. Looking for “next actions:” (without quotes), however, gave me way too many hits, since those words are to be found in lots of places. Looking for “next actions:” with quotes gave me no results at all. So I resorted to add a unique abbreviation to each list (NXAC, WTFR) to make the search results more specific, which seems to work well.

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

This sounds like a wonderful idea.

However, search has always been broken in my account. It misses a lot of items, most notably ones that have been there for a long time. I also don’t know how often the index is rebuilt.
I might try your suggestion, but doubt that it works reliably.

I’ve seen several comments about search not working correctly in the past, but no announcement of a solution by 37s. I wish search would be fixed, or at least there were an option to re-index everything (maybe that could solve the problem).

Topic: Mobile version?

Just stumbled upon this (probably long-stale) thread.

For what it’s worth, I really don’t even think Highrise needs an iPhone version. It’s already quite useful on the iPhone as it is now. I can do everything in Highrise that I can do on the desktop, on the iPhone. It’s by-far one of my most-used iPhone “apps”. Great job on making it that way 37Signals.

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

Hi bob. I have a dedicated page for every project. In it, I have the usual things: a “Next Actions” list; “Waiting for” list; general notes etc.

To get a consolidated Next Actions list, I merely search for “Next Actions”, and the search page brings up all the places in my backpack where I have written “Next actions”.

Try it for yourself. You’ll see how easy it is.

You can obviously do the same for your waiting for lists too!

Topic: Mobile version?

FYI: The first place we’ll be focusing on mobile access will likely be for the iPhone.

Any progress?

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

This sounds great – exactly what I want. Can you explain more – I don’t follow

Topic: GTD - Seeing all your next actions in backpack!

One of the problems I’ve had in the past with implementing GTD using Backpack is that it’s hard to see ALL of your next actions, by context in one place. I have a next actions list for all of my projects, and I always wished that I could just get one master list of ALL my possible next actions, preferably by context. One solution I tried was to copy and paste each one into a master list, but this became particularly error prone for a forgetful person like me.

But in a rare spark of intelligence, I’ve just discovered (or more accurately, realised) that I can actually see all of my next actions, filtered by context, in one simple to view ‘list’, without creating a new page just by using the built in search function. All I have to do is search for “Next Actions context” and boom – all of them in front of me.

One neat thing is that since the search function returns the page title and text surrounding the string you searched for, most of the time you can actually see what project the Next action belongs to. And the next actions are clearly highlighted in yellow, so its easy to scroll through and pick!

Now I don’t have to worry about where I put my next actions – they could be as a note or a list. Its immediately so much more flexible than I could ever have dreamed of. Organic brilliance by 37Signals.

p.s. If everybody does this already, excuse me – I couldn’t find anybody writing about it online!

Topic: Mobile version?

Mobile Highrise is here with nContxt.

You can access your Highrise content from any phone with a browser.

It’s free for the 1st week, and $5/month afterwards. Info and screenshots available here.

Topic: Mobile version?

Regarding Open Door and Park Place. Park Place does not work for me, I think the developer is still finishing the product. Is there anyone using Open Door successfully?