Hello, readers. I want you to know that what may have already been obvious to you. I have been on a vacation from this site. The time away has proved useful and I am very excited about what it will allow me to share with you. I still have a Palm TX in a double holster with my iPhone but being a Palm blogger nowadays is like being a realtor selling a house for market value.

However, I know we are all in this together & life doesn’t stop and neither do the opportunities for productivity. Prepare for a ramping up of little activities here on this site to consolidate, simplify, enhance and entertain.

Contrary to what you may (or may not) have thought I have actually expanded my blogging and productivity research. I have created several other blogs and am now circling back like an eagle to put my eagle eye focus on this site. Among the projects I have started is the iphoneorganized.com site which I have mentioned here already. I also started an X Files Music & Video as an outlet for my love of the show and upcoming sequel called TheXVideos.com. I also started a general purpose productivity blog to cover items not specifically related to PDA devices. I have a long term project at forgettingthingsdone.com. Also a mini blog project called GettingThingsTerminated.com.

I have also become fast friends with a Movie Soundtrack blogger at SoundtrackGeek.com and I guest posted for his retro Wednesday Post for the Real Genius Soundtrack even creating the you tube video preview of songs.
You can find it here Real Genius review

I still have lots of productivity surprises in my bag of tricks and expect to be unfolding them as soon as I can so the creative flow continues to flow. I am happy to say I still receive emails almost daily for the template. I have an iPhone project that rivals what I have done with the Bonsai template and want to get this out before the SDK officially takes hold in June with the App Store.

One last thing before I end this post, Thank You. Thank you for helping to make this blog what it is. Thank you for indulging my cinematic licenses and crazy personality. Thank you for your readership and support.

View Photo Slideshow

Update: 8/21/2007-No Desktop! No Problem! PDB Version now available for Palm Only Users. Just request it.

Bonsai is a Palm program by a company called Natara. You can find it at Palmgear.com and download a free trial. Bonsai is what you would call an outliner program. An outliner displays information in a tree-view or explorer-view like interface. There are a few really good ones out there for the Palm but I happen to think Bonsai is the best. Do not underestimate their power as I have taken the time to read manuals for programs like this that can reach over 150 pages. I’ve researched quite a few outliners & you need not look further than Bonsai if you use a Palm.

What I will do here is “outline” a way to implement GTD (Getting Things Done) using Bonsai. This is what I believe to be an almost flawless implementation that with upgrades to its features that I’ve already made to the Natara Forums will take it to a whole other level beyond what already is an amazing resource.

This is the start screen on the desktop. Peaceful in its simplicity yet it holds all of your Next Actions, Calendar Events, Project Actions, Ticker file, and Someday/Maybe items. In fact, all your contexts are created without using Categories, Filters, or even Keywords. This now means that you have the freedom to use them in other ways to customize your outline to your liking. You are not limited to 16 categories, hard to access keywords, or complex filters that are difficult to create. How is this even possible? This is all now possible because of a little feature suggestion of mine that got implemented that allowed for Zooming in & out on the 5 way navigator.

The “context parents” which before would have cluttered your list are no longer an issue when you Zoom into them. This frees you from a 16 category limit because you can create as many 2nd level “context parents” as you want. This also frees you from dialogue boxes you’d encounter with filters and keywords. This system allows for quick one handed operation on the palm when you’re navigating using the 5 way.

Filters can now be powerfully used to augment the added Calendar heading. If you can keep your actions and events together, why not do so? Viewing your list using flat list filters and zooms makes adding more headings and items a non issue. You can see I leverage time in my use of filters.

How do I handle someday/maybe items? Very simply by using the start date attribute. I can set the start date for a someday / maybe item for 6 months from now. Six months later it will show up in a either a this week or next week filter. However, just like in the previous picture I can create headings to group items and yet all headings disappear when the list is filtered. How about alarms and the fact they are missing in Bonsai? I simply link out to date book and set the alarm there for only the current week. If I use “Back to Bonsai” I can easily jump back and forth.

How are project actions managed? How can this system be used to track projects and their actions that can come from multiple contexts? Well, I have a project myself and that project involves this very blog. Beyond what I have written here I have written a full description of this system with all the specifics inside a Bonsai Outline. You can import it into your Bonsai Desktop and then synchronize your palm and have an actual template to create from. It’s free and all I ask is that you leave a comment. I’ll send you the outline by email. Your email is not used in the comments at all and remains private. I will also add you to my weekly (once a week email) newsletter which you can unsubscribe from at any time. If you would not like to be on the newsletter just send me a reply email telling me so when I send you the outline.

Your participation will help to create a lively interaction and sharing of ideas. Leaving a comment will allow me to update you on my blog as well as send you this Bonsai Outline Template. If you use the Natara Forums you will know me by my Username Fox Mulder as someone who contributes to the community and not some spammer. I participated there for 3 months before I started this blog. You will even find my site listed on the Bonsai Page at Natara.com

If you’d like the outline just leave a comment. I’ll assume you want it. If you only want to leave a comment then let me know not to send the outline and I won’t. Also, If you don’t already own Bonsai download a trial and check it out. You will be then be able to use it to see my full description of the implementation. The best way to view the outline is using Bonsai Desktop. I’ve included a video so you can understand why I have “Parent Contexts.” It is the Zoom Feature that makes it sing on the Palm

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

PS – Even though I have not responded to each and every comment doesn’t mean I have not been sending out the templates. If for some reason you did not get one due to an oversight just email me another comment telling me this. Thank you.

Update June 6, 2007 In the video I mentioned a product called one key I meant Okey. Click here for my blog post on it. You’ll also find the link to the download link from the Palm Freeware site where you won’t need to submit an email to download.

• Get them to delay updating their OS for several years while you create ipods and itunes.
• Have Palm end partnerships with hardware manufacturers like Garmin, Symbol, and Sony
• Kill off their handhelds like the Lifedrive and make sure the TX does not get updated.
• Also since they are not primarily a hardware company get Palm to sell their OS and pay to buy it back but without being able to make updates to the Desktop Application (unlike itunes)
• Create faulty Treo handhelds like the 755p and make promises to update it that they don’t keep.
• When they do keep the promise to update it make sure the update is faulty and available for some carriers.
• Also discontinue that hardware line before the right update is released.
• Close down Palmgear which is almost like an itunes for Palm Software and have it share space with windows products on Pocketgear while you build up your web apps and prepare your SDK for Feburary 2008.
• Announce a new product in a new product category at All Things D and then decide not to release it so Asus and other companies can get Market Share with a similar product.
• Delay Palm Desktop compatibility with Vista till early 2008.
• Have the founder of the company sell of shares off his own company stock undermining investor confidence.
• Make Palm conduct layoffs.
• Delay a new product that was going to come out before Xmas, don’t tell anyone what it is, and lose the potential profit you could have made.
• Make Palm close most of it’s retail stores while you open up new ones.
• This is really difficult, but have them delay new product introduction for at least one year especially to give you lead time to have developers create plentiful new apps for the iphone/itouch before they even introduce your product.
• Get them to hire your former employees you are not interested in retaining to act on ideas you were not interested in anyway.
• Narrowly escape your CEO being named worst CEO of 2007.
• And last but not least find a way to make Palm do this all by themselves so you can strictly focus on innovating and building on your current success and not spending time to get them to do all this.

I may not have included all the particulars and if you see any I missed feel free to add them in the comments. Given that it will be a year (according to Palm) that Palm OS Too Long comes out I am sure Apple is thinking of other things it will get Palm to do without actually doing anything to get Palm to do it to themselves. Like I said we have a year. Customers, accessory makers, developers, bloggers, etc. Let’s make the best of it and try not to write about the iphone. . . if you can help it. I’m sure there is enough stuff to rehash in the coming year. It may seem ironic I would write something like this on a Palm blog but I am pretty certain that I am not the only Palm Enthusiast had some passionate thoughts and feelings about the list of facts I’ve laid out. It is precisely because I care so much that I bring to light the truth that is out there. .

This group is set to only send out emails from me to you and is not one of those mass email groups. Click here or on the image above to subscribe and get your template or simply join the list to get update info. Enter your email and simply click the orange subscribe image. If you already got a template you are automatically on the list already.