agendas

We expect planners to be easy to use; they're supposed to make our lives easier by helping us keep track of events and appointments in a straightforward way. Almejandro's Daily Planner takes a more complicated approach to this task. It's not the most intuitive program we've ever used, but it does offer some interesting features in addition to the basic datebook functions.

We had to spend some time looking at the planner's interface before figuring out how to proceed. There's a monthly calendar and a list of daily tasks, which made sense. There was … Read more

You've probably had the dubious pleasure of walking into a store with the intention of buying a variety of needed items, only to draw a complete blank once you're in the aisles. What To Do is portable freeware that creates task lists designed to put an end to such forgetfulness.

What To Do downloads as a ZIP file, but since it's completely portable you can save it in any directory or even to a mobile device or USB drive. During the initial setup, we could choose destination directories for the folders What To Do uses to store … Read more

A majority of American voters wants the FCC to keep its hands off the Internet.

At least, that was the finding of new survey results released this week by polling firm Rasmussen Reports.

Among the 1,000 "likely U.S. voters" questioned, only 21 percent said they'd be in favor of the Federal Communication Commission regulating the Internet. A majority 54 percent said they're opposed to government control of the Net, while 25 percent were left undecided.

Rasumussen conducted its survey on December 26, just a few days after the FCC unveiled new regulations that would … Read more

The Droid X is rooted, the Nexus One is done, and we dive deep into Android tablets with Senior Editor Donald Bell. We also take a brief look at Agenda Widget and cover a tip on how to retain Bluetooth connectivity while in Airplane mode.

Tablet Watch

Agenda Organizer Deluxe offers to help you keep to your schedule by keeping all of your records and dates in a central location. However, a clunky design and confusing commands keep it stuck in the mud for the duration.

The program's interface attempts to get off to a good start, but we were constantly frustrated by its confusing layout. It offers an onscreen tutorial; however, we found it unhelpful and instead opted to explore the directionless layout and confusing command icons. After much trial and error, we discovered a way to create a list of events by filling in … Read more

4ASoft Agenda offers to help users get organized in their busy lives. While it covers a lot of ground, this program's design will prevent most users from feeling comfortable and truly utilizing it.

The program's interface may overwhelm users with its abundance of command icons. The biggest hurdles are data entry fields which are small and unmarked. Users should reserve time for several experimental runs and a long, hard look at the online Help file. Users are presented with three separate organizational tools: Agenda organizer, Address Book and Jobs organizer. The Jobs Organizer is a helpful tool similar … Read more

This simple but well-designed program ensures that your meetings and attendees stay on task. It offers an easy-to-navigate user interface that will appeal to all user levels.

Effective Meetings opens with a professional, straightforward user interface. Menu and command buttons run across the top of the window for creating new meeting agendas. The features are organized by categories that break down the meeting process (General, Attendees, Preparation, Agenda, and Minutes) and each can be accessed by either clicking the appropriate command button at the top or by clicking the appropriate tab at the bottom of the window. We quickly walked … Read more

Stress can be alleviated, say the gurus at TROG Bar, if we understand that it isn't the result of being too busy, but instead from trying to manage (and actively remember) all of our tasks all at once. With that in mind, the TROG Bar presents a flexible system to keep your tasks organized and offers you help getting the most from the program.

TROG Bar (which, by the way, is short for Total, Relaxed Organization Guru) integrates nicely with Microsoft Outlook and can work in conjunction with several popular task management systems such as Franklin Covey and Getting … Read more

This was originally published on CBSNews.com.

When times are hard, people adjust their priorities--even the president. When an unexpected economic disaster imploded as Barack Obama was entering office, some of his technology agenda was put on hold.

Almost 100 days into his presidency, Obama has yet to advance most of the strong technology policies he promised during the campaign.

Thanks in large part to the economic crisis, Obama has yet to put forward his new cybersecurity strategy, or even fill some important technology-related vacancies. At the same time, the downward-spiraling economy has let him to push forward in other … Read more