Lactose Intolerance

So, I did the minimum this time around. Again.

I had read the short description of the week three offering some time back and I've been rolling my eyes at the thought of this particular assignment ever since. Between Wikis and Google docs and traditional email and the still-very-handy scrap of paper and manual writing implement, I couldn't see a very strong need for these particular Web 2.0 tools.

Plus I saw from our email that more passwords were needed to access the tools for this weeks assignments. And goddess knows I just can't get enough passwords in my life. Let the eye-rolling begin.

Well, Stef's course podcast for this particular lesson seemed to anticipate my reluctance and basically told me (and everyone else, of course) to quit whining and do it.

So I did it.

Using Remember the Milk, I was able to send the list a reminder and add a couple of comments. But I couldn't figure out how to add my phone number to the Jott list. And the Jott FAQ page wasn't working when I poked around for help.

Nevertheless, I now feel I can whine freely.

It's not that it's a useless tool or that it might not have features that could be exploited successfully given the right needs and environment. I just don't feel any urgency to add another layer of technology to the list tools we've already been given. The calendar features and reminders on Remember the Milk do give it some features that other tools lack (particularly the connectivity and sharing features), but I didn't familiarize myself with them because, frankly, I don't see myself using this particular tool past this assignment.

The same holds true for Jott. Maybe more so. I've mentioned before that I don't own a cell phone. That in itself removes the most useful feature that Jott possesses, the ability to convert a voice message to text while you're away from your desk/email/internet connection. Granted, this would be a useful tool to have if I was that mobile (I'm not) and constantly creating to-do lists (I don't) and adding to them on the fly (yeah, right). [BTW, does anyone know if it's true, as stated in the Wikipedia article, that "speech is then transcribed to text using a combination of software and of human transcribers?" Definitely a few steps back from the cutting edge of technology if true]

And another thing. Don't tools like Blackberrys and iPhones have a lot of these capabilities and features built-in? It seems as if Remember the Milk and Jott are somewhat cheap "kludgy" alternatives to some other existing (and perhaps more powerful) tools. If I needed this kind of connectivity, wouldn't it be to my benefit to supply myself with the type of tools that would work more seamlessly?

So, for me, neither of these tools seems destined to become part of my particular toolbox. I think they're remarkable, in their way, but given the wealth of tools available, these two don't provide this particular lack-0f-power-user with any compelling reasons to make them a part of my personal or work tools.

Feel free to persuade me that I'm wrong though.