05 | August | 2012 | Advocate's Studio

I love a good task management app and Do.com is a great tool from the awesome folks at Salesforce.com for just that. Right now, it’s a fairly stripped down but clean web-based app that allows you to set up projects, assign tasks, see your own tasks, set due dates and keep track of what has been done and what hasn’t been done. This week, the next iteration of the tool is launching in beta and looks to be offering more. The full version of the app is anticipated at the end of August.

At heart, it is still the same tool, but organizing gets easier with contact list and Facebook integration. Once integrated, Do.com will show contact changes as your contacts make them elsewhere. You also will be able to create job templates that will allow you to assign the same tasks each time you undertake a similar project with a single click. You will be able to comment on tasks so that assigner and assignee can keep in touch on what is happening around a task.

You can get a look at the original Do.com still and get a feel for the new version. And you can request an invite by signing up at the site. Check it out – you might find yourself a lot more organized and on top of the mountains of stuff that needs to get done.

The other day I found myself neck deep in research on an arcane topic and, in order to immerse myself, I had cued up a podcast of a news interview on the subject while I was searching and reading material on the Web. I pulled some valuable information out of that podcast, but I wasn’t able to get everything because I was doing too many things at once and I really didn’t have the time to take notes while listening.

Enter Transcribe. This handy Chrome extension will transcribe audio recordings so that you have a written record and don’t miss a word. You can also navigate to their free tool page here. Pick a local file and the transcribed text will be auto-saved in your browser’s local storage. An audio player bar at the top of the screen is controlled by key strokes – ESC for pause / resume, F! for slow down, F2 for speed up, F3 for rewind two seconds and F4 for fast-forward 2 seconds. You will see the text in the window below the player. So simple and easy to use! Another cool feature? You don’t even need an internet connection to use it – just click on the transcribe extension button in an open browser window and Transcribe will get to work. Everything works locally.

There is a paid Pro version as well, with more detail at this link. The only difference I can obviously see is that the Pro version can handle multiple recordings at once.

Nice tool there, particularly if you work with audio recordings a lot or need to get interviews or other speeches from audible to written form.