The new software I use: workflowy chrome app

And so far… I love its simplicity & user interface!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSmbnaPZVHE?rel=0&w=960&h=720]

The last one I used was http://www.actionmethod.com/product/online. I choosed after testing The list of the Retro-Planning Softwares I tested:
https://www.zoho.com/projects/
http://www.projectmanager.com/
http://www.easyprojects.net/
http://www.unmariageaorganiser.com/ (Yes I tested wedding planning tools)
http://www.missorganisator.com/fre/5/outils

[EDIT, 2014.08.12] If I don’t stick to workflowy, here is an alternative http://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/

“Those separated from family and friends by long distances often use video conferencing services such as Skype in order to see each other when talking. But who hasn’t experienced the frustration of your counterpart not making direct eye contact during the conversation? A software prototype from the Computer Graphics Laboratory ETH Zurich may be able to help.”

Text by Angelika Jacobs from ETH Life Blog

I don’t know why but this “computer vision” software makes me think of the AutoSmile project by Theo Watson from F.A.T.

More on the project (+source code):
• Skype eye contact finally possible
• http://graphics.ethz.ch/publications/papers/paperKus12.php
• Paper: Kuster C, Popa T, Bazin JC, Gotsman C, Gross M: Gaze Correction for Home Video Conferencing. Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH Asia (Singapore, November 28 – December 1, 2012), ACM Transactions on Graphics, 31 (6), 174:1-174:6

Bibliographic management software
A bibliographic tools (also called reference manager, or citation management tool) can be used for any discipline (sciences, social sciences, humanities) to save citations and PDFs, as well as incorporate citations into a Word document.

Choosing a reference manager is hard because there is too much choice. Here are four criteria of choice: Efficiency/Features, Aesthetic/ergonomics, Interoperability (citation styles, export format), OpenSource. The two last criteria can be evaluated on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software.
That article is also helpful http://ica.library.oregonstate.edu/tutorials/lesson/626–Introduction-to-Zotero?mid=821&type=UploaderResource&uid=1241.
For the two first ones, it has to be tested. The leader softwares are EndNote (Thomson Reuters), Mendeley (Elsevier), Papers (Springer), Zotero (Center for History and New Media at GMU) – Two other notable open source softwares: the—quite dry—BibDesk (BibDesk developer) which is the closer client for BibTex tools, and Docear (Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg and University of California, Berkeley), a suite of tools for academic writing.

My choice before testing: Docear for its mind mapping tool & Mendeley for its interoperability with Docear, its free iPad app, its capacity to recognize and rename PDF metadata, its online community, its legal and free offer.

My final choice: Papers, as it has the friendlier interface. It is therefore very efficient to do tasks, and speeds up my work. Paticulary for the uploading of new PDFs, completing their metadata, sorting them out in categories and adding notes – which is the first step I took.

Here are some of the GUI (graphical user interface):

(BibDesk)

And Papers2:

Retro-planning software
One of the hardest task of the PhD studies is to learn to work by oneself. Therefore, managing one’s time demands discipline, wise advices but most of all: tools.
More here

Because when you are ready for self control and fully loaded of “golden rules” to work fine, two problems remains: Knowing what to do and when to do it. And over a 3years period of time, retro-planning tasks on a piece of paper on in .txt documents can become a mess.

I began by searching more about retro-planning, I tried to remember my Pert and Gant diagrams courses – big mistake – Then I tested these online tools over the criteria of “easy to use, modern and efficient interface, free (low cost), interoperability, phone/tablet App, simplicity”.
The one which is scalable, appropriated to my (working alone) needs and which is above the others concerning the previous criteria is: Action Method (By Behance Network).
After having planned a general TDL (To Do List) + Milestones over a year, I find efficient to have my due (and overdue) tasks right next to me on my tablet at anytime. I cut these major steps in sub-TDL on post-its (or notebooks, or .Txt files).

The list of the Retro-Planning Softwares I tested: http://www.actionmethod.com/product/online

https://www.zoho.com/projects/

http://www.projectmanager.com/

http://www.easyprojects.net/

http://www.unmariageaorganiser.com/ (Yes I tested wedding planning tools)

http://www.missorganisator.com/fre/5/outils

Screenshots:
1. on iPad, 2. on iMac

Title: E, U, And Their Inner Life (2009)
By: Gerard Rallo
Link: http://www.ideesabsurdes.net/wordpress/?p=420
Image: on my flickr

Concept:
Based on real neural networks, E and U, are two electronic monkey toys designed solely to find inner neural happiness.
Description:
To achieve such a goal, they perceive their environment (their owner, and their partner) and themselves. Depending on their own personality they balance the importance of each entity depending on the happiness they bring to them, they modify their inner structure in order to adapt themselves to their perceptions, and at the same time, modify the way their environment interacts with them.
As a result of this chaotic system, we can find and interpret infinite behaviors and relationships; stable, with ups and downs, unstable, uni and bidirectional dependency, independence, bullying, chronic depression,…

All their interactions and states are offered up for people interpretation, represented in a barely decipherable pattern on the LED panels on their chests.

Opinion:
We will notice here the system of representation of the little monkey toys emotions, an abstract modulation of a LED matrix. The interpretation is leaved to the observer / user and might significate something or become interpretable with the time. In the other hand there is a main design problem in the appearance of those monkeys. Their face is represented as smiling (without any interaction with it) then it influence the way we interprete the LED matrix. The LEDs should represent an emotional state for those monkey therefore either LEDs should be placed on the face or the monkey should have no facial expression – as it is our main emotional expressive output.

Opinion:
The overall concept of this project is a bit more complex than what is described above. I extracted from it only what interests me that is, it’s typographic approach.
Here typographic parameters are modulated by the way of using the keyboard, but what I see is that in an everyday use of that kind of tools, user’s mood – that influence his physical behavior – would naturally react with the message he writes and characterize it visually. It means that typography – which already graphically translate a chosen intention in a message – could be auto-generated by the natural, usual use of the keyboard. Typography would become – a bit more than it already is – a non verbal complement of information to the message possibly associable to the mood, emotion or at least intention of the writer.