task management

A couple of days before Thanksgiving last week a faculty member asked me to provide some information for a grant application that is due at the end of December. I told him that I would get to it after Thanksgiving. The next day he sent another request about getting an answer to him immediately. If the info was something he needed before doing anything else I would have made time, but the requested data is essentially “I support this project because of A, B, and C” that can be inserted the day before the deadline. I sent the faculty member a polite note to remind him that I had a number of tasks due before Thanksgiving and I would provide the information the next week, as promised. Yesterday one of the directors of a university program told me about a favorite saying: “Your urgency is not my emergency.” I may have to start using that!

Today marks the end of an era: it’s the last day that iGoogle pages will be available. iGoogle is a personalized home page for web browsers, and I’ve used it ever since it was launched in 2008. I glance at it several times a day, to keep track of news, tweets, and Remember the Milk tasks. Tomorrow I’ll have to find a new source for keeping all of these items on one page. Two of the leading replacement contenders are Protopage and Netvibes, but I don’t love either option. Anyone have other suggestions?