OSMO is not an organizer that will do everything for you. I will not sync with your iPhone or your Blackberry. OSMO will not publish your calendar or allow you to drag and drop from one application to another. What OSMO will do is keep track of your calendar, tasks, contacts, and notes. In this article you will learn how to install OSMO and see just what it has to offer.

NOTE: As of this writing, the OSMO website is not responding.

Features

The OSMO PIM offers the following features:

• Calendar
• Tasks
• Contacts
• Notes
• Alarms
• Printing
• Date calculator
• Day notes
• Timeline
• iCal support
• Notification alarms
• GNOME system tray support

And more.

Installing OSMO

Even though the OSMO web site has gone MIA, the application can be found in your distributions’ repositories. So in order to install OSMO you only need follow these simple instructions:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “osmo” (no quotes).
3. Mark the results for installation.
4. Click Apply.
5. Sit back and enjoy the progress bar.

Figure 1

Once OSMO is installed you will find the executable menu entry in the Office sub-menu of the Applications menu. Click that entry and the OSMO main window will open (see Figure 1).

With OSMO, what you see is what you get. This is the only window you will need. From here you do everything. And the very first thing you will want to do is to make sure that OSMO runs in the background so, in order to recall your PIM, you only have to click on the OSMO icon in the system tray (the man in the suit with the black hair).

You can find this configuration option in the Options tab. At the bottom of this tab you will see two options:

• Enable System Tray
• Start Minimized

These should both be self explanitory.

Other options (in the General tab) you might want to take care of in the Options tab are:

• Date format
• Time format
• Web browser
• E-mail client

Now there are also sub-tabs for Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, and Notes. Poke around each sub-tab and configure these features to your liking. One configuration that might give you pause is the  “command” options. In the Tasks options you will see an option “Global notification command”. What you can do here is set a command for a task notification. You can get creative here, like using a sound with the “play” command. Whatever you use here, make sure it can be executed from within a terminal window. You could do something like this:

(xmessage -near An OSMO task awaits your attention) &

The above would pop up a small window with the message “An OSMO task awaits your attention” when the reminder hits.

That’s it for the more important options. Now let’s take a look at the heart of OSMO.

Calendar

Figure 2

The OSMO calendar (see Figure 1) offers all the standard features you would expect in a PIM calendar. In order to add a task you only have to right click a date and select Add Task. The creation of a task is very straight forward. Also from this right click menu you can browse Notes, iCal Events, and export to iCal.

As you can see, when you view a particular day in the OSMO calendar it will give you the details of that day as well as showing the days tasks. What I like about this is that it is one of the most uncluttered views of all the PIMs I have tried. You quickly get an idea of what your day is like.

Another nice feature is that when you add a task to your calendar it is automatically created as a task. But what if you just want to add a meeting or office hours? You certainly don’t want all of your appointments to show up as tasks. No. To add non-task entries in your calendar you want to toggle the Day Note panel (Upper right icon in the icon toolbar) and then insert a time line by clicking the small clock icon in the Notes pane (see Figure 3).

Figure 4

When you add a timeline in the Notes you will see the notes pane go from an empty window to a window with a timeline broken into the interval you configure (when you click the Add timeline button).

Now you can add meetings in a more standard way, and without adding them as tasks.

Final thoughts

Although OSMO won’t make the balancing act between work and home a simple, automated task, it will allow you to keep yourself organized in a clean, user-friendly way. And you don’t have to worry about losing calendars on a server, getting bogged down in cumbersome UIs, or lost in feature-bloat.

OSMO is a simple, easy-to-use PIM that will keep you simply organized.

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In this article you will learn how to configure the open source groupware client, Evolution, to sync to your Google account so you can keep track of all of those calendars in one, easy location.

I am going to assume you already have Evolution installed. You will need an Evolution installation >= 2.12 in order to have both read and write access to your Google calendar. If your Evolution installation is pre-2.12 you will only have read access to your calendar. This does little good because you will not be able to add events to your Google calendar through Evolution. So if your installation is < 2.12 you will need to upgrade.

Setting up Google

Before you get into configuring Evolution, you have to make a small change to your Google account. You will first need to log onto your Google account (or Gmail account). Once logged in click the Settings link. Within the Settings window click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. For Evolution to be able to retrieve your email you are going to use IMAP to connect. Enable this by clicking the check box for “Enable IMAP”. Once that is finished click “Save Changes”. Now you’re ready to move onto Evolution.

Setting up Evolution for Gmail

We will first set up evolution to connect to your gmail account. Go to the Edit menu and click on Preferences. From within this window you will see the Mail Accounts “tab”. Click this tab and then click the “Add” button, which will open up the mail account wizard. This should be fairly straight forward. Here is the pertinent information you will need to configure for Evolution to be able to work with your Gmail account:

• incoming server: imap.gmail.com
• outgoing server: smtp.gmail.com
  
• username: use your full gmail address
  
• outgoing serer authentication type: Login

Outside of the above configurations, everything else will be configured as you would for your standard account. Once the wizard is complete you can make your Gmail account your default if you choose. By doing this, all outgoing email will default to this address (unless you select a different email address from the From dropdown.

Setting up Evolution for Google Calendar

Figure 1

Configuring a Google calendar is just as simple as is the email account. The first thing you need to do is right click the area that contains the listing of your calendars. When you do this you will see a new pop up menu.  Click “New Calendar” from this menu (see Figure 1) will open up the calendar wizard.

The first thing you will want to do is select Google Calendar. In this same window there are a few items to take care of (see Figure 2):

Name: Just a name for this calendar.

Username: Your Gmail address.

Calendar: Here you will want to click the Retrieve List button to get a list

Figure 2

of your available Google calendars. You will need to supply your gmail password for this to complet. Once it is complete you can select which calendar you want to add from your list of Google calendars.

After you complete the configuration click OK. You should, almost immediately, see your Google calendar populate your Evolution calendar.

And that’s it. You are now ready to interact with Google mail and calendar with Evolution.

Final thoughts

Evolution is one of the finest PIMs available. And if you are a Gmail/Google Calendar user, Evolution is just the solution to keep all of your accounts easy to manage.

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Kontact is the KDE entry in the groupware client race. It is the proverbial tortoise in a race with one giant hare, but as the race continues, Kontact improves and evolves at a faster pace than any of its competition. Does that mean Kontact is ready to usurp your current groupware client? Probably not, but it is definately worth a long, hard look. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the features it offers.

Tools and features

Kontact has the usual suspects when it comes to groupware clients: Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and todos. But along with these tools are a few surprises you might not expect but will gladly welcome.

• Summary: Overview of everything happening in your Kontact including: Upcoming events, new email, news feeds, etc.
• Notes: An infinite book of digital sticky notes. You can also drag and drop your notes into emails!
• News: Collect your RSS feeds in one place.
• KitchenSync: The universal syncing component.
• Journal: Keep your own digital journal within the confines of Kontact.
• Time Tracker: Keep track of time spent on projects and work.

Kontact can also communicate with many groupware servers. The list includes:

Kolab

SuSE Linux OpenExchange Server

eGroupware

OpenGroupware

Citadel

Microsoft Exchange*

* Support for Exchange is only partially implimented at this point.

Novell Groupwise

Obviously the single most important groupware server work must be done on Exchange. Once Kontact can fully commnicate with an Exchange server, Kontact will find far more support in the Enterprise level.

As far as features are concerned, the list is impressive. Outside of the usual groupware client features, Kontact also includes:

Mail

• GnuPG support built in
• Out of office replies
• Favorites folder
• Certificate manager
• Anti virus/Anti spam/Filters managers built in

Calendar

• Publish calendars
• Timeline/Time spent/What’s next views

Contacts

• Distribution lists
• Crypto settings for individual contacts
• Custom fields

Why you should use Kontact

If you are looking for a groupware client that offers more than the standard features, enables you to keep your life well organized (and Thunderbird isn’t enough for you) then Kontact is for you. You will enjoy the stability Kontact offers as well as the outstanding anti-spam tool (SpamAssassin) and anti-virus tool (ClamAV).

Why you should not use Kontact

Figure 1

If you need full Exchange support look the other way. It will be a while before the Kontact team manages to pull off full support for the most-deployed groupware server. You should also avoid Kontact if you prefer a less-is-more approach to your tools. You will understand completely when you first open up Kontact and see it’s “tools aplenty approach” (As you can see in Figure 1 to the left.).

Final Thoughts

I have used Kontact on and off for a number of years. I’ve seen it grow from an unstable, barely usable afterthought to a full-fledge, business-ready groupware client. Until recently I wouldn’t have recommended Kontact to anyone but the biggest KDE afficionados. Now, however, I think most people will find Kontact on par with most groupware clients. Outside of the lack of Exchange support (which is a deal breaker for many) I can’t see a reason not to give Kontact a try.

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It’s one of those applications that will be used by the geeky sort, those who don’t mind a stark exterior with a pretty complicated interface. Tobu is also different because as it describes itself, it is a “freeform information organizer”, and that pretty much holds up. You can use it for task lists, notes, thoughts, ideas, project planning, anything you like, but it will take some time to think it through and apply it.

The basics of it is that you create notes, with a name, a tag and a description. You can then simply list your notes by tag, or tag combination. That’s really all to it, but underneath this simple method lies a pretty complicated system. Tags are the main way of navigating, just enter one or more and items will pop out quickly. You can also see the relation each item has to other tags for cross reference.

What I love about Tobu is that it really lets you do anything. Tag all your tasks with “task” (how original), and when you list items in that tag you will get your task list. You can also use “today”, “tomorrow” and other tags to designate time frames and schedules. Tag all your notes with “note” (I’m really something aren’t I?) and you can list all of them, seeing all the other tags applied, or list ones in the “notes” and “blog” section for notes about your blog.

The power of Tobu, and all other application like it is that they only provide the framework, while you provide the method. This makes these applications the most flexible out there, but you need the best possible composure to use them effectively. If consistency is your cup of tea however, you will love Tobu.

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As with every Personal Information Manager Total Organizer combines a calendar, an organizer, a to-do list, notebook and contact management software. Total Organizer uses a tree view that contains categories and subcategories with all those information. A category work could for instance contain different project subcategories each with their own calendar, notes, to-do list and contacts.

The main category combines all information from its subcategories which is important for the schedule obviously. The root category finally contains all information from all categories offering an overview of all activities, notes, contacts and the like.

Keywords can be assigned to every information that is being added to Total Organizer which can be helpful when searching for specific information. Popup reminders can be enabled as well. The application uses less than 7 Megabytes which is pretty good for an organizer.

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