The Tech Savvy SMB - smart technology for smarter small businesses

Trello Kanban Turbocharges Productivity

Trello has been around for many years and it is highly regarded as a task management/project management tool. Some years back, I was doing consultancy for an organisation and tried to get members of the marketing and communications team to use Trello as it was ideal for planning and tracking projects and tasks within those projects. However, I did manage to write up a review.

Sadly, other members of the team were total Luddites and they resorted to emails as their tool of choice! So, my premium subscription of Trello lapsed and that wasn’t it until I read about the fact that the service had been updated. that I revisited it.

Bitwarden Password Manager Review

by Kevin Tea

Bitwarden is that rare example of my discrediting my credo that if you aren’t paying for a product, you are the product. Password managers are another spoke in the wheel of security measures that are increasingly becoming essential. I started with Lastpass but found that too flaky and Dashlane was a bit too aggressive. I found my solution in 1Password and have been a premium subscriber for many years and that is not about to change.

However, somewhere online I fell across a review of Bitwarden which was stated to be not only probably the best password manager available but the best free password manager. Intriguing.

Todoist Updates Windows 10 App

by Kevin Tea

Todoist has revamped its Windows 10 app to bring the service in line with other platforms and kicking into touch the old legacy system that dates back to Windows 7. The company writes: “In December 2020, we introduced a new and improved Todoist for Windows 10 as a way to provide you with a better user experience.

“This means faster updates and bug fixes, more consistency across platforms, as well as a broader range of features that were already available on other platforms.”

Internet Use Is (Sadly) Down To Trust

by Kevin Tea

I first started on the Internet in the early 1990s. Access was via a matchbox-sized modem that back then cost about £200 and howled like a banshee when connecting. There was no World Wide Web WYSIWYGism and you interacted with the cyber world via typed in string commands. You could access cyberspace via either AOL or CompuServe and, on the latter, I joined a teleworking forum with like-minded individuals and we eventually formed a four-year project for the European Commission.

We were responsible for examining the ways the emerging Internet could benefit the geographically disadvantaged, Eurospeak for those stuck in the middle of nowhere and would these days be titled digitally disenfranchised.

Spark Email Doesn’t Light My Fire

by Kevin Tea

Lockdown boredom means that I am always looking around for new apps and services, especially email apps, and that is how I came across Spark which, on the face of it, looked to be very promising. However, as I experimented with it, it became clear that Spark and I were never going to be friends. This doesn’t mean it is a bad email package, just that the way I work with email and Spark didn’t have matching personalities or methodologies.