Online planning software

We’ve spilled plenty of virtual ink on to-do lists in the past. But despite the  plethora of alternatives on the market, there always seems to be room for one more. Now Mac software house The Omni Group is preparing to launch OmniFocus,  a “professional-grade task list management” application with its roots in GTD. For web workers who spend most of their days tied to a Mac, it’s definitely worth a look. Though the program won’t ship until January, it’s in open beta now, and you can buy a discounted early bird copy ($39. ***

A couple weeks ago I stopped by Plaxo, makers of the divisive online addressbook, and was told about a little experiment they had been trying since mid-August. Adopting the ethos of the web worker, the company is now running internal planning and product development as an unconference. Instead of littering meetings throughout the week, everybody reserves Tuesdays for meetings, and the management brings in breakfast and lunch. They call it “Meataxo,” according to a company-wide cloying habit of using the -axo suffix on everything. As for “meat” versus “meet,” I haven’t gotten a straight answer on that. Meataxo founder Joseph Smarr, a Plaxo senior software engineer, says it’s a good way to save the rest of the week for uninterrupted blocks of work, and to get a glimpse into what everyone else is doing. He thinks it helps Plaxo feel like it’s still a small startup. ***