Today's topic is dealing with sensitive information - such as logins, passwords, PIN numbers, credit card numbers and so on.
Up to last week, I was using the SplashID software to keep everything worth securing secure. I started to use SplashID back in 2001 when I bought the Palm based Sony Clie SJ30 (as replacement for wonderful Palm IIIxe). The Palm based program came with desktop counterpart that allowed editing of entries. Later in 2004 when I switched to Pocket PC, I simply purchased Windows Mobile version of the same software.
I have decided to stop using Microsoft Outlook. No, I did not have any major issues with it, no horror stories of crashed, unreadable emails or viruses. As long as you use decent anti-virus (for example this one), switch off automatic loading of images and never do anything stupid such as clicking on an attachment or a link in email, you are reasonably safe. What got me to switch was lack of interoperability between anything non-Windows and Outlook and headaches of synchronization with on-line information. Using Outlook-only everywhere is not an option for me, because I need to use Mac as well as Windows and buying license of Outlook for every notebook, PC and virtual machine would be prohibitively expensive.
In certain sense, people and companies have one things in common. If have been around for few years, you collect, acquire or create very strange collection of tools, platforms, software and data formats. In short, you end up with lots of digital mess. I am planning to make major cleanup and streamlining in 2007 - consolidate the hardware, software, data formats and workflows both at home and at work.
I have read the GTD book and many interesting articles and blogs on how people implement it. I noticed that the best way how to succeed is try to follow and customize the GTD approach for own circumstances, and build set of tools and processes that would make dealing with stuff easier, faster and more efficient.