Wednesday, September 21, 2005

PocketMod mod - use both sides

[Edit: US Letter-size PDFs now available below.]

I've been crazy about PocketMods lately, thinking about them a whole lot, although I haven't actually used one up yet. I keep making them and not having a use for them. But I'm starting an internship of sorts next week, and that will likely keep me more busy than I currently like being, so I hope to have stuff to organize in them then. For those not in the lifehacking know, PocketMods are like little filofax organizers that you can make yourself with just a sheet of paper. Visit the site, drag and drop yourself a layout, and print. Then, all you'll need is a pair of scissors and some folding kungfu to make yourself a disposable (book-like) weekly organizer that costs next to nothing.

They dropped version 0.4 of the maker software lately, and now it has cool things I'll never use, like a daily meal tracker, a dots games, music score sheets, and storyboards (i'd love to use these but...) One thing that I didn't really like about the site in the beginning was that there are no preset, default example Pocketmods for you to pick up and play with. The 'Mod' portion of the concept is that you can put together whatever kind of organizer you want to suit your specific needs. Maybe you have a lot of appointments and meet a lot of new people - drop in a larger ratio of contact pages and daily schedule pages. They're just like the sheet refills you can buy and slot into your regular daily organizer. But this also makes it hard for someone to get into the idea quickly, if they don't have the time to think about what they need, or to understand what the hell the site is about.

So my project for today was to design a PocketMod Powerpack(!) of five example PocketMods that people could start using right away.

The 5 editions were:
  • PocketMod Standard - Basic week planning/note-taking capability. This should meet most people's needs for a basic planner and notebook.
  • PocketMod Xtra - With shopping list and expense tracking. Has room for 3 busy days a week (you can plot those days out in detail). Probably best for university students, and those who need to juggle domestic matters along with work .
  • PocketMod Creative - Storyboards for quick visual idea capture. Great for people who work in advertising or film.
  • PocketMod Executive - With monthly overview, deadline tracking, appointment management pages. There's still room for a weekly planning overview and 4 busy days!
  • PocketMod Math - Packed with graphs and space for equations.
[Update: Added another.

  • PocketMod Notetaker - Lines and blank pages for use as a quick and pretty notepad.]
But there's one more. The system prints 8 mini pages on 1 side of a sheet of paper. I realized something incredibly simple today while looking at one of mine that doubles the potential of PocketMods: Where does the other side of the paper go!? I don't know why they haven't mentioned it. There's no good reason not to. I can't believe that it hasn't occurred to them. So I printed two back-to-back, and they flip back and forth perfectly!

PocketMod Deluxe
  • PocketMod Deluxe - Basically a Standard model with an extra side that contains everything else you could want. Loads of writing space for ideas, a shopping list, to-do list, expenses chart, and a full 12-month calendar.
If you want to hack yourself a PocketMod Deluxe, print on both sides of the paper. Maybe use 1 side for note-taking and the other for organization, or games, or whatever. When you want to transform your PocketMod (insert Autobots sound effect here), simply unfold it, and re-assemble in the opposite direction. Two PocketMods in one! Thick paper helps, of course. Their design/idea seems to be patented, according to the site, but I can't believe they didn't work this into it. Maybe I should have applied for a Super PocketMod patent before posting this.

----

Download PocketMod Powerpack V2 (A4)
Contains 7 abovementioned purpose-built templates in PDF format. All rights belong to the PocketMod.com guys, of course.

Edit (17/09/06): The files went AWOL sometime back, but I've just reuploaded the A4 pack. I no longer have the US Letter size templates, but it should be easy to make them yourself if the A4 ones don't scale to fit nicely. I suspect they might.

Edit (26/07/08): I'm pleasantly surprised that people still want to download these files, and have updated the once-dead link above to point to FileFactory where they should sit for a little while longer. Thanks for coming by!

Technorati Tags:
at 10:09 PM

24 comments:

  2. What a great idea! :) Thanks for sharing your PDF's! Do you have a standard 8-1/2" x 11" template?
    ReplyDelete
  3. hey donna, i just put them up. hope they're useful to somebody!
    ReplyDelete
  4. They'll be useful to me! Thanks so much for posting them and accomodating the US-size too! :)
    ReplyDelete
  5. I love the PocketMod concept right from the start. But printing to sheets back to back, or printing double sided for that matter, doesn't work very well. To be able to write on or read from every page in your PocketMod, you'll have to cut three edges: two down and one to the right. Unfortunately, this will disintegrate your handy PM into four peaces.
    ReplyDelete
  6. Brandon, how did you manage to get the templates-pdf on a A4 size sheet? The pocketmod.exe application does not allow to change the paper size, it prints default to Letter size (I think).
    ReplyDelete
  7. fino: the double-sided pocketmod design is not intended to allow you to access all 16 pages at once. so you don't cut anymore than you're supposed to.you just open and invert the fold to access the other sides when you need them.

    as for A4, they do allow you to "use with any paper size" in addition to the "8.5 x 11 inch" option. I'm not sure what changes, but you can output them to A4 pages matching your printer driver. On the Mac, anyway.
    ReplyDelete
  8. Brandon: I found out how to print to A4 pages on my HP PhotoSmart 8250. First, the pocketmod.exe application does not offer a choice of size, at least the version I downloaded doesn't. You'll have to go to the online app, where you can choose 'Fit to custom size'. Then, in the Properties of my printer, I select A4 size. Next I select the Paper/Quality tab and under Paper options I check 'Print without a border' and 'Auto-resize without a border'. This way the 8-slot templates print out fine.

    Fino
    ReplyDelete
  9. Brandon: sorry for the 'anonymous' post, but something was wrong with my password. Couldn't log in.
    Anothe question: how did you manage to get the pocketmod output in a pdf?
    ReplyDelete
  10. yeah i don't have this "pocketmod.exe" you speak of because i'm on a Mac. i just execute the flash file that contains the maker. version 0.4 has the option for outputting other sizes and the process you mentioned it exactly what i did (with the exception that my printer doesn't support borderless printing. if yours does, then you can have even more perfect double-sided pocketmods!)

    output to PDF is a print option on Macs. on PCs, you can do it if you have Adobe Acrobat (the program, not the free reader). it installs a plugin that will give you the option at time of printing.
    ReplyDelete
  11. Ofcourse, that's the way to go for printing to pdf. In the mean time I'm enjoying the pocketmods hugely. No more struggling with organizers which are too big to carry around all the time. Or writing on a left page with your hand on the rings in the middle: horrible. This pocketmod thing is heaven on earth for those of us who have been fighting with all kinds of organizers. Downside is, these pocketmods keep crumbling in your pocket, so I've made a cool holder to keep my pocketmods. It's slightly bigger than the pocketmods and it holds about 3 to 4 of them. Shame I can put a picture of the pocketmodkeeper in this post.
    ReplyDelete
  12. The best thing about PocketMods is that they are handier than other GTD tools. I had thought of double sided printing too but dropped the idea as by the time i really needed to use the other side, the paper is in a bad shape and i find it easier to print a new one. This also forces me to do a weekly review before i transfer data to a new PocketMod ;-)
    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi
    the links for the two downloads are broken. :-(((((
    ReplyDelete
  14. oh yes, thanks for the reminder. i lost them in the server move, but have them on my other computer. will put them up again soon.
    ReplyDelete
  17. Could you send me a link to download the A4 Powerpack please? :)
    ReplyDelete
  18. Thanks for the reminder, Sander. I've re-uploaded the A4 pack.

    pocketmods.zip
    ReplyDelete
  19. How to update the 2005 calendar in the template to 2011 and later? Thanks!
    Jay Shah jayanu at gmail.com
    ReplyDelete
  20. Man it's been so long, I don't know. I haven't used Pocketmods in awhile, but the site is still up so I'm going to make some more and try them again this week. Are there still faithful users out there?
    ReplyDelete
  22. PM's da bomb fo EVA!
    ReplyDelete
  23. Broken link, please get a stable file host!
    ReplyDelete
  24. Yeah I know. I stopped using PocketMods awhile back, and didn't know they were still around until someone commented about repocketmod.com above. I'm sure it's trivial to reapply the double-sided idea to some new ones!
    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)