As you’d expect from a web 2.0 start-up – the interface is clean and simple. Let’s look at it tab by tab and check out the functionality of each one.

Dashboard allows you to track:

• Overdue or upcoming assignments and exams.
• Lists your classes along with the current average for each.
• Recent notes or files that have been uploaded.

The Dashboard makes it extremely easy to stay on top of everything you have to do with a glance. Isn’t it better than your Sticky Notes?

• Next up we have the Assignments tab which only shows, you’ve guessed it, upcoming and completed assignments with grades attached.

• Exams tab let’s you set up detailed reminders, with both SMS and email support for notifications.
• The Notes tab contains a rudimentary word processor, more likely a text box. It is a big downside for those who are used to process their text to highlight ideas and important aspects. It has revisions which means you won’t lose any changes – if you’re not happy with the outcome – just revert to the previous edit.
• The text editor is Markdown enabled which means:

[…] a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML). –a Daring Fireball project.

• Calendar tab, let’s you see – in a manner similar to Google Calendar – your assignments and exams. It is iCal format compatible so you won’t have any problems importing your current calendar.
• The best part yet, the Files tab let’s you upload/download any kind of file you might want to use, PDF, Word, JPG, you name it.

TrackClass is completely free and available for everyone to use. If you want to organize your student life TrackClass is the way to do it, it is for normal people. Of course, if you’re a geek, you could always use the Google Apps suite to achieve the same result, it has more features – but you won’t get cohesion and a one stop shop for all of your needs.

As always, I look forward to your comments – what do you use, and what do you think about TrackClass.

Gist – as its name suggests – helps you get the essence about your contacts, greatly improving my workflow these past days. Its algorithm sorted out all the duplicate contacts, a part which more than a few other apps have failed, and mashed everything together – pulling information from social networks, email and even news articles, and ranking the importance of one contact by the number of conversations and the date of the last contact.

By using this process it prioritizes news items in the Gist dashboard – grouped by Company and People – it gives you a sense of what’s happening right now  in your network of people and companies, putting you up-to-speed about the topics you care about. And the best part this service is that you don’t have do the legwork to make it work, just sign in, input your accounts and sit back.

Other notable features are:

• Attachments box which lists recent documents that you’ve received – don’t need to hunt them down anymore.
• Links box shows you recent incoming links – handy if you’re doing research on something or need to reference the link often.
• Syncs with the Outlook Calendar – and soon with Google Calendar.
• Import contacts in .CSV format.
• Manually adjust the importance of a person or add details.

This service is certainly angled at the work/business types – and is a must-have for anyone working with people, like public relations representatives, journalists keeping track of their sources or a company keeping track of its clients.

Gist is currently in private beta, and a lot of features are not yet implemented. Robert from the Gist team assures me that support for more email providers, Twitter and Mac OS X Mail app is on the roadmap. In my tests Gist was stable – no crashes or unexpected behavior; the user interface is simple and easy to use. I still feel a bit queasy about handing over my Gmail credentials, but their Privacy Policy is solid; they clearly state that they won’t share this information and once you delete your account, it is gone, not like Facebook who keeps you account dormant until you manually request deletion.

A downside to Gist is that it doesn’t have an offline mode like Google Reader or Gmail; if you don’t have an internet connection you’re out of luck.

I strongly recommend this service once it officially launches and invite everyone interested to keep an eye on their blog – which is riddled with interesting information about APIs, coding frameworks and announcements regarding the service.

If Action Method would succeed in getting a large user base it will be the best thing that happened to humanity. It is a ‘workflow manager’, and the results are probably better than having your own personal secretary:

• Accessible from any computer connected to the internet. Standards based Javascript/DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict means you won’t be in trouble if using Safari or IE8.
• A well thought of interface, with different types of tasks clearly differentiated, and absolutely no digging through menus – an achievement considering the feature set that this app provides.
• You can create your own Projects and add tasks under it, in a typical 2 level branch scheme. The tasks you create can be delegated to other Action Method users by simply typing their email. You can communicate with them, send a nag if the job didn’t get done or thank them via ‘Share the love’ button. Set up a due date and monitor the time it took to complete is a cinch.
• References lets you store files, links, documents anything you need to achieve a certain task. Instead of searching every time for the Sticky Notes or notebook you’ve got everything in one place, neatly organized.
• Discussions, a major breakthrough of Action Method, gathers all communications, files, decisions into one place making it extremely easy to work with – and you can do this with many people! Doing this in Yahoo! Mail would be a total disaster and even GMail would require setting up filters and labels for each of the participant – Action Method does it for you without lifting a finger.

• Backburners – ideas that might be genius but you just can’t work at them right now, now have a place to live.
• Events manages deadlines for projects or tasks, meetings, conferences, it’s what you need it to be.
• Inbox – the place where you receive delegated tasks, new discussions, backburners and references.

The team behind Action Method has created a very insightful short video that explains the main features of the product along with live examples of a situation which is available here.

If you’re worried what you’re going to do when you’re offline, well, there are Action Method paper products: Action Book – a notepad with a task oriented printed pattern, Action Runner – the smaller brother, cards and stickers.

There’s only one downside to Action Method – when you reach the limits of the free version, and believe me, you’ll want all the features, you’re going to have to get a subscription. It’s not terribly expensive considering what you get out of it and the work that the team put towards creating this amazing web app. In the meantime, you should definitely try it by going here and setting up a free account.

I had the chance to ask Scott Belsky from Behance, the company behind Action Method, a few questions:

Q: What was the inspiration for ActionMethod? Was it a personal need that later developed into a product?

A: The inspiration was the fact that creative people and teams have too many ideas, but seldom take enough action to make their ideas happen. Productivity is sorely missing in the creative world. We developed the Behance Network to help organize the creative world’s work. Now we wanted to help organize the creative process – all with a bias towards action. What started as a small project for our team (Action Paper) became a major project to build an online productivity application fro the creative world.

Q: AM is certainly one of the most advanced solutions out there; How long did it take to bring the idea to fruition?

A: It took us over a year to get it to where it is – and we’re just getting started. We have many improvements in our pipeline. Another interesting and little-known fact is that our team used Action Method to build Action Method. We developed the Action Step functionality (creating action steps and delegating them) first. And then built the rest of the application around this basic functionality.

Q: Most of your competitors are advertising supported. How would you justify a paid subscription? Why not have that just for business users?

A: If users adapt Action Method Online as their primary task/project management solution, they typically take advantage of our advanced file-storage and project management capabilities that cost us on the bandwidth and storage side. As such, we structured the product to provide UNLIMITED action steps to iPhone users and up to 50 for those who want to test the full online capabilities.

Also, we believe that design, functionality, and methodology are sacred. So, we decided against introducing advertising into an application that is all about focus and productivity.

Q: How would you imagine AM evolve in the future?

A:We think that “ACTIONS” should be removed from email and other forms of communication. Action Steps are a unique element that must be managed accordingly. After all, progress in any project ultimately comes down to taking action.

Q: If you had to pick one feature of AM you can’t live without, what would you choose?
A: Definitely the Action Steps!  We feel that every idea – and every project – ultimately comes down to taking action. I log in every morning and see ALL of the Action Steps for every project in my life – personal and professional – sorted by Target Date. I can then further filter these action steps by color (priority) or by keyword.  To me, this is the most valuable aspect of the system.

I’m currently doing research for an article geared at free, simple, collaborative organization tools, and I’d like to hear about what you use, and, of course, your opinion on Action Method.