FW Editor: Get Organized Portable is an interesting application but there are so many other similar products available at this moment. What makes Get Organized Portable better?
Alex Laird: Calendar applications are abundant, yes, but Get Organized is more than just a calendar--it's a planner tailored specifically to students. Most calendars just allow you to input individual meetings, appointments, etc. that aren't attached to anything specific but are just sporadic and in your schedule. Get Organized breaks your schedule down by Terms (which may be quarters/semesters/trimesters depending on your school), Terms can be broken down into Courses, and Courses broken down further still into Assignments. Since Get Organized was designed just for students, the details you can specify for a Term, Course, and Assignment are all specific to you. For example, to any Course you can add Instructors, Textbooks, a Grading Scale (i.e. Exam, Homework, Project, etc.), and more. To an Assignment you can specify the Course to which it is attached, what type of an Assignment it is from the Grading Scale, a Textbook for the Assignment (if applicable), or a grade when complete. Stuck on an Assignment? Simply click the "Ask" button to contact the professor for that Course. Wondering how you're doing in Politics? Click the "Grades" button to see an up-to-date status of your grades throughout the Term, including a graph that tracks your overall progress. Finally, of the few Assignment planner applications that are already out there, none of them are available for all operating systems, and the majority of them come with a price tag. Get Organized is free for life and available for all platforms.

FW Editor: Get Organized Portable is available for Windows, Mac OS X and a portable version which can run on any OS. Is there any difference (from features point of view) between these versions?
Alex Laird: The Windows and Mac versions of Get Organized look and function identically. Their user’s information is stored with the account of the computer, so multiple users can even use Get Organized to store separate Course loads on the same computer. The Portable version of Get Organized, however, stores the user’s data alongside the application itself. The Portable version can be placed on a flash drive, opened on any computer using any operating system, and the user’s data will still be there. The look and functionality of the Portable version is the same as the Windows and Mac versions, it’s just where the user’s data is stored that differs.

FW Editor: Can you tell us a few things about the 'Class Organization' feature?
Alex Laird: The program revolves around the Assignments that you input, and those Assignments are each tied to the Course to which they are assigned. For a Course, you can specify meeting times and days, enter credits, add Textbooks, monitor grades, record Instructor and lab details (if applicable), and more. You can also specify a color for a Course, which is the color all Assignments attached to that Course will appear--this makes it easier on your eyes when you're trying to look at your schedule and see what's due in what Course. If you keep getting distracted by everything that you have to do, Get Organized will allow you to filter out unwanted Assignments by clicking on a filter or by selecting an individual course from the left panel. The focus is to allow the student to quickly and easily find what is due in what Course and what has already been completed.

FW Editor: How many different tasks can be saved in Get Organized Portable? Is there any limit for that?
Alex Laird: The limit to the number of tasks you can add would be how much memory your computer chooses to give to Get Organized--so, no, there is not a feasibly attainable task limit.

FW Editor: Grading is another interesting feature. Are these graphs automatically generated based on user input?
Alex Laird: The Grade Book shows your current grade for each course as you progress throughout the semester. These grades are automatically regenerated every time you enter a new score, so they're always up-to-date and as accurate as possible. The graph that is displayed in the Grade Book is essentially a timeline from the start to the end of the Term that you're viewing, and it's to scale. As you progress through the Term (and you faithfully input your grades when an Assignment is complete), the bars for each course will progress from left to right across the graph. The dots indicate an Assignment that was turned in, and the grade-level shown at that point is your overall course grade up to that point.