Posts Filed Under ‘Software’
My latest two videos are up at Fast Company: one's on firewalling your attention with time blocking, and the second is on three ways to use Google Wave in your business.
The time blocking piece is actually a personal confession about my hermit tendencies. Sometimes I just shut everything off, fall off the face of the planet, and have some uninterrupted me-time. I've had co-workers say to me, "Um, where did you go today?" and the answer is usually "To my happy place, a distraction-free zone." As you'll hear in the video, at my last office job, I actually used to schedule a meeting with myself complete with a conference room to get away and focus on something for awhile. Here's the 2 minute, 37 second clip.
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Panic is a software company that makes useful tools like my personal favorite, Transmit for the Mac. They've also made a beautiful project status display that helps their team keep on top of what they're working on, and what important dates are coming up. Click on the thumbnail to see the full version. The board is actually an internal web page that auto-updates support email queue numbers, how far along each company project is, day over day revenue comparisons, the company calendar, and Twitter messages. Here's the effect it's had on the team:
Les, one of our support guys, said it best after a week: “That board is like magic.” Our support turnaround time is faster than it’s ever been. Just the simple act of “publicizing” those numbers — not in a cruel way, but a “where are we at as a group?” way — has kept the support process on-task and, I think, made it a bit more like a video game. (It helps that when all the boxes are at “zero”, a virtual bottle of champagne appears on-screen, and a physical one is likely removed from the fridge.)
Brilliant! I am dying for one of these for my own personal use. Panic, will you add that to your project list? For the nitty gritty on how this board was built and what kind of display it's on, check out the full post at the Panic blog.
The Panic Status Board [The Panic Blog]
Ever since I installed a barcode scanner app on my phone, I see QR codes everywhere--so naturally I wanted one of my own. If you too are a barcode-scanning fool, point your phone's camera at this QR code and you'll get a link to my personal web site. Fun!
A QR ("quick response") code is a square barcode that makes getting URLs, location coordinates, any text or contact information onto a phone quickly. With a barcode scanner app installed, you just point your phone's camera at the code to read its contents. Here's what reading this QR code looks like on my Android phone, using an app simply called "Barcode Scanner."
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Better Gmail 2 Updated · Google's Gmail tweak broke some of the more popular features of my Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension this week, including Folders4Gmail and Hide Spam Count. Thanks to the quick work of Arend v. Reinersdorff, the problems have been fixed. If you're a Better Gmail 2 user and your labels aren't collapsing properly or your Spam count is showing when it shouldn't, hit the "Find Updates" button in Firefox's Add-ons dialog to get the fix, or download the most recent version directly from Mozilla Add-ons. Thanks for your patience and for using the extension. As always, news and discussion about the whole series of Better extensions is always posted on the mailing list. · 3 days ago
In his web-site-turned-book Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far, Stefan Sagmeister says keeping a diary supports personal development. I couldn't agree more. Writing is a form of thinking, and journaling is a great way to help yourself think personal issues through.
I've fallen off the journaling wagon lately though, but inspired by former Lifehacker editor D. Keith Robinson's tweet tonight, I'm getting back on using Buster Benson's 750 Words webapp. The concept of 750 Words is simple: every day, you type 750 words--the equivalent of three pages--of stream of conscious, whatever you want, free writing. You earn points and badges for every day you type any number of words. Your entries, which are private by default (despite the somewhat alarming Facebook Connect login), can be exported at any point. Buster's one of the kings of personal data visualization (just look at the guy's homepage), so it makes sense that when you're done writing you get all these interesting analytics and charts about your piece, like how long it took you, what words you used the most, and what you talked about. Explore the public stats page to get a taste. Here's a screenshot of the data I got after writing my first entry tonight, a literal braindump of the most random thoughts I had about today.
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“The Swype package you installed does not match the screen size” · If you tried out the excellent (and unofficial) Swype beta for your Nexus One--the keyboard replacement that makes touch-typing much easier--you may be getting an annoying popup about how the Swype package you installed doesn't match the screen size. I love Swype so much I've been putting up with the error for weeks, constantly dismissing it. Turns out a better version for N1 users kills the error. I uninstalled my error-prone version and installed this one yesterday; happily there are no more errors. · 2 weeks ago, 10 comments
If you've taken the leap and hosted your domain email with Google Apps, no doubt you've noticed that you miss out on services that regular Gmail accounts get: like Google Reader, Voice, Wave, Analytics, and right now, Buzz.
After complaining about the disparities on a recent episode of This Week in Google, a helpful Googler unofficially got in touch to clarify and confirm the problem. Let's call her/him "Helpful McGoogler." Here's what HM said.
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Microsoft Outlook Social Connector · With Google's plans to include Buzz in Google Apps for enterprise customers, Microsoft needs a way to get social media into Outlook, and the Outlook Social Connector add-on seems to be it. When Office 2010 ships--in the first half of this year--it will have support for Facebook, MySpace, Windows Live, but--oddly--not Twitter. Here's my review of the current version, which integrates LinkedIn contacts and news feeds with Outlook 2003 and 2007 now: Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Is No Buzz (But Maybe That's a Good Thing) [Fast Company] · 2 weeks ago, 1 comment
I am thrilled to announce I've landed a pinch-me dream job: I'm now a Project Director at Expert Labs, the new non-profit headed up by Anil Dash. I'll be in charge of developing ThinkTank. Here's what happened.
Last March I was thinking about buying a netbook, and asked my Twitter followers a question: Do you have a netbook? What do you love or hate about it?
When I got back 243 informed opinions by savvy netbook owners, I knew I needed a way to easily parse and share the most useful replies--and ThinkTank was born. ThinkTank is a work-in-progress web application that archives your conversations and social graph on Twitter (and eventually beyond). As you tweet, ThinkTank captures, filters, and ranks responses to those tweets so you can see the most useful responses first.
In other words, ThinkTank makes it easy to ask your contacts a question and find meaning in a high volume of responses. That's what makes it a perfect fit for Expert Labs. Expert Labs' goal is to make government run better by helping policy makers take advantage of the same kinds of crowdsourcing tools that the rest of us take for granted. Expert Labs is also part of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), the world's largest general scientific community. While you and I can use social networks to figure out what kind of netbook to buy, policy makers can use social networks to tap the expertise of scientists and technologists and inform decisions on how to govern. ThinkTank's goal is to facilitate that.
The most amazing part of this whole thing? The first project that will be putting ThinkTank to use is for the White House itself. The President has identified a series of scientific and technical challenges that are as important to the future as the moon landing was. And we want to help drive feedback on that list, and even suggest what other items should be on there that haven't been included. Here's more on the Grand Challenges initiative from the White House.
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Iterating Buzz · Last week I gave Google a small pass for launching Buzz with serious privacy problems and a too-hard-to-find "off" button, saying that at least they were iterating quickly and openly, correcting their mistakes. Today I'm happy to see they continued to do so this weekend, even after I wondered if I spoke too soon. Significant changes to how Buzz works will be rolling out which address most of the problems it has. Would you see this kind of quick and apologetic about-face from an Apple or a Facebook? I don't think so. · 3 weeks ago, 17 comments
My latest FastCompany.com video segment, shot several weeks ago, is about managing your social media updates, partly by funneling them all into one place (like your email inbox).
Then Google Buzz launched.
So, here's my social media productivity two-punch: first the video, then a walk through Google Buzz's more advanced features.
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Google announced the all-new Google Buzz today, a Gmail "inbox" of sorts that aggregates all your contacts' social network activity across the web. Lifehacker's got the full rundown.
A few quickly-jotted first impressions of the service:
- This ain't no Orkut. Buzz demonstrates that Google is VERY serious about social media, and just threw down the gauntlet in an attempt to take on Facebook and Twitter.
- However, they're doing it by embracing existing networks and consuming their feeds, instead of building Yet Another Island. Openness: walking the talk.
- That said, while Buzz does include Twitter status updates --which Google already integrates into search results--Facebook status updates are conspicuously absent. When questioned about Facebook Connect support, Gmail/Buzz product manager Todd Jackson said, "We have nothing to announce about that at this time."
- Instead of limiting Buzz's photo support to Google's own product, Picasa Web Albums, Buzz supports their competitor's (arguably superior) photo-sharing service, Flickr. Once again, Openness with a capital O.
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Last year's trashy GoDaddy SuperBowl commercials annoyed me enough to switch domain registrars; this year's just confirmed I made the right decision. If you want out, here's what I posted about it last year:
Yes, I knew that popular, cheap domain registrar GoDaddy always used sex to sell their services, and yes, their bullying upsells always bugged me, but yesterday’s Super Bowl ad shot my “Stop doing business with GoDaddy” to-do to the top of my list. But where to transfer to? I polled my Twitter friends on which registrars were the best alternatives. Here’s a spreadsheet of the full vote tally; turns out the least expensive, top vote-getter was Namecheap.com.
Been very happy with NameCheap ever since, and their "Not happy with your current registrar's advertising methods?" switching coupon code, SWITCH2NC, still works. Sorry, Danica: I like looking at beautiful people, just not at Hooters.
A week ago I asked readers to tell me how they're using Google Wave in their daily lives, and despite a bit of "ha! no one's using Wave!" snarking on the Twitter, I got lots of interesting responses. Unsurprisingly, most Wavers use it as a real-time wiki, but some take advantage of features unique to Wave, like inline and private replies, public tags, and gadgets. I featured the most unique use cases I got in a brand new chapter just added to The Complete Guide to Google Wave. The following is the text of the just-published Chapter 10, which describes ways in which a few people who don't work for Google are using Wave to get things done--with screenshots.
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Must-Know Browser Tricks · My latest at FastCompany.com dives into your browser's options dialog and keyboard shortcuts: Five Browser Secrets of Power Web Surfers · February 8th, 2010
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