June, 2008

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16
Jun 08

Here and Now – The Four-Year Edition

I was reminded the other day by a good friend that I’m suppose to be informing you all of the current technology trends, happenings, notable advances, etc. and I fell down on the job. 

Innovations from four years ago seems like eons in internet-time, but let’s take a quick review of some old dogs that are tried and true. I’ve used most of these for many years. These are not fads. They are things tried, and they simply work really, really well.

  • Use any browser but Internet Explorer. I go back and forth between Safari and Firefox.
  • Get your news off of the web (but don’t surf to a dozen different sites). A Feed Reader and Google News keep me well informed.
  • Get a digital camera. Share your photos online with Flickr. Use iPhoto for storing your digital photos on your own computer.
  • Use Google for your default web search. Yahoo and MSN are ok, but I get the best results from Google.
  • Use Gmail for your personal email. Stop manually sorting messages into folders and embrace searching. I’ll admit it was weird at first, but now folders seem down right archaic. Use Google Desktop if you’re on a PC (Spotlight if you are on a Mac).
  • Get a Mac for your next home computer. No really. Get a Mac. Run your PC applications on it if you must, but you’ll be amazed at how easy and pain free computing can be when Microsoft isn’t mucking it up. I promise you’ll ask why you didn’t do it sooner. For the penny pinchers in the crowd, do the research: Mac’s are competitively priced.
  • Along the same lines, make your next home computer a laptop and install Wi-Fi at home. You’ll use the portability to bring it in the kitchen (for a recipe you just looked up), or in the living room (to check IMDB while watching a movie), or just to read the latest news in bed.
  • Stop driving to BlockBuster. This is really easy to do with TiVo or with a subscription to Netflix.
  • Listen to Podcasts. It’s like TV and Radio shows, but delivered over the internet. And there are a lot of channels. Sarah and I regularly watch the nightly ABC World News this way and NPR alone has 620 different podcasts, which sort of makes Satellite TV’s boasts of 300 channels sound a bit like a joke.
  • Use Backpack for organizing your life. Do it GTD style.
  • Use Highrise for keeping track of your contacts.
  • Use Jott for capturing your thoughts on the road.
  • Use Google Docs. In a lot of cases, it makes those cute thumb drives totally unnecessary.
  • Stop using MapQuest and use Google Maps.
  • Use text messaging.
  • Use online banking.
  • Use PayPal to send money by email.
  • Trust Wikipedia. It is an excellent source of quality information. Use your own judgement, but I rarely run across anything that seems incorrect. Cross check if you are concerned.
  • Use Amazon for ordering just about anything. Spend $25 to get free shipping.
  • This one is a little on the edge of “tried and true”, but I think it’ll prove itself out in time: Get an iPhone. I’ve had mine for a year and depend on it every day in a dozen different ways. They sell now for only $199. I’d buy it again in heartbeat.

What did I miss? What would you change?

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14
Jun 08

Instant Messaging causes Less Interruption

Matthew E. May, who wrote The Elegant Solution Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, reports that:

“researchers found that workers who used instant messaging on the job reported less interruption than colleagues who did not.”

Which is absolutely amazing because it’s the exact opposite of conventional wisdom. I can’t even tell you how many people I’ve heard shoot down IM because it’s “more ways for people to interrupt me”.

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13
Jun 08

The New iPhone 3G

Here’s what you need to know about the new $199 iPhone:

  • It’s faster than the original iPhone
  • It has built-in GPS
  • It works with Microsoft Exchange
  • In addition to your minutes and any SMS you want, the 3G data plan will run $30/month
Me? I’m still happy with my 1st generation iPhone and will wait till next summer for rev 3.

 

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7
Jun 08

Embracing Change, Quoth He

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.  ~Author unknown, commonly misattributed to Charles Darwin

There is nothing I enjoy better than an elegantly designed solution to a problem you didn’t realize you even had.  There is always a way to make the business of our daily life work faster, more efficiently, and more conveniently than before.  If we thoughtfully design how we move in our lives, we can spend more time doing the things we want to do instead of, say, standing in line at the post office during our lunch break.

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.  ~Ellen Glasgow

Of course, there is nothing more frustrating than finding a great solution and being unable to implement it.  Whether in my professional life or in my personal life, it is aggravating to know that there is a better way to accomplish something and being stuck with The Old Way simply because others are unwilling to embrace change.

I find that too often, in the words of W.H. Auden:

We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

I am refining the focus of my blog to become a platform for sharing and exploring new ways to solve our problems in business and new methods of managing our “housekeeping” in our personal lives.  It is also, of course, a platform for me to promote what I think is exciting in terms of technological advancement.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

I am excited about this refined focus – sharing the technologies that I think can bring progress to our world.  I am looking forward to seeing what new things are to come, both the great new inventions and the smaller designs that do incremental adjustments to make our lives a little simpler.

After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully.  After five years, look at it with suspicion.  And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.  ~Alfred Edward Perlman, New York Times, 3 July 1958

I will add that not every change is innately good and pure.  Some changes bring nothing more than clutter and complexity into an already overburdened human life.  But you never know when you will find the next Great Idea. They used to say that the “horseless carriage” was a passing fad.  The only thing you can do is to keep your mind open to a new way of doing things and to be unafraid of embracing a new idea.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.  ~Confucius

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4
Jun 08

Basecamp for Managing Projects

We started using Basecamp for managing a second project at work. If you haven’t giving it a try, check it out! I also strongly recommend checking out Highrise – it’s an amazing tool for tracking contacts and setting follow-ups.

Basecamp

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