Archive for May, 2008

I was looking at some of my comments when I found a trackback to one of the funniest posts I’ve read recently, it makes fun of the term productivity Ninja, and I am linked to! This behavior can not be tolerated of course and the Ninja has bee dispatched to deal with this arch criminal, but until he gets there, take a look at the investigative report by The Growing Life.

In light of the current situation as I have said, I have contacted said authority, who is on his way to deal swift, nay, productive pain to the author, who should enjoy the limelight. While he can! Muahhahaha. I just wanted to correct some of the so called “facts” or observations he makes. Here’s the lowdown on the productivity ninja, or at least as much as his second line of command knows.

Bruce Lee is not the ninja

Bruce Lee is obviously not, and could never be a productivity Ninja. Have you ever seen him walking around with a Moleskine? For that matter, no one could ever see the productivity ninja. He is so productive at walking that you can not see him, since he enters his own dimension of productivitiveness, also called Dimension P.

Dave Navarro is not the Ninja

Again, misinterpreted facts. As a guitarist myself I am inclined to talk of him as one of the disciples training in the productivity dojo, he has some pretty cool guitars. Despite this, the P code does not allow sideburns like that to enter the realm of true productivity.

“In all seriousness, however, wouldn’t a real ninja shoot a dart at you with a note in it or write a message on your arm without you noticing it?”

Of course not! A real ninja would shoot emails right into your head, and retrieve the answer directly from the neurons in your gray matter. He has no need for conventional electronic equipment, although he does use Remember the Milk sometimes, this has something to do with being in his own dimension again.

The productivity ninja is a sexy women

I actually don’t know, but let’s hope that this is the case!

The productivity ninja doesn’t have much fun

You couldn’t be farther from the truth! He applies labels, manages his emails and comes up with new ways to use online applications all day! Imagine, no need to play squash, no Nintendo Wii and stupid guitars to tend to. The Ninja uses regular expression searches (or in his words, regex searches), he does mass replacement algorithms, and all sorts of fun stuff, why would you say otherwise?

“He Does Not Hang Out With the Productivity Easter Bunny or the Productivity Tooth Fairy”

Indeed, he does not. This would not be the Ninja way. He has been sighted with the productivity duck billed platypus and the productivity Santa Clause though.

The productivity ninja does not use Internet Explorer

Another misconception, the ninja does use Internet Explorer, or in his words, IE. He uses it a lot to point out flaws in the browser so he can bash it around. The ninja does not in fact “use” any browser in the common sense of the word. He has his own Ninja Browser, which was developed from P-particles and is made purely from productive energy.

The productivity ninja isn’t affected by dings

What? First of all I am inclined to ask a question containing one three lettered words, consisting of double-you, tee and eff. First of all, dings are one of the worst enemies of the man himself. Second of all, the productivity ninja isn’t affected by anything, only he affects everything. He’s a bit like Chuck Norris I guess.

Thanks you to Clay for his awesome post on The Growing Life.

StumbleUpon is a cool phenomenon on the web, it allows you to discover, or stumble upon, websites you like endlessly. People can “I like it” a page, which will get the page into the system, or just add another person who likes it. The page is also tagged, which serves as a basis for categorizing each webpage. Users can specify their interests and based upon that and the tags, pages similar to their interest will be served.

This results in two things. One is that one can have so much fun on the net, instead of every 1 out of 20 pages being appealing, the ration goes up to about 1 in 3 or better. This also means that a lot of people become less productive, you can spend hours on end just stumbling. This has led to a debate weather StumbleUpon is a friend or foe, a blessing or a curse.

I would like to make the case for StumbleUpon and I think I can make quite a good case too. First let me argue with some of the points made against. My biggest argument is that if you don’t have time but still spend hours in front of StumbleUpon that is hardly StumbleUpon’s fault is it? Just stop pressing the button for God’s sake! I don’t think smokers blame Marlboro or Coffee drinkers blame Nescafé for making coffee.

I also heard that people are starting to hate this service because it is used a lot for blog promotion and so on. Well I use it too, although I really only use it myself when I think I wrote a cool article. If you don’t like the fact that a page is stumbled, just use the thumbs down button. If the community agrees with you they will bury the story anyway. If you don’t agree with the community it doesn’t mean the community is right, but StumbleUpon is developed for the majority, not the minority.

Now some points for StumbleUpon’s good name. For people who write about anything on or off the web, this can be a great source of information. If you write about cars, just type cars as your interest and you will be served thousands and thousands of pages with the content you’re looking for. Many times these pages would be otherwise unfindable, since they may rank 399th on a Google search.

StumbleUpon also helps many upcoming bloggers by driving traffic to their site. If a Stumbler doesn’t like the site it means a 2 second detour, but some of those guys might like the page and keep viewing. This means a valuable new site for them and a valuable new reader for the blog too.

Also, personally I love StumbleUpon. I’ve probably found the funniest pages, I’ve laughed very hard thanks to SU, and I’ve found the most beautiful photography, the best music pages and the list could go on and on. To me StumbleUpon is like the small restaurant on the corner which can be found in every city. It looks like nothing special, one restaurant out of the thousands, but you go in and have one of the best meals of your life. StumbleUpon brings these pages closer to you, and it let’s you have a great time. If you can’t stop that just means SU is a great service, the fault lies with you.

If you’ve got multiple accounts there’s a really easy way to backup all your emails automatically as they are sent/received. If you have a gmail account it’s even easier, but it can be done with many services, and even email clients.

The whole idea is to route all your email addresses to one central account. You don’t have to use this to actually read the mail, but it can be used as an emergency backup, or just general storage of all your emails. I personally have gmail accounts and accounts hosted by Bluehost. I get regular emails to all my accounts, but I only need to view a few of them regularly, so those that I monitor daily I route to a central Gmail accounts. I also forward emails from ALL accounts to another Gmail account, which I just use to store my emails.

I started this about a year ago, and I only used it once, but it probably saved me about 2 weeks of work, so I guess it was all worth it. It may be hard to find stuff on this account as you may accumulate thousands of letter, but at least it will be there.

In Gmail you can simply use a forwarder rule to send all messages to another account, if you have an email address hosted by a company like Bluehost you will likely find options for forwarding there as well. You can also use apps like Outlook, although this is much more of a bother, since you actually have to send the emails manually while Gmail and other hosts will do the bulk of the work automatically. Perhaps another option would be to retrieve all your mail with Outlook or Thunderbird and use your data file in the same way as you would the central Gmail account.

This tip might not contribute to your productivity directly, but it will give you an increased sense of organization, and an extra backup option which you can forget about until you need it.

Stapling productivity just doesn’t get any better than this folks! This stapler doesn’t use metal staples, but the paper itself to join together your stuff. Apart from being highly environmentally friendly, it will save you money and time, since you will never have to buy staples again!

I seem to run out of staples at the worst possible times, although I don’t use them much at all these days. This contraption is a great novelty item too though, I’m probably ordering one this week just to play around with it.

If you need industrial office type stapling for 50 pages I recommend getting the usual high performance stapler, but for every day use, I would say up to 10 sheets, this is great. Such a great idea, such simplicity, I love it! If you like it too check out a video and links to buy on my new site, Organization & Planning, where I will be moving all the product stuff that used to be on Hack Your Day a while back.

I see a lot of DIY project around the web, but few are as cool, and actually quite useful as this one. Jamie Matthews on his blog shows us all how to turn an external device into a Gmail notification lamp. The article is fairly detailed, but I think if you put in some time and effort you should do fine.

What really got me going was the extent where this tech could be taken. Although physical electronics and me go together like a balloon in an iron maiden, but I think extending this to go bluetooth is just a step higher and that is just awesome. Imagine getting a small bracelet or ring which vibrates or lights up in a cool ambient way when you get an email. I’ll grant you that effective bluetooth distance is about 10 meters, but you could be roaming around in your room for example remodeling, and never missing an email.

If you take it even one more step further, you can take it to Wifi. I have a router here at home which is in my room, but extends all the way to the edge of our back garden, which is a floor down and a good 2-3 rooms ahead, across at least 4 walls. If I would get a huge booster antenna I could even extend it to the end of the garden, meaning I would be in range when inside about 200 feet. Anytime I’m home I can see when I get an email, without having to manually check it.

Let’s take it even further with the actual internet, and/or mobile technology. You can create a program which calls your mobile when you get an email. You could also mod your phone to resonate in a specific way when the program calls. This means my phone could resonate while in a meeting, and I would know it’s an email instantly. This tech may seem pointless, since on many phones you can check your email right? Think of the following situation. You’re in a meeting, which you absolutely can not get out of, but you’re waiting for a very important email. You could set the application to only call you when specific criteria is met, for example the sender is a specified person. You would only be disturbed with the important email in this case.

Awesome project and awesome technique, and a bit of productivity too, check it out, I’d love some comments from people who managed to make this, maybe with some pics, I would post them for you too!

Adobe Air has quickly become a favorite of mine, and has quite some hype surrounding it, and for a good reason. Possibly for the first time in internet history it brings together the internet and the desktop in a usable, easy, productive and very stylish way. There have been, and are, other projects on the horizon like Prism and Bubbles, but Air provides the best interaction between your desktop and online world. Say hello to some of my current favorite Air Apps, all of which further your productivity in one way or another.

Doomi

The very sexually named Doomi is actually quite misinterpreted if looking at its name alone. It is a very simple, unobtrusive and easy to use to-do list enabling you to take down tasks on the fly, very quickly. My favorite thing about this Abobe Air app is that by default all you see is a bar showing you your to-do items, completed items and number of reminders at the top, and a text area for inputing a task. Just jot and press enter, that’s all. When you need it press the arrow to see the list, and expand further to see old items.

You won’t be getting Remember The Milk style complexity and depth, but it does beat anything else I’ve used in the area of just taking down thoughts. Just today I was in the middle of writing a post and it occured to me that I deleted my contact widget on the blog and I wanted to remember to put it back. I didn’t want to fire up any complex lists, and Doomi proved to be great help. Just jot and continue working. I would recommend this for the management of your daily tasks, very simple, yet very effective.

One weakness I want to point out is that Doomi is not minimizable to the notification bar. Sometimes I have quite a load of applications running and I don’t need the clutter on my tray. If you have a hotkey assigned to launch it, or something similar you can just close and reopen it all the time, the loading time is virtually non existent.

Klok

Klok is a time tracker for Adobe Air and a perfect example of the complexity you can achieve with Air. At first the applications all seem very limited, compared to Outlook for example, or Remember The Milk as I just mentioned. Klok is very different, with a beautifully designed interface and loads of features it can truly be used like a desktop application.

You will be surprised to know that Klok actually operates with one function. Create all your projects inside it, and afterwards all you need to do is double click and select “work on”. Klok will then track the time you are working on the project and log it. Really that’s all there is to it, and that’s all there should be to it, the purpose of the app is to give you reports to help your productivity, not to bog you down with unnecessary actions.

It gives you great reporting options like the week view, which is like a reverse calendar generated from what you’ve done. There is a summary report available, weekly reports and monthly reports, and if you take a few minutes to review these sometimes you can gain a whole lot of time, or see where you have time left.

I haven’t been using Klok for long, but there are two annoyances I found. The worst one, again, was not being able to minimize it, which is a bigger pain here, since closing the app means stopping time tracking. There is a minimize option available, but this only folds most of the window and only shows the status. The second, minor fault, was the estimation of time spent on a project. Since many of my projects are ongoing, it would be nice if these was a weekly or daily amount as opposed to an all time one.

WebKut

This application, aptly named WebKut is designed to take screenshots of webpages. Again, a very specific use, but highly helpful. You type the URL you want to take the snapshot of and when it loads you can choose between full screen capture mode, the whole page capture mode (this is one I see rarely) and selection capture mode.

You can choose between four image extensions, output directory and file naming, and that’s all there is to it, and that’s all I need. I am going to list quite a twofeatures I would like to see, but don’t take me wrong, this is a great tool, it just has more potential in it which is not available yet. First of all, it would be nice if it could automatically load the page active in my Firefox browser, since that’s what I screen capture most. Also, it would be nice if I could select an area and move it around, as opposed to auto capturing what I select instantly.

If you take screenshots regularly this is a great tool because it lets you visualize your selection very well, and is also available without firing up Photoshop or Gimp. Oh also, the tagline on the page “Let’s cut the web! Take away its best parts” is just awesome!

Twhirl

As you can see from my sidebar I am starting to Twitter actively and Twhirl is my perfect desktop companion for that. It gives you all the options, replying, twittering, deleting, managing friends, followers and so on. Since I am new to Twitter I don’t yet know how much advanced tech you might need, but for the average user it will definitely be very cool.

No need to log in or use your browser, just fire up Twhirl and start writing. You also get plenty of options, and a surprisingly large list of themes to choose from, you will definitely find one that matches your OS or taste. I think Twhirl is the best example of what Adobe Air tries to achieve, interaction between your online self and your desktop.

Snippely

If you’re a web designer, or are dabbling in some code Snippely is a great tool for organizing snippets of code you use regularly. Of course you can also use it to record text snippets of any type, like a specific email reply you need to use for 2 days, ideas and so on.

You can create groups of snippets, like a group for CSS, for PHP, or for one specific site for example. You can then add snippets of code, or plain text. What I love about Snippely is that it is very easy to organize yourself in this manner because it is presented very intuitively and in an easy to access way.

The only problem with it is that on the other hand it is not easy to use, at least at first. You will be clicking around for quite some time, since the interface usage is not very well done. Just a quick tutorial, click on the bottom right to create a group, and then a snippet for the group. Then name the snippet and add code. You can set the type of code by clicking on the default “plain text” with the right mouse button and setting appropriately.

Overall, this is a very good application, but is in need of some usage rethinking. A menu bar, or a more intuitive double click interface would be awesome, and maybe a way to share would be great too!