I don’t think I’ve ever written about something in two blogs at once, but this is just so stupid, that I have to share it twice. In short, the founder of Mikogo, Mark Zondler, has been threatened by Mannheim city; if he doesn’t give up his Twitter username, http://twitter.com/mannheim, they will sue him for it.

My first reaction was, what the hell are they thinking! This was also my second and third reactions, and I’m still counting, the stupidity of this is just overwhelming. Ok, his name is Zondler, not Mannheim, but will this mean we can only use names which are our own, in the future? Will everyone have to change their names to daniel_123 and daniel_887?

When I started registering domain names I really wanted pataki.com instead of danielpataki.com, so I could have some better email addresses, maybe for my family as well. As it turns out, that domain is for sale, but i doubt it is held by someone name Pataki. Could I sue him for this? I also really wanted Webtastique.com (instead of net), so if I quickly have a baby and give him (or her, maybe this is a girl’s name) this name, can I finally sue this person for the domain? His name probably isn’t Johnny Webtastique, so he shouldn’t have been allowed to register it, I think jail time will be necessary for this evil person.

While I don’t actually think there will be a lawsuit because this is just an idle threat in the hope he’ll give up his name, the arrogance of the city is astounding and infuriating. How do governments expect people to behave in civilized fashion, if their own cities act with the arrogance and pompousness of a spoiled 9 year old girl?

Read more about this on one of the Mikogo blog posts, and let us know about your thoughts on this issue, do you think Mannheim (the city) would stand a chance in this lawsuit?

I’ve talked about Windows 7 a bit before, but now I want to show you my favorite features, some of the reasons I think it’s worth buying this OS, probably a first for Microsoft for a while now. While being very similar to Vista, it feels completely different somehow – in a good way. The handling, response, user friendliness has been cranked up, while errors, pointlessness and cumbersome navigation have been toned down. So, on to my top list of features in Windows 7.

Things work

The only thing more infuriating than a missing feature is a feature which never-ever works. In both XP and Vista, if things went wrong, you frequently got messages asking you if you want Windows to try and fix the error. At first, full of naiveté and hope I clicked on these, but when problems never resolved themselves I stopped using this “feature”.

It seems that this has changed in Windows 7. There were 2 instances where an error was actually resolved, one of them a networking error, which I couldn’t find the cause of, the other a program installation error. The second one was more impressive however, I wanted to install my HP OfficeJet, and the setup refused to start because I was using an “outdated” Windows version. Changing the compatibility had no effect, so finally when the setup failed, Windows popped up a message, stating that it seems the program didn’t install correctly, do I want to have Windows change some settings and try again. I chose yes, and the installer started. I’m sure I could have solved the problem myself with a little effort, but it was nice that Windows did this for me in 2 seconds.

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Whenever trying to accomplish a task, finish a project and so on, if you want to know how you performed, you will need some sort of method to calculate your effectiveness. You can do this by simply deciding weather your goal was reached or not, but if you want to be a bit more sophisticated about it, read on.

I don’t want to go into a lot of math here, especially because you can come up with your own calculations for your own specific tasks. One of the easiest ways to calculate how effective you were is to estimate the number of hours a task will take, and compare it to the amount of time it actually took. This is especially useful if you’re working on something repetitive.

What I really want to take a look at is the factors to take into account if you want a totally unbiased report on yourself. I was motivated by a comment left on a Lifehacker post by a reader, take a look.

I bet Warren Buffett uses a computer that’s sh*ttier than yours. What are you trying to accomplish with your computer? What is he trying to accomplish with his? Who is more successful at harnessing his computer for the tasks that he needs it to do? You or Warren Buffett? Who has a better price/performance ratio? A better ROI?

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I don’t think people usually associate Yanni with motivational speeches, although there is something spiritual about him. While listening to a live version of his song “Swept Away”, I heard him say something at the very end.

“Everything great that has ever happened to humanity since the beginning, has begun as a single thought in someone’s mind and if anyone of us is capable of such a great thought then all of us have the same capacity, capability, because we are all the same”

Aside from the “we are all equal” but, which I completely agree with, there is an important motivational and productivity message there. If you are working on a project, there is, broadly speaking, nothing you can not achieve. If one of your project’s still fails, there is nothing to stop you from trying again until you get it right. Just because you are facing difficulties, there is always a way. You might need to get a degree in something, you might need to read 20 books, but there is a way for everyone.

Upon doing some research, I found that he actually said a lot of smart things, some a bit cliché, but true nonetheless. You can find a list of his quotes from that live concert in Athens, and also some other ones on Wikiquote.

This has got to be the coolest idea I’ve ever seen, for the full details, take a look at Ivydesign, via lifehacker (complete with a similar DIY project).

I have a “small” idea I’d love to add to this, if any DIY-er out there can do it, please let me know, here goes. It would be awesome, if the whole picture frame part could rotate to face up. This means that you would basically see the picture while sitting at the table. In addition, it would be good to let the image casing open in that state. I would love this because we frequently put together puzzles with my girlfriend, but we don’t have the space to comfortably put a big puzzle away while we are working on it. It would be awesome if we could just put it inside this table and then when we don’t need the table we just flip the puzzle and close the table up.

Take that furniture productivity!

When creating a task list, sometimes it is hard to input data in an easily digestible fashion. I think a lot of times to-do lists fail because an item is 10 lines long, and while all that text is definitely relevant, and can help you do the task, it can also get in your way. A lot of information can disable the at-a-glance function to do lists should have and also deter you from finishing a task because it seems complicated. I believe that the key in creating successful task lists lies in balancing the list between simplicity and relevant data, and here are three methods you can use.

Use tags to link important data locations

A task created in Todoist

For my list needs I usually use Todoist now, an application I favor because it has the simplest interface, yet is extremely powerful and well structured, and also because it has native Launchy support for adding tasks from your desktop and Gmail support to use in your favorite email client. Take a look at this post on Hack Your Day on how to integrate these services into Todoist.

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