Just a quick note to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas!
I am looking forward to relaxing over the next few days and being as merry as I can. My copy of Making it All Work by David Allen arrived today, so I will start to read it over Christmas and report all about it here on this blog.
Enjoy the festive season and get ready for the New Year!
Thanks,
Andrew..
Being a security guy myself, the storage of personal data on public servers is always a matter of concern.
Luckily, I have just come across a cool little video showing you how to encrpyt and decrypt your notes in Evernote.
I love little snippets of information such as this. Isn’t it great that we can get information such as this at our fingertips free of charge. Enjoy!
The great folks over at MindJet have just released a Strategic Planning Mind Map that I am sure will help us all in taking stock and reviewing 2009.
The Mind Map is broken down into 5 steps:
I think this is a great Mind Map and something that we can all use for planning 2009. You can read the original post over at the MindJet Blog.
You do need MindJet MindManager to open this file as it is a MindManager Mind Map.
It is the final countdown to Christmas now, 4 days till the 25th and I am sure that everybody reading this blog will be totally organized and prepared for the festive season 🙂
I have just this minute received an email from Amazon stating that the David Allen Book, Making it all Work, has been delayed by the publishers and not due into the UK until the 15th of January 2009. Looks like my Christmas Reading is limited to the Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp as that has just shipped and will be with me before Christmas.
Here are my collection of links for this week.
My next weekly links will be on the 28th of December when all the Christmas celebrations will be over and we will all be focusing on the New Year.
As it is the New Year, I will do a special New Year links section with all links focusing on planning for the New Year.
Hope you all have a very Merry, and of course productive Christmas!
Andrew..
Although it’s a simple enough concept to grasp, setting one’s clock ahead to stay on time can be tricky to actually pull off.
The mind usually pulls through to help us remember that we have tried to trick ourselves and cancels out the entire intended effect which actually making things worse than they were in the first place.
Luckily the iGoogle Procrastinator Clock has been released as an easy solution for the endless quagmire of getting things done on time.
Instead of simply letting our brain’s trust that we have put a clock forward by five or ten minutes, the Procrastinator Clock plays constant tricks on the displayed time in order to ensure that users are unable to rationalize away being late by a few more minutes.
The add-on allows a manipulation period of up to fifteen minutes early to play within so that viewers can never be really certain that their computer clock is showing the correct time. Procrastinator Clock can work a charm for those who remember changing their own displays by ensuring that there is no possibility of knowing exactly how fast the clock really is.
Considering that it’s entirely free of charge, chronic last-minute panic victims really do owe it to themselves to at least take the iGoogle Procrastinator Clock for a spin to see what it can do for their deadlines.
I have covered Zenbe in a few other posts on this blog and I do have a review of the full web based Zenbe ready to publish as soon as I can get it on the site. I just thought I would review the little cut down Zenbe Lists for the iPhone as this is a good list manager that syncs with a web based application.
Zenbe is one of the best productivity program developers currently at work and has justly achieved a certain level of notoriety for their dedication to multiple platform releases. Now the addition of the Zenbe iPhone application, Zenbe Lists means that the task-organizing and daily planning so many computer users enjoy is finally coming to the most popular mobile device.
The iPhone version of Zenbe Lists is a great option for both those who already make regular use of the application from their desks and users who are unfamiliar with the entire program. As to be expected from the name, Zenbe Lists allows users to make simple run-downs of their to-do items.
The best features are found in the level of customization offered however as Lists provides fairly substantial sharing and sorting options. Users can collaborate on their lists with other Zenbe subscribers so that business associates or roommates can keep real-time access to their shared items. Marking finished list items is updated immediately which makes Zenbe Lists an extremely effective tool for keeping track of the day’s work.
Zenbe has also made Lists accessible from their official website as well which allows for easy uploading of data to iPhones. The portability and in-depth functionality of the program makes it ideal for blog updates too, a feature which should greatly extend the user base of Lists past the GTD crowd.
Overall Zenbe Lists is definitely one of the higher ranking iPhone productivity applications available for download, packing enough worthwhile features and quality design to warrant a spin from just about anybody.
Here are another review of Zenbe.
I guess the prominence of my blog is growing as I have just been tagged in a meme game by Dragos from eDragonu.
Seems like a good idea to let all my blog readers know more about me as well as to get 7 more blogger’s involved so here goes.
First, here are the rules.
Well, as the name suggest I have to tell you all 7 things about me that you may not already know. So here goes..
Now I have to pass this on to the following bloggers:
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Be sure to check out the blogs I have just mentioned as they are all on my blog reading list.
I have just read this neat little story and video that I thought I would share with you all. Now, I am one of those very lucky people with a very good photographic memory.
I am able to tune into the memory of sight to help me remember items. I have managed to utilize Mind Mapping techniques to really harness this power that I have and this has helped me pass numerous exams as well as impress people with my memory.
I was just reading about how Evernote have teamed up with Eye-Fi to bring you a digital electronic memory.
I have covered Evernote in great depth in this blog and my regular users will know that I love Evernote and use it daily to collect and share notes between my numerous computers and also the Web.
Eye-Fi manufacture WiFi enabled SD Memory Cards. These are the same cards that go into your digital camera for photo storage.
So, what has happened now in the collaboration between Evernote and Eye-Fi is that you can take a picture with your digital camera and with some simple setup it will be automatically sent to your Evernote account.
Obviously you need a WiFi connection to make this happen but you can take the pictures and then they will be uploaded when you are in range of a trusted WiFi Access Point.
Think of the uses for this!, here are some from the Evernote Blog
* Got back from a conference with a stack of business cards? Snap a photo of them.
* Just finished a big whiteboard session? Don’t copy it into your notebook, snap a photo.
* Just had dinner? Snap a photo of the receipt for your records.
* Doing some comparison shopping? Go to a store and snap a photo of the sales tags.
* Got a billion dollar idea sketched on a napkin? Snap a photo so you’ll never forget it.
How cool is that!
Just added one of these to my want list as I have to try this out, although I mainly use Evernote on my iPhone for image collection so I do have a feature like this already.
Evernote as a photo storage and automatic backup service, now there is an idea…
Hope you have all had a great week.
I have just been to my childrens Christmas nativity and right after this I am heading to my fathers Christmas party at the Hilton in Leeds for yet more festive fun.
Productivity is more important than ever right now as we just have more things to do, and there is a prominent deadline that we have to meet. More about that, as I feel a post coming on later in the week about festive productivity.
Just a quick post to test out the posting functionality of WordPress 2.7 which I upgraded this blog to earlier today.
All seems in order, had a sight issue with some of the plugins not getting re activated after my upgrade.
I am very impressed with the new WordPress interface. I think this is probably the biggest cosmetic update that I have ever seen to WordPress and I am going to enjoy learning all the cool ways of using it in the most productive way.
For those of you who are interested, I performed the upgrade from 2.6.3 to 2.7 using the WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin. All went really smooth and worked fine.
If you find anything that is broken or does not work as expected, please let me know.