GTD and Productivity Links – 24th August 2008

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In a bid to ramp up the content and readership of this site, I plan to start a new section of this blog with a collection of weekly links.

I am very active in the GTD, Productivity and Motivation arenas and I think it is great how many blogs are appearing right now.

I find some great things to read so it only makes sense to have a weekly summation of the weeks best links that I have found whilst surfing the web for relevant information.

So, for this week, my links are as follows.

  • My fist link is a great review of my current GTD app of choice, OmniFocus. The review is brought to you from Productivity501, a blog that I subscribe to.
  • My second link is another good review of OmniFocus. This time the review is from a neat site called MacApper. MacApper reviews all the latest Mac Apps and it has become a great site that I visit to find out about the little apps that are not mainstream and you don’t always here about.
  • My third link is a comparison of Things and OmniFocus from MirthLab. Now, I use OmniFocus at present but I am going to review Things. I like the visual look of Things, but the functionality of OmniFocus is what wins it for me. Again, a better look at Things is what I need to see if I am missing anything.
  • The fourth link is a collection of GTD tips for Microsoft Outlook. I used to implement quite a few of these tips before embarking on a journey with GTD and before I made the switch to the Mac. Worth a read.
  • The last link for this week is The 4 Ideas That Will Revolutionize Your Productivity from Organize IT. I love these tips and I will be dedicating considerable time to writing about all of them in the coming months.

That is it for this weeks links, hope you are having a great day.

Woopra – Track Your Web Site Visitors in Real Time Better than Google Analytics

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Woopra Web Analytics
At the Bloggers Meet-up I attended on Friday I had the chance to get a beta invite code for Woopra.

Woopra is a Web Site Analytics program similar in operation to Google Analytics. These type of Analytics differ from the log based Analytics Apps such as AWStats that is provided with most hosting accounts. The reason these differ is that these rely upon Javascript code on each page in order for the Analytics program to work.

In order to start using Woopra, you have to register for an account at the Woopra website. You can then add your websites to your account. If you have a beta invite code, your sites are enabled immediately. If not, you have to wait until they release some more codes and approve your site. I am unaware how long this takes at present.

Once your site is approved, you need to start using the tracking Javascript. There is a WordPress plugin that you enable and then enter the Website ID into the Plugin Configuration Screen, that is found on your WordPress Dashboard. If your site is not WordPress, you need to manually enter the Javascript shown on your Woopra Account just before the tag. I use a PHP Include for the footer for one of my non WordPress sites so this was very easy for me.

To view the Woopra Analytics, you either use the Woopra website, which shows limited information but the best way to view the stats is with the downloadable client. This client is available now for Windows and Mac. The Mac version has just been updated and works now without needing the latest 64bit only Java Runtime.

You enter your Woopra details into the client and it stars receiving stats for your account in real time.

Now, the killer use of Woopra is the real time alerting. You can see visitors as they come to your site in real time, along with information such as the referrer and also what page they are currently on. I have to date not used any tool that comes even close to what is offered by Woopra. You can also interact with the users by opening up a MSN Messenger type window in their browser. This seems like a really powerful tool for sales based companies to track web site usage and attempt to interact with the potential customer in real time as you can see how the visitor came to the site.

I have enabled Woopra on three sites. One is WordPress, one is hand cranked PHP and the other used RapidWeaver. I have got it working fine on all three with no fuss whatsoever.

Below is a screenshot showing a map of the world that shows which nation your visitors are coming from.

Woopra Web Analytics

The screenshot below shows one of the many representations of data. This case for referrers.

Woopra Web Analytics

I know a lot of fellow bloggers and webmasters read this blog. If you have not yet tried Woopra, what are you waiting for. I think this is the best analytics tool I have used and cannot wait to see how it develops in the future.

Northern UK Bloggers Meet-Up

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Northern UK Bloggers
On Friday night I attended the first UK bloggers meet-up that was held in the Old Broadcasting House in Leeds City Centre.

The event was organised by Jamie Harrop and Chris Garrett. The aim of the event was to bring together local bloggers who were interested in organising some regular meet-ups and all day events similar to the WordCamp and BarCamp events.

For this first meeting, Jamie Harrop did a presentation about the new Analytics Tool, Woopra. Jamie gave out some Woopra Beta Invite codes in the meeting and I downloaded and installed Woopra for this blog and I must admit that I am very impressed with it so thanks to Jamie for a great presentation.

We then had an around the table where attendees got the chance to tell the others about their blogs. Here is a list of some of the blogs that the attendees to the meet-up had created:

3DogsBark – Personal blog of Andy Mitchel, the creator of GTD Inbox
Chrisg.com – Chris Garretts blog about Blogging and New Media
Gaj-it.com – UK Gadget News and Reviews
JamieHarrop.com – Personal blog about many aspects of life
RubyInside.com – Blog about Ruby and the Rails environment
SuperCarDrives.com – Blog about driving Super Cars
TimNash.co.uk – Personal SEO blog from Tim Nash
Travel-Rants.com – Travel blog covering all aspects of Travel
TheHodge.co.uk – Dominic Hodgson’s personal blog
Zath.co.uk – Tech and Games Blog

I heard about the meeting from the power of social networking. It was via a Twitter post that I heard about the mailing list and then the organising of the event was done through Facebook and mailing lists.

It was a great evening and I look forward to the next meeting which is hopefully going to be an all day affair.

Thank You – 2015 RSS Readers and Counting

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On the 25th of January 2008,. I wrote a little note thanking all my readers as I had just hit the 1000 RSS subscriber mark.

Well, I am happy to say that I am now over the 2000 RSS subscriber mark, peaking at 2061 RSS Subscribers.

2000 RSS Readers

I guess 3000 is the next goal. It has taken me 7 months to go from 1000 to 2000. With an increase in posts and a slight widening of the subject matter I have set a goal to ready 3000 by the start of 2009. Fingers crossed that I do it. Just need to spend more time writing about the cool little time saving and productivity hacks that I utilize in order to fit everything into my very hectic life.

Again, thanks to all my readers and I hope you enjoy and get some benefit from my work.

Taking Notes Changed My Life

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GTD Notes
I really mean the above statement!

A common thread I have on this blog is the importance of having the ability to take notes whenever you can. Every second between you having a thought, and recording it is a second closer to you forgetting the note. This is a key involvement of GTD when processing actions to Get Things Done.

For me, I carry a Moleskine wherever I go and now I am armed with my new shiny iPhone 3G. I have a post on OmniFocus for the 3G coming soon as I am loving the ability to sync my tasks and carry them around with me. I have also started using Evernote and the application between the web, iPhone, and desktop client is really slick. More to come on that as well.

Now, the reason I am writing this post is that I have just read a great post over at Lifehacker about the five best note taking tools. Evernote is on this list as well as my old time favourite, the pen and paper. The blog post covers Evernote, Pen and paper, Microsoft OneNote, Google Notebook, and Personal Wiki.

Check out the blog post and see what you think..

The Magic of Thinking Big – Book Review

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One book that I have read quite recently was The Magic of Thinking Big, by Dr David J. Schwartz.

The book is written by Dr David J. Schwartz who was a professor at Georgia State University before starting a consulting firm that focuses on leadership development.

The front cover of the book drew me in with the blurb of “Set your goals high then exceed them!” Being one for believing in the importance of setting goals I thought the book seemed like a good read and the reviews on Amazon where non too shabby so I decided to invest the time in reading the book.

The book is around 350 pages in length and is split into what I would call mini section chapters. There is no real flow to the book with no clear sections and each section/chapter seems to address a specific issue, for example their are chapters called “How to overcome the fear of other people“, “Think as big as you really are“, and “Get the thinking big view of your job“. The benefit of this type of structure is that you can pick up the book and just read one of the 30 page or so chapters and then put it down. I have also found that I have gone back to a few of the chapters since reading it to re-read and the organisation allows you to do so as a reference manual.

I must admit that I found the book quite old fashioned in its thinking and it seemed to cater more for corporate America, people working for large corporates and happy to do so. Being more of an entrepreneur I found some of the advice against my core values, but we are all different, and I did find the book a positive use of my time. The book does utilise real world examples for every aspect that is covered. This helps the reader relate to the advice given as the author explains situations which he has experienced where somebody has benefited from the advice in the book.

The book is very similar to the famous Think and Grow Rich from Napoleon Hill in the fact that it instills the confidence in the reader that you are what you think, and the mind is the strongest muscle in your body that when trained and utilized correctly can bring with it results.

So, in summary, worth a read but not up their with the best books and I would give it a 3 out of 5.

WordPress iPhone App

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Just a quick post as I am writing this blog post from my Hotel room in Winchester as I am working away for a while with a client.

The cool thing is that I am writing this using the brand new WordPress App for the iPhone.

The App allows you to add multiple blogs and view, edit, and write new posts.

This will be great for me to write little Twitted type snippets to my blogs although adding images and links may prove hard with no copy and paste yet on the iPhone.

Well, I am going to start my day now. Have a good one!

Zig Ziglar – Prime the Pump

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I think Zig Ziglar is just great.

If you do not know who he is, he is a Southern American Motivational Speaker and has been on the speaking circuit since the 1980s. I have blogged about Zig before and his Motivational Podcast.

One of the videos on Zigs podcast is one with his very famous Water Pump. This was Zigs trademark in the early days and I urge you to watch this, and hopefully you will make the connection to the words that Zig is saying.

I think there are many truths in this video, ones that can help you in a lot of aspects of your life.

Watch the video, and I would love to have your comments and feedback.