If you don’t, I’m not in the mood to explain what it is, so visit the site and figure it out.
But if you do…
Category: Web & Technology
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Latest Shiny Shiny entries
I forgot to link to my last few articles written for Shiny Shiny, so here they are.
This week: Be Safe, Part II: Woman looking for man, lots of money, nice car, washboard abs
Last week: Be Safe, Part I: When Good Scams Go Bad
The week before: Get it while it’s hot – Apple introducing movies to iTunes?Go on, it’s Friday… Go leave a comment then head to the pub!
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When good demos go (very, very) bad
So we all know that Microsoft have now announced that “Vista will be released when it is ready”, so don’t hold your breath, you’re likely to go grey before we see it.
But how are the existing features coming along? Well, let’s see…
At Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting on Thursday, Vista product manager Shanen Boettcher set out to show just how easy to use the speech recognition technology built into upcoming Windows Vista software will be. Like, for example, dictating aloud a simple, heartfelt letter to mom, and having one’s voice automatically transcribed into a computer.
The result was a disaster.
Several tries at making the computer understand the simple salutation “Dear Mom” was read by Microsoft software as “Dear Aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all.” Attempts to correct or undo or delete the error only deepened the mess.
Based on this report from Reuters, I think we can agree that there’s still a tad of tweaking to be done…
And until next time, dear readers, remember: “Let’s set so double the killer delete select all.”*
[*: I think we’re onto a winner here. It’s bound to compete with “All your base are belong to us”…]
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GTD Slacker Drowns in Own Disorganisation: Community Devastated
In late 2005, out of desperation and after a few months of feeling like I couldn’t make head nor tail of the JCB-loads of projects I had on, I ordered and read David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I’d first heard of it from some truly zealously organised people and I thought if I could gain a tenth of their organisational skills, I’d be well ahead and leaving the pile of mud I felt I was on. [For those unfamiliar with GTD but curious, here’s the basic workflow chart.]
Some months on, I’ve had flings with just about every productivity software for Mac, web-based or else. Quickly running through them, this is what I thought of them:
- Thought I’d be brave and start with the paper low-tech version, as David Allen had given me the urge to leave fiddly technology behind and just throw everything on paper as soon as it crossed my mind. As it stands, I type a lot faster than I handwrite, and I’m much less likely to let my laptop dissapear below stacks of invoices, printed spreadsheets and other desk junk, so I deemed it best to keep it on my computer’s desktop if there was any hope of me keeping this up.
- Having used Basecamp as a single free user before, I thought I’d give it a second go, hoping GTD would help me make better use of it. Not bad, but seemingly I’m a slightly forgetful idiot, and I would slack and forget to log in for a couple of days, letting the more random selection of tasks take over again. Nowadays, I’m a light Basecamp user for work purposes and for shared tasks with others, but not as productivity tool for myself.
- Next I went for the other extreme, the complex kGTD: Kinkless GTD harnesses the power of OmniOutliner Pro to become a hefty productivity tool. Unfortunately, I started spending more time organising kGTD and playing around with it than working, which was completely counterproductive. To put it simply, I was worrying about the cup rather than enjoying the coffee.
- I tried the classic text file recommended by so many users as a low-tech option, but it just turned into an immense disorganised list, causing me to forget priorities by just going top-down through the tasks.
- At the moment, I’m in a steady relationship with Mori, which I’m sure I could use it as more than a glorified stash of text files. But I’m also having an affair with DEVONnote, though we’re still just flirting and I haven’t figured it out yet.
So I’m still hopping around, looking for the ultimate app. I came across the demo for Thinking Rock, which seemed structurally so tightly organised based on GTD that I couldn’t go wrong, but haven’t yet installed it or played with it beyond looking at their demo. It’s not visually the most pleasing thing I’ve ever come across but it looks like it’d do the job.
What I need from a GTD app:
- Easily throw ideas to be processed as they happen (brain like a sieve means everything needs to be written immediately) so that the inbox of ideas doesn’t distract me any further
- Good structure of multiple projects
- Forcing me to deconstruct projects into tasks rather than think it’s too much hassle to break it down any more because it’s fiddly to do so
- Good archiving of old done tasks, for when I start doubting myself about whether something was done or not and when (brain like a sieve… Is there a theme here?)
- Hopefully, good looking and easy to use
What are your GTD apps or techniques of choice? Any advice for a slacking GTD user?
I do feel I’ve gained in mental organisation and planning from the book and its concepts, as well as from reading the blogs of some true GTD geeks. I’ll follow with another post of my top GTD/Productivity tips, but leave me yours too!
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I blog, therefore I talk about cats
There’s an unwritten rule in the blogosphere that one should not talk about their cat on their blog. It’s cheesy and highly uninteresting to everyone but you. But I’ve decided to break the rule just this once…
This is my new pet cat Sammy.
Ok, so maybe he’s not mine, and maybe he’s not really a cat either. He’s a 9 months old cheetah, an animal usually found in deepest Southern Africa. But this baby lives elsewhere. It lives in Heilbronn, beautiful Germany.
We spent a fantastic, if a bit too hot, weekend in Germany – a first-time visit for me – for our friends Eric & Alex’s wedding, but I’ll post those pictures later. Much too knackered right now from the flight back!
We had the wonderful chance to see Sammy this morning when the owner of the Park Villa Hotel allowed us to join him while he fed him breakfast – a nice big piece of meat. Sammy went on to also snack on the hotel’s pet tortoise’s breakfast as well – a leaf of salad – and moved on to main course by trying to take a bite out of Andrew’s thigh! It was like a giant cat who’s play-biting, so Andrew didn’t have the reaction to move away, but the owner quickly lured away Sammy with some leftover meat, to ensure Andrew kept both his legs.
And the purring, oh, the purrrrring! It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard, he really wants to be loved and cuddled, and purrs like a giant version of a house cat!
I’ll link to all the photos of the cheetah, as well as the wedding pictures tomorrow. But for now, danke schoen and gute nacht.
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As a marketer, I promise to respect my designers
These days, I’ve been doing a fair amount of work directly with the designers at work. I’m also sitting directly next to them (marketing and design together – whoddathunkit?) so I’m getting a lot more honesty as to what guidelines they need/want when starting on a project.
This morning, seeing Seth Godin’s post on “How to live happily with a great designer” made me smile. I may have been guilty of the lack of clarity, and a few moments of “I’ll know when I see it”, but I’ve learned to be clear in my brief, and then to let them out to play for a while. Usually gives good results!If you also work with designers, or even software developers, and are in charge of strategy, briefs, or giving some sort of guidelines before they start work, have a read through. You’ll probably go through the typical steps of “This is funny”, followed by a touch of guilt, finishing with a feeling that this may help you a lot in the long run.
And why don’t you go over and thank you designers for all their hard work today?
PS – The marketer did not get paid off by the designers for writing this article. It’s genuine designer-love. Really!
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This is why outsourcing tech support is a bad idea
amorfuss: “i’m having problems with your software in OSX”
Indian tech support: “ok, first please to being click on the start menu”
a: “i don’t have a start menu, i’m running osx”
ITS: “please sir to being click on start menu”
a: “i don’t have a st…”
ITS: “sir if you don’t to being click on the start menu, i can’t help you” -
Shiny Shiny's new tech columnist
I’ve been itching to tell you about this for a while, but wanted to keep it under wraps until it was really happening. But now, I can officially say it – I’ve started writing for Shiny Shiny: A Girl’s Guide to Gadgets.First post about women and gadgets went live this morning, so have a look and tell me what you think! And have a look at all the funky gadget reviews on Shiny, there’s some good stuff in there.
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The Prompt of Doom: Having too many logins
“You know the one I mean; when you visit some site that you haven’t been to for a while, long enough that you’ve changed browsers or something expired, and it asks you for your your username and password and you don’t have the vaguest idea, so you guess, and the browser says “Remember this username/password?” I always get a sinking sensation, knowing that my immediate future probably contains email confirmations (which will probably end up in the spambucket) and half-forgotten password (is the answer case-sensitive or not?) hints. I confess to rankly superstitious behavior, telling the browser “No, don’t remember it.” in the hopes that the general orneriness of things will cause me to guess right. I know some Internet Identity gurus, and they say “It’s about so much more than single sign-on”, but dammit, do I ever want single sign-on; and I can’t be the only one.”
That quote is taken from ongoing, and what can I say? The man’s right.
How many passwords do you reckon you have in total? After a quick count, I’m up to well over 50 almost-daily-use login/password combinations I need to use on a daily basis. And, in fact, I’ve left most work-related ones out of that number. No matter how many hours of brain training I spend with Dr. Kawashima, I still can’t remember them all.
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The end for allofmp3 in the UK?
“Britons using bargain music download website allofmp3.com have been warned that they are breaking the law. Record industry trade association the BPI said consumers were breaking UK copyright law because allofmp3.com was not licensed to sell recordings”, say the Beebs and CNet.
Why doesn’t the music industry focus on building a new business model that works in today’s world, rather than try to close down sites that sell illegal music? There will always be ways to acquire music or other entertainment media without paying for it, the music industry just need to make their offering more appealing than the illegal one. At the moment, this isn’t the case; overpriced CDs, DRM mp3s which cause unbelievable headaches when trying to transfer music to your own devices, albums with 2 good songs and a load of rubbish on the rest of it. You catch my drift?
Services like Allofmp3, Napster, BitTorrent, etc will keep cropping up, and to try and beat them all is like playing Whack-a-Mole, there’s always another one appearing somewhere else! Rather than take away the users’ rights for buying legally[1], the industry needs to give users unique features and treat them well.
It’s a broken and angry industry, stuck in its old ways. Music will change, with or without them.
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[1] If anyone can find the picture of the insert Sony puts inside CDs to list exceptions where those legally-bought CDs would not play. “Any computer which has burning/ripping devices installed, any Apple Mac computers, some car stereos, DVD players, etc…” That’s the perfect example of taking away legal users’ rights.
that canadian girl 
