Friday, December 21, 2007
Microsoft makes the “101 Dumbest Moments in Business” list
3:59PM Sarah Stokely | Microsoft (or rather it’s PR company) made Fortune magazine’s list of the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business list for 2007, for its gaffe when it inadvertently sent a dossier on Wired journalist – to the journo himself. The 13 page dossier described him as “tricky” among other things – and of course became a pretty meaty story for Wired itself. That little PR disaster is old news, but I thought Fortune’s list might make for some cruisy Friday afternoon before Christmas reading. :) More » 
Check Your Aiport’s Delay Record Before You Travel
3:05PM Gina Trapani | Wired magazine reports that the year 2007 was the worst ever when it came to airport delays, and they put together a handy Google map of major airports’ delay report cards. At my home airport in San Diego, almost 16% of all departing flights are delayed (as was my holiday flight home this week), which is a lot better than New York’s JFK airport’s whopping 30%. What about yours? Check out the map before you decide what time to leave home for the airport. (Beware: not all airports are on the map.) Atlas: Airport Delays Are Getting Worse, So Pack Your Patience [Wired] More »
Cover Flow iCal Events
3:00PM Gina Trapani | Mac OS X only: Now that Leopard’s got Cover Flow in Finder and a central calendar store, you can search for events and tasks and preview them all big and pretty-like right in Finder. The Mac OS X Hints blog details how. (The two tricks: make sure you use the kind:ical operator and that you include Spotlight items in your search critreria). Neat way for iCal/Mail to-do users to search that data without launching the apps. View iCal events in Cover Flow [Mac OS X Hints] More »
Backup Your Email with MailStore Home
1:46PM Gina Trapani | Windows only: Archive all your email messages to DVD or to your hard drive with MailStore Home, a desktop email import, search, and archiving utility. Fire up MailStore Home and import any POP/IMAP email (like Gmail or Yahoo Mail) or Outlook, Windows Mail, or Thunderbird email. MailStore Home sucks in all your messages and lets you burn a backup disk or store and search your entire library locally for when you’re offline. MailStore Home also has some disk space conservation smarts, and it doesn’t lock your messages into a proprietary format. More »
Control iTunes with Launchy
12:14PM Gina Trapani | Windows only with Launchy: Control iTunes from the keyboard with a new script that adds Play, Pause, Stop, Next Song, Previous Song, Ratings, Track Info, Volume Adjustments and more to Windows keyboard launcher Launchy. Download the Launchy/iTunes script (which isn’t a plugin proper, it’s a Launchy utility) and click on the iTunes Control.exe file to install it. Rescan your Launchy catalog and invoke it to get to your new list of iTunes features. One step closer to Quicksilver… Launchy 2.0 is a free download as well as the iTunes utility. (The link below points to a 0.1 version of the script, but a 0.3 version is here.) Thanks, Daniel! Launchy and iTunes together [Fast Thinking] More »
Previewing Chandler, the PIM for the People
11:25AM Gina Trapani | Windows, Mac and Linux: A preview release of the highly-anticipated, cross-platform, open source personal information manager Chandler is now available for download, and while it’s still got kinks to work out, it looks as promising as its vision. Called the PIM “for people who use their Inbox as their task list, Chandler picks up where your Inbox leaves off.” Chandler’s essentially a combination calendar, email inbox and task list for the individual, as well as a collaboration tool for small groups. The Chandler developers say: Our goal is to serve the way people actually work, independently and together, particularly in small groups, a market segment we believe is underserved. Our belief is that personal and collaborative information work is by nature iterative and that the existing binary Done/Not-Done, Read/Unread, Flagged/Unflagged paradigm in productivity software poorly accommodates the reality of how people work. More »
How Can I Create a 2007 Timeline?
8:00AM Gina Trapani | Dear Lifehacker, It’s pretty hard to believe 2007’s almost over! I always spend the holiday week thinking about all the places I went and things I did this year, and since I have a terrible memory, I’d like to start capturing all that. Is there an easy way to set up a timeline of stuff that happened to me this year and past, something I can update each New Year? I don’t have the patience to keep a journal all the time, and each event will probably be only a few lines. Suggestions? Signed, Timeliner More »Take away
7:15AM Tamar Weinberg | Two years ago, we showed you how to take your data home for the holidays. More »Stay Productive Over the Holidays
6:45AM Tamar Weinberg | Now that you’re likely off to celebrate the holidays with the family, you may still have lingering thoughts about the need to be productive. Blogger Jon Morrow suggests twelve ways to discipline yourself to get things done during the downtime. Set time limits when you have to visit family and friends; don’t stay too long. Instead of cooking for hours, buy the food. Catch up on your reading and writing. Clean your clutter. He also suggests to drop resolutions and set milestones instead: Plan the new year – Forget resolutions. Instead, create a handful of major milestones that you can break into action items and then measure as you progress through the year. A lot of this should resonate with most of you, especially if you’re trying to postpone your work for the very last minute. Take advantage of the holidays to do that so you can enter 2008 with a much clearer conscience. Holiday Hacks: 12 Radical and Slightly Naughty Ways to Stay Productive [On Moneymaking] More »
