Ubuntu has launched an online feedback community called Brainstorm. The site uses social networking principles to allow the user community to post ideas, suggest improvements and request features. Users can vote and comment on the suggestions posted. It’s been designed to harvest ideas from more casual users who might not be part of the Ubuntu community already – and it should give developers a barometer for which features and requests are most popular. Neat! [via Wired] More »
LinkedIn is starting to make inroads into the Australian professional community, and yours truly succumbed this week. So Wired’s How-to Wiki on how to get ahead on LinkedIn was timely.They suggest that you keep your profile professional (save the quirky personal hobbies for MySpace) and that you expand your network by helping others rather than asking for recommendations and introductions:
Want a thumbs-up recommendation next to your profile, but don’t want to bribe your contacts? Write a recommendation for someone else first, Alba says. When a colleague reads your glowing review of his business prowess, he’ll be more inclined to reciprocate.
If you want someone in your network to introduce you to one of their network, then you need to have something relevant to offer, not just a sales pitch or a request for help:
Utilize social graces with a professional message describing your general interest or an informational interview.”When I see your message, I’m looking for something that isn’t ‘join my Shaklee business,’” Alba says. “I want to see significant reasons for me to open my network, endorse you, and feel confident.”
Any Aussie LinkedIn users out there care to share their power networking tips?
Get Ahead on LinkedIn [Wired] More »
Although choice is generally seen as a positive thing, the New York Times examines how and why closing a few doors can help you take major steps toward moving forward with projects and getting things done. The article begins with a look at a third century B.C. Chinese general named Xiang Yu, who burned his troops’ ships and destroyed much of their means of survival on arriving in enemy territory. He explained this was to focus them on moving forward — a motivational speech that was not appreciated by many of the soldiers watching their retreat option go up in flames. But General Xiang Yu would be vindicated, both on the battlefield and in the annals of social science research.
The Simple Dollar blog today talked about some research which suggests that buying one item while shopping increases your ‘shopping momentum‘ so you’re more likely to buy other items. Apparently once you’ve made the decision to buy something, your deliberation process for buying subsequent items is less than with the initial purchase.
So how can you rein in this ‘shopping momentum’? Well, having a shopping list and sticking to it is one obvious way. They offer six suggestions for how to cope with the temptation to splurge after a period of living frugally. The one that stood out to me was:
“If you make a mistake, don’t follow it with another one.”
This is a classic – it’s shoddy reasoning, but all too often it’s easy to say ‘well I fell off my budget/diet, I may as well buy/eat another one”. You need to accept the slip up and get back on track, rather than giving yourself permission to make it worse.
Got any tips for how you avoid overspending? Please share in comments.
Six Ways to Break Free of the Purge and Splurge Cycle [The Simple Dollar] More »
Windows Mobile only: Freeware Windows Mobile application Google2GO! marries the functionality of Yahoo! Go to Google apps. As you can see in the demo video above, that means search, calendar, email, RSS, and more are all tied to the Google offerings of each application. It’s no Google Android, but if you use Google apps for most of your web services, it looks pretty nice. Google2Go is freeware, Windows Mobile only, requires Windows Mobile .NET 2.0. Google2Go [The Tech Turf via Google Blogoscoped]
Windows only -You know that big collection of LPs and tapes you don’t play anymore? Well the Giveaway of the Day website is offering a free app which looks like a great way to kick off the move to digitising your music collection. Similar to open source app Audacity, Cool Record Edit Pro is a Windows-based app which allows you to record and clean up sound files from a range of sources.
It includes a click and crackle filter for cleaning vinyl records, a noise filter for cassette-tape recordings, and an equaliser to enhance the sound quality of all recordings.
Cool Record Edit Pro supports MPEG (MP3, MP2), WAV, Windows Media Audio, Ogg Vorbis, Audio Tracks and Dialogic VOX) audio formats, and you can convert audio files from one format to another.
The system requirements are: Windows 98/Me/2000/2003/XP, Windows Vista or better; CPU: >750MHz Intel or AMD CPU; RAM: 64 MB RAM or above.
Sounds like a good potential weekend project. If you try it out, let me know how you get on. :)
Cool Record Edit Pro [Giveaway of the Day] More »
We’ve seen what you can do with limitless workspace possibilities in our Coolest Workspace Contest, but fact is, most of us don’t have the limitless freedom to tweak our workspaces that many of the Coolest Workspace entries did. With that in mind, and with the idea that necessity is the mother of invention and all that, today we’re kicking off our first Coolest Cubicle Contest, with $500 to Amazon at stake. So without further ado, hit the jump to take a look at this week’s coolest cubicle submissions.
Weblog Web Worker Daily sits down with Getting Things Done author and productivity evangelist David Allen to discuss his upcoming book and how GTD is more than just lists. To Allen, it’s about control: If you walk into anywhere and want to get more control, all you really need to do is a version of collect. That is I need to sit down and just get everything that has my attention or the attention of everybody in the group I’m trying to get [in]control.
The new book, which Allen describes as “GTD on steroids,” provides a higher-level look at implementing GTD in your everyday life, which is what Allen focuses on in this interview. If you’ve given GTD a once-over but have had trouble seeing the forest for the trees (or the project for the lists, as it were), this interview may give you a better idea of how and why you might want to integrate GTD philosophies into more aspects of your life. David Allen Part 3: Really Getting it Done is Not Just Lists [Web Worker Daily]
Web site Wirenode turns any web site with an RSS feed into a mobile-friendly version of that site, perfect for browsing sites on your mobile device when they don’t have a mobile-friendly interface. “Mobilizing” any site with an RSS feed is a breeze, and when you’re done you’ll end up with something like this mobilised version of Lifehacker. You can also use Wirenode to create your own mobile sites from scratch, though I’m not sure how much use most of us would get from that (maybe a start page with links to your favorite stuff?). Of course, you can also mobilize individual pages with RSS feeds with Google Reader style if you prefer the GReader layout but you’re not already using Google Reader mobile. Wirenode
If you use your cell phone in environments where a blaring ring isn’t always the ideal, but vibrate alone doesn’t always get your attention, then you’d probably do well to set your phone to vibrate first and then ring if you don’t pick it up after a few seconds. This functionality is available on some phones out of the box, but many other phones (ahem, *iPhone*) don’t offer this functionality. Weblog jkOnTheRun offers a simple workaround: Customize a ringtone by adding a period of silence before the actual sound. Then load up up the custom ringtone on your iPhone. Now, make sure you set your iPhone to use the new ringtone and also to vibrate upon an incoming call. When you get dialed up, your iPhone should “play” the silenced part of your ringtone while vibrating.
Obviously this tip works with any cell phone that can vibrate and ring on incoming calls, and it’s a great way to take calls discreetly while still using your ringtone when you need it. If you really want to keep your calls on the down low, try assigning an inconspicuous ringtone. How to make your iPhone vibrate first, ring second [jkOnTheRun]
