Wired magazine profiles productivity guru David Allen and offers a good summary of his Getting Things Done system, its history, and some great quotes from The David. First, for folks who say GTD is too complex: [Allen]realises that his system can be difficult and that he’s often accused of going overboard with elaborate schemes. He responds with a shrug. “Look, the workings of an automatic transmission are more complicated than a manual transmission,” he says. “To simplify a complex event, you need a complex system.”
The people willing to take on that complex system? They’re the ones who know they need help and are trying to improve.
The Freelance Switch had a really interesting piece on freelance networking and “co-working” today. Matt Soniak interviewed Jason Hillman on the development of a freelance network which now operates from a central office in Philadelphia called “Independents Hall”:
“On September 1, Philadelphia’s first dedicated co-working opened its doors for business. Picture the hippest coffee shop you know. Now add broadband internet, a kitchenette, a shower, an air hockey table, a conference room, a mini-fridge for your beer, your own workspace and a handful of other like-minded creative folks. That’s Independents Hall. On one level, it’s a community of freelancers interested in getting out of the house while still independently doing what they love to do, as well as meeting, supporting and encouraging others like them. On another level, it’s a physical place for this community to do all that and more.”
I read about it this morning, felt really inspired and mailed off a link to a freelance writers mailing list I read. Then I noticed on the Whirlpool forums that a few readers over there had been similarly enthused. Thought it was worth sharing with Lifehacker, since it tackles a few of the thorny issues of freelance working – namely, how do you network with others in your profession, how do you promote your own business and stay abreast with potential business partners, and how can you afford office space while freelancing if you don’t wish to work from home.
Windows only: Freeware application Foldr Monitr watches any user-defined folder and automatically uploads any new photos to your Flickr account. After installing the program and authenticating with Flickr, just select the folder you want to monitor and that’s that. If you’ve set Foldr Monitr to start with Windows and point it to your main photo folder, the app will automatically back up all of your new pics to Flickr as soon as they hit your hard drive. I hacked together a similar solution for automatic folder monitoring and uploading to Flickr that works across platforms, but this freeware, Windows-only solution brings a much friendlier user interface and many more advanced options to the process.
Flickr Foldr MonitrMobile web start page Paged Mobile provides shorthand web navigation from their mobile start page. From its short URL (http://pa.gd/) to its web URL shorthand (which generally uses the first four letters of a URL followed by the last), most popular shortcuts on Paged only require four keystrokes. For example, you can navigate to Lifehacker by entering lifr, or Remember the Milk with remk. In addition, Paged Mobile employs YubNub web command line-like operators and shortcuts, so you can search Wikipedia by typing .wp Lifehacker (searches Wikipedia for Lifehacker). Granted, you’ve probably already got a lot of your favourites bookmarked in your mobile browser anyway, but Paged Mobile’s simple shorthand makes it a very useful mobile start page.
Paged mobileBlogger Dumb Little Man says that being ambidextrous with the mouse can increase your brain power: By switching the side of your mouse-pad you will force yourself to use your non-dominant hand. This, in turn, will stimulate the neural connections between the right and left hemispheres on your brain. Scientific research confirmed that people that use both hands equally have 10% more nerve fibers joining the two sides of the brain.
Mousing “goofy” can also help you stop RSI. Here’s how to train yourself to mouse with the other hand.
3 Easy Ways to Improve Your Brain Power [Dumb Little Man]The Age has written up a Vodafone offer giving a year of free GPS to new subscribers to its Vodafone Compass GPS service. The service, only available on the Blackberry Curve 8310 handset, is free if you sign up before 1 December 2007. The normal charges are $2.50 per 24 hour pass, $8 per month or $79 per year. Details of the Vodafone offer are here. The Age article says Vodafone will offer the Compass service on more handsets by Christmas. Telstra offers its Whereis navigation service for $15 a month on the Blackberry 8800. I have to admit I’m a bit of a GPS novice. I’ve tried and liked the Tom Tom, but not used any mobile phone equivalents. I have to admit I like the idea of being able to use the phone GPS to avoid having to have a standalone GPS gadget, so I’d be interested to hear from users who’ve tried mobile phone GPS.
Windows only: Customise or clean out your cluttered right-click shell menu with freeware application ShellExView. Once you run the lightweight executable, you can edit any existing entry in your right-click menu spanning contexts from normal Windows Explorer menus to Internet Explorer-specific menus. The program could be more user-friendly, but it’s very effective. For example, if you’ve got a heavy right-click menu from apps you don’t need access to from your right-click, just run ShellExView, do a Ctrl-F search for the name of the program or entry, and disable it. Right-click again and it’s no longer there. ShellExView is an effective freeware utility, Windows only. For a more user-friendly alternative, check out FileMenu Tools. Thanks Yoav!
ShellExView [Nirsoft]Just when we thought Gmail’s development is stagnating, rumour has it a “new version” is in the works.
Store-bought playdough is stinky and dries out really quickly – but you can get around that with Instructables’ easy recipe for homemade, non-toxic playdough. This is an easy recipe that you can customise with your own colours; plus, it’s easily rejuvenated if it gets a little dry with just a little water kneaded in. How to Make Playdough (Play-doh) [Instructables]
While many people just use Facebook as a social connector, you can also use Facebook – quite successfully, I might add – as a self-marketing tool. Entrepreneurial blogger Neil Patel has written up an article on marketing yourself with Facebook that brings up some good points, and the best one is this:
