Getting Things Done author David Allen calls any kind of productivity trick or system “advanced common sense”—using the smart part of your brain to help out the dumb part in its most feeble moments. The Getting Things Done weblog lists some of its best “advanced common sense,” like writing things down, ubiquitous capture and setting up to-do’s in their right contexts. For me, hanging up the car keys on the keyrack is the advanced common sense that keeps my dumb future self from running around the house looking for them when it’s time to go.
Does the thought of hiring a virtual personal assistant in Bangladesh for 5 bucks an hour make your skin crawl? Entrepreneur Ryan Norbauer explains how he got over his hang-ups and got super-productive with hired help. He writes: What is the part of your work (whether personal or professional) that only you can do? And what if you could somehow force yourself to do only that work? In my case, doing precisely this with the help of outsourcing has radically improved my effectiveness.
Record and share real-time (but not live) drawings and whiteboards with YouTube-like embedded videos at web site Sketchcast. Sketchcast’s intro video (above) touts the product as a potentially new style of blogging, but it seems better described as a way to share whiteboard ideas online. On the other hand, if you’re looking to collaborate with a live whiteboard online, check out previously mentioned Skrbl and Scriblink.
SketchcastGoogle Calendar and Google Reader are now iPhone (and iPod Touch) friendly and Gmail has also undergone a graphical user interface overhaul which looks great on the iPhone, too. Thanks, Ian!
It’s only when you’ve scheduled automatic tasks for your computer to do for you that you have true reign over your silicon gadget minions. Weblog Of Zen and Computing lists what jobs your computer can do for you, like spam filtering, Google Alerts, and image batch resizing. I’d add backup, downloads, hard drive cleaning and spyware/virus scanning to the list. What do you automate on your computer? Do tell.
Time Saving & Automation Round-up: Let the Computer Do the Work [Of Zen and Computing]Google’s updated its advanced search operator options to make finding pages by date a lot easier. Recently the big G’s gotten a whole lot faster at adding new pages to their index, and now you can search for pages that Google’s found within any number of days, weeks or months. Hit up the advanced search form to use a handy (but limited) dropdown, or go beyond defaults using URL parameters like this:
Two years ago, Lifehacker alum Keith posted some of his best professional email tips and we set up a personal local wiki with Instiki.
Search the contents of every web page you’ve ever bookmarked with del.icio.us using a dynamically built Google Custom Search engine from deliGoo. Just point your browser to the deliGoo homepage, enter the username and optional tag you want to search, and then enter your search terms and click Goo. deliGoo will analyse your del.icio.us account and create a Google Custom Search Engine, then use it to search the contents of every site for a match. If you’re a prolific bookmarker and you’ve run into a situation where you know you’ve bookmarked a page, remember what it was about, but can’t find it using your tags, a deliGoo search might be just what the doctor ordered.
deliGooThe minimalist Wine Wedge creates a cheap, space-saving wine rack of any size anywhere and any time you need one. The two rubber wedges that make up the Wine Wedge actually look a little on the flimsy side, but according to the NYT review, “The Wedge may not look very robust, but it works surprisingly well.” If you’ve had problems with frail wine racks in the past, the $9.95 Wine Wedge is a cheap and sturdy alternative.
Wine Wedge solves need for traditional wine rack [Unclutterer]Logmein is a free application which allows you to connect and remotely control your PC. It’s not new, but I’m a new fan having used it while I was away at a conference this week. Happily, it works with Vista, as I was using a Vista laptop at the conference to connect to my Vista box at home. One thing I learned – the remote access does depend on the remote PC being powered on. It sounds like a no-brainer, but I was on autopilot before I left home and put my PC into hibernate mode. I had to make a phone call home to get it turned on, which wouldn’t be possible if you live on your own! So if you intend to use Logmein on the road, make sure you leave your PC turned on! My one gripe was that if the PC you’re trying to access remotely needs to be powered up, there seems to be a delay of a few minutes before that PC shows up as “online” to you at the remote location. Admittedly, I was attempting to access it from a fairly crappy hotel conference room media centre with Vista machines on an unreliable wireless network, so any of those factors may have contributed to slowing down the remote connection! We wrote up the use of Logmein as a way to provide remote tech support here.
