Slow Syncs with Omnifocus and Your iPhone
Fortunately, Omni Group is planning a new version of Omnifocus for iPhone that will solve the problem, but hasn’t appeared yet in the App Store. If you can’t wait like me, there is an AppleScript workaround provided by Omni Group at this link.
It solved the problem and I am happy again. If you are a serious GTD user, you should check out Omnifocus.
UPDATE 8/13/08 --- Omnifocus V1.0.3 is now on the App Store and supposedly fixes the Sync problems.
Some Fun with Words
Occassionally, you come across a
fun site. Wordle is just that.
As the Web site describes:
"Wordle is a toy for generating
“word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds
give greater prominence to words that appear more
frequently in the source text. You can tweak your
clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color
schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours
to use however you like. You can print them out, or
save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your
friends."
I ran the tool on my blog and here is the "word
cloud" it
created:
Lots of fun. Enjoy!
Moo Cards: A "purple cow"
If you are in the market for an
innovative way to differentiate yourself, you should
check out Moo cards. As Seth Godin says in his
book Purple Cow, “Cows, after you’ve seen them
for a while, are boring...A Purple Cow, though.
Now that would be interesting.”
Conventional business cards are boring, while Moo
Cards are not.
Moo is a London-based printing
company that allows you to create your own unique and
personal products using stock images or your own
photos from Flickr or your computer. Their minicards
are 28x70mm in size -- approximately 1/3 the size of
a regular business card -- and can have any picture
on the reverse size with 6 lines of text on the
primary side. While they are higher priced than
ordinary business cards, they really differentiate
you.
Since I have been handing out Moo mini-cards, I have
not failed in engaging the other person about the
cards and my background. They are definitely worth
getting.
Fluid & Google: The Death of Office?
If you are an Apple user and
frequently use sites like Facebook, FriendFeed,
Google Docs, etc., then Fluid is a technology that
you need to investigate. Fluid allows you to very easily to run
your favorite web applications as separate Cocoa
applications on your desktop.
I created a separate application for FriendFeed,
Facebok and Google Docs. Why? To manage my workflow
easier and to prevent the situation where an error in
one tab kills my other tabs. The combination of
Google Apps and Fluid is very powerful and has the
definite potential to make Microsoft Office
irrelevant someday. I am not yet ready to abandon
Office; however, the sharing and search capabilities
of Google Apps are very appealing.
I recommend that you download Fluid and try to make
some Site Specific Browsers. I think you will find it
very helpful in the move to web applications if you
are use to the desktop application
workflow.
Starbucks/AT&T -- Why so complicated?
Incredible hassles this morning
trying to register my Starbucks card
for free wifi
support. Firstly, they obviously did not size the
system to handle the demand. Even though I was
entering my proper Starbucks login and password,
the system insisted on coming back with an error.
Then, finally when I got through, it wouldn’t accept
my card that currently has a $15 balance
because...get this...I haven’t used it in 30 days!?!
What about all the soy lattes that I have bought with
cash in the last 30 days? They don’t count.
This is what happens when a corporation treats their
customers like criminals. Obviously, some empty suit
at corporate headquarters is worried that someone may
“free ride” on the wifi network by buying a latte and
sitting there for many hours.
Starbucks just doesn’t get it! Simply provide free
Internet access like Panera, independent coffee
shops, etc. and they will come...and they will drink
coffee. Get rid of these absurd hoops to jump through
and 2-hour limitations. Particularly since your
competition already has!
Starbucks should trust its customers and they will
reward it with their business. Especially those who
already have their loyalty cards!
UPDATE:
I made a special trip
to Starbucks to buy a latte on my card. It was
accepted finally!
Evernote and ShoZu
Lately, I have been using the beta
of Evernote as a way to organize my notes on
the MacBook Pro as well as to have an online copy.
While still a little immature, the
synchronization, search and OCR on photos are very
impressive. Also, the integration with various
platforms (Mac, Windows and Windows Mobile) is
cool.
One thing I was not happy with was
the resolution of the snapshots done by the Evernote
Windows Mobile client. As an alternative, I could
take a higher resolution photo and then email it to
my Evernote email account; however, it would take a
lot of steps. Enter ShoZu.
By making Evernote email my
one-step account in ShoZu, I can quickly take a photo
and send it to Evernote online. Evernote will store
it, OCR it and, when I synchronize with my Mac
application, provide a copy on my laptop. It is quite
cool.
I recommend that everyone should try Evernote and
ShoZu. They are an excellent combination.
What if this afternoon your Twitter feed was offline?
What if this morning your digital newpaper didn't arrive?
Imagine waking up and finding out
that you have zero
newsfeeds pending to
read. What happened...did everyone decide to boycott
the Internet? Could there actually be no updates to
the 34 feeds that I normally follow? The silence is
eery...almost like something out of a horror movie or
a Twlight Zone episode.
Unfortunately, the moment of insanity passes
and Occom's Razor takes over. The simplest
solution is the best...there must be something
wrong with the mechanism that is updating my
NetNewsWire feeds. So I start at the beginning and
assume sleep is to blame and stop and restart the
application. No effect. After hitting the Refresh
All button five or six times hoping that it would
automatically start up again, I decide that I need
to fix it.
Dismayed and annoyed, I vented my frustration by
sending a status update to all my social networking
sites using MoodBlast. Suddenly it dawns on
me...maybe it isn't only me. Rather than searching
the forums to find a solution, I decide to see if
anyone else is complaining on Twitter. No one in my feeds are having
the same problem?!?! However, I do get my news fix
on how Team Slipstream is doing in the Giro.
However, when I go to Summize, I hit the Jackpot! Not only is
there a description of the problem, but someone
has already provided a solution...NewsGator is the
problem and remove the synchronization from your
preferences within NetNewsWire. Suddenly, the RSS
feeds load and I have 104 new feeds to read.
Maybe, I shouldn't be so happy.
This was a very illuminating experience on our
dependence on and the power of new Web V2.0
communication methods...i.e. RSS Feeds and
Twittering. In record time, I was back up and
running...the free and quick dissemination of
information will dominate the future of the
Internet.
Presentation Zen: Buy it!
Every once and a while there is a book I read that just clicks. It simply knocks the ball out of the park. Presentation Zen is one of them!
A very easy and quick read, Presentation Zen offers page after page of excellent advice about how to build winning presentations. Before reading it, I thought I was an excellent speaker. Afterwards, I realized that I was implementing only about 30-40% of the ideas in the book. I cannot wait to prepare my next Powerpoint presentation. How often does someone say that!?!
Garr Reynolds is currently an associate professor at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan and spent many years working there. Consequently, the book has a Japanese flavor to it, which obviously also appeals to me. Some of the lessons are simply profound in their simplicity. For example, the key to a good presentation is two questions: "What is your point? Why does it matter?". I do not know how many presentations that I have attended in my life where the presenter was clueless on these points and just presented what he or she felt comfortable to present regardless of the relevance to the audience.
Another profound point is that the powerpoint slides are there to complement the speaker, not replace him or her. Therefore, every single point should not be on the slides. That is what should come out of your mouth. When the audience is trying to unravel the meaning in a complex slide, they are not listening to the speaker. Keep the slides simple to support the speaker...not replace the speaker.
I also liked the sidebar sections that provide interesting tidbits of knowledge. One cool one is about the Pecha-kucha method. Basically, Pecha-kucha was developed by a couple of expats in Tokyo and consists of presentations, where the presenters are limited to 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds as the presenter tells the story in sync to the transitioning slides. Within only 6 minutes and 40 seconds, you need to tell your story. How's that for getting your pitch down?
What about all these restrictions? Reynolds postulates that the restrictions are actually liberators of your creativity. I agree wholeheartedly, but it is definitely work to get things to be simple. As Mark Twain said, "It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech." However, the investment that you make on the preparation makes the investment your audience makes worthwhile.
As for investments, go buy Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. It is definitely worth it. Also check out his blog.
Businessweek Doesn't Want Us to Link to Them
This runs completely counter to the new Web 2.0 Internet. They should be encouraging us to link to their pages to drive clickthrus to their Web site. It increases the possibility of all different social networking engines to highlight their stories in mashup sites. It just goes to show how out-of-touch mainstream media is when it comes to the Internet.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9858916-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Obama Under Attack
Lately, Senator Obama has been becoming much more aggressive both in person and on the Internet to fight off allegations. I doubt it is a good strategy to be so aggressive and further an negative image. To paraphrase the Queen in Hamlet, "Methinks, Senator Obama doth protest too much!"
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2008/01/obama_mail