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.
A Good Investment of An Hour of Your Time
I just finished watching
an hour-long video on YouTube of a panel by authors
Marci Alboher - “One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model
for Work/Life Success” and Tim Ferriss -
“The 4-Hour Workweek; Escape 9-5, Live
Anywhere and Join the New
Rich”. It
was part of the Authors@Google series and took place
about one year ago in Mountain View.
Some key takeaways resonated well
with me. Tim Ferriss emphasized time and time again
against focusing on list of items and accomplishing as
much as possible as opposed to focusing on the
effectiveness of the work you are doing. His pareto
analysis approach, i.e. focus on the 20% that achieves
the 80%, is spot on. He also said that, when forced to
do things from 9-5 in a single location, people will
make up things to do to fill the time. While managing
organizations, I have found this to be very true . The
key is getting people to do innovative, effective
things with the extra time.
Marci Alboher talks about “Slash Careers” where you
have multiple jobs/pursuits to your life. I can
certainly relate to her discussion. In addition to
having run a division in a high technology company, I
have specific interests in marketing, sales, computers,
coaching individuals, writing, presenting, wine and
cooking. I am always balancing these different
activities in my life. I am truly a “slash” individual.
The video offers a new way to look at careers and life
and really reinforces my belief on time management.
Enjoy.
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.
Reckless Kelly - Time to Visit the iTunes Store
There are times where you find a
hidden gem and you need to pass it forward.
Reckless Kelly is one of them.
I was introduced to them by one of my
friends. Hailing from Texas, their country/rock blend
is quite enjoyable...if you don’t have any of their
music, it is time to visit iTunes and download their
three best songs:
Wicked Twisted Road
Seven Nights in Eire
Stick Around
Enjoy!
"A Tale of Two Upgrades"
To quote Charles Dickens, “It was the
best of times. It was the worst of times.” This week
two long-awaited upgrades arrived for Mac users:
RapidWeaver V4.0 and Delicious Library 2. Both have
offered some free upgrades to its installed base.
RapidWeaver allows any registered RapidWeaver
3.6 customer, i.e. a Serial Number starting with
RW3SN. RapidWeaver is an excellent Web site creation
tool and is the one used for this blog. For me, the
upgrade was a snap and now I am using RapidWeaver
4.0 for this entry. I will report on my impressions
of RapidWeaver 4.0 in a later blog entry, once I
have had the opportunity to explore it further.
Delicious Library has stated that any customer that
bought Delicious Library 1 on or after December 1st
2007 would be entitled to a free upgrade to
Delicious Library 2, when available. Here is
the actual blog entry. Delicious Library is a cool
application that allows you to “catalog your books,
movies, music, software, toys, tools, electronics
and video games”. However, unlike the RapidWeaver
upgrade, this upgrade is not going as well. The
Delicious Library 2 installation and migration of my
library has gone flawless; however, the new version
does not accept my Delicious Library 1 license key.
Consequently, my instance of Delicious Library 2 is
running in demo mode and will NOT allow me to scan
in any new items.
There are no instructions on the Delicious Monster Web
site on the process to get a free Delicious Library 2
upgrade license key and I contacted Delicious Monster
by email two days ago about the problem. I have yet to
receive a reply.
My hope is that Delicious Monster will be honoring
their commitment to the installed base. In any event,
they are not handling the situation as well as
RapidWeaver. I am wondering if we will see a rerun of
the YazSoft PR disaster?
UPDATE
6/4: Good news. I
found the free upgrade path for Delicious Library. You
simply need to go through the normal purchase process
embedded in the software and they will credit you the
$20 upgrade fee if you qualify. Unfortunately, I needed
to find this on my own and there is no real explanation
on the Delicious Monster Web site. Nevertheless, I
never received a direct response from Delicious
Monster.
UPDATE
6/18: I finally
got an email from Delicious Monster with my free
license key. Clearly, they have honored their
commitment to existing users; however, it is more than
three weeks since the product announcement.
Was I in Tokyo?
Sometimes I am surprised and
yesterday was one of them.
While my wife was shopping for food at Nijiya Market -
the Japanese supermarket in Mountain View, Ayumi - my
10 mo. old daughter - and I went to Grain D'or Bakery
in the same strip mall. Grain D'or is related to
Andersen's Bakery chain where I frequented often when I
lived in Tokyo. We get excellent premium white and
raisin bread there.
Also, I normally sit with Ayumi and have a cup of
coffee and sometimes a cheese danish. They brew Mr.
English Coffee from my favorite coffee shop in Los
Altos. This time however, they had run out of all the
freshly-brewed coffee, except de-caf. When I told them
that they needed to re-fill the "high test" coffee,
they offered me a free cup of espresso for the
inconvenience. Nice touch, but hardly blog-worthy.
Patience.
As I was having my coffee, an elderly person in a
wheelchair came into the restaurant and one of the
staff helped her to the table next to mine. She was
going to have lunch in the cafe. At the same time, out
of joy Ayumi let out a huge shriek and the elderly
woman commented how loud she was. It was understandable
so I moved to the outside tables to give her some peace
--- after all she is paying good money for lunch, too.
Here is the blog-worthy service item --- after I
finished my coffee and brought the mug inside, the same
staff person came and apologized again for the lack of
fresh coffee AND to tell me how adorable my daughter is
and thank me for moving to accommodate the elderly
person. It is the kind of service and commitment you
unfortunately don't find here in America, but is
commonplace in Japan.
As Seth Godin puts it, it is part of Grain D'or 's
purple cow and what makes it remarkable. I recommend
that you visit the store at 137 E. El Camino Real,
Mountain View, CA 94040 (650) 210-9488.