Category: post

Very interesting social website called We Are What We Do. This idea goes like this, it has a list of actions we all can do to make the world a better place. For Instance, planting a tree (improves the environment) or taking a bath with someone else (saves water, energy and promotes romance). Do one of the items and you can check it off and see the number of others who have done the same. It is like Digg crossed with GTD crossed with crunchy progressive feel good social action. Great idea.

I have the following quote in the body section of the front “Today” page of my Backpack list:
Begin nothing until you have considered how it is to be finished
I have no idea who it is attributed to. I found it a few weeks ago in a fortune cookie. While it is not really a fortune it is good advice none the less. A good way to start prioritizing the daily tasks.

Merlin is up to his old tricks again. This time he is running a series on how to release your inner email-fu and get that inbox under control and down to zero… That’s right, zero e-mail in your inbox.
Sounds like a dream to some of you right? It did to me once as well. I thought the idea of processing 100% of e-mail that I received, being quick and nimble with that processing and keeping both my work and home e-mail inboxes at or very near zero all of the time was impossible. I am here to tell you that not only is it possible but it is very liberating and emotionally validating to have that zen like control over the center of your communicative world (For most of us, this is what e-mail is). Almost all of my tactics |were developed by practices I learned from other posts on the subject that Merlin has done in the past.
So, if you have ever wanted to achieve what I have, I could not think of a better place to start.
43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero

In the future, perhaps I will outline my own e-mail-fu, learned from many masters, which involves an IMAP account, 5 folders and a lot of hard line mercenary style choices made with split second precision. My e-mail fu is strong.

Here are some of the things I have added to my del.icio.us list lately that I wanted to share with all:
Gladwell.com: The Social Life of Paper – “Had the computer come first — and paper second — no one would raise an eyebrow at the flight strips cluttering our air-traffic-control centers”
Fortune: Secrets of greatness: How I work – “E-mail and voicemail; yoga and personal assistants; structure and grooving: A dozen accomplished people tell what works for them.”
Writely Acquired by Google – “We like lava lamps and they’re pretty much standard decor at Google.”
What Google’s acquisition of Writely means – “Google knows that most people don’t need the full Microsoft Office collection. They don’t even need most of it. They don’t even need half of each product.”
If all that isn’t enough, we now know that…
Your Home Office Can Kill Your Brain – “I resolve to put on some Prince and dance for a good five minutes as a break today. Preferably to the songs ‘7′, ‘Gitt Off’ and ‘Sexy MF’ and while dancing with the cat who will think I finally lost that last marble.”

The most Dugg story on Digg right now and there is good reason why. Remember when I was saying that calendaring was the next online revolution? Well, Google is on the way in and TechCrunch has the screenshots to prove it. Boy does it seem cool.

It must just be the season. There are some really fun and entertaining tales of install issues, hardware crashes and other tales of geek woe over at the Geek Gather blog. Take for instance:

• The Ubuntu Adventure – What happens when you put a geek in a room with a few dying iBooks, a Linux CD and some time?
• The Dell Experiment – When ZIF sockets and thermal paste go horribly wrong.
• Infinite Loop – “Dammit Jim! I’m a podcaster not a routing specialist!”

You can find these and many other geek tales at http://geekgather.org/blog

I had the pleasure of being a guest the other day on Scottie’s (Most Excellent) Podcast. We discuss, outline and review a number of “Web 2.0” apps and generally revel in our own geekness for an hour. It is a pretty good listen if I do say so myself. Get at the link above or subscribe to it in iTunes.

I have posted a new update on the wedding page. We now have a place and time picked out for the wedding itself (Yeah!).

I now have a page up to try to keep family and friends up to date with what is happening with the wedding. It can be accessed here (full link below). I have not included a navigation link to it in the site links above because a lot more people visit the site than just family and friends. This link will also be featured on our invitations and other event related communications so if you forget to bookmark it now you will be seeing it other places. Although, it should be easy enough to remember:
http://patrickrhone.com/wedding

Merlin Mann once again nails it. This time it is nine tips for making meetings more productive. I am not so secretly thinking of printing this out tomorrow and doing a little mailbox stuffing at work. My favorite quote:

…this is coming from a man who often was compelled to spend the better part of one day a week on a bi-coastal video conference call with two dozen people. Staring. Wishing death. Listening to the CTO opine at length about how exciting it would be to build and sell a national yellow pages app from scratch. If there had been cyanide capsules on the table instead of M&Ms, I don’t think I would have hesitated to indulge."

Oh yeah, everyone needs a copy of this…
9 tips for running more productive meetings | 43 Folders