It looks like the very popular Engadget podcast (03-21-05) is back online. The host is Eric Rice.
Topics of potential interest: Motorola i930, The Treo, HP iPaq h6315, Playstation Portable, CTIA Wireless Expo, and Home Backup Solutions.
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The daily, typically under 10 minutes CIO Podcast is great for getting up to speed on the latest news – both business and technical – from a "chief information officer" viewpoint. The podcasts are well produced, timely, consistent, and on-target. Highly recommended.
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Podcasting
- Marina’s Work Out Podcast [high energy, I am not subscribed, but good idea]
- Brad Sucks on ODEO Podcast Service [also Doc Searls, Brian Bailey]
- Portable Media Expo is open for registration
- Tablet PC podcast [I am subscribing]
- A Public Library offering Audio Books on iPods
Music
- Brad Sucks on Harmonica Beatboxing
- Dave Slusher (via IT Conversations) interviews John Buckman, Magnatune Records
Technology
- Snort Cookbook – Chapter 7: Miscellaneous Other Uses
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DBJ (cr.yp.to) [using qmail,
DJBDNS, Daemontools] - ClearSilver (www.clearsilver.net) [HTML template system]
- Berkeley DB (www.sleepycat.com) [database]
- F-Secure on iDefense’s new tools for cyber-security R&D
- Intel and EMC’s VMWARE are working together closely (integrating H/S)
- Spyware in the Enterprise PDF (from Sunbelt)
Miscellaneous
- Phil Laak is hosting a show on the E! network called "Hollywood Hold-Em"
- Beyond Bullets book is out [aka ‘better briefing with PowerpPoint’]
- Vespa anyone? Maybe a new Segway?
Today’s link fest has been brought to you by the our fine friends at Amazon who are offering you a great mobile music player + recorder + FM radio that I personally use and endorse the iRiver iFP-799 (may or may not be availalbe for Amazon Prime shipping though).
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This is your Tech Tidbits Daily for Monday, Mar. 21th 2005. This week we are going to continue to highlight potentially interesting tidbits from the recent eTech "Remix" Conference. Today’s item comes from Dennis Crowley at Ubiquity Labs in New York City. At the conference they showed a project called Dodgeball that links people together via their mobile devices to the locations they are either currently visiting or planning to visit. The service is now available in 22 cities. For more information about the
links mentioned in this podcast, or
for more details on how to subscribe to this podcast check out www.technewsradio.com. You can also send audio or email feedback to technewsradio@gmail.com. Have a great day.
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I tried several different approaches with note-taking at eTech.
With my Tablet PC (HP TC1100) not rebuilt in time for the conference, I thought it might be good to do some experimenting. If I had my Tablet PC I would have taken all my notes in One Note.
So, on Day 1, I took notes all day using the O’Reilly note taking book that was part of the "freebies."
On Day 2, I used MindManager X5 Pro in the morning. And thanks to Tom Hoffman & Tim Lauer in their presentation "From the Classroom: Remixing Wikis with Rendevous, Web Services, and School Tool" I loaded up Ruby On Rails and instiki 0.9.2. And the afternoon was spent taking notes in this personal wiki.
Then on Day 3, I mostly took notes using with TextPad or Outlook email to just send me a text file of the notes.
Which was better?
- The manual note taking is a pain because now I have to make them digital (but I never missed anything, see below for explanation).
- MindManager was good for capture and organizational thoughts. It will also move to PowerPoint or Word well for the post-conference report (still debating the deliverable format).
- The text files were basically "usable" but under impressive.
- What I really liked was the personal wiki. And I think I’ll be prototyping this more in the future. Maybe with JotSpot.
The only downside to the digital solutions was that my computer was on. And that in itself is a distraction because it was too tempting to check email, do web research, RSS feeds, and chat. So I got 90% of the big thoughts, but to be honest I probably missed more on Day 2 and Day 3 because of ease to get on the Net.
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One of my biggest challenges is that I like to experiment with trying the "newest" thing … after reading 43 Folders, two ideas have percolated to a point of actually trying them out.
Over the course of the last month, I tested the generic Hipster PDA (I was using a single 3×5 index card print out and data collection card for a couple of years so the idea wasn’t completely foreign to me). It worked out well, and I managed to not end up with tons of scraps of paper during the course of the week that needed to be processed during my weekly review. So … it was an improvement in being and feeling organized.
So … now I am switching gears, and I am going to try for the near term to do the same with a Moleskine (company page, 43 Folders reference). I picked up a 192-page Squared Notebook (88-8370-102-X) for just under $12.00 last Thursday @ Le Travel Store in Downtown San Diego. I moved over some of Hipster PDA data and started using it to capture stuff. I am pretty happy with it so far.
I think I am going to back it up using a desktop scanner for the near future (supplementing data entry necessary from my weekly review). The other challenge is how to organize the data collection areas within the book. Right now I am trying the front for all notes, except for a middle section devoted to tech references, and a back section dedicated to spiritual data. Some other areas might be: contacts, to do items, big thoughts, and travel reference.
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I was just thinking of adding a weekly poll to www.technewsradio.com and I was wondering how I was going to find a good solution. I only had to read my RSS feeds for an answer thanks to Terry Storch @ Fellowship Church:
I am currently trying out PollMonkey.com on the site. I have heard good things about it, and heard it again while at SxSW. I am not sure how I plan on using it, but I am going to give it a shot. Currently there is a poll asking what your favorite category on terrystorch.com is: Leadership Tips, Google, What’s Working, or Other. Check out the poll at [link].
[Update: The only bad thing about this is that I had to read my RSS feeds for a good answer. My fear every week when I do my weekly review and do a mass delete on all my un-read RSS is that it is nuggets like this that get missed.]
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The Life Hacks session was very good from a personal and professional perspective.
Here are my my edited notes …
Live Hacks application functional areas (geek perspective):
- decent email search (many tools)
- easy webscraping (generating RSS feeds)
- keyboard macros for Windows/Linux (like Mac tools: launchbar, butler, quicksilver)
- filepile for everyone (Flickr, iFolder, Groove)
43 Folders Recap (Merlin): ‘Getting Things Done (Getting) by David Allen‘ is a "Framework for making progress on projects that are important to you" but "Can’t put things into folders all day long and still get any work done."
Lo-Fi Paper Hacks are a great example of doing the "Least Complicated Thing" to get something done.
The ‘Hints & Tips’ concept entitled "Four Head Ticket Trip: Agree Everyone Has A Ticket" is a great example of "How do you find ways to not screw things up."
Need to check out these tools/concepts: QuickSilver (launch bar – command line interface) for Mac, Growl, and Unix tool called Remind. Also Google Suggestion is a create tool/example of something simple that helps be more productive.
Keyboard short cuts may not be ultimately faster to do a process when compared to a mouse or other interfaces but they seem to keep the user in "the flow" and they continue to have a great deal of focus on the problem at hand vice being distracted by interfaces.
We need to be ready to help the technical inexperienced person (TIP) use technology to their advantage. It helps us in the long run because then they help others, ultimately reducing the demand on alpha geeks.
Geeks love big screens. Why? Check out research by Mary Czerwinski.
Tips for protecting your work flow from distractions:
- Exit Email/RSS
- Exit Chat
- Limit Internet via a proxy
- Eliminate navigation problems
- Utilize background tasks for notification of emergency
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I am using Doppler as my podcatching client. I was all bummed that I thought my "OPML" lists of all my podcasts that I subscribe to was lost in my recent HD crash.
It turns out I was very wrong. Doppler stores those files in the place where you want your Podcasts physically stored. I had a back up of that folder (in My Documents), and yes a back up of the Doppler config files also.
So, I think the only thing I really ended up losing was: 8 hours of email, my Firefox bookmarks, and stuff I stupidly put on my desktop.
Steve Holden's Blog 