A little bird told me about a new way to manage my lists

As a GTD devotee and techno-geek, I am constantly tinkering with my productivity and time management toolset. I use Evernote to manage my notes. For task management I have tried a number of different products, including Google Tasks, Remember the Milk an Nozbe. These are all great products in their own right, but recently I had settled on Toodledo. I liked Toodledo mainly because its free offering covered most of what I needed. I also liked how it integrated with my Iphone and with my email account.

However, this setup wasn’t perfect. Read the rest of this entry »

Do The Exact Opposite

Several weeks ago I happened to catch Yes Man on cable TV.

Jim Carey portrays a loser – a banker whose wife has left him, whose friends refuse to spend time with him, and whose main activity at work involves rejecting loan applications.

On the advice of an old acquaintance, he finds himself at a motivation seminar where he commits to a new approach to life – saying “Yes” to any proposal that comes his way, no matter how ludicrous.

In true Hollywood tradition, this triggers a complete turnaround in his life, by the end of which he has found his true love, boosted his career and become a hero to all his friends.

Maybe I’m going through a minor mid-life crisis, but lately I find myself reading, seeing or hearing a lot about personal empowerment and self improvement.

Read the rest of this entry »

John and five others liked this meeting summary

I started up Outlook.

42 unread messages – typical for a three hour absence from my desk.

I quickly scanned the list to see if anything warranted urgent attention.

One email stood out – from my boss. It was a forwarded complaint from a customer with an added directive : “Please summarize the current situation and provide your recommendation for the best course of action”.

I recalled having answered a similar request a year and a half ago. I searched through my email archive and found the relevant mail. A few minor changes to bring the information up to date, and the response was in my Boss’s Inbox within half an hour.

I have worked for the same organisation for the last 9 years. During this time I have amassed thousands of incoming and sent emails. They are all organized in PST files – one for each quarter. Naturally, amongst these thousands of emails there are tens (maybe hundreds) which are still of economic value to the company. They include correspondence that lead to important business decisions, previous versions of documents, approvals and sign-offs by various departments, strategic papers that were ignored at the time, etc.

Some of these are duplicated in the network file system or filed in paper form. Others are not, partly due to lack of time, and partly because  they didn’t seem particularly important at the time. They are indexed based on a unique system which resides in one place – my brain.

If and when I leave the company, all this information will be lost !!

Like me, there are hundreds or thousands in every big organisation.

I believe that the solution to this problems lies in importing the habits and processes that govern social media on the Internet. Furthermore, I believe that we are on the verge on a revolution in this area. Read the rest of this entry »

Three ways of crossing the Man-Machine Boundary

“I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it” (Thomas Edison)

Whether or not Apple’s new tablet announced today is a success, it seems to me that this is a major step forward in the evolution of one of three competing paradigms for human interaction with mobile devices.

The first paradigm has been around since the first portable PC’s were developed, that is, a keyboard, screen and pointing device all bundled into one package. This approach is used on most laptops and netbooks, and even some mobile devices with keyboards such as the most Blackberry devices, Nokia E72 etc . It appears to be the most appropriate for serious productive work.

The second paradigm is the touch screen, brought to a new level by the Ipad. This appears to be a more intuitive interface as the user interacts directly with the objects on the screen without the keyboard or mouse as a mediator. However, there are still some major issues with this approach,  including arm fatigue and fingers blocking out the screen. As anyone who has ever attempted to write a lengthy email on the Iphone, it is quite a slow and tedious process.

The third paradigm, which to my surprise has not received much notice, is the mobile Keyboard approach that is mainly being pushed by Asus. The idea is to have a PC bundled into a keyboard, which wirelessly communicates with a screen nearby. To my mind this is a very interesting concept, as I can imagine a future where flat screens are ubiquitous, and where we walk around with lightweight (potentially collapsible) keyboards that contain networking capability and some basic storage for our identity and preferences (presumably most of our data is stored on the cloud) and we wirelessly connect to freely available screen at work, in a cafe or in our airplane seat.

Which of these paradigms triumphs in the long run remains to be seen. Most likely the Laptop approach will continue to be used for work related applications, tablets for recreational activities such as web surfing, video, e-books etc, whilst mobile keyboard will target the gaming and home media market.

Perhaps a new paradigm will emerge that trumps all three. In this space, its interesting to look at 10/GUI, which attempts to merge the first and the 2nd. I for one look forward to interacting with mobile devices in new and interesting ways.

Till Death do us part…..

You can pretty much change anything about your life – your partner, your religion, your sex, and with enough money – your physical appearance.

There’s one thing you can never change – the sports teams you support.

Having lived in the Israel, Australia, the US and the UK, I consider myself a fairly eclectic sports fan, with my interests ranging from Cricket, to baseball, rugby, football (soccer), basketball etc.

For the record, here is a list of the teams I support and the reason why.

	Because I grew up there is the golden age of Zahi Armeli, Roni Rosenthal (later a Liverpool star) etc
	Maccabi Haifa Basketball Club – Refer above, except for the part about a golden age
	Liverpool FC – because I grew up in the golden age of Ian Rush, Kenny Dalglish etc
	Philadelphia 76ers – because I grew up in the golden age of the Dr, Moses Malone etc.
	Chicago Cubs – because it was the 1st baseball team I ever saw live, because of Rigley field and because of its tragic history
	Israeli National Football team – Always a a true patriot
	Dutch National Football team – Because Dutch people are nice and because of its tragic history (refer Cubs above)
	Brazilian National Football team – Because of the way they play
	Sydney city (formely Eastern Suburbs) Roosters Rugby League Club – Because I used to live in the Eastern Suburbs
	Barcelona FC – Favourite city in Spain
;	Australian Wallabies (national Rugby Team) – Again – true patriot
	Australian National Cricket Team – Ditto

What the world needs is another Blog

לעברית, הקש PgDn.

For Herbrew, press PgDn

“A blog of a thousand posts begins with one Chinese proverb” (Lao Tzu paraphrased)

So, I have decided to start my own blog.

Why the hell am I doing this ? Partly for the technological challenge of getting a respectable website up and running (I figure someone in my line of business ought to have a some first-hand knowledge what goes on under the hood) and partly because everyone around me seems to be doing it.

What will I write about ? Anything and everything that interests me, including Politics, sports, economics, quality coffee, IT, and generally coping with life in the 2010′s.

Will I have enough to write about ? That remains to be seen, but I already have several ideas in the making so I am pretty much set for at least the next two months.

If I build it,will they come ? Other than my family members and closest friends probably not, but then again who knows.

What’s special about this Blog ? If your not me, probably not much, though I do have one unique selling point. I intend to post both in English and in Hebrew. There might be other multilingual Hebrew-English blogs out there, but there certainly can’t be many.

What will my blog do for humanity ? For starters, halt global warming, solve the Iranian problem and end the Chicago cubs curse.

So come back to visit again soon. Should be quite interesting.

(S787XBW9BZCM)

“