PDAs

Well the XDA Exec has gone (hooray - rubbish battery life, awful phone, absolute brick [breeze block] but nice keyboard) and in comes Blackberry 8800. Nice. Still think Palm beats it for PDA functionality by a mile, and I'll take on ANYONE with Graffiti v thumby keyboards or predictive text. Victoria has the Perl - very stylish but RUBBISH for typing, don't do it! I do miss the realtime MS Synching - Blackberry is way behind - flaky and manual. And no camera! How will I survive? (easily for now, roll on next generation - gettimg close methinks. Wifi on new Blackberry sounds good, if the battery can cope with that as well as the inbuilt GPS). Overall, it does what I want and is easy to use, and has fewer faults than anything else I've tried. Somehow still doesn't wow me though.

Virtually Working?

So, I posted about this ages ago, but time, technology, services and thinking have moved on...
So now I have a job again, and a vaguely normal life (lacking in time and boat but thats another story for another blog!) I thought it would be good to reflect on my virtual office set-up now it's matured and services have come, gone or settled in my browser...

Email
I use Gmail @ home, I've got my "broadband attached email account" picked up in there and the email from my domains and my gmail account all splatted into one simple, but functional light email client in Gmail....

Calendar
So, I use Google Calendar... it's simple, effective and accessible.. I get daily agenda emails telling my what I'm meant to do etc.

I use Plaxo to synchronise my Google Calendar to my Outlook 2007 Calendar at work so I know what the hell I'm meant to be doing work and socially...

Tasks
At work I use Outlook 2007, at Home I use Remember The Milk, Google Calendar puts the time based tasks into it and therefore Plaxo replicates them to the on-line Plaxo Task list and Synchs them into my Google Calendar.

Contacts
From Outlook 2007 to Plaxo, autosynched oh yeh and I use LinkedIn and that gets synched into Outlook (and hence to my work Blackberry) etc so thats covered

Docs / Spreadsheets
Work it's Office 2007 - favourite functionality so far is Smart Art (or Smart Arse Art as I call it) and saving as a PDF... at home I use Google Docs/Spread, again functional and the integration is good...

Messaging
Eek, this is where it gets messy:

@Work - MS Office Communicator + GTalk (embedded in my iGoogle page) + Skype
@Home - GTalk + Skype + Live Messenger (a lot less now)
@Everywhere - Jaiku + Twitter + Facebook for random adhoc messaging, presence and personal insights
Music
iTunes to manage the music on my ipod video 30gb
Last.FM for my music exploration and on-line or random listening (like now!)

News / RSS
Google reader is packed with 162 subscriptions, iGoogle for summary stuff and I use FaceBook for those personal "news"

And well a lot of this is crosspopulated so Jaiku aggregates blog posts, flickr uploads, twitter and music from last.fm and then this gets pushed to Facebook which also has some google reader shared items (also on my blog), I can twitter a task to Remmeber The Milk and it appears there and then gets synched into Plaxo..

Wow, it seems messy but the number of "things" is reducing and I'm settling into a rhythm and a subset of tools that give me what I want twith the flexibility to add more..
let me know what you do...?

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Build A Sales Machine: "Manufacturing" New Business

Link-> Build A Sales Machine: "Manufacturing" New Business

Sound sales management thinking here from Aaron in the US. Nice ideas, cogently expressed - perhaps a useful checklist for experienced sales managers, or a useful insight for those getting started in that role. Kinda wish I'd written it first!

Lichfield - a citizen's view

I think Lichfield is a fine place - with few downsides. Let me share my thoughts on this sunny and peaceful Sunday morning...

Good

• Fantastic cathedral www.lichfield-cathedral.org/
• Great city architecture and history www.lichfielddc.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents.php?categoryID=1106
• Excellent theatre (the Garrick) www.lichfieldgarrick.com
• Location - M6/M6 Toll easily takes you North/South/East/West
• Great train service! (provided Virgin don't wreck it with new timetables)www.lichfield2london.org.uk/petition.php
• Airfield nearby (Tatenhill - www.tatenhill.com)
• Loads of good restaurants (Qmin/Eastern Eye for Indian, Ruby or Lee Garden for Chinese, Thrales for English, Chandlers for brasserie, Pizza by Goli for family Italian, Ma Ma Thai for... well you work it out! http://www.siamcornerthai.co.uk/siamlitchfield.asp)
• A few superb pubs (Queen's Head for top real ale and character, Nelson at Chorley or Plough at Huddlesford for country pubs)
• A nice park (Beacon Park)
• Good festival www.lichfieldfestival.org
• Shops ! Waitrose; M&S Food Hall; Salloways jewellers; Tudor cafe
• and a nice new hospital all of our own...

Not so good

• Awful planning consents in the 80's/90's trashed too much of the City - getting better now
• New build housing density much too high - building problems for the future?
• Too many chains of naff teen alco-pubs and consequent Saturday night problems
• Not enough political challenge to the Council
• Over exposure of our MP, Michael Fabricant, smiling into the camera everywhere

Anyone else have a view?

Powerpoint Presentations are Dead...

...long live the conversation and reputation....

But if you need to sweat some more value out of those powerpoint assets then try SlideShare

Staffing - Permanent v Contractors v Associates?

Associate employees.... I've an instinct that this approach to resourcing could be ideal. People can work flexibly, build their own profile and value, and I as employer get flexible resources levels and low HR overheads - and avoid the headaches and risks in permanent employees. It's different to contractors as I'll go back to the same people, we'll get to know each other, I'll invest in training and knowledge exchange, and care for my best associates so they come back. Does that all work or am I idealistic? Perhaps they won't be quite as loyal or committed to my business growth as permanent staff?

I'll let you know...!

The "new" digital age

The thing about exponential growth is that we all think there is one "take off" point. But of course, that merely depends on where you look at the curve from. It takes off more and more - that's what exponential means. In the late 80's we saw the exponential take off of PC's and the internet. The 1st real digital age perhaps. Then around 2000 we saw age 2 - e-commerce and the standard that everyone used the internet - it's not special anymore (amazing yes, special no). So perhaps now we're entering the 3rd age - that of collective consciousness. I explained this to my partner Victoria - a very astute solicitor - thus: human knowledge and ability used to get driven from small groups of bright people physically networking, usually in universities, constrained by how many people could work together. The 3rd digital age of applied blogs, RSS feeds, intelligent search engines, etc now means that constraint has gone and that millions of bright people can apply their intellect, and absorb tangential & lateral thinking, as they focus on their intellectual challenge. That is scarily powerful.

I find the control of this fascinating. You might say there is none. But actually the entire community's collective ethics are the rules. There are loads of examples of the collective mindset bringing down unacceptable behaviour. It's a bit like an updated set of 10 e-Commandments, but proposed by the community itself.

Phew. And this is just our view of the exponential curve today. It would be way beyond our parents yet our children will wonder why we dawdled along like this.

The thing about useful stuff is: Zoho Meeting - it just keeps getting better

The thing about useful stuff is: Zoho Meeting - it just keeps getting better says John Wilson. Blimey, that looks dead handy says me. But how on earth do you work out which whizz bang technology to adopt? I've got a business growing fast, needing 24 hours a day from the management team (and some dosh, should anyone fancy), and I can't see why we can't run it all in a virtual and low overhead environment. OK, occasional social sessions will be well worthwhile, but City based glass & chrome office blocks? (Haven't yet found a client who says "yes, charge me double so you get a nice view of the Houses of Parliament")

But I haven't time to specify requirements, validate software, consider its future proofness, etc. And anyway, my needs will be different in a few months probably. What to do, eh? Perhaps need someone clever and trusted to do a virtual business set-up site reviewing the best essential 6 functional things you need to do business safely.