Untitled - By Me
A short while back, I had asked for some feedback and direction. From this, I received several replies; thank you so much! Here is one of those replies:
“I’ve been using PDAs since the mid ’90s, and I’m interested in using them to extend my brain — productivity, in other words. Overall, there’s been little focus on this since the rush for communication. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what works, and what doesn’t work, under webOS.”
(Thanks, Doug, for the response! Doug’s product looks like a great productiviy product for the Palm Pre. I haven’t tried it yet, but plan to do so.)
I think this is a great idea and I will work on a post about this. In the meantime, I wanted to talk a little more about a particular subject; one who’s name Doug actually wrote above – Focus.
I’ve alluded to it, and have talked about it directly in a couple of posts. I sincerely think focus is a huge area one has to work on to increase personal productivity in order to accomplish goals, and finally handle everything life throws at you in a relaxed manner.
Side Note: Doug, I think the Palm Pre & WebOS helps with this tremendously by letting you take things in stride, not get interrupted and maintain focus.
Yesterday was Independents Day (I hope you had a GREAT day). Focus was surely a gigantic necessity in forming our country. I’m picking up this book and reading it to see how the Founding Fathers kept their focus and accomplished such a great task.
Tags: Focus, GTD, Palm Pre, Relaxed Productivity
It really warms my heart and brain to watch people talk about something they have a passion for. I stumbled across this tonight. What a unique website. Click on the “video screen” in the upper right hand corner and take a few minutes out to watch this video. I really appreciated that these guys love what they do and are basically fulfilling their dreams.
Interesting that as I wrote this it just struck me that I was just chatting with someone on Facebook about how they have not fulfilled their dreams (kind of paraphrasing in a way). The video, and the conversation, are making me think about my own path, goals, destinations and dreams – all of which have been on my mind lately.
Question: What are your dreams and what are you doing to fulfill them?
What a great way to end the week! So looking forward to some down time!
Tags: GTD, Microsoft Outlook, Personal Productivity, Relaxed Productivity
Has anyone been successful with setting up and using “Internet Free/Busy” in Microsoft Outlook 2010 to help with scheduling meetings? I sure haven’t. I’ve been pretty excited about Microsoft Outlook 2010 since the Outlook Team announced it on there blog. However, I’m not sure this feature is working.
Every day, I am working more and more with other organizations. This week alone, there were at least five times where I went though this time wasting exchange:
Email From Customer: We need to have a meeting / have you attend a meeting. When is good for you?
Email From Me: Well, my Monday and Tuesday are shot. Wednesday or Thursday are open for now.
Email From Customer, the next day: How about Wednesday Morning?
Email From Me: That got booked up. Thursday afternoon?
… And you get the gist …
I said to myself, there has to be a better way to do this. There has to be a technology solution. I have heard about “Free/Busy Server” for years, but have never been successful at setting it up. So, I tried again, and the instruction (as shown here, especially the part about the FTP setup), don’t work. Plus, if the Free/Busy (FreeBusy?) file is behind a protected FTP site, how will someone be able to use it??
Has anyone else conquered these dilemmas – both the “Let’s Try To Schedule A Meeting Two Step” as well as Free/Busy?
(Side Note: As some may suggest / think of, yes, Exchange does this – supposedly great – inside an organization – however, I’m talking about “Inter-organization” scheduling.)
Tags: Microsoft Office, Outlook, Personal Productivity, Relaxed Productivity
(I spent some time writing this up as a part of an application. I thought it was so good, and, because I spent the time I thought I would post it here also.)
Should I buy a Palm Pre over an Apple iPhone?
As with many things in life, it depends.
The first thing you need to ask yourself when making this decision is why you are considering getting a “smartphone” (as these devices are commonly called). The “why” can be generalized into one of two categories:
1) I want to get a smartphone for entertainment.
2) I want to get a smartphone to help me be more productive.
If you think you are in the first category, then, you may want to lean more towards the iPhone. Apple has certainly done an incredible job at making music easily available and a piece of cake to load. Their apps (applications you can load on the phone, some for free and some for a cost) can keep you entertained for hours. However, if you are more interested in tackling life, the Palm Pre is definitely the phone for you.
Palm’s slogan is “Life Moves Fast. Don’t Miss a Thing,” which is the perfect companion to being more productive, whether in your personal or work life. The Palm Pre takes everything that is thrown at you (Emails, Text Messages, Facebook Notifications, Twitter Tweets, Appointments, Tasks) and queues them up in what’s known as “notifications.” A notification can be flat out ignored, temporarily ignored and placed as an icon at the bottom of the screen that you can deal with later, or literally “thrown away.” This is opposed to the iPhone where when one of these life events happens, a message rudely pops up in the middle of the screen, interrupting what you are doing (on the phone, or not) and forcing you to deal with it. The Palm Pre’s “river rock” design is comfortable in your hand, making life comfortable to handle, even multiple things at one time.
The Palm Pre was the first smartphone to truly be multitasking – allowing you to run more than one application at one time. Get a text and need to look at your calendar? Just “slide over” to it, see what you need to see and slide back. You cannot do this with the pre iPhone 4 phones. The new iPhone 4 does have multitasking, however, it simply is not as graceful and will not keep you as productive as the Palm Pre.
Life truly is moving faster and faster every day. If you want a tool to tackle it (and one that has music and apps as well), then the Palm Pre is it. Palm’s website is a great source of information, including videos that will demonstrate everything I have talked about. Palm’s Facebook page has a great video demonstrating how you will truly feel with a Palm Pre in your hand. Finally, if you are looking for a more neutral review, Gizmodo.com is a good source. I hope this helps; now, go be more productive!
Been absent, again, for awhile. Here are some random thoughts and updates:
- I’m happy to see that Nancy is still trying. Please view her video and help her out.
- Contrary to my rant of awhile back, I’m still using the Palm Pre – and happy I am. It still is a great productivity tool; the bestone out there for people who truly want to concor “Life moves fast, don’t miss a thing.”
- I’ve had some of the largest productivity challenges of my life lately with my work. I’m pondering doing some writing to help me think through them, and make it educational for others at the same time.
- Related to the above, I recently figured out that there are a lot of you monitoring this blog. What can I do to be of service to you? What would you like to see / read more of? Palm Pre? Productivity? Business? Let me know. Comment here, or, email me: jeffrey@fixyourtodolist.com
Tags: GTD, Palm Pre, Personal Productivity, Relaxed Productivity, Stress
QuickPress (Quick Post): I love proactive people. This gal came up to me in the Denver airport and explained that she is trying to win a scholarship by getting the most views on her video. Please help her out (you don’t have to watch the whole thing for her to win): Nancy
Once again I’ve been absent for a while. Things, as normal, have been very busy. Yet, I wanted to write an update post on my Palm Pre since I’ve been in that mode here on my blog.On the plus side (I always try to look on the bright side of life – thank you Monty Python), I still love how Palm has hit the nail on the head with the Pre being a great business productivity tool. Case in point:
- I was on Facebook looking around.
- I have the web browser up on another card holding the address and phone number for something I’ll need in a bit.
- I’m IM’ing with a friend, and…
- I can quickly slide over to my calendar to confirm a time for that IM conversation and not miss a beat.
A quick jab towards my “iPhone has changed my life” friends; I would like to see your iPhone do the above just as effectively. Alas, in a touché’ to the iPhone, there are sure some things the Palm misses the mark on:
- Battery Life. When I travel in Denver, and use my phone some to medium (Maybe a call or two, Bluetooth, GPS), it is dead by noon. My Treo at least would last all day.
- I’m on a (very) mini-vacation in Vegas today. Phone came off the charger at about 9:00am, it is now noon and I’m down to 49% battery.
- Calendar. I wish the monthly calendar view displayed colors and more effective information like the Treo did. In its current form, it is pretty useless.
- Adding Contacts. On my Treo, when I found something on Google, there was an option to add it to contacts with the “touch” of a link. No more.
- Slow. It is NOT a peppy unit. I watch iPhone users and, bam! They are there!
Where I stand: if Apple comes out with the new phone this year, and the OS is up to multitasking par with the Pre, then I will probably jump ship. I read an article recently that said Palm is working on new phones. So if they address the above, I may say on board as I have been on the Palm ship a long time (I started with the Palm Pilot) and have always appreciated what they do for productive people like me.
Epilog: I think the world of “$.99 Apps” is killing us. Of the (very) few apps I have found worthwhile and useful on the Palm Pre, no one is coming out with much needed updates or growing their applications. I have to imagine that because the app is so cheap, and it was so easy to make using the WebOS operating system, that there is no motivation to keep developing the application. When I talk to iPhone users, they say their cheap apps get updates fairly frequently, and I have to wonder if that is due in part to the effort the developer had to put into the iPhone app. As I understand it, the programming language is much harder to learn and Apple is very strict about what they allow in their web store. I think this is something critical the world needs to ponder, let alone Palm.
I really think Robert Scoble has it wrong in this post. Palm was not betting on a “small phone with a decent experience and web browser.” They are betting on people wanting a true business tool and not a toy.
Tags: Palm Pre
When I purchased my Palm Pre, I purchased a Touchstone charger for it. I love the Touchstone and its whole concept. When I am working in my home office, I just lay my Palm Pre on the “puck” and wah-lah, it is charging. If I answer the phone while the Pre is on the puck, it automatically answers like a speaker phone. If I pick the Pre up off the puck, it automatically takes it off speaker phone. It really functions as a great business office phone. (Being “built for business” is an important point and one I am chomping at the bit to write about in my next post.) Yet, the Touchstone has had some issues.
When you purchase the Touchstone, you have to replace the back cover of the Palm Pre with the Touchstone back cover. (As a side note, Verizon’s Palm Pre Plus comes with the Touchstone cover I believe.) It is similar to the original back cover, accept instead of being a smooth, glossy surface, it is more rubberized. I think this is for two reasons. One, I think the rubberized surface helps the Pre sit on the puck. Two, the cover has the metal antenna (for lack of better words) inside for the inductive charger. I am figuring it gets a little warm in there, so, they had to make the plastic thicker. In any event, I unfortunately have had three issues over time with the Touchstone:
- My first Touchstone (or the back cover) “buzzed” or “hummed” ever so slightly after the Palm Pre was fully charged. In my Zen like home office, this was not good. After surfing the net some, I saw that other people reported this and, some, said that swapping it out for another unit made the problem go away. I swapped mine out and, sure enough, the hum was gone. However, there was another disruption in the Zen river rock.
- With my 2nd Touchstone Cover attached, I began to notice that as I “thumbed” on the keyboard, the unit “creaked.” Related, it just did not feel as solid as it did before. I was on the road for a week and swapped my cover back to the original cover (as I was not taking the Touchstone on the trip with me), and, wow(!), I immediately noticed how much more solid the unit felt. After my trip, I swapped back to the Touchstone cover and I was in church taking notes. I (and others) noted how “creaky” and loud it was. So, I called Palm and kudos to their customer service; they said, “no problem, we will send you another one” which I had in a matter of days.
- My 3rd cover is much more solid and quiet than my other Touchstone cover. However, sigh, the charging on the puck is intermittent. It keeps going in and out of charging mode, “duh-dunking” every time. Frustrating? Yes. Yet, again, kudos to Palm. Customer service was apologetic and did not give me any hassles; another one is on its way. I am optimistic that I will be back in “river rock on a pedestal” soon. Also, I am optimistic about Palm. See my next post about that thought.
Tags: Palm Pre
