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What Andy's Doing
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Recently Written
- Passionate People: Get What You Deserve, Become a Career Renegade!
- Featured Blog: Patrick Rhone and His Journal
- Ask The Readers: Can You Disconnect And Still Be Productive?
- Why Working Long, Hard Hours Gets You Behind (?)
- How to Help Great Productivity Blogs Get Discovered
- My Scandelous Confession and A Royal Rant About GTD
- On New Beginnings (And More About Your Host)
- Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
- How to Use Basecamp and Backback In Perfect Harmony
- How to Chill Out
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Categories
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Archives
How to Use Basecamp and Backback In Perfect Harmony
I’ve read a lot of posts out there in the blogosphere trying to answer whether Basecamp or Backpack is the best solution for managing projects. The fact is that there is no reason that you should have to, or want to, choose one over the other. I have been using both for about a year now and I’m happy to be able to share what I’ve learned so far. I recognize some of you may not have heard of these tools, so let’s start with what they are.
What is Backpack:
Taken from the Backpack website: “Backpack is a web-based service that makes organizing your information incredibly easy. Backpack lets you make pages which can contain any combination of notes, to-dos, images, files, etc. You can keep these pages to yourself or share them with colleagues, co-workers, friends, or family.” (You can also see how Brett uses Backpack as a general GTD system here)
What is Basecamp:
Taken from the Basecamp website: “Basecamp takes a fresh, novel approach to project collaboration. Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.”
First, I Had Backpack.
How I Use Evernote
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been really pimping Evernote to friends (both in real life and online, particularly on twitter). I’m usually pretty shocked to hear how many people have tried it and simply don’t know what to do with it or how to make it a useful part of their workflow. So, I thought I’d give you all a little peek into how I use it in my day-to-day life in the hope that some of you might come to love it and use is as heavily as I do. But first, indulge me in a little bit of speculation as to why people find it so difficult to put Evernote to good use.
Web Warrior Tools - Get Your Smart On
My very good buddies Glen (of LifeDev) and Leo (of Zen Habits) launched their brand new ebook store today, called Web Warrior Tools. Much like their awesome blogs, the main idea behind the books they sell is improving your life. And don’t let the name fool you - these precious volumes are good for anybody, not just us chumps that spend all day tapping on the keyboard.
They’ve already got some killer titles fresh off of the presses, including:
- The Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting
- Email Zen
- The Get Rich Slowly Guide to Roth IRAs
- Secrets to a Healthy Life
The best part their offerings (and ebooks in general, really) is that you can have them now! Click to buy, and you’re ready to go a few seconds later. Gotta love the freakin’ Internet.
All books offer a free preview of a chapter or two, so you can peruse a good chunk of the book before paying a nickel. Run - don’t walk - over to Web Warrior Tools and get yourself some of the finest ebooks from the finest bloggers on the web!
Friday Fun: Flip Video
My wife bought me a Flip Video Ultra for Father’s Day. If you’re unfamiliar, you can find more info here - but it’s essentially a really tiny digital video camera. It’s too cool for words, I kid you not. Here’s a video of my son and I playing with it:
Are You the Hoonan? from Brett Kelly on Vimeo.
Fun, fun stuff.
Be sure to subscribe to my Vimeo feed to see all of the little oddball video clips I put up there. I’m going to have a good time with this thing 
Have a great weekend, everybody!
Technorati Tags: vimeo, flip video, friday fun
Bloggers: Show the World What You’re Up To
The following is a sponsored post. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t mean every word of it, because I really do.
Like it or not, the age of social networking is upon us. There is no escaping this reality, and if you’re looking to make your blog a success, there’s a myriad of sites where you can participate: Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Last.fm spring to mind - and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The iPhone as a GTD Swiss Army Chainsaw
I have to be honest - this past Christmas, the item at the top of my wish list was the completely drool-worthy Amazon Kindle. I had watched the video intro a dozen times and was completely smitten. And while I had been secretly longing for an iPhone since they were released, I simpley never thought of it as a plausible reality due to my current cell phone contract, the new T-Mobile Sidekick I had just bought, etc. But, thanks to my terrifically perceptive wife, a shiny iPhone found its way under our tree. I seriously haven’t been the same since.
Obviously, I’m a little late to the game when it comes to this little piece of technological magic. It’s been out for well over 6 months now, has been hacked, jail-broken and otherwise futzed-with to seemingly endless degrees. But, it was new to me and I was in heaven. And, as with most Apple products, it did exactly what I expected it to, and did so (almost) flawlessly. Without rehashing what thousands of people have already said, let’s just say that it’s the single coolest piece of techno-gear I’ve ever owned.
365 (or so) Merlin Mannerisms
Everybody’s favorite productivity eccentric has agreed to have a whole slew of quotes published as a “Quote of the Day” calendar for 2008!
Not to sound like a fanboy, but I find Merlin to be an immensely entertaining guy, as I’m sure many of you do as well. Not to be encumbered by traditional thinking (and since I’m an American and instant gratification is the only way I roll), I just read through the whole thing in the last 20 minutes. It really just made me realize how relatively poor my vocabulary is, but it made me chuckle a whole lot.
Why the Amazon Kindle is Going to Completely Rule
The tech community has been all riled up of late with regard to Amazon’s new electronic reading device, the Kindle. Chances are, you’ve heard of it and probably developed an opinion about it.
From everything I’ve read on blogs and news sites and heard on podcasts, people seem to fall into one of two very distinct camps:
“The Kindle is an ugly, steaming pile that will fall flat on it’s face and I look forward to being there when it happens.”
or
“The Kindle is going to revolutionize the way people read and if it were a girl, I’d want to slow-dance with it.”
As you’ve probably gathered from the title of this post, I’m siding with the second band (though, I’m not really in the market for a waltz partner). Here’s why:
How to Drink Like a High Roller in Vegas Without Going Broke
Being born and raised in southern California has its benefits. I can be at some of the most beautiful beaches in the country in less than an hour by car. I can also (during winter) spend a couple of hours on the road and be in just the right spot for some pretty respectable skiing. Hell, I live in a county that had it’s own teeny bopper television show, for Pete’s sake.
But all this pales in comparison (in my humble opinion, anyway) to the fact that I live only a scant 3.5 hours from Las Vegas, Nevada. And while I’m not a “Vegas kind of guy” per se, they do have several things to offer that are somewhat hard to come by around where I live - legal gambling being the most obvious. And coupled almost inextricably with Vegas-style gambling is drinking.
Google Maps Hack - Include the Journey Home
Being the total and complete Google fanboy that I am, Google Maps is where I typically turn for all of my mappy needs. I realize there are tons of other options, but Google’s directions are pretty consistently accurate - plus the application is just easy and fun to use.
