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- 8 Ninja Uses for Binder Clips
- Reasons to Get a Tattoo (and Reasons Not To)
- Getting Things Done with 37signals’ Backpack - Why I’m Switching Back
- 11 Tips for Better Tech Support
- Cranking Widgets Theme Updated!
- Keep Your Notes in Order with the Daily Scratchpad
- The Single Most Useful Contact on Your iPhone
- Happy Monday: Odds, Ends and other Minutiae
- Bloggers: Show the World What You’re Up To
- Describing Twitter in Plain English
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11 Tips for Better Tech Support
We’ve all been there. Something’s dreadfully wrong with your trusty computer - you can’t print, you can’t get on the web, you can’t play Bejeweled. For whatever reason, the problem is major enough to warrant one of the most desperate acts you can imagine - a phone call to tech support.
Now, before we dig in, let me tell you that I’ve done my time answering the tech support phone calls. I spent a good 3 years at it, so I have a pretty good idea what I’m talking about. And while I didn’t enjoy it for the most part, it was an enlightening experience. The support calls that were the most pleasant (or least unbearable, it could also be said) were with people who took the time to perform one or more of the steps I’m going to outline here. Trust me folks, this is the real freaking McCoy.
The key to making things work with your tech support representative is to make things easy for them. I know that there are a great many jackasses out there who feel some sense of entitlement and indignation when speaking to people in service roles, but believe me - you want them to be happy.
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.
Describing Twitter in Plain English
I’m a big fan of Twitter (even though we’ve had our differences in the past - mostly due to my not “getting it”). While my updates may not be as fast, furious or incessant as some of the people whom I follow, I do try to pop on there as often as is feasible without completely kneecapping my productivity at work and home.
Whenever I mention Twitter to my non-techie friends and family, I’m often asked what it is and I can never quite articulate it without making it sound like some über-nerd service that only computer people use. It’s frustrating, because it’s such a fun service (and potential time sink - you’ve been warned, uninitiated readers) and I really wish more people used it.
Fortunately, I found this great video (via Twitter, oddly enough) that does a fantastic job of explaining just what Twitter actually is and why it’s so freakin’ cool.
Trick Out Your iPhone with These Smart Playlists
As I mentioned previously, i received an iPhone for this past Christmas. While I really love it, having to go from a 60gb iPod which held all of my music to having only 8gb of space took some getting used to. I started out by hand-picking various albums and tracks and changing the contents each night in preparation for the next day. It got to be pretty arduous, needless to say, and I was only listening to about 15% of my music, and it was almost entirely tracks that I really liked. In other words, roughly 85% of my music was sitting quietly in iTunes with very little hope of making it onto my iPhone. I sought a way to change all that…
Being a big fan of the Macbreak Weekly podcast, I’d heard Andy Ihnatko discuss his fantastic book, iPhone Fully Loaded. Wanting to really get everything I could out of my new toy, I ordered myself a copy (great book, highly recommended). One of the best chapters in the entire book is “How to Make 8 Gigabytes Seem Like 80″, which directly addressed the problem I was having with the music rotation. So, a good bit of what I’ll share below has been built upon the tips given by Andy in his book (which you should go buy).
Sandy v. Remember the Milk: The Web-Based Reminder Cage Match
Within this little GTD cult of ours, there are an alarming number of battles fought over the best tool, notebook, web application, etc. In my mind, it’s a little silly - just use what works, right?
Well, sometimes there will be two “competing” services/devices/things that both offer a compelling solution to a common problem. Today, that problem is reminders and the two services I’ll be covering are Remember the Milk (hereafter referred to as ‘RTM’) and Sandy.
Now, before everybody starts frothing at the mouth about how the service they use is better than both of those, let me reiterate - I don’t really care what you use. If a stack of cocktail napkins, a set of soap crayons and a shoebox get the job done for you, then that’s great. My point here is not to decide on the all-time greatest way to remind yourself to take the pizza out of the oven or pick up your kilt from the dry cleaners. I’m simply going to compare the capabilities of these two services and tell you which one I like best. Mmkay? Mmkay.
Top 1 Thing To Keep Your Toddler Away From
Your laptop computer.
This is a picture of my Macbook after my 2.5 year old son got his hands on it:
6 Websites That Will Certainly Make You Smarter
Ah, the Internet. It’s one of those things that regularly inspires awe in me, even though I spend several hours a day interacting with it (both professionally and recreationally).
But with such an immense amount of information, it’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. While there are many fantastic websites chock full of accurate data and intelligent ideas, there are probably 100 times more that are pretty much useless. A sad fact, but a fact nonetheless. Which is why it’s so important, if you spend any amount of time poking around the web, that you have a few oases - diamonds in the rough, if you will.
In my many, many hours of perusing the Internet, I’ve come across my fair share of websites. I’ve selected a few that I consider to be the least likely to rot your brain (but be warned, all of these can very easily rob you of an entire afternoon if you’re not careful).
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.
Superstar Interview: Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani Talks Beer and Productivity
When somebody first start digging around for GTD and productivity-related websites, it won’t take long before they arrive at Lifehacker.com. A fine mixture of links to quality articles and products, as well as full-length features, how-tos and all sorts of other goodies. Like it or not, it’s hard to deny that LH is a force to be reckoned with.
Behind the behemoth sits Gina Trapani. Powered by a staff of stellar writers and a love for all things lifehackery, she keeps the music playing. And being such a fan of their site, I was especially excited to get the opportunity to ask her a few questions. Enjoy!
Free Software: Two Minute Timer for OS X
Better late than never, I suppose
Many, many moons ago I wrote a tiny little two minute timer application for Windows as a free alternative to the $10 offering from the David Allen Company. I got more than a few emails asking for a Mac version. Well, ask and you shall receive!
This is a little different than the Windows version - it’s actually an Automator workflow converted to an application. Here’s what you’ll need to run it:
