Cord Chaos

If you’re like me, you avoid cleaning or rearranging your office due to the dread of having to sort through dozens of cables lurking behind your desk. Fortunately, there are some gadgets on the market to help with this pesky little problem.

• Cordies Cable Organizers Cordies desktop cable management system keeps all your desktop cables straight by snugly holding cables so that they don’t slide off your desk when disconnected. Each loop holds multiple cables at once and can support power cords, USB cords, phone chargers, and audio and video cables. Cost: $12.99 from ThinkGeek.
• BlueLounge CableDrops CableDrops offer another solution for keeping cords and cables in place. They come in packs of six and in a variety of colors. Cost: $9.95
  from BlueLounge.
• Applecores. Keep cables organized and in place with AppleCores. They come in three size, multiple colors, and can hold everything from earbuds to household appliances, and the best part might be that you can simply unplug and they’re ready to go when traveling. Cost: $1.99-4.99 from Applecore International.
• Dreamfarm Jot. Jots work a lot like CableDrops, but might be a little more versatile (the Dreamfarm website shows Jots holding everything from cables to sets of keys) and are only slightly more expensive for packs of two. Cost: $4.95 from DreamFarm.
• Ziotek Color-Coded Surge Protector Keeping cords straight on top of the desk is one thing, but what about under it? How many times have you played musical cables trying to locate one of a half a dozen? The Ziotek color-coded surge protector is just the fix. It includes color-coordinated slots and cable markers to keep all your devices straight. Cost: $10.99 from CyberGuys.

Cell Phone and Charging Stations

What a difference ten years makes! I can’t remember ever needing to charge anything before cell phones and MP3 players came on the market, but charging stations are now a permanent part of our work life.

• Breffo Spiderpodium Stand. The Breffo Spiderpodium stand is a cool little gadget that holds cell phones, iPods, and other devices on an eight-leg “octopod” (instead of tripod). It mounts to car vents or mirrors, stands on desk or counter tops, and wraps around bike handlebars, backpacks, or baby strollers. It won’t leave marks and can easily be moved to another spot. Cost: $17.25 from Amazon.
• G.U.S. Phone/PDA Charging Station. If devices are taking over your counter tops, especially if multiple people in your home or office need to charge them at the same time, you might like a phone/PDA charging station. This one can stand on a desk  or counter top, or be mounted to a wall so that phones are out of the way and in one place. Cost: $39.99 from GreatUsefulStuff.
• Chargepod. For even more devices, you might prefer the Chargepod, which can charge up to six devices on one outlet. It claims to support over 3,000 devices, including phones, PDAs, cameras, and mp3 players, and it’s also available as a car charger. Cost: $49.95-59.95 from Callpod.

Notes and To-Dos

While I love technology and all the conveniences it often brings, I’m still a compulsive note-taker, and although my filing needs are nearly non-existent these days, I still use a few tools to keep paper in order.

• Dreamfarm Gripet. Another Dreamfarm creation, the Gripet holds notes and reminders using friction. It attaches to a wall, filing cabinet, or refrigerator with magnetic or adhesive mounts. Cost: $19.95 from DreamFarm.
• Tear Away Planner Mousepad. In recent years, I’ve  made use of my mousepad by buying a small desktop calendar to fit to it. Although I use Google Calendar for keeping track of dates and events, I like having a month at a glance and right under my computer mouse. If you use a paper to-do list, you might opt for a tear-away planner mousepad instead, which covers a full week of to-dos at a glance. Cost: $9.99 from ThinkGeek.
• NeatReceipts. If you hate tracking paper documents for taxes and record-keeping, NeatReceipts can help. It organizes receipts, business cards and other documents by scanning and then using optical character recognition to extract key information. Cost: $199.95 from NeatCo.

What are your favorite gadgets for staying organized?

Photo courtesy Flickr user yprime

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Businesses approaching a market will consider the audience’s media usage, and the message they’re communicating, before they choose a communications tool. But in distributed teams, we may choose collaboration tools for their own sake — their features — rather than their suitability to the tasks we actually need them to perform, or the team we need them to support.

The Limits of a Tool-Driven Approach

Tools are not the process, nor are they the work. Tools are there to make complex tasks easier or more efficient for your team. On paper, that differentiation seems clear, but in practice, it can quickly become muddied.

For example, a considerable influence on the way teams choose tools is, often, how they hope those tools may be able to change team members’ behavior or communications, rather than because they suit the team’s current or preferred ways of collaborating. We might also choose tools we feel will alter the actual process we’re using in some crucial way.

The problem with this approach is that it can be difficult to separate the tool’s problems (or benefits) from the process’ problems (or benefits), and that has the potential to mire the team in confusion and error when things go wrong.

Similarly, you may inadvertently diminish the benefits of either the tool or the process by discarding one, but sticking with the other on the misunderstanding that it’s that part of the equation that’s delivering the benefit.

Riskier still, using a tool-driven approach to actually evolve work processes puts the responsibility for the robustness and longevity of your business processes at the feet of third-party software developers who may never have heard of your organization, and — who knows? — may no longer be developing their product in six months’ time.

Taking a Tools-Last Approach

For these reasons, it is more sound to develop processes around your people — who, after all, you need to do the work — and the outcomes you desire. Then, you can identify the formats in which you need those outcomes, and finally, search for tools that will deliver outcomes in those formats.

In finding starting points for the tools you want to consider, why not look at the tools your team’s already using, and balance those against the project’s individual requirements and characteristics? Looking at what’s working now, and how your team functions now, can give you clear ideas about what your people need to get their jobs done well and happily.

In particular, consider:

• The learning curve and usability of a tool. Choosing tools that are already used by some team members, and have good usability in and of themselves, will reduce the cost to the business of the tool’s adoption. That cost isn’t only apparent in the days following the tools’ inception within a team, and it doesn’t always relate directly to a time-cost. Errors relating to tool adoption can damage everything from data to brand, and may arise months after the tool’s adoption.
• The re-usability of the information you put into it. Getting team members to put information into the tool you’ve chosen is only one part of the equation; the other is getting that information out. Consider the possible scenarios in which you might need to do this — for reporting purposes, if you switched to use a different tool or changed the process in future, to create a project output, and so on — and assess how manageable the job would be. The trend toward smaller, lighter solutions that produce output quickly may not be right for you, if your requirements are demanding, so it’s important to consider the realities of your needs, rather than simply getting caught up in the latest-tool hype.
• Its cost versus its adaptability to other projects or teams. The adoption cost of a tool — in terms of subscription fees as well as the time-cost of its uptake by your team members — would, ideally, be offset by its adaptability to other projects your team might be working on, or to other teams within your organization. Be careful when you’re making this assessment, though: it can be a fast-track to misappropriation if you don’t consider for each possibility of adaptation the points we’ve discussed above.

How do you go about choosing tools for your team? Do you select tools in the hopes that they’ll benefit your process, or do you build your process first, and choose tools to suit it?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user csotelo.

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Wearing the nano on my wrist, what immediately struck me was how often I wanted to check the device for various things it couldn’t provide. With a few minor feature and hardware adjustments, the nano could be the ideal smartphone-paired watch, and an amazing tool for the connected worker.

Speaker

The nano comes complete with a countdown timer, but to my dismay, it doesn’t have any kind of built-in speaker, so there’s little way to tell if the timer’s run down, short of just watching the device like a hawk or having it hooked up to headphones. Putting a speaker in the nano (even a very simple, single or tri-tone one) would be a necessary first step toward making it useful as a productivity tool. It could then be used for alarms, timers, and notifications of all kinds.

Bluetooth

I doubt Apple is inclined to put a Wi-Fi radio in the iPod nano, but Bluetooth makes sense, since that allows you so many connectivity options for a music-focused device. Bluetooth, as many have already pointed out, would allow the nano to connect with wireless headphones while still residing on your wrist and operating as a watch.

Bluetooth would also open the door to allowing the nano to maintain a persistent connection with your iPhone. This is where the real potential for the device resides from a productivity standpoint. With a Bluetooth connection, suddenly service and iOS app tie-ins become possible.

Push Notifications

I don’t want full-fledged iOS on the nano, and I doubt very much Apple would ever be inclined to deliver it. But what I would like is a simple way for notifications received on iOS devices to be pushed out over Bluetooth to the iPod nano, so that if I receive new emails or instant messages, they would come up on my wrist as an audio/visual alert.

Putting notifications on the nano would save time, because I wouldn’t have to pull out the smartphone every single time I received a notification or my phone vibrated. It would also make it much more likely that I’d hear or feel notifications when my iPhone was on vibrate, since it’s not at all guaranteed that I’ll feel the vibration if the device is in a jacket or bag pocket.

An iPhone’s Best Friend

If the iPod nano could work as a Bluetooth speaker with an integrated mic, and could receive calls from the iPhone, it would really add to its value. And even with all the features listed above, the nano still wouldn’t be able to operate as a standalone device even on par with the iPod touch, so there’s no chance that it might cut into sales of either the iPod touch or the iPhone. In fact, if anything, it should help boost those sales, since it’ll be seen as a unique, desirable peripheral not available to owners of Android and other competing devices.

In the end, what am I really asking for from Apple? A built-in hardware speaker/mic, and a Bluetooth radio. That’s not going to add up to much in terms of additional cost per device, and Apple could easily offer those additional perks only on higher-end nano models to make sure that higher prices don’t scare off people looking for just a music player.

On the software side, the nano could use a modified, limited version of iOS like Apple recently introduced in the new Apple TV, which would allow the company to gradually release features with every hardware iteration, thus providing upgrade incentives.

Do I expect the nano to become the dream iPhone accessory I describe above anytime soon? Probably not. Would Apple be missing a huge opportunity by ignoring the potential that’s clearly there? Definitely.

Generally, I use my media center, which happens to be a Mac mini, for entertainment, not for getting things done. But during the day, I can flip the switch and put that machine to work.

Media on Demand

My job requires me to pay close attention to what’s going on in the news. But no matter what job you do, it probably will prove helpful to stay on top of what’s going on in your field. If you find a good streaming source, playing that on the background while you work can be advantageous.

I queue up podcasts and even the occasional livestream on my media center. It keeps it off my work monitors, so I can choose to tune it out if I get too busy, but it also means I can quickly adjust my focus when I have some spare bandwidth. And I find that working doesn’t prevent me from taking in information I’m hearing at the same time.

Twitter Box

I sometimes find that if I use Twitter on my main work computer, my attention span is even shorter and more fractured than usual. By relegating that (and other) social media channels to the media center, I can check in when I have time, but it isn’t begging me to look at it.

You can just use your favorite Twitter app or the new homepage, which is pretty powerful, but I prefer using some tools designed for larger displays. There’s ParaTweet, for example, which is designed with presentations in mind. It displays tweets in real-time, and you can focus in on specific terms using filters.

Conference Call HQ

Many people use VoIP now for conference and other business-related calls. I’ve done it at my work computer, but it’s another case of having too much going on in the same place.

So for business calls, which require my complete attention and focus, I’ll turn to the media center. There are some great webcams out there with high quality mics built-in, and having a voice call routed through your home theater speaker system really helps make sure you hear what people are saying. Plus, you can sit on the couch and be at ease, which should lead to a calmer, more composed conversation.

Video calls also go to my Mac mini now, on those few occasions when I need to make them. A webcam mounted to the TV provides my end of the feed, while watching video calls on a larger display means I can pay better attention to people’s body language, which leads to fewer missed cues and other awkwardness that can come along with video chat.

Divide and Conquer

The media center may seem like primarily an entertainment device, and it is, but it’s also a great way to get low priority computer stuff off your plate. It’s accessible, but it isn’t screaming for attention. Likewise, since the media center isn’t where all your work is waiting, it provides the perfect communication tool. Just like you pay more attention on the phone when you’re not browsing the Internet, real time web-based communication works better when you do it on a machine that doesn’t have a thousand browser windows open.

If you use a media center as part of your web working setup, share your tips below.

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Of course, there’s a huge “if” involved in that. That being that the Apple TV’s web working prospects are only as good as its ability to support and run apps in the future. If apps do come to the platform, it could become a revolutionary device for the person who works from home. That’s because if it does get apps, and if, like the iPad its internals are based on, it can support external keyboards or other input devices (maybe an iPad running a virtual keyboard app?), it could become the cheapest productivity computer available.

Running iWork, Docs to Go, or even just Google Docs with its upcoming iOS editing capabilities, the Apple TV connected to a display could prove a fine word processor, number cruncher and presentation tool. Perhaps best of all, at just a little bit larger than a pack of cards, it’s also incredibly portable, and can theoretically work wherever you have access to a TV or computer monitor with an HDMI input.

But would Apple really risk cannabilizing its own iPad and notebook sales for a $99 device that could do pretty much everything many basic users would need from a computing device? While it’s true that Apple probably wouldn’t want to trade sales of $500 or more for ones at $99, I don’t think an app-capable Apple TV would really do that; there’s enough of an advantage in owning a Mac and/or iPad compared to an Apple TV, even with apps, to make sure that people will still go for the more expensive devices.

Apple TV could be more than just Apple’s means of gaining entry into the living room. If the company plays its cards right, it could be the way to broaden the iOS customer base far, far beyond its current numbers. A $99, extremely portable, easy-to-setup and use device that plays nicely with Macs, iPhones, iPod touches and iPads would definitely have a place in the toolbox of any web worker.

What do you think of the potential for the Apple TV as a web working device?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

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Here are my personal favorites; the tools I’d definitely hate to have to work without:

1. Gmail. Although there are plenty of times I wish I could avoid email altogether, it’s still a fairly decent tool for keeping me organized, especially by using Gmail. The “Superstars” feature (available in Labs) helps me to highlight and flag emails that require some sort of action or attention on my part. Labels allow me to organize types of communications and information for quick sorting and recognition. The advanced searching functionality helps me find things quickly and easily, and canned responses (also available in Labs) save me from having to reinvent the wheel when sending routine messages. So long as I make sure Gmail is working for me, instead of the other way around, it really keeps me organized and productive.
2. Google Calendar. I keep all my time-sensitive appointments and recurring to-dos organized in Google Calendar. On a busy day, it’s very easy to forget about phone calls or other items on my schedule, but customizable alerts keep me in check. If I anticipate an overly busy week, I’ll set myself multiple reminders to make sure nothing slips by me. I also love the ability to create multiple, color-coded calendars. I’ve created three primary calendars to organize specific types of activities and tasks: A “personal” calendar (color: pink), a “work to-dos” calendar (color: blue), and a “booked calls” calendar (color: orange). This provides me a quick overview of the week, and if, for instance, I see an orange appointment block, I know I have a call scheduled with someone.
3. TimeDriver. I used to attempt to manually coordinate my schedule with that of clients, interview guests, and other business contacts, but it became a nightmare, and several times I came close to double-booking myself. Although I’d love to have an assistant handle a lot of these types of tasks for me, tools like TimeDriver are a good substitute. I simply set my availability for the coming weeks, and when it comes time to coordinate appointments with others, I send them a link to my calendar, and they pick slots that work with their schedules. I know Google Calendar could provide this functionality in some ways, but I prefer TimeDriver for this purpose.
4. Zoho (Writer and Spreadsheet). Lately, I’ve been in the mood to simplify my organization. One thing I’ve been doing is creating a simple weekly to-do list, organized by day, within Zoho Writer. As I work through the list, I strike through tasks, making it really simple to see what’s left to do. I also like being able to see my accomplishments at a glance; I can look back over the entire week and see the tasks I’ve completed, which really helps me maintain focus. I used to create my to-do list on paper or within Backpack, but the paper list tended to get lost under notes and other items on and around my desk, and the Backpack list seemed to be ever-growing (more like a catch-all, master to-do list). The new system is simple and also keeps me from having to rewrite the list as things get moved around.
5. Pen and Paper. I know there are tons of note-taking tools available online and within different gadgets, but my personal favorite is a simple, 5″ x 8″ notepad and a good pen. I have to be able to catch notes and ideas on the fly, and paper is a good way to physically organize things into the right order or priority. I used to use (and occasionally still use) index cards, along with every size and shape notebook on the market. I eventually settled on the 5″ x 8″ since it seems to be the perfect size to capture and divide thoughts without wasting a lot of paper or running out of room. Although I’ve gotten away from paper-based systems in almost every other area of my work, I think pen and paper will always have its place in my organizational toolbox, even if it is old-fashioned.

With the right mix of applications, it’s much easier to stay on track and prevent things from being overlooked or forgotten, and with all the great tools available online, it’s possible to stay productive no matter where you are.

What tools keep you on track and organized?

Photo by Flickr user brdwatchr1, licensed under CC 2.0

What Is “Great”?

My definition of a great tool is one that actually enhances the way I work. That’s a big call — I’m not talking here about tools that simply make life easier, or reduce a burden. Ultimately, that’s the whole point of tools. When I decide to give a new tool a try, I expect it to deliver some benefit, otherwise I wouldn’t bother with it.

I think great tools open doors to new possibilities that I hadn’t countenanced before. They augment my approach to work in a way that allows me to reach further, apply more of my skills and develop new insights. A great tool is one that helps me evolve my fundamental focus.

Great in Practice

If this all sounds too idealistic for you, let me give you an example of what differentiates a handy tool from a great tool.

As a writer, editor and content manager, I work with content all the time. A long time ago, when I wrote web copy, I’d hand it to a designer, and they’d drop it into the site’s pages for me. If I wanted to change that content, I’d have to send the amendments to the designer to implement.

When content management tools came along, all that changed. Now I could control the content directly, edit and alter it, and shape it to the contexts in which it appeared myself. This was extremely handy, and produced a better outcome for site owners. The content management tools ticked all the boxes operationally, but at the end of the day, I still wrote the text in a word processing app or text editor. The creative production process remained unchanged.

Later, I was introduced to DocBook, an XML schema that allows the identification of pieces of content as small as individual letters. Here, for me, was an actual revolution in the way I worked. DocBook represented a new way of thinking about my content and suited my thought patterns much better than did the blank page of a word processing file, implying as it did a linear flow and a single voice.

The fact that this tool suited my brain better than did word processing tools allowed me to think about information and communication differently: instead of battling (albeit subconsciously) with the restrictions of my tools, I was free to approach content in a way that really suited me, and was shown a completely new perspective on my work at the same time.

Where content management tools made my life easier and improved my product, DocBook effectively allowed me to evolve my practice.

Finding Great Tools

It’s all very well to use a tool and find that it suits you, but when you’re reviewing potential tools to try, how can you increase the chances that you’ll select an option that turns out to be a great tool?

1. Know what you like.

There will always be tools that are great in ways we can’t anticipate. But you can increase your chances of finding great tools by acknowledging and thinking about the great tools you’re using right now.

Work out what it is that makes those tools great for you. In my case, DocBook appealed to a part of me that loves structure, order and sense, and is excited by stepping back from the details to get a clear view of how they fit together in the bigger picture. Tools that meet that particular need are likely to be contenders for my great tools list.

2. Follow your hunches.

If a review or information for a given product speaks to you somehow, follow that hunch. If it sounds good to you, it probably is. Even if it’s not, the research and trial processes might help you identify the missing elements that would make it a good tool — giving you something to seek out in your ongoing search.

Don’t overlook the hunches of others, either. If a close friend or colleague recommends a tool to you, give some thought to that product. People who are close to you are likely to have a good understanding of the way you operate, and may be able to see a fit between that and a given tool. And that’s something a reviewer will never be able to do.

3. Give it a go.

Be prepared to trial and experiment with a tool to find out how it might expand the way you operate. Although signing up for an app or downloading and installing the software can be a hassle, especially if you’re not completely sold on the tool, you might just find it’s worth the energy.

If something in the information you’ve accessed about the tool speaks to your instincts, it’s likely that the experience won’t be a total waste of time. On the other hand, slavishly chasing after the next or latest fad tool, just because everyone else is, is less likely to be a satisfying experience.

Have any of the tools you use actually evolved the way you do your daily work? Tell us about them!

Image by stock.xchng user ZoofyTheJi.

Posterous takes care of this problem for you by making it extremely easy to post content to the social media apps you use.

Doriano previously described how you can use email to share photos through Posterous, but I’m going to talk about how easy it is to use the Posterous bookmarklet to share any content across multiple platforms.

To create a Posterous account, you don’t fill out a registration form, you send an email. Then you get a confirmation email that will take you back to Posterous to add your social apps accounts to the service.

Once you’ve added the accounts to which you want to be able to post, the next thing I recommend you do is install the bookmarklet. On the “Manage” page, under the “Posts” tab (the default) scroll down and find the “Posting” box. Click the bookmarklet link and follow the very simple instructions to add the Posterous bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark toolbar.

Now go to some content that you want to share and click the bookmarklet in your bookmark bar. In the window that pops up, you can customize the info you’re about to post:

Posterous grabs images, videos and sometimes text from the site and lets you pick which you want to use. You can add your comments and click “Post” if you want this item to go to all your social media accounts, or you can click “Advanced Options” and pick and choose which accounts to post to. For example, I only want this link to go to my Twitter account and a personal blog:

Tips: If you want to use a specific text excerpt from an article, select the text before clicking the bookmarklet, and it’ll be added to the image/excerpt options. Choose it, and it’s neatly inserted as a blockquote. If you want to send the item to a blog where you have categories, in the title field, type ((tag: Category1, Category2)), for example, and it will automatically be categorized on your blog.

Note: Unless you want the cute puppy video you sent to your family blog, the excerpt of the article on agile programming you sent to your pro blog, and the photo of Freddie Mercury in an eyeball suit you just tweeted all to appear together in sweet cacophony on your Posterous site, you need to create multiple Posterous sites. This is easy to do, and you only have to add your social media accounts once. Then when you choose Advanced Options in the bookmarklet, a drop-down lets you pick the Posterous site you want the item to appear on:

I have only tested sharing with Posterous to a blog, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you post something to Twitter or LinkedIn, Posterous inserts a link that takes people to your Posterous site, not to the original site online. I assume the same is true of other social media apps, too. On a blog, the links go to the original item wherever it appeared online. I recommend testing Posterous a little bit at a time to see how it works for you.

I’ve only talked about the bookmarklet here, but do check out the email options. The first thing I did with Posterous was take a photo with my iPhone and email it to Posterous, which automatically autoposted it to every service I’d added. Doriano explained how to email content to specific sites in his article, so check that out as it’s actually kind of hard to find the info on the Posterous site.

Have you tried Posterous yet? What tools do you use for social sharing?

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There comes a time in your business where you experience growth or change. You think you have everything running along smoothly, and then the real work begins when everything is turned upside down. You want to take advantage of new opportunities, but in order to do that, you have to adjust your systems, support and tools to accommodate that growth and expansion.

Old Pain: Incomplete and Outdated Systems

You know you need to do it. You hear it all the time, “You have to put systems in place to support your business and streamline your work so that you’re more productive, and so that you can outsource and delegate lower level tasks.” It makes sense in your mind, but it just doesn’t seem to be a top priority in the early stages of your business. Instead, you concentrate your efforts on figuring out how to navigate the often confusing path of the small business owner, while spending the rest of your time trying to find new customers and clients.

Before you know it, though, your business starts to take off, and then the pressure really starts setting in. You’re still figuring your way around, you’re trying to maintain your current lead generation efforts, but now you have the added workload to boot. There’s just no time left to worry about creating systems now, except that the further things go, the more desperate you become, and you start feeling like you’re digging your way out of quicksand.

Old Pain: Little or No Support

Most small businesses have to keep things very lean during the beginning, but it doesn’t take long to get used to managing things solo, leaving you strapped for time and thinking you’re the only one who can get the job done.

Then, of course, because you never had time to create systems around your business, everything is a jumbled mess. How will you ever figure out what best to delegate? Even if you wanted to outsource some of your work, where would you start? Without clearly delineated roles, hiring help would seem like a waste of time and money. You’d only end up doing the work yourself or not having anything for the new assistant to do.

The only problem is, there’s only so much you can do on your own, and at some point, you’ll come to the end of the line of your availability, which will mean the end of the line for your company’s growth as well.

Old Pain: Few Tools in Place

There are so many tools available to make the life of a business owner easier, but in the beginning, several things can get in the way of you taking advantage of them. Money is tight, and with such a small workload, it just seems to make more sense to do it yourself, rather than paying for something that you’ll barely use.

As your business grows, you start thinking you might want to get a few tools in place to cut down on your administrative time, but by then, you think that you’ll get things done faster if you just just keep doing them as you’ve always done. By the time you realize you really need them, you’re worried that implementing new tools could cause you to lose valuable information or time, should there be glitches in setting them up.

They don’t call them growing pains for nothing, but as hard as it is to interfere with the delicate arrangement of your business in order to put new systems, support, and tools in place, it’s important to have the faith and, as organizational and productivity guru Julie Morgenstern would say: let go so that you can grab hold. By letting go of things temporarily, you’ll be able to get a better handle on them for the future so that your business can handle the growth that’s coming your way.

What “old pains” are holding back your growth potential, and how are you overcoming them?

Photo by Flickr user doug88888, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

I want to find the perfect flash drive like baseball pitchers want a perfect game. The perfect gadget is elusive and amazingly rare, and I’ve often come tantalizing close to finding it without actually getting there. I think I’ve found the perfect drive now, but I’ve thought that in the past, too. So, here’s a run down of where I’ve come from, and where I’m at now, and why I think I’ve come as close to perfection as possible.

Monarchs of Old

Two flash drives come to mind when I think back on the long parade of USB keys that have come and gone over the course of my life as a gadget-addicted web worker. Both shared some similarities, but I liked them more for their differences than for what they had in common.

Lexar FireFly

The FireFly represents the first time I paid attention to the case design of a flash drive. Before this, it didn’t matter what it looked like, and to my mind, none really looked that good anyway. It didn’t matter that there were complaints about the speed of the drive, and even some murmurs about high failure rates. It felt solid, had a blue glow, and genuinely resembled its namesake.

When I started using a FireFly, a 512MB capacity drive was all that I really needed. I still have the neon green one that I had back then, and it still works, though I don’t use it any more because all of my documents are now online, and at that capacity there’s very little else I can carry on it. They’re still available from Lexar, but the capacities don’t seem to be increasing and keeping track of the cap started to become a nuisance, so I moved on.

SanDisk MicroCruzer

To escape the tyranny of caps, I moved on to the MicroCruzer, which again boasts a pretty attractive form factor, but with a retractable USB connector to eliminate the need for protective covers. A reassuring orange glow lets you know it’s working, and you get the reassurance of using a SanDisk flash product, a company I’ve found to be tremendously reliable. Many of my MicroCruzers are still in service.

But not all. The retraction trick may prevent the connector from getting damaged and reduce the need for a cap, but with lots of repeated use it seems to wear down, and now some won’t catch when extended, making it much harder to connect them to the computer. And it shares the same small but chunky design with the FireFly, which means they still feel like a bulky imposition in my pants pockets.

Current Ruler

LaCie CooKey/IamaKey/WhizKey

The flash drive so nice they made it thrice. LaCie originally released the IamaKey model of this drive, which I bought as soon as I became aware that it existed. It’s a USB key meant to resemble an actual key, thanks to a housing designed by 5.5 Designers for the Mac-friendly accessory maker. When that model took off, LaCie introduced two further designs that essentially replicated the form factor.

Which is a good thing, because it’s actually perfect, insofar as my current flash memory needs go. The keys come in a range of capacities, from 8GB to 32GB, and they sport a rugged metal design. They’re as thin as house keys, so they fit can on your key ring. The connector is one-sided (doesn’t have the traditional box of a male USB connector, only the business side with the contacts), which allows for the thinness of design.

A little plastic cover is provided for those who are paranoid about damaging the contacts, but as someone who promptly lost that cover on his first key, let me tell you that it isn’t at all necessary. The construction of the contacts is such that they seem impervious, even when kept with the rest of your keys in a pocket filled with change and other bric-a-brac. They’re easily portable, functional, unobtrusive and stylish. Plus clients and people I meet in the course of doing business almost always fall in love with them, so they help with networking and they make great corporate gifts, too.

Have you found the perfect flash drive?

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One of those better options is Twitter. Twitter has the advantage of being a great way to open a direct line of communication between yourself and a potential employer before you even forward your work history or even any professional information at all. It’s almost the virtual equivalent of landing a job based on a conversation with a seatmate on an airplane.

JobDeck aims to make the process of looking for work on Twitter even easier. It provides a refined search that allows you to drill down and find job offers and information about prospective employers and employees, and it does it all in the familiar environment of TweetDeck, so as long as you’ve used the popular Adobe AIR-based Twitter client in the past, you won’t have to go learning a new interface all over again.

In fact, JobDeck really isn’t much more than a standard install of TweetDeck with some colorful rebadging and a couple of very special unique columns that will help you in your job search efforts. All the regular features are there, too, so you have access to your main timeline and all the time-wasting fun that could potentially go along with that. My advice? Create a new Twitter account devoted solely to job hunting in order to keep your focus and avoid distraction.

As mentioned, there are two new columns introduced in JobDeck, which is powered by TwitJobSearch, a site that provides search results from Twitter pre-filtered and tailored to job hunters. The first is a “Job Search Experts” user list. It’s a good way to pick up tips and find interesting articles about the job market and career development in general, and it has the benefit of allowing you to keep these people out of your main Twitter feed, where they might not be as appreciated or could get lost.

The other column is a dedicated column that returns results from the TwitJobSearch main feed, which searches the web, returns relevant job search results and organizes them into a single stream. As of right now, a lot of the traffic is related to the JobDeck app itself, but scrolling through the feed reveals that it does do a decent job of collecting career hunting info. Unfortunately, it’s also hit or miss, including info for jobs ranging from KFC front-line employees to iPhone app developers.

It’s nice, but it isn’t yet impressive enough to merit its own dedicated client in my opinion. It reminds me more of the Blink-182 branded TweetDeck release than a new and unique tool. The TwitJobSearch site itself is a much more useful tool, with customizable advanced search options and an experimental job map feature. Not to mention that the interface is quite attractive and highly usable, and there’s a browse function that lets you see job tweets by category in case you aren’t yet sure what exactly it is you’re looking for.

If you’re already using TweetDeck and you’re looking for work, using the JobDeck special edition isn’t going to cost you anything, and might provide you with a few useful links and/or tips. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for something that will dramatically change they way you look for work, skip this release and just use the web-based or iPhone version  of TwitJobSearch, especially if you’re not a fan of the TweetDeck interface.

Landed a job through Twitter? Tell us about how you did it!

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As of now, the Kindle — although I find it professionally beneficial in the sense that I find myself reading more — doesn’t have a direct and measurable impact on my work life. I can think of a few ways apps could change that situation and make the Kindle a valuable tool in my web working toolbox. After all, the Kindle has always-on 3G connectivity and extremely good battery life, both very desirable things in a mobile platform.

A Twitter App

It’s an obvious pick. Basically any device that can have Twitter on it almost inevitably will have Twitter on it, eventually. But Twitter on a Kindle would be a good fit because it requires very little in the way of resources and processor power. It’s basically text, and if there’s one thing the Kindle does well, it’s text.

Sure, there are lots of images, videos and web links on Twitter, too, and some might feel that that was the most important aspect of the service. For my purposes on the road, though, I’m less concerned with deep engagement and more concerned with basic access. As long as I can read my stream, and, more importantly, post updates from my Kindle, I’ll be more than satisfied.

A Gmail App

Another mostly text web-based tech that would work on a Kindle is Gmail. The ability to browse your text-only email with a simple, light interface via the Kindle would actually be preferable to reading it on a computer, in my opinion, since it would make it that much easier to actually concentrate on the content of your messages.

It shouldn’t be that hard to include a simple composition component, too, since the Kindle has a full keyboard. The key to making this app really useful will be keeping it simple, so let’s hope all parties involved keep that in mind. For instance, just because the Kindle can now read PDFs natively, doesn’t mean a Gmail app needs to be able to display PDF attachments. Basic email is all I’m looking for.

A Word Processing App

I want to use my iPhone to write things on the road from time to time. I don’t want to have to get my laptop out just to jot down a basic idea, but I can’t, in all honesty, use the iPhone’s virtual keyboard for anything longer than a text message or a very brief email or tweet. It’s functional, but nothing more.

Despite the small size of the keys, I definitely prefer the hardware keyboard the Kindle makes use of. I use it all the time to make notes in the books I’m reading (a favorite Kindle feature of mine), and after an initial adjustment period, I now find it quite comfortable. A basic app that allows me to create even basic text files that I can then transfer to my PC for further editing and use in other documents is exactly what I need from a Kindle word processing app.

A To-do App

I know the iPhone (and other smartphones) sort of has this covered, but since my to-do needs are very basic, I think I’d actually prefer to do this sort of thing on the Kindle with its basic, paper-like e-ink display. It might not be as easy to navigate without a touchscreen display, but I might actually be more inclined to use something attached to my reading platform than to my phone.

No iPhone, But Not Without Merit

The Kindle isn’t an iPhone; it’s designed to be a single-purpose device. I don’t think Amazon ever foresaw a future in which it would begin offering apps for the platform when it conceived of the Kindle, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful. As a mobile device, the Kindle has a lot of advantages over media players and other platforms, and with the right kind of effort in the right directions by developers, it could be a very handy little web working tool.

What kind of apps would you like to see on the Kindle?

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So here I’m going to give those apps a chance to shine, because even if I can’t personally use them during the course of my day-to-day business, it’s entirely possible that many of you can. Accordingly, here are four oddball little web applications that do things you may not even have realized you wanted one to do in the first place.

Create Your own YouTube with Fliggo

As the prevalence of video on the web continues to grow, it makes sense that video social networking should grow, too. And since there are already numerous apps that allow you to create your very own social network, it also makes sense that one should also exist to help you create your own social video site.

Fliggo (covered by Liz over on NewTeeVee last year) allows you to do just that. It’s a smart, simple, easy-to-use and visually stunning platform for easy construction of a video sharing site of your very own. It works well whether you want to set up a home for a series of instructional training videos for your workplace or client, or if you just need a place for the family to gather and share home videos online.

Design Your Space with Floorplanner

My brother recently had to create a plan of the tenant apartment he recently put into the basement of his new house. Part of the process required that he submit a floorplan of the converted space to the city for licensing purposes. Neither of us are good at AutoCAD, so we had to look around for another solution.

Floorplanner does just what we needed. You can map out your space and design the layout of furniture, fixtures, etc. quickly and painlessly. Everyone from office managers to interior decorators can probably find a great use for this.

Put Your Heads Together with ResearchGate

I’m no scientist, but that hasn’t stopped me from always wanting to be one. Sure, I took basically the opposite career path and went into English, but I still like to think that I have a fairly scientific mind.

If that mind were properly trained, I’d use it to contribute to the community at ResearchGate. It’s a social network designed specifically for professional scientists, so that they can connect, share findings, and form mutually beneficial partnerships and research teams. If you’re actually working in a scientific field, it’s well worth checking out.

Get Everyone Together and Active with TeamSnap

I never really used to like team sports all that much growing up, but now I play in two dodgeball leagues two nights a week. It’s a great way to meet people, stay active, and just have fun, and the range of athletic ability means everyone can participate.

Managing a team for coed, intramural or beer league sports can be a tricky thing. Tracking down team members, arranging and sharing game time and location information, and keeping track of who’s paid what and who’s in need of equipment or uniforms or things like that can all present quite a challenge. TeamSnap takes a lot of that trickiness out of the process, and there’s a free plan, so it works on any budget.

There are some great little gems hidden out there in the world wide web. It can be hard to sift for diamonds, though. I try to note as many promising ones as I can, and hopefully the ones I’ve passed on today will help some of you out there in your personal and professional pursuits.

Found a hidden gem of an app recently? Let us know about it!

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If the advances of the past couple of decades have told us anything, it’s that we probably can’t accurately predict the future, especially when it comes to technology. But that doesn’t mean we can’t prognosticate about general trends that might help us prepare for what’s to come.

Google Wave, but Better

Some would argue that Google Wave was the biggest online tech disappointment of the last year. It received a fair amount of hype prior to its launch, and at first just getting into the initial beta made people feel a sense of privilege and entitlement. That sense of entitlement quickly turned sour, at least in my experience and the experience of the vast majority I’ve talked to about Wave.

Google Wave itself may be a disappointment, but that doesn’t mean the hearts and minds of the team behind it weren’t in the right place. Thinking about the next step beyond email is a natural enough progression, and it’s likely that that next step will be more interactive, both between people and across media, which Google Wave most definitely is. People who think Internet communication reached its zenith with email are the same type of person who preferred the fax machine and the telegraph to their successors.

I imagine the future of the web to be built around context-based nodal communication, sort of like what’s starting to happen with Twitter and Facebook integration in blog commenting systems. I’ve no idea what the final shape of this kind of communication will look like, but it should benefit working only by emphasizing relevance and relationships over other concerns, like etiquette and immediacy.

Distributed Becomes De Facto

It’s already starting among call centers and other similar businesses operating in North America, at least, and pretty soon other employers will catch on to the fact that running a distributed operation instead of maintaining a physical office saves time and money.

That means we’ll see a lot more remote workers in the near future, culminating in a workplace that is completely home and coworking space-based by the end of the decade. It may seem hard to believe at this point, but think about how far we’ve come in this regard to date, and what people would’ve thought about it ten or twenty years ago.

Death of the Desktop

Well, not the surface itself, but the desktop computer, for all but extremely specialized usages. I realize the irony of predicting this while typing on my iMac, which I absolutely love and much prefer to my notebook computers. The fact is, though, that external monitors can now pretty much replicate all the convenience features that result in my iMac preference. I would much rather spend as much money as I can on one computer and have it suit all my needs, than spread it around to multiple, less ideal machines.

If anything, people will move more and more towards a notebook/netbook or notebook/tablet working configuration. The slate is the hottest new form factor in computing today, and though we haven’t yet had a chance to see how consumers will respond to the new, super portable touch-screen devices, I predict they will catch on quite quickly.

Greater portability will mean that business and public spaces will cater more to mobile workers, and we should be able to find a place fairly easily to plug in and reap the advantages of being able to work from wherever we are without diminished capacity. Picture a Starbucks with secondary monitors built-in to the walls and surfaces.

No Flying Cars

These predictions may seem bold, but I’m not suggesting we’ll be zipping around on sky highways here. There’s already precedents for each of the things mentioned above, and all I’m really doing is following the current trajectory of a few trends to their natural endpoint.

Where do you see web working ten years from now?

Image Credit: Lugi Novi

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Projects is one of the most full-featured, yet still affordable, PM solutions I’ve seen on Apple’s mobile platform. That said, if you’re looking for something that replaces Microsoft Project, you’re looking in the wrong place. Projects is more like an advanced task manager with some PM app characteristics and tools. It’s a supplement, rather than an all-in-one solution.

A Quick App That Needs to Be Quicker

The idea behind Projects is that you can do some basic PM on the go. As such, I think it’s really key that the app be tailored towards pick-up-and-go usability, but as it currently stands, that isn’t really the case. Your default view upon entering the app, for instance, is a list of all your current ongoing projects. That’s handy, but it took me a minute to figure out that I had to hit the “Edit” button to create a new project to begin with. A quick add button is something many iPhone to-do apps have, and it perfectly suits the platform and the concept behind Projects. Hopefully it’ll be forthcoming in a future update.

You also can’t swipe to delete any projects, which could arguably be a data loss prevention feature, but actually feels like another missed opportunity. Likewise, neither project phases nor groups can be quickly added or deleted, but tasks, which are two levels down, can be. I’d advise the developers to just make the adding/deleting features universal.

Better Fit For Different Types of Projects

I do like the options you’re given when you’re creating a project, even if I’d like it to be easier to get there in the first place. Projects lets you create either Group- or Phase-based projects, which, depending on the type of work you’re doing, can provide a great advantage. Being able to choose between an organizational model and a more linear progress-based tracking model is a definite advantage Projects has that you won’t find in a lot of the more simple to-do apps.

Creating tasks for projects also provides a decent amount of flexibility. You can add notes, set a flag (which unfortunately is only a star-based rating system at this point) and set dates and duration. You can also assign it a status, choosing between “To Do,” “Waiting,” “WIP,” and “Complete,” which should cover all the bases for most people. I also really like the date interface, which allows you to pick dates from a calendar and makes everything a lot easier than it would be with manual input.

Gantt Charts and More

Perhaps the most notable feature Projects brings to the table is to be able to look at all your tasks for your various projects in Gantt chart format. While they’re a standard feature of project management apps, I’ve yet to see Gantt charts so well implemented on the iPhone. Viewed in landscape mode, the charts are even more legible and helpful in providing a quick overview of where you stand with regards to your various deadlines. Tasks are also color-coded according to their status, making your at-a-glance takeaway even more informative.

Finally, you can export your projects, which is really helpful if you want to use them on a desktop platform as well. You can export your data as text or as an MPX file, which can be read by Microsoft Project. Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to sync or import data, which is a major limitation of the app, but at least data on the phone doesn’t have to stay there.

For $6.99, you really have to judge whether or not what amounts to a standalone PM app is necessary for your iPhone. Keep in mind, though, that Projects is a very handy to-do application as well, so the cost isn’t terribly unreasonable, even if you’re only using it for personal projects and day-to-day activities.

Would a standalone mobile PM app be useful for you?

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The sketchbook is a free space for your ideas to play, unbound by lines and ruled margins. It’s a laboratory, a playground, a testing facility and a sounding board. And perhaps best of all, it requires no batteries and can go pretty much anywhere you do. Here’s why I love mine so much, and why any web worker would do well to have their own on hand.

Idea Log

You know the feeling of getting hit with innovation lightning? The one you get when you come up with something great, something you’re terrified will fly out of your head before you get to a computer. That kind of idea, to my mind, is best captured by the sketchbook, in as close an approximation to the unprocessed original as absolutely possible.

The nature of our brains is such that as we think about an idea, we tend to process and refine it while we keep it in our heads. I much prefer to capture the really good ideas raw, before I’ve had a chance to rationalize and massage them into something more manageable, but possibly much less potent, too.

With a sketchbook, I find that I can capture the idea in its essence, unhindered by editing and page constraints. I’m a very visual person, so it helps that I can use words and images easily thanks to the clean, blank unlined pages. It also makes it easier to add to or scan later on. Plus, even ideas that turn out to be not-so-great could transform into something really useful just through the absent-minded doodling I do on a regular basis on top of existing sketches and concepts.

Collaborative Tool

Describing what you want to do or want to have done can be very hard. Project disappointments, in fact, are often due to confusion regarding expectations, rather than any real failure on the part of anyone involved in the process.

Having a sketchbook on-hand, depending on your comfort level and relationship with the individual you’re working with, can be a great way to spitball ideas using non-traditional means. Even if design has nothing to do with your project, you can use the space to rough out workflows and processes, draw mind maps and illuminate key project concepts in a way that verbal communication simply doesn’t allow for.

Passing a sketchbook back and forth, and taking turns writing, sketching and thinking out loud has produced some of the best collaborative work I’ve ever produced.

Stress Relief

Doodling has always been one of my favorite pastimes. Ever since my early school days, when I used to idly doodle in the margins of my primary workbooks, I’ve enjoyed sketching and drawing as a means to relax. With all that practice, you’d think I’d be better sketcher than I am.

Skill aside, a sketchbook to which I can turn at any moment to work off a little stress through therapeutic doodling is a must-have for my professional health. It’s always close to hand, it doesn’t cost anything, and it isn’t bad for my health. There are few other stress relievers for which all of the above is also true. Best of all, it’s a leisure activity that I can actually do while I’m working, which is invaluable.

Even if you’ve never tried sketching or doodling before, give it a shot and see how it makes you feel. The key is to master being able to draw with a complete absence of self-conscious thought, so that you truly get lost in the activity.

So do yourself a favor and get a sketchbook. It will become a constant companion, and possibly one of your most trusted advisors.

Do you tote a sketchbook?

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