Archive for: productivity
Many of us work well under pressure. When I’m doing a long article I can often find myself procrastinating, staring into space and only working sporadically. Using a stopwatch is one of my favourite ways to boost my productivity and motivate myself to get the first draft done within a certain amount of time.
TimeMe is a huge online stopwatch which I have displayed on my second monitor as a constant reminder that the clock is ticking. It pretty much takes up the whole screen along with some basic settings. Users may also adjust timer display (size, colour, width) and sound alarm settings to fit their needs. Simple yet effective.
This is a similar tool to E.ggtimer and the likes.
However, they also offer a downloadable versions so you can run it on your desktop if you don’t like connecting to the web when working or studying. Check it out here.
I’m a huge Gmail fan. Yes I’ve heard everyone talk about how much power Google has, and how dangerous it is to put things in the cloud, and the numerous complaints about privacy issues, but I’m a fan, plain and simple. I get what I need to get done, it’s all streamlined and integrates well with one another. I could probably fine ten apps that each one do one thing in the Google system, but why depend on so many? Keep it simple is what I say.
Recently I’ve been alerted of a way to make my Gmail productivity even more effective, and that’s with the use of Gtriage. While many of us are inundated with email after email, sometimes finding that hundreds have come into our inbox at any given time away from the computer, who wants to go through all of that?Gtriage does the work of training your inbox instantly, and over time it learns to grow with you and identify which emails are vital and which can be touched later. I won’t say it’s perfect, the key word is train, so while you have parameters to set in the beginning, it will grow with you based on how you feed it information.
Emails that it determines to be important will be labeled “IMPORTANT” and put into a singular folder that is accessible on the desktop or on your mobile. Because the application runs in the background, there’s no apps to install, no third party plugins, no anything, so desktop or mobile, everything just works. It’s a good way to never miss important messages, and if you’ve got the patience to allow it to learn your habits, can be very powerful. I’ve only been using this for a few days, but I’ll probably circle back in 30-60 days to see if it’s really learned who I am and what emails are important to me.
Evernote 3.5 Windows in beta.
When Evernote first came out there was a lot of hype surrounding this all purpose information collector and sorter. Unlike anything that we had really seen before, Evernote allowed users to capture content either in video, internet, or photo, save it and store to the Evernote account and have all devices sync with your account. It was a great way to share information you would need later, or capture something as simple was scribbles on a napkin without actually having to carry the napkin with you. For web surfers specifically the ability to save an entire page along with the URL or just highlighted content allowed us a new way to capture just what we needed without bookmarking an entire site. Evernote really changed the way we capture data on our mobiles and now it gets an upgrade.
Evernote 3.5 for Windows was recently released in beta and it’s nothing significant, but does address a lot of previous annoyances. Evernote has always existed in many formats; an app, a browser button, and a desktop application rounds out how you can find Evernote. The desktop version for windows was nothing fancy, in fact it could be described as clunky, glitchy, with a UI that was not as intuitive as it could be. With it’s Apple counterpart running smooth and clean, it was a wonder why the Windows version could not mimic that same look and feel.
Some updates you will see are as follows:
- three views offered for looking at notes: List, Mixed, and Thumbnails
- geo-location tags activate a map that slides into place to show its location
- interface feels a lot more Windows 7 than its older counterparts
- search database has been improved, and you can save and edit your search filters
- multi-language spell check
So with these minor improvements we’ve seen a nicer desktop app under the hood. The application is still free, with a paid pro account alternative offering more functionality for the power users.
Over a year after a third-party app was released for Yammer users with an Android, Yammer have decided it’s time to release their own official app to compliment their service which enables people working within a company or group to send updates as to what they’re doing which is fed into a constant stream, like Twitter.
The app can be ran in the background while you use the phone on a day to day basis. It will vibrate or make a noise when the stream is updated by a colleague answering the boilerplate Yammer question, ‘What are you doing?’
The pre-release version is still reported to contain many bugs and I doubt it will be ready until late Spring of next year.
I think that this app will make switching from the iPhone to cheaper android devices much easier. Many people depend on Apple’s device purely because of the apps – now with many alternatives in the hands of the competitors, the iPhone could be in trouble. Expect a price drop in early 2010.
For many writers, the main problem when using a computer is the endless amounts of distractions that come along with them. At least I know it was for me. Even if I was just using Word I’d find myself focusing more on formatting, fonts and colours rather than actually getting the word out. However, since I started using Q10 my productivity has almost doubled.
Q10 is a basic word processor that looks like it’s from the early 80s. Just a black screen with basic text when you type. You can also have the noise of a typewriter as you type which I find gets the momentum going.
You can change the colour setting for the text.
There are other benefits to using this program a well. Firstly, it’s better for your eyes as there is less light to process and the text is easier to read. Also, if you’re using a laptop, because much of your screen is black you batter is spared enormously. How much power do you waste while using a word processor to light up 95% of your screen white?
You can get Q10 here.
I’ve been a big fan of Behance products offline, for my meetings, site sketches, and to-do list from time to time. Now they are tackling productivity online with their new online app and comparable mobile app to always stay on top of the things that you need to do daily.
Action Method was introduced this year as the premiere application to manage your projects, tasks, planning, and meetings. The application allows you to create projects, create tasks, assign tasks, and manage a calendar. If tasks are falling behind you can nudge the people to whom you assigned them to in order to remind them of deadlines. Color coding is a big winner for this app as it’s easy to find what you’re looking for with alternating colors.
Have an iPhone or iTouch? No problem, your web application syncs with your mobile app so your to-do list is never far away. Incredibly useful and sure to improve with future updates, the app is free to download, and free for up to 50 tasks, premium service for unlimited tasks comes in at $12/month or $99/year.
Mac users rejoice, the new version of Evernote has just been released. Version 1.1.4 can be updated from the “Check for Updates” command from the Evenote menu.
For a break down of what this version brings to you, read the release notes.
Evernote is an effective way of making sure you never forget your ideas. With the ability to catch your ideas no matter where they are, a napkin, online, a street sign, a window posting, capture it all with Evernote. Evernote also links across your laptop, your desktop and your mobile so you are never far from the inspiration you seek.
You can read a full review of Evernote here.
Company Name: Workology
Type of Industry: Career and Recruitment
Based: UK
Founded: April 2008
Competitors: LinkedIn and Xing
About: Workology is a peer-to-peer website that enables professionals to control the way they work.
There is no such thing as a job for life; freelancers, portfolio careerists, working parents, start-up entrepreneurs and retirees still feel they’ve got value to add and want to create and realize their way of working. They currently do this by relying mainly on the referral economy or the fragmented recruitment industries and that is hugely inefficient.
Workology simplifies the current process by offering people a free platform to create work opportunities and gain support to suit their individual work styles.
Crenk Thoughts: Everyone wants to control their own working style, but wanting alone is not sufficient. Because we all know that it’s simply not possible for some professionals to work flexible times e.g teachers, doctors, firefighters etc. Therefore, Workology is suitable for those professionals that have been listed above (i.e freelancers, entrepreneurs, retirees etc) – professionals that if they work flexible times, their productivity won’t be affected. In contrast, their productivity might even increase.
Also, Workology will have a tough time competing with niche websites like oDesk and RentACoder. Because these sites give a better marketplace for programmers and IT professionals to land a job. I also noticed that there are not many established companies posting job opennings in Workology. In that sense, I think Xing is doing a great job of attracting big players like Dell, Samsung, Sedo, Hitachi, 1&1 etc.
So, will Workology be around after 5 years? If they want to, then they have a lot of work to do…
