Xplorer2 file manager (Windows) - Lifehacker

Lifehacker posted my favorite file manager as their "download of the day" on Friday: Xplorer2

There are so many reasons why this little app is better than the built-in Windows Explorer

1. Two panes - This makes it so much clearer to copy files from one directory to another.  Xplorer2 has handy buttons for "copy to" and "move to" which make file transfers a breeze.
2. Easy bookmarks.  Windows Explorer does bookmarks (favorites) too, but they're much easier to use with Xplorer.  Xplorer gives you a number of ways to organize your bookmarks and, most importantly allows you to assign a keyboard shortcut to each of them.  It's so easy to run around one's file system this way, rather than trying to mouse all over the place.
3. Easily rename files - If you've ever ripped a CD that didn't have any .mp3 tags, or wanted to batch rename a whole bunch of photos you won't find an easier way than with Xplorer2.  You can use special tokens to append a counter, a date or a number of other things to your bulk file rename.  In the above example I'm renaming a book-on-tape that I ripped.  The character $01 will add an auto-counter to the rename.

There is a lot of functionality built into this free file manager.  One of LifeHacker's reader's summarized all of the keyboard shortcuts in a great chart on the post. Check it out from Zabkat.

Google Maps adding more countries

 According to the Google Earth Blog you can now do street level navigation on several new countries:

• Russia
• Turkey
• Taiwan
• Thailand
• Croatia
• Slovenia
• Lithuania
• Estonia

Now I can zoom right in on the conference site where my colleagues will be in a couple of weeks:

A few weeks ago I wrote about a way to bring animated maps into your PowerPoint presentations.  It'll take a few months for the Google Maps information to percolate to Google earth.  Even so, a whole lot more of us can do mapping presentations with a lot greater detail.

 

Technorati tags: Google, Maps

Microsoft to offer $3 version of Windows & Office...

...now if only they'd make it easy for NGO's to buy and license the same things overseas (more on that in a minute).

In a bid to win back the developing world into the arms of Redmond, Microsoft announced today a special discount bundle of its core software:

According to Computerworld:

The initiative, an expansion of Microsoft's "Unlimited Potential" strategy, involves offering governments a $3 software package called the Student Innovation Suite. It includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office, and Windows Live Mail desktop.

The suite will be available by the end of this year to qualifying governments that are working to supply PCs to students in order to promote technology skills. In 2008, Microsoft will extend its availability to all countries with economies defined as low- or middle-income by the The World Bank.

I hope that Kosovo will be a "qualifying governing" for this program given that it is not an official country.  Microsoft is seeing the developing world move more and more to Linux, which is free of charge.

In a world awash in boot-leg software, this is a smart move for Microsoft.  At the same time it has to work harder to make Microsoft products available through legitimate channels.

Last year I spent quite a while trying to buy legal copies of Windows XP and Office for our community center.  My parent organization refused to help through their volume licensing program.  So I spent a lot of time on the phone with Redmond, WA, Germany and Croatia.  No one believed that it was impossible buy legal software in Kosovo.

I'll always remember the German MS representative who snottily asked, "you've been in every store??" when I told him legal software didn't exist.

Despite my gripes, this seems like a good move for Microsoft and a  for developing countries.  I'll be fascinated to know how they'll keep all those pesky license keys straight though.

via DownloadSquad 

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Developing Countries

Keep your kids safe online

For the most part, I feel like my kids are safer overseas than in the US.  I live in a culture that very highly values kids and where neighbors really are neighbors.

While the Internet has sure made it easier for my kids to talk to their grandparents, it also exposes them to threats they wouldn't ordinarily encounter as MKs.

CNET has written a pretty thorough, six-part article on "Keeping your kids safe online.  You'll find age-specific tips on keeping healthy boundaries around your PC.  You'll also find tips on how to configure you system, from the router down to the web browser to make your kids computer experience family friendly.

This series of articles is worth reading if you've got kids and know that living overseas isn't a bye when it comes to Internet safety.

via Lifehacker

 

Technorati tags: Internet Kids

Presentation Collaboration: Google's new addition

 The Official Google Blog is reporting that Google is about to role out a collaborative presentation application. This application would complete a suite of applications (with Spreadsheets and Docs) that allow people to work on a project in real time.

I wrote about the value of Docs back in December as a collegue and I were working on a document together from several thousand miles away.  The new presentation product will presumably give us the same benefits.

From the Google post:

We've already freed those of you working in teams from the burdens of version control and email attachment overload when going back and forth on word processing and spreadsheets. It just made sense to add presentations to the mix; after all, when you create slides, you're almost always going to share them. Now students, writers, teachers, organizers, and, well, just about everyone who uses a computer can look forward to having real-time, web-based collaboration across even more common business document formats.

This certainly isn't a tool I'd use every day, but it's a handy one for the toolbox.  No word yet of an official release date.

Technorati tags: Presentations, Collaboration

Free Computer System Recovery Tools

Every once in a while the wheels fall of the wagon and you desperately need a hand.  LifeHacker published their Top Ten System Recovery Tools list a couple of days ago.

Whether you use a Mac or  PC you'll find some handy tools here.  You may not need them now, but this is a list worth bookmarking.

Collaboration: Box.Net Storage Widgets

Sometimes it would be great to have a place to keep all of your team documents, policy guides and templates in once place where everyone on your team could find them?

Yesterday Box.net, an online storage service company, released a new widget that essentially functions as a public folder for your website, blog page or wherever else you'd like to embed it.  Unlike services that just warehouse your files Box.net is trying to leverage the social networking space to make your data more usable to more people.  Check out the article and example in TechCrunch and this MySpace page for working copies. 

Embed the widget and you get a flash-based widget that provides easy access to shared files.  You can easily share audio, video or other documents.  Media is automatically played when clicked.

You can also password protect access and users can also upload their content with the pro and premium versions of the service.

This is another tool with great collaborative potential.  On your missions website you could easily add a box like this were important, and regularly edited, documents were kept.

In this example I've uploaded a policy document and copies of registration certificates our team might frequently use. 

There are obviously a hundred other ways to do the same thing (FTP, Wikis, etc) this one is very, very simple to implement.  As you can see in the drop-down box above, you can also subscribe to the "folder" through RSS if that works for you.

Box.net gives 1GB accounts away for free, other services apply at different price points.

 

 

Technorati tags: collaboration storage

Blogging: Constructive Vs. Drive-by Anonymity

Yesterday I posted Tom Johnson's 20 Principles for usability.  In that post I mentioned my prejudice against anonymous commenting and posting.  Beth brought to my attention circumstances in which people need to maintain a level of anonymity.  Good point.

This discussion is also happening at much more exulted levels.  A couple of days ago (4/8/07) Tim O'Reilly lit up the blogosphere with a post on the need for a blogging "code of conduct."  In addition to being picked up by the NY Times, it stayed at the top of Techmeme all day as everyone mobbed O'Reilly.  Today O'Reilly posted a "Lessons learned so far" article outlining and clarifying the bulk of the feedback received thus far.  One of those "lessons" is about anonymity.  Their is a distinction to be made between "constructive anonymity" and "drive-by anonymity."  The former is used to protect while the later is used to assault.

Constructive Anonymity vs. Drive-by Anonymity

According to O'Reilly's post:

Another place where we clearly erred in the first draft is in the suggestion that anonymity should be forbidden, as there are most certainly contexts where anonymity is incredibly valuable. (Some that come to mind include whistleblowing, political dissent, or even general discussion where someone might not want to confuse their personal opinions of those of an organization to which they belong. As one commenter remarked, it might even be useful for a shy person to whom anonymity gives a bit of courage.)

This is only one small part of this larger discussion, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

Technorati tags: Blogging

20 Blog Usability Tips

Tom Johnson has scrounged the Internet for what makes the difference between a good and a bad blog.  He's culled a number of sources to come up with his top twenty principles for creating a good blog.

Most of Tom's suggestions are great advice for every blog.  A couple, like getting your own domain name and creating an index are probably beyond most of our needs.  Here are a couple of that caught my eye and stimulated me to comment.

Number Two is one where a lot of "ministry blogs" struggle: Encourage Comments.  This is really important as it's the core of communal interactivity.  It's not the blog post that generates value per se.  It's the interactions of tens or dozens of commenters adding their bit of wisdom from the hive mind.  Blogs that don't have comments have much, much less value to the community because no one can interact with the content.  My own practice is to allow anonymous commenters and to almost never delete a comment.  I don't like anonymous posters...I think it's lame to leave a comment without leaving your identity.  But I'd rather have even that stilted interaction than none at all.  I've never deleted a comment either.  I've had some pretty horrible things left on another blog I write about the ministry side of my life...but I've let the comment lie.  I think it communicates a great deal about the commenter and sometimes that's to my advantage.

Number Three: Make it easy to subscribe.  If you are still reading blogs one-at-a-time in your web browser you're wasting WAY too much time.  Use a "feed reader" and allow other readers to subscribe to your blog easily.

Number Twelve: Allow readers to contact you offline.  It's important to leave an email address somewhere on your blog.  People may want to get in touch with you about something completely unrelated to your your last post.  They may want to help you, or may be asking for help.  Make it easy for them to connect with you.

All twenty of these principles are worth reading.  Most of them are "doable" for a guy like me...a few are not.  I'm not interested (yet) in having my own URL for my blog (#17)...but I may in the future.  Since I use Blogger, I can't easily created indexes (#16) or include related posts beneath each post (#11).  There is something here for everyone and it's a read worth your time.

Your Presentations: Controversial PowerPoint Research

Over the last several months I've given a life-times worth of PowerPoint presentations!  Okay, that's not true...it just seemed like it, both to me and, perhaps, to my audiences.

Bert Decker points out some interesting research about PowerPoint presentations; every missionary presenter should be aware of this.

Researchers at the University of NSW found that the brain cannot process written and spoken information well at the same time...The principle finding among some of the other controversial conclusions is "It is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you in the written and spoken form at the same time."

He goes on to explain that the researchers found that slides that contained the same text that was being spoken were not effectively processed by the audiences minds. 

So stop with using PowerPoints with so much text! Use graphics, charts, pictures, symbols and the like - because they also found in their research that "It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form."

This is a pretty significant finding since many presenters use their slides as talking points, if not as their complete set of notes.  While I don't use a lot of text on my slides, I confess that I've used bullet points as reminders of what to say during the presentation.  If I want to communicate effectively, I shouldn't do this.

Good luck, and remember to use more charts, pictures and symbols.

 

Technorati tags: Presentations

How-to: Add animated maps to your presentations

 I was looking at a colleague's website the other day when I noticed a promotional video he had added.  What caught my eye was the animated map that was imbedded into the video.  It started over the United States and then flew over to a position above the Balkan Peninsula before zooming in to Macedonia. 

I thought to myself, that's just what I need to help explain to people where Kosovo is!  It looked like it had been done with one of the web-based mapping apps, but I couldn't figure out how he'd done it.  So I shot a note to my colleague, who graciously forwarded it to Peter, the guy who'd done it.  Peter said he'd done it with Google Earth, HyperCam and some video editing software.  So I sat down and created a simple one for my purposes.  I uploaded it here to YouTube for simplicity sake. 

Since it's so easy, I thought I'd write up a basic tutorial. Neither my resolution nor my frame rate are all that great because of the laptop it was created on; your mileage my vary.

 

To create simple animated maps like these you need only three applications, all of which are free.

1.  Google Earth - Google Earth is a desktop application, as opposed to Google's web-based one.  The download is about 14MB and the installed app requires Internet access to use.  It downloads and caches all the map information as you fly around the world.  It's easy to use, has phenomenal detail and is, best of all, free.
2. HyperCam - this is just one screen capture tool but it works pretty well.  It simply records everything on your screen (or a selected region) and saves the output as and AVI (movie) file.  There are other, perhaps better, alternatives to this one.  Microsoft's free "Windows Media Player Encoder" does this and much more. 
3. MovieMaker - No hyperlink to this one, because if you're running Windows XP it's already on your computer.  Of course, you can use any other video editor too.  <sarcasm> If you use a Mac, well, it will just do this step all by itself like magic but you'll end up with a QuickTime file. </sarcasm>
4. Presentation software of your choice.  I've inserted this in a PowerPoint deck as part of presentation on Kosovo.  You could also use it in a website (see the YouTube footage above) or other application.

 Step One - Create your mapping sequence

1. Chose your starting point.  In the clip above I just zoomed into a position above the United States.  Just left click and drag the earth to where you want it.  Use the compass, zooming and pitch tools in the top right hand corner to find the perspective you're looking for.
2. Add a "Placemark".  When you have the position you're looking for, click "Add" and then on "Placemark". A window will appear asking you to name the Placemark and assign it other properties, if you're interested.  Don't worry about anything but the name of the placemark and the icon it will use.  Click on the icon to the right of the name and click "no icon" at the bottom of that dialogue box.  This will create a Placemark without an icon.  Icons are great for your personal reference, but doesn't look good on a video!  When you click 'okay' you'll notice that you now have a new Placemark in the Places section of your sidebar.  My first Placemark was called United States.  You'll create other Placemarks for transition in your video.
3. Decide on your ending point and any intermediate points you may want to show along the way.  You can see that my video above contains only three Placemarks, the US, Europe and Kosovo.  I have other places marked under Places (like one called Gjilan).  I haven't used those Placemarks in this video.  You can create your Placemarks in any order and sort them later.
4. Create a tour of your places!
   1. Under Places check all of the Placemarks you want to visit in your video.  In the tour for the above video I have selected the United States, Europe and Kosovo.  You can have as many or as few as you'd like.
   2. Order them correctly by dragging and dropping the Placemark titles in the Places sidebar.
   3. Play your tour!  Go to "Tools" on the menu bar and then select "Play Tour."  Google will now take you through a tour of your Placemarks.
   4. You can edit the speed at which your tour moves by changing the options under "Tools/Options" and then clicking on the "Touring" tab.  Fly speed, tour speed and tour pause are all changed here.  Does your tour pause too long on a Placemark?  Change "tour pause" from the default down to a 1 second or so.
5. When you tour runs the way you want it to, you're ready for the next step.

Step Two - Create your screen capture

Now you're ready to create your video file.  Lets use HyperCam for our screen capture.  As I mentioned, there are other applications for this step out there, but this works pretty well.  It will leave an annoying "unregistered HyperCam" logo in your upper left hand corner.  For now, I've decided I can live with that.  So go ahead and install HyperCam and run it. 

1. A dialogue box will appear that allows you to specify which part of the screen will be captured.  Make sure that Google Earth is the "window" right behind HyperCam when you do this.  Click on Select Region.  When the crosshairs appear drag the section of Google Earth you want to capture.  You may not want to include the title and menu bars, for instance.  Note:  You'll have to decide how large a window you want to capture.  If you're working on a new machine with a cranking graphics card, go for full screen and capture as large an image as you're able.  If you're computer is older, or doesn't have a dedicated video card, resize the Google Earth window so that it's about as large a map as you'll ultimately use in your presentation application.  If you try to make it bigger than your computer can smoothly draw, your resulting video will look very jerky and will probably be missing a lot of frames.
2. Click on "Start" recording to begin the screen capture.  The HyperCam dialogue will disappear and you should be looking at your Google Earth screen. Press Ctrl-Alt-P to begin playing your tour.  Using the keyboard shortcut will keep your mouse from being seen in the video.
3. When your Tour is over, press F2 to stop the screen capture.  That's it!  You've just made a video of your Google Earth Tour.

Step Three - Edit your video

You may have gotten some extra artifacts in your video when it was created.  It may not have begun smoothly or ended smoothly.  In this step you'll trim out the beginning and end of your map tour.

1. Open MovieMaker - this is probably hidden under Start/Accessories or something like that. Again, this already ships with Windows XP.
2. Click 'Import Video"  Navigate to where HyperCam saved your video (MyDocuments by default) and import your tour.  It's probably labeled something like "clip0001.avi"
3. In the center of the screen you'll have a new clip.  Drag it down to the timeline to begin editing your video.
4. Click the Zoom buttons above the timeline to make it easier to work on your video.  Clip off any extra junk you have may picked up during the capture.  In my example above, for instance, the HyperCam dialogue box was captured at the beginning of the screen capture.  That needs to be edited away.
5. Once you've trimmed that junk away you can add transitions into and out of your map tour, add picture, titles or whatever might be helpful.
6. Save the project and export the video.  You now have a WMV vile that can be used in PowerPoint, uploaded to YouTube or run in MediaPlayer.

This is my first tutorial but I hope it's helpful in explaining to you how to explain to people, where you live.

Sitting in an airport...waiting to be delayed

I'm supposed to be in San Jose today, but because of terrible weather yesterday my flight was canceled.  So now I'm sitting in Chicago's lovely O'Hare, waiting for a flight that is supposed to get me into San Francisco at 6:40 so that I can speak in a church in San Jose at 7:00 PM.

Wishful thinking, you say?  Oh, I'm sure you're right!  But this is the best our modern air traffic system could manage.  I was thinking that I'd be running through the airport as it is, but then I checked with my favorite flight tracking service, Flightstats.

Here's what Flightstats tells me is the historical performance of this this Chicago--San Fran flight:

The AVERAGE DELAY is 66 minutes?  I'll be lucky if I make to the church before everyone has left and is safely tucked into bed at home!!

Prescient post - Flight's canceled

Yesterday I posted about Google's flight information service (courtesy of flightstats.com) which allows you to send a message to Google and receive back your flight information.

I had occasion to use that very service this morning.  I showed up at the airport at 5AM for a 6AM flight to San Jose.  I got that uncomfortable feelings as soon as I saw the long lines at check-in.  Having only a carry on, I walked to the self-check-in kiosk and started the process.  A minute later the screen told me that I should talk to an agent...it couldn't complete my request.

I texted Google my flight number and found that my flight had been canceled.  Since it also returned the airline reservation number, I was off and (trying) to get rebooked almost immediately.

Good stuff...except I'm still supposed to be somewhere else right now...

Flight info with Google

Google is now providing flight status information via any cell phone through text messaging.  Simply text your flight numbers to 446453 (GOOGLE) and you'll be texted back information from flightstats.com.

If you don't know the flight number and want to find an 800 number, simply text the airline name to the same number and you'll receive back their reservations phone number.

Right now this is only for flights arriving to, or departing from, the US.  However, flightstats also covers international flights so Google may up the ante in the near future.

 

via DownloadSquad

Computer-aided language resources

Learning a second language takes a lot of time, a lot of patience and a lot of plain old study.  Sure, there are books a plenty to help you parse that odd verb, or help you conjugate that key verb in your sermon to give it just the right tone, but why not let software help.

I stumbled upon Verbix quite by accident a few months ago.  I couldn't believe the treasure that I'd found.  Here is their purpose, from their website:

Verbix is an independent non-profit organization that aims to promote and protect linguistic diversity [UNESCO Observatory: Multilingualism]. This site contains verb conjugations for hundreds of languages, ranging from national and international languages to regional and even extinct languages.

Verbix comes in four flavors, two that are web-based and two that are applications for your computer.  Both come in free and paid varieties.

Web-Based Editions

The first is their free web-based application.  You'll find verbs from 81 languages available, not as many as the desktop edition, but quite a few!

I can't vouch for how complete each languages' verbs are presented, but I've been fairly impressed by the set for Albanian, my adopted language.

All you need to do to get started is pick a language and enter a verb.

The resulting return will parse out the verb of your choice into the tense, voice and mode that are available.  Verbix doesn't have the parsing for every single verb available in its database.  Instead, like the above verb, it matches the many verbs by their conjugations.  Most of the time it seems right on, though I've found a few that I've differed with.

The web version has both a free and paid version, the difference being that the paid version provides lists of synonyms and antonyms, additional information about each verbs, etc. (version comparison).

Desktop Editions

The desktop edition is good sized (12MB) but very, very easy to use when your Internet goes out.  It too comes in a free and paid version (version comparison).  The desktop edition boasts up to 316 languages in its database.

Like the web-based edition, you first pick the language you want to work in.  You can browse languages either alphabetically or by the language family tree.

After selecting your language you're presented with the desktop.  Again, we'll use Albanian as the sample language.

You can either enter the word you want to parse, or browse through the verbs alphabetically.  Verbs and extra information appear on the main window.

This is a fantastic program for reference or study.  There is a lot more functionality here than I've covered.  Verbix's web-site was obviously not built by a marketer, but a quick glance at the help file will give you an idea of else this application is capable of.

Whether you only need to verb-form once in a while or you're a serious student, Verbix has a lot to offer.

Free 10 minutes with Skype

Everyone once in a while Skype offers freebies; in this case it's 10 free minutes to normal landlines and mobile phones.  Get yours here.  This offer will probably disappear shortly.

Gotta love Lenovo...

Okay, these are just concept videos....but I'm glad I'm not the only one whose thinking about dropping his laptop.  This feature is a MUST for the always-on-the-go missionary.

 

If you live in a country where coffee is ALWAYS near by, you'll want this feature.

 

 

Just concepts...I'd just be happy to find a way to quit roasting motherboards over the poor power grid in my country.

 

via GottaBeMobile

Comparing web-based mail: Hotmail, Gmail & Yahoo

A lot of missionaries rely (unfortunately in my opinion) on web-based mail services.  I say unfortunately because many missionaries live in Internet-slow countries and they spend countless hours waiting for pages to reload.  Using Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird is a much better solution, and a couple of the below solutions give you that flexibility.

If you're going to use a web-based mail service, why not use the best?  Last month TechCrunch compared the top three mail services, Hotmail, Gmail & Yahoo.

Their conclusion:

Overall we prefer Gmail over all other webmail applications because performance (speed) is consistently fast, and emails can be tagged making search much more effective. They also offer more storage and other features, and it’s free. However, Yahoo and Live Hotmail offer more mainstream Outlook-like user interfaces (although Live Hotmail does not allow you to access other email accounts from their application), whereas Gmail takes some time to get used to. If you are looking for speed and tagging is important, Gmail is for you. If you are looking for the closest thing to Outlook online, go with Yahoo Mail.

Read the post for more details.

Missionary Slide Show: the next generation

I haven't posted any eye-candy here in forever, so today is the day.  I've given various PowerPoint presentation between 1-3 times a day for the last two months or so.  For the most part, people seem to stay engaged with what I'm presenting.  But PowerPoint sure has its limitations.

Check out Jeff Han's demonstration of his new touch screen technology.  It runs on a a regular computer (though its a six figure version) and looks distinctly "Minority Reporti-ish."  You can read more about it here.  Sorry I can't embed the video right here...it won't embed for some reason.

I would be awesome to have that kind of technology for missionary presentation!  Give us another 15 years and we'll be there.

via DefenseTech

Remembering all the names!!!

Light posting lately.  I'm still out visiting the churches of my parent organization, the Christian & Missionary Alliance.  What a privilege it has been to meet so many people that make my organization a great one.  I'm traveling around North Carolina at the moment, a five week tour that will take me to twenty churches when I finish.  Each one of the those churches has around 60-150 in it.  Each one of those people have a name.

So many names. 

Remembering people's names is challenging for many people, yet no sound is as sweet to someone as the sound of their own name. 

The folks over at the Ririan Project have a great post on how to remember people's names.  They list nine steps which were a great review for me last night.  Honestly, I'm slacking in the mental discipline necessary to remember 10-15 new names each day.  This post was a good reminder, encouragement and refresher on how to do it more effectively.

I'd list those nine steps briefly here, but then you wouldn't read the post.!  If you are in a position that involves regularly meeting people and learning names, this post is worth your while.

Online collaboration: skrbl, nice online whiteboard

 If you've read this blog for any length of time you know that I have a thing for tools that let people collaborate at a distance.  Maybe that's because I'm frequently far away from the people with whom I want to collaborate!

Skrbl is a very nice online whiteboard that can be created almost instantly.  In their words:

The complete web whiteboard. Just start skrbl, give out your URL and instantly share online.  Use skrbl to collaborate with others or, keep it your own private web space. Write notes, sketch drawings, upload pictures, share files...
Everyone sees the same screen,
Everybody stays on the same page.

It really is about that easy to use.  In about twenty seconds after launching the web site I was doodling on the whiteboard.

You can write with a mouse or with text.  You can insert graphics and communicate very complex information very simply.  As a tablet use I love inking right on the screen.

  You can use this for your self, as an online bulletin board or more valuably, invite others to participate in an online brainstorming session.

Registered users (free) can add people to the session either by sending them an invitation email from within skrbl or by IMing them the URL for the session. Either way it's about as simple as it gets.

On the DOWNSIDE, I sent a link to a friend who was on a 3 meg broadband connection and after about 15 minutes, he still hadn't seen anything drawn on the screen.  Whooops.

Skrbl is still in beta but watch out for this little app.  It's got a lot to offer.

via Lifehacker

New Beta for Skype and Skype Pro premiers

If you're a Skype user there are a couple of things you may want to be aware of.  First, the beta of skype 3.1 was released today.  As always, it's beta, so use at your own risk.  It has some nice new features, including the long-awaited "typing indicator."  That is, when in chat you'll be notified when other people are typing.  Read more about the beta here.

The second is about the release of Skype Pro.  If you're in Europe this may be worth looking into:

The Skype Pro subscription deal includes:

• Zero cents per minute calling to domestic landlines in your country — this means you can talk as long as you like and only pay the connection fee (3.9 cents or equivalent) for each call that you make to domestic landlines
• Free Skype Voicemail (normally €15 per year)
• €30 discount on SkypeIn numbers
• €5 Skype Credit included as part of the introductory offer (see below)
• A €30 discount on a Philips VoIP 841 cordless phone.
• A €10 discount on an SMC WiFi phone.
• Money off a series of Skype Extras.

Bonus: If you get there quickly, you can purchase Skype Pro on a five month basis for €10 and receive €5 Skype credit absolutely free.

Details here.

AllFreeCalls Shut Down

Sorry for the light posting this last week.  I'm home for a few days in between speaking commitments and I'm mostly "fasting" from the Internet more or less.

I blogged about AllFreeCalls a couple of weeks ago and now it appears that they're shot down for the time being.  I just thought you may want to know :)

Check out TechCrunch for more info.

Calling overseas, for the price of a call to Iowa

TechCrunch is reporting on a service called AllFreeCalls which enables you to make overseas calls to select location for the price of a call to Iowa.

Here's how this apparently works.  Calls to rural Iowa are subsidized by you, the taxpayer.  The subsidy is greater than the cost of the overseas call so AllFreeCalls pockets the difference.  For more information on these details check out the comments on this post or here.

Only select countries qualify, but the include places like Canada, China, much of Western Europe and...especially for us in Kosovo, land lines in Serbia (Kosovo landlines use the Serbian country code so this should work).

This is a pretty great deal if you already have free or cheap long-distance service within the US.  If you're not a Skype user, or if the folks you're trying to reach have lousy Internet service, making Skype impractical, see if you're country is included.

If you're outside the US, one TechCrunch commenter reports using this successfully with SkypeOut.  In fact, if might try this with Skype's new unlimited calling plan for $14.95.  Couple this with AllFreeCalls  and your telecom costs just dropped to about zero.

Missionary e-mailing lists: Best practices for creating, maintaining and participating

 Most of us use either snail-mail and/or email to keep people up-to-date back home.  I think everyone on my team, for example, writes an update somewhere between once a week and once a quarter.  While blogging is changing this dynamic some what, I can still say things in an email to my friends and supporters that I won't write in a blog entry.

To that end, what are the best practices for using email for updating your supporters?  I'm going to riff on this DownloadSquad post on mailing list etiquette and suggest a few tips.

A.  Use a list-server.  A "list server" is a computer on the Internet that keeps all of your email address for you.  When I want to write an email to everyone on my list I send an email to a single address and then the list server sends it out to everyone on the list.  Here are the advantages:

1. This is a safe and secure way to keep all your email addresses handy.  I've known a number of missionaries who have had to rebuild their entire contact list one-by-one because their computer died.  Can a list-server go down and lose your data?  Sure, but you're more likely to have a camel sit on your laptop, or in the case of one friend, have termites eat your hard-drive, than a modern data center lose your data.  Plus you can easily download the list as a text file for backup.
2. You send one email to one address...period.  More and more services are putting limits on the number of addresses one can send "to" at a given time.  The number varies, but I know a number of people who have to send out their updates in batches, 10 addresses at a time.  This takes a lot of time and makes it harder for to send out updates.  When its difficult to send out updates you simply don't do them as often.

B. Send an introduction when you add someone to your list.  It's good practice to confirm with them that they were added.  It's also a nice touch to let them know from the beginning how they can "un-subscribe" to your newsletter.  It may be another few weeks or a month before you send your next update; don't keep them wondering.

C. Add a subject prefix.  This is a great idea and suggested on the DLS post.  On the subject line use a common subject for all of your updates like <kornball> Kosovo Konnection: January </kornball>.  That way when people see your newsletter in their inbox they'll immediately know its from you and they can quickly sort it or read it.

D. Make it easy to un-subscribe.  How does your best friend from 15 years ago tell you politely that your dumb newsletters are plugging up his inbox and that he no longer cares to hear news about East-Krasnaland or the lost people groups there-of?  I usually add a footer to give people instruction for unsubscribing from the list server.  This is another advantage of using a list server to do your mailing for you.  They can unsubscribe and you'll never be the wiser.  Most list-servers have settings that will allow you to know if your Aunt Grace dumped your missive, but sometimes its easier to be oblivious.

E. On a non-technical note, BE YOURSELF.  Every once in a while I read a prayer letter that sounds like its been snatched from A.W. Tozer or Oswald Chambers.  Guess what, you're probably not him!  Just be yourself (praise God & hallelujah).  When you're having a tough time (but resting in the arms of Jesus and trusting in his steadfast love) just say so.  In other words, cut the crap.  You don't have to bleed all over people to get your point across, but you don't have to smother them with a lot of psuedo-spiritual lingo either.

F.  Keep them short, but keep them regular.  When I'm on the field I try to write briefly but regularly, every two weeks or so.  I want them to be frequent enough that people know what's going on without overwhelming people.  If you're only writing every quarter you'll be forgotten by everyone but your relatives.  If you're scheduling a big outreach for Friday, shoot your list a note Thursday (deepening on your time-zone) and then a quick note on Saturday morning.

Check out the DownLoadSquad post for a few more.  It's really geared for mailing lists for hobbyists and special interest groups, but it has some good information for those of us who rely on email to communicate with the folks back home.

Managing the Alpha Male

On the plane from Phoenix to Ontario, CA, today I listened to the Harvard Business Review Ideacast 2 from last May 17th.  I'm trying to get caught up on these older casts and this one was a winner.  From the description:

How to Manage the Alpha Male:  Whether he's your boss, your subordinate, your colleague, or your client, learn how to get the best of what the Alpha Male has to offer.

I thought this was a particularly good podcast as it relates to missionaries and missionary life.  Some missionaries are driven, Type-A, Alpha male types.  Others, of course, are as varied as any other population group.  Since we tend to spiritualize everything in Christian circles, however, the Alpha type tends to be either wildly praised as visionary and prophetic, or roundly criticized as sinful, selfish, self-absorbed, control-freaks, etc.

Some leaders are Alpha-males, though not all.  As with any personality type these folks come with their attendant strengths and weaknesses.

The authors in the podcast, who have written a book entitled, The Alpha-Male Syndrome, from the Harvard Business School Press.  In the book they detail the results of their study indicating, unsurprisingly, that  the range of Alpha-Male traits goes from extremely strong and positive to dysfunctional.  They also discovered that the greater the strength the greater the complimentary weakness and that age positively correlates to the strengths.

They gave the following examples:

1. Alpha-males tend to have an assertiveness, sometimes an assertive anger that they use  to influence people.  While this can be effective, people also feel run over.
2. Alpha-males tend to be impatient.  They tend to move the ball down the field, but in the long term this impatience burns out the people around them.

If you work with Alpha-males the podcast is worth a listen.  Their comments, and the book they've written, have some solid advice for both dealing with one's alpha-maleness and that of others one might work with.

Ten Annoying Meeting Behaviors

Michael Hyatt has been cranking out the great posts lately.  Yesterday he wrote one on Ten Annoying Meeting Behaviors which was outstanding.

I've been in meetings both in the church and on the mission field where I've seen all of these behaviors.  I've been guilty of many of them too, but that's something I'm working hard to avoid...especially "checking email while in a meeting."

Because these are so well writen, I'm just going to quote at length.

1. Arriving late. This ends up wasting everyone’s time. Not only do you miss out, but it often forces the group to start the meeting over just to get you up-to-speed. It also screams, “I’m disorganized. I can’t manage my time.” Is that really the impression you want to create?
2. Taking phone calls. This is probably the most obnoxious behavior. You might as well say, “Excuse me, but I have someone else more important trying to reach me.” At the very least, have the courtesy to quietly excuse yourself and step out of the meeting. And, don’t answer the phone on your way out the door. Try to be as discrete as possible.
3. Checking e-mail. This is similar to taking a phone call. It communicates that you have something more important to do than pay attention to the meeting. Just say, “no.” Leave the laptop in your office unless you need it for a formal presentation. And, please, PLEASE resist the urge to pull your Blackberry out every five minutes and check your messages.
4. Engaging in side conversations. A good meeting only has one conversation going on at a time. A side conversation is, at best, distracting. At worst, it is a challenge to the meeting leader for control of the conversation. Engage in a little self-control. If you need to follow-up with someone, write yourself a note, and do it after the meeting.
5. Not taking notes. If it is not worth taking notes, why are you there? This communicates, “Nothing going on in this meeting is worth remembering or following-up on.” If you haven’t done so, you might want to read a previous post I wrote called “Recovering the Lost Art of Note-Taking.” You’ll be surprised how much more interesting the meeting becomes when you are capturing your thoughts or what others are sharing.
6. Talking too much. There’s nothing worse than the person who feels the need to comment on everything. Or worse, once they get the floor, they won’t give it up. They just keep talking ... and talking ... and talking. C’mon, give the rest of us a chance!
7. Interrupting others. Okay, you have a great idea. You’re smart. We’ve got it. But can you wait until the person currently talking is done? The worst form of this is the person who randomly changes the subject. When you make a sharp left turn, you can you can give everyone else meeting whiplash.
8. Not coming prepared. Maybe you got away with this in school. But this is real life. People notice. When you are invited to attend a meeting, people expect you to make a contribution. If you don’t contribute, people assume you haven’t done your homework. Maybe that’s why you are getting invited to fewer meetings. Hmmm.
9. Chasing rabbits. This is one of those behaviors that makes meetings longer than they need to be. You don’t need to respond to every comment with a quip. You don’t have to tell some long, drawn-out story that everyone has already heard before. Stay focused. You can do it! The sooner we get through the agenda, the sooner we can get back to our offices and get some real work done.
10. Not speaking up. Every meeting seems to have them. Deadwood. How can you sit quietly for the whole meeting? Sometimes I want to pull out a mirror, hold it under your nose, and make sure you can fog it! Why do you keep coming to meetings? Worse, why do we keep inviting you? Speak up or bow out.

There are some real stingers in this list.  In some ways these kinds of behaviors may be more prevelent in faith-based-organization meetings than in the for-profit sector.  I've had church elders tell me that they wanted to leave "work behind" when they came to church meetings.  But Micahel nails it when he diagnoses the core problem: "When you really get down to it, all of these flow from the same basic problem: disrespect"

Did he miss any in his list?

 

Technorati tags: meetings, productivity

CloneSpy cleans up duplicate files - Do you know how much HD space you're wasting?

I've noticed a tendency that comes from larger, cheaper hard rives.  I pay less attention to duplicates of data, music, and especially, photos.  What difference does it make when you have a half terabyte of storage?

Those of us running on laptops may be a little more sensitive, but I found a little utility called CloneSpy that's opened my eyes a little.

CloneSpy is a duplicate file-finder that doesn't just search for duplicate file names, it searches for duplicate bits.  That is, it searches for duplicate files that may even have different file names but contain the same date.

  I thought I'd take a break from pruning and write about it because it's already found 225MB of duplicate files and it's only gone through five percent of "My Documents."  Yikes?  I feel like I'm reasonably careful to avoid saving duplicate information too, but apparently not.

CloneSpy works pretty intuitively and seems be careful to avoid letting you delete important stuff.

My only beef so far with it is that you have to make a decision on each group of duplicate files, rather than handling them in a larger batch.  On the other hand, I suppose that keeps people like me from becoming "delete happy" and losing something important.

 

via Download Squad

New Skype pricing structure...price hikes for SkypeOut

Jaanus, over at the Skype blog gives some further explanation of Skype's new pricing structure.  You may have seen this before, but there has apparently been a  lot of rumor and opinion circulating as to what it all means.  Here's a recap from Jaanus:

• As of January 18, a connection fee of 0.039 € or equivalent applies to SkypeOut calls after the fifth second, with the exception in the next two bullets.
• The connection fee does not apply if you are on the Skype Unlimited plan in the US or Canada, or Talk for Britain plan in the UK.
• The connection fee doesn’t apply to toll-free calls. You can do toll-free calls without having any Skype Credit or paying anything.
• The following regions were added to our Global Rate of 0.017 € per minute: Czech Republic, Guam, Hungary, Israel, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Puerto Rico and both Alaska and Hawaii in the United States.
• We are working on our new Skype Pro offering that, among other things, will have domestic SkypeOut calling in a number of countries with a connection fee but no per-minute charges. You can sign up to receive more info by e-mail, and it will of course be here on the blog. No date yet, but I think it’s safe to say we will speak more about Skype Pro in weeks, rather than months.
• Nothing changed in the structure of our other prices (Voicemail, SkypeIn, or free Skype-to-Skype).

 

If I'm reading this correctly, I'll now have to pay $.74 per minute to call Kosovo mobile phone (.039+.0354=.0744).  That's significantly higher than what I was paying a year ago to SkypeOut a colleague's mobile phone.

If I'm not mistaken that's now significantly higher than a run-of-the-mill long-distance card from a retail warehouse store (Sams, Costco, etc.)  If memory serves, and I can't find the data on the Sams Club site, I used to pay around $.50 / minute from the US to a Kosovo mobile (which are routed through Morocco for technical reasons.)

If you've been using Skype for US-to-foreign calls you may want to check your rates.  Rates to the countries mentioned above are now apparently cheaper, but prices to the off-the-beaten-track places look like they're going up.

Are You a Leader?

I'm always interested in how various people define leadership.  To some you either have it or you don't.  To others leadership is the synthesis of traits which can be learned and developed.

Pastor Tony Morgan wrote a great post called, 10 Easy Ways to Know You're Not a Leader.  Tony is self-confessedly in the "you have it or you don't" leadership camp.  While I'm not sure I agree with that I love his Top Ten NOTs of leadership:

1. You’re waiting on a bigger staff and more money to accomplish your vision.
2. You think you need to be in charge to have influence.
3. You’re content.
4. You tend to foster division instead of generating a helpful dialogue.
5. You think you need to say something to be heard.
6. You find it easier to blame others for your circumstances than to take responsibility for solutions.
7. It’s been some time since you said, “I messed up.”
8. You’re driven by the task instead of the relationships and the vision.
9. Your dreams are so small, people think they can be achieved.
10. No one is following you.

I think this is a pretty good list.  While you might take issue with one or two, flipped on their heads this is a pretty good list of characteristics.  As I read through each item different things hit me, especially numbers one and two.

#1. I just listed to a great podcast from the guys at Manager Tools.  One of the things that came through from their experience is that good leaders get the job done and don't wait for more funding, more personnel, etc.

#2. I was struck by many conversations with my good friend David Aderholdt who has frequently commented that he feels that one can often have more influence outside of leadership positions than inside them.

May God all give us both great vision for what he wants done, and the perseverance to gut it out until we get there.

via Michael Hyatt

How to manage kids in the Home Office

WebWorkerDaily has a great article today on managing kids and the home office.  As a missionary, whether I'm on the field or on home assignment in the US, I do much of my planning, studying and administrative work from my home.  I would imagine this is true of most missionaries.  At the same time, I have two beautiful little girls who frequently want and need daddy's time and attention.  What to do?

WWD frames the discussion with this question: Are you going to leave the door to your (literal or figurative) office open or closed to your kids?  The author decides to leave it "open" and gives a number of great suggestions for managing work and kids at home.

This is a question that I've struggled with as well and have also decided to keep the door open.  It's something of a relief to realize that work-at-home parents from many professions are dealing with the same issues.

If you're wrestling with how to be both mom or dad at home, and gainfully employed, check out the WWD posts and comments.

Putting OneNote & MindManager together

I've been a fan of both Microsoft OneNote and MindJet MindManager for several years.  They both occupy important places in my toolbox.  I use OneNote almost daily for project tracking, reference and the core of my productivity workflow.  I use MindManager for planning, brainstorming, sermon writing, agenda creation and taking notes of conversations.

Now the folks at MindJet Labs have released the OneNote 2007 + MindManager tool which increases the ability of these two tools to work together.  Basically the tool provides:

• OneNote 2007 Send To MindManager
• OneNote Hyperlinks in MindManager
• OneNote Notebook Hierarchy Mapping

These function allow the passing of data between the two applications:

•  From MindManager, you can easily map out the Notebooks, Section Groups, Sections, Pages, and Subpages, including hyperlinks:       Select File...Open...OneNote 2007 Notebooks.
• From MindManager, you can send the current map to OneNote as an image that you can sketch on and annotate:       Select File...Export...Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
• From OneNote, you can send a page to MindManager as a hyperlinked topic:  Press the Send to MindManager MindManager button on the Standard toolbar in OneNote.

Rob Bushway previously outlined how to hyperlink from MindManager to OneNote, but this new tool should make it much more natural to share data between the two applications.  Some of this functionality is really already of part of OneNote.  But the new open OneNote API is going to make this kind of development all the more common and I'm looking forward to seeing how real geeks leverage the power of OneNote for by connecting it other applications.

via David Rasmussen

Ten ways to collaborate at a distance & the best tools to do it.

Judi Sohn over at WebWorkerDaily  recently posted a great article on the ten ways you can work with and communicate with colleagues at a distance and the best tools for doing each.  The ten are:

• email
• phone
• text chat
• VOIP
• Web conferencing
• Document collaboration
• Group on-line document sharing
• Wiki
• Shared calendars
• Message forums

 She goes one to gives some pros and cons for each approach and some of the best tools for each of the ten modalities.  If you work with people over long distances this article is worth your while.

Great Firefox tip: Ctrl-Enter

Descapa, over at the OneNote Extensibility blog gives a great usability tip for Firefox today.  You may have run accross this before, but if not its worth checking out.

. If you type "cnn" and then hit ctrl-enter it will prepend the "www." and append ".com" so you have "www.cnn.com" which is great!

Just today I got a Starbucks gift card and I wanted to see the balance on the card and to do so I would need to go to "www.starbucks.com/card" as it was printed on the back of the card. I had already opened Firefox and I typed starbucks in the address bar and at this point I would go through the effort to hit home type www., hit end type .com and then "/card" but instead I just typed "starbucks/card" and I hit Ctrl-Enter and Firefox filled in the rest for me so I went to www.starbucks.com/card. It was just too awesome.

I tried it again, for example the OneNote site is: www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/ so I just typed "microsoft/office/onenote" and Ctrl-Enter and it went to the right site! Sadly this doesn't work in IE 7 : ( However I was just very pleased to see this feature working and just how I would try it too!

 

Technorati tags: Firefox

No New Years Resolutions for me...

Maybe the timing of this post is a little off. This time of year everyone is talking about New Year’s Resolutions. I’m not a big believe in resolutions…I don’t think they work for me. They work for some people, but not for me. You may be a little like me, in fact, according this WNBC/Marist College poll only 44% of adults are planning on New Year’s Resolutions this year.

Instead, I try to think about this question:

What one thing can I do today that will make the biggest different 120 days from now, or 365 days from now.

Answering that question helps me to leverage today for tomorrow.  You see, I can't get my head around, "this year I'm going to exercise more & lose weight"  It will never happen.  I can only think about, "I'm going to exercise three times this week."  I can't handle "this year I'm going to be a better person."  I can only daily allow God to work on my heart through daily spiritual disciplines.  Incidentally, according to the poll above these are the two most popular New Years Resolutions

Over the years I’ve come up with a list of things that I want to be about regularly that I think will pay off big 120 days from now. Of course, it may not be that on May 3 such and such will happen. But the value of the regular discipline of “one things” aggregates over time. Here are some of my “one things”:

Prayer & Bible Reading – I believe that my spiritual life is my life’s center out of which all personal development, discipline and horizontal & vertical relationships derive. This one thing pays big dividends over time, 120 days from now or 1200 days from now.

Scripture Memorization – This is similar to the first one but I’m committed (right now) to memorizing large blocks of Scripture. This does a number of things. It’s fantastic mental exercise which helps me to stay focused and sharp in other areas of my life. It also firmly roots me the Reality of what God says. Right now I’m using a method I wrote about here.

Exercise - This is a no brainer; regular exercise makes a significant difference in how I feel, think and act. Guess what, I’m not a very disciplined person when it comes to exercise. I’ve never had to do much to maintain my weight.  But I believe that I feel better and think more sharply when I do.  I don't exercise every day, but I try to shoot for three times a week.

Drinking Water - This may seem odd, but as someone with kidney stones I want to keep track of roughly how much water I'm drinking.  I don't care about the totals, I just care about the trends.

Weekly Review/Daily Process-Inbox - This is something out of David Allen's Getting Things Done.  In short, both daily and once a week I review all of my outstanding projects, to-dos, goals, etc.

Write/Blog - I've committed to blogging fairly regularly, not because I think there are oh-so-many people interested in what I'm writing, but because its good exercise.  If you want to be a better writer you have to write.  Blogging forces me, in a quasi-public way, to get out there and try to put my thoughts "down on paper."

Language Study – as a missionary in a foreign country there is nothing more important to my continued impact than my ability to communicate with the people with whom I live. At the same time, I set the bar for this pretty low. I want to spend 15 minutes every day studying language. That’s ridiculously low, you might say. But if you ask missionaries who are currently on home assignment in the US how much time they spend in the study of their adopted language few will admit to much. In fact, last spring I was busily scanning in language resource books so that I could bring digital copies home with me. One of my colleagues, who is the sharpest language learner on our field laughed and said good-naturedly, don’t bother…you’ll never look at them. Why? Because there is so much else to do while on home assignment. And she’s right…except I’ve determined that plugging away at the language for a short time every day will pay off when we return to Kosovo.

Professional Reading – This is a no brainer too, but one that many missionaries over look. Being mindful of one’s personal development pays huge dividends down the road. Here again I’m only looking to spend 15 minutes a day in professional development. To this point I’ve been pretty selective of what I think counts. For example, I just finished an awesome book called “The Arabists” by Robert Kaplan. It’s the story of how modern diplomacy in the middle east has been formed by the foreign service officers who lived there long term. It's an awesome book, but it doesn’t feed into my professional development, so I didn’t count it. Right now I count books (or podcasts) on missiology, theology, business management, finance management, etc. These are things that specifically hone the tools in my tool box or give me new tools all together.

Again, I’m not interested in spending hours every day; there is just too much to do. But by spending some time each day my mind is exposed to new material in ways that help me be mindful of my own development.

Of course it's great to have a list of regular disciplines.  But how do I map my progress? 

Last May I discovered Joe's Goals which has really helped me track the “one things” in my life. Joe's Goals allows me to make my disciplines regular, instead of daily.  That way I don't get too hung up, too neurotic about them. 

Joe's Goals gives me a handy graph to help chart these against time and also weigh them for importance.  My daily devotions and weekly review are weighted at three points, water drinking gets only one.  It's not a perfect tool, but it's very, very handy.

If you're still reading you can from the above graphic that I didn't hit too many of my "one things" over the weekend.  That's true!  We had friends visit from out of town and all my attention was on them, not on hitting the daily biggies.  And you know what?  That' just the way it ought to be!  The "one things" are not my masters, they're my servants.  Tracking my goals over a longer period of time gives me a larger context in which to evaluate myself.  One weekend spent doing something else more important fits in appropriately.   At the same time, when I began a new week today I was easily able to get back in the groove.

For my money, forget about New Years Resolutions.  Focus on doing the things today, or this week, which will leverage your tomorrow.

 

Technorati tags: Goals, Productivity

Decision-Making and the boy who cried wolf

Recently a friend of mine, Matt Peace, turned me on to the Harvard Business Review Ideacast series.  Ideacast is a great biweekly series of podcasts that include book reviews, interviews with notables, and "lessons learned" from recent business events.

Working backward from the current podcast I hit on number 6 which caught my attention.  Its from July, 2006.

How Your Company Can Make Better Decisions: In this look at organizational decision-making in light of Merck & Co - Vioxx experience, Harvard Business School Professor David Garvin offers an improved prescription for company decision-making.

Okay, I have to admit I was clueless that there was a problem, but Garvin makes some great observations:

• Decision-making is not punctiliar, it doesn't happen it a single point in time.  "Decision-making is an extended social process"  Decision-making in an organization always involve multiple people at multiple strata of an organization.  Sometimes decision-making generates its own momentum over time.  Because of this it is not always possible to truly know when a decision has been made.
• Because of this momentum contrarian view points are often suppressed intentionally or unintentionally.
• To protect the organization, minority views need to be actively supported by leaders.
• Decision-making processes should actively stimulate dissent.  Assign people in the decision-making process to be active contrarians. 
• Assign people to create multiple options or alternatives. Options present decision-makers from the blinder of a "go/no-go" solution set and broaden discussion.  Decisions shouldn't be framed in a "should we do action A or not."  They should be framed as, "here is the issue and A, B or C are suitable solutions.

Here is some advice to managers for creating better decision-making within their organization:

1. Companies have decision-making cultures.  These cultures help or hinder good decision-making.  We need to understand our corporate cultures and encourage positive characteristics.
2. Encourage constructive conflict but not dissent for its own sake.  Get multiple alternatives and minority viewpoints.
3. The leader shouldn't open a meeting with his own viewpoint.
4. Decision the decision-making process to periodically surface different points of view.
5. Strive for transparency.  The best decision-making process happen where everyone understands the rules of the game and information is shared up front.
6. Encourage trouble-makers in your organization.  Andy Grove from Intel calls them "helpful Cassandras."  These are those who are regularly cry wolf, say the sky was falling, etc.  Grove actively sought these people out to be part of the decision-making process.  He found they always helped lead to better decisions.

This is great advice for Christian organizations.  Frequently, in the name of "constituted authority," "being on the same page" or "God's will" dissenting viewpoints, contrarians and minority view points are suppressed.  Decision-making is paralyzed in these contexts out of fear of being "rebellious."  Good decision-making requires openness, honesty, listening-skills and compassion.  These are traits Christian organizations should have in abundance.

 

Technorati tags: leadership, decision-making

Nice mention in Joe's Goals

I've been using Joe's Goals for about nine months as a way to help me track my "one things." My "one things" are those actions or activities that I think will have the largest payoffs 120-360 days from now. I'm working on a post now that describes these, but Ian was nice enough to list me with some of the big-wigs for putting a Joes Goals badge on my website. Thanks Ian.



I put the badge there to help all of my supporters know how I'm doing on some of these "first things." I think that the more communication I give those interested in our work and the greater the transparency in our relationship (to a point) the greater the synergy created between us, hence the badge.

Online file conversion

Have you ever had a friend email you a document or an audio file that you can't open? ZamZar is an online file conversion site that will convert a number of different types of image, document and video files from one format to another. Simply browse the file you're converting, select which format to convert to and enter your email address. They'll mail you back the converted file.



While I haven't tried it yet it looks like a handy utility to bookmark.



Via Joe

More Skype Extras

Jaanus over at the Skype blog announced another extra today called Unyte.  Unyte is a document sharing facility built into Skype that allows you to share documents, applications and even desktops with others you're speaking with.

Unyte is great for when you’re discussing a project with colleagues. If you are on a conference call with four co-workers and want to discuss a project plan you have all been working on, use Unyte to share the document with everyone on the call and any updates you make will be seen straight away by everyone.

 

 

This probably isn't for everyone, but it's another example of how the barriers of distance are collapsing around us.  Skype is really making online collaboration approachable for the masses, for the poor, and for the technically challenged.  Seriously, the things that Skype, and other IP Communications companies, are offering are bringing this kind of technology down to home-espresso-maker level.  They're still not for everyone, but they're becoming for more and more the regular folk.

Technorati tags: skype, collaboration

Out with BlogJet, in with Live Writer

I've been using BlogJet as my blog editor since April 2005 and  needed something like it for a couple of reasons:

1. I needed an offline blog editor.  The Internet in my adopted country isn't super fast and using an online editor, like the one built in to Blogger, isn't practical under those circumstances.
2. I needed an editor which allowed me to post pictures easily and in one step.  BlogJet, for instance, allows you to select a picture from anywhere on your computer and add it to your post in nearly one easy step.  No separate resizing, formatting or uploading necessary.

BlogJet did both of these fantastically and I regularly encouraged others to give it a try.   Other editors I tried either didn't handle pictures well, or where priced out of reach or just didn't click with me.  To be honest, it took a long time to get BlogJet to upload my pictures properly.  For some reason it couldn't communicate to my FTP server and this was an issue for a number of people in BlogJet's support forums.  After about six months it was fixed and I purchased the program and haven't look back. 

Last week I upgraded from the old Blogger to the new Blogger.  The new Blogger has a lot of great features and I'm glad I made the change.  The downside is that BlogJet can't communicate with the new version.  One minute I'm posting a blog with no problems, the next I'm back to using Performancing or Blogger's built in web-based editor....yuck.

That will be fixed in the next version; Dmitry has been working on BlogJet 2.0 for quite a long time, and I know he wants to get the product right.  He's been very responsive to my own requests for technical help and he's made a great product.  The problem is that he's not been very forthcoming about a ship date for 2.0  He posted a screenshot of 2.0 and talked about new instant search capabilities in August.  Then in November he clarified the upgrade pricing policy, which is very reasonable.

But Blogger Beta went live about a month ago and he's not responded to anyone's concern that the current BlogJet won't work with it.  I don't have any idea how many BlogJet users use Blogger, but I would guess that Dmitry's install base is fairly large.  I would think he would release a patch, or make the 2.0 beta public, or respond in some way.  But in one of the threads on the BlogJet support forum Dmitry simply says on November 3: "No dates yet, but it will be released soon."  When one forum member says that "soon" isn't good enough Dmitry simply replies:

 "Yep... But I promised not to make promises
But since this official announcement: http://www.blogjet.com/blog/2006/11/03/ … ube-demos/
you may not afraid of buying the current version "

Now, I actually applaud Dmitry's commitment to his product and desire to avoid endless Microsoft-like-slipped-ship-dates.  At the same time, its been two months since he's made mention of 2.0 and two months is an eternity when you're trying to blog daily.

So, while I love BlogJet and wish it and Dmitry all the best, I decided I needed another option. So this morning I downloaded Windows Live Writer and gave it a whirl again. 

Windows Live Writer was released last spring or summer and everyone raved about it for a while.  I downloaded it and tried it, but couldn't figure out the picture uploading scheme in the 90 seconds I tried it and went back to BlogJet. Until last week.

Now it's working great, supports plug-ins for things like ink and Flickr and is as easy to use as BlogJet. 

The problem really isn't so much that I can't use BlogJet with Blogger anymore.  The problem is that I have no idea when I'll be able to.

 

Technorati tags: BlogJet, Blogger LiveWriter

Great GTD wallpaper

I continue to enjoy the benefits of the “Getting Things Done” methodology, even though I have a lot fewer projects on my plate. Sometimes it’s nice to have a visual reminder of the work flow behind the methodology. Stefanos Karagos over at Anabubula.com has created some great GTD desktop wallpaper for your motivational purposes.

Group One

Group Two