I have been doing this for awhile but after speaking with a friend the other day who didn’t know the trick I thought it would be worth sharing. I am a big believer in wishlists. I figure if I mark something as a want or wish, and I still want it a month or two later, it is probably worth buying. This helps to cut down on my impulsive buying. I used to maintain my wishlists on Amazon, but since the Apple Music Store opened I have been buying my tunes there. So how do you maintain a wish list on the iTunes Music Store. In iTunes create a new playlist, to do this press the plus sign in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. I call this new list “Apple Store Wishlist.” I chose this name so that it appears near the top of the list. Then go browse the iTunes music store, you can listen to 30 sec. previews of any song in the store. When you find a song or album that you like simply click and drag the preview into the newly created playlist. All of the previews are stored there until you delete them. Then when you are ready to buy the album or song simply click the “ADD SONG” button and it will go to your shopping cart. Simple, but very useful!
[tags]iTunes, Apple, Music, Wishlist, Apple Music Store[/tags]
Want your screen saver to turn off when you walk in the room? What about having iTunes automatically pause and play when you leave or comeback? What about being able to send SMS messages from your computer. BluePhoneElite will allow you to do all this and more. I am dying to give this app a try but my Blackberry is not supported but many other phones are compatible. This is a must to show to your Windows friend who want to see some of the power built into a Mac.
[tags]Apple, mobile phone, phone, Mac, Bluetooth[/tags]
I had a friend inquiring the other night how to organize his iPhoto pictures. He is a little more OCD than myself in that he wanted to be able put all of his pictures into folders according to who was in them. I explained to him that iPhoto was not folder driven, rather it was driven more by a databse. I showed him how keywords could be added to photos, however he was not quite satisfied as the keyword feature in iPhoto is cumbersome at best.
Well, today I found this. This script has been around for sometime however it just went universal. This freeware plugin brings tagging to iPhoto making finding those pictures a breeze once you have added tags to it.
[tags]iPhoto, mac, apple, osx, photography[/tags]
Email is a phenomenal tool. As an early adopter I am one of the first to promote the extensive advantages to email. I carry a Blackberry and conduct much of my business via email. However, in the last few years I have learned the drawbacks of email. Email is not a good avenue for a board meeting, confrontation, a love note, or firing. Many people do not understand what is appropriate information for an email and thus you get email overload.
I have heard of some corporations where employees are so addicted to email that they are receiving upwards of 400 a day. This reduces the average knowledge worker to no more than an expensive keyboardist. I hope that if you are one of those employees that receives that volume of email that you might take a moment to sit back and ask your employer why he or she allows that to go on on their network. That said, many of us get as many as 50 emails a day that need some form of attention. In years past I would take this information and place it into the myriad of folders I had organized in Outlook and inevitably forget to take care of one of them.
About six months ago I came across this article, by Merlin Mann, which changed my email life. As part of the GTD system, this email method essentially breaks down email into five categories. Those emails that need response, those that need action, those that are archives, those email to which you are waiting for a response, and those that you are holding (such as your latest Amazon order). By segregating my email by what needs to be done to it, and not by some random task category then I have been far more diligent about getting them done and I can regularly see which ones need to get done in the near future. It is also a wonderful thing to see a completely empty inbox, it is much less daunting.
This simple method of taking care of email has in a way saved my email life. I can not explain the number of hours that I spent going through folders trying to see which emails needed my attention. Today, I simply schedule a few minutes several times a day to categorize emails that have come in. Then I place time on my daily schedule to respond, or take action on those emails.
[Tags]productivity, GTD, email, advice, commentary[/tags]
Recently I have become a student of the
In love with Backpackit…
Several months ago I came across an application that I use so vigorously today that I find it hard to imagine life without it, but then again that is the definition of a killer app. Now I am not sure that backpackit is the next killer app, but for me it comes close. I am not sure whether it is
the simplicity or the accessibility, but backpackit covers a multitude of needs for me. I keep all of my lists there, I store photos, and files, and even manage small projects from there. It is a wonderful collaboration tool and is wonderful for managing information dissemination to large groups of people.
This week I was reminded by a fellow backpackit disciple about one of the major sweet points of backpackit. I had showed backpackit to him a few weeks ago and he was duly impressed. As is normal with technology, he promptly reminded me of one of the key features of backpackit. I was attempting to pass a large file onto him and was explaining to him on the phone that I would upload it to my FTP site and would email him a link, user id, and password to the site. As I was in the process of setting up a protected directory and uploading the file he called back and said, “why don’t you just put it on backpackit?” Long Pause. Well, that would be much easier. So, I clicked on my tab that always has backpackit open, created a new page, uploaded the files, and shared it with my friend. Wow, that was fast.
My point for this blog, is to commentate on how easily we forget all of the functionality of the applications that we love. I have been a backpackit evangelist for nearly six months now and use it everyday, but when I needed it I quickly went to my old path for for doing things. My mind did not leap to the new path that was easier, faster, more secure, and well just better. I simply took the path that I had been using for a decade (still not bad by any means). I guess, I am really saying that even this dog is hard to teach new tricks to. It is a lesson for myself that I need to be more patient with the technology challenged people in my life.
[tags]productivity, backpackit[/tags]