Month: June 2010

5 ways Google Calendar is turning into my ultimate productivity system.

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Doug Belshaw

I still write to-do lists, but I no longer use Remember The Milk nor have I ever used any kind of GTD system. At work I’ve been using TeuxDeux to make sure I get certain things done on specific days, but increasingly Google Calendar does everything I need it to. 🙂

Let’s examine the evidence:

1. Natural language recognition

I can type in Phone David at 1pm on Thursday and Google Calendar will do something sensible with it. Being able to add and delete quickly is really important to a lightweight, yet effective productivity system.

2. Mobile access

Now that I’ve got a Google Android phone it’s easy to access and add things to my Google Calendar. It was a bit of a bind to do so previously as the iPhone required 3rd party apps to synchronize.

3. Reminders

I’m not always in front of a computer, but I pretty much always have my mobile phone with me. Setting SMS reminders as well as pop-ups covers all the bases.

4. Google Tasks integration

If I really need to write a to-do list relating to a project, a Google Tasks widget can be added to the sidebar. The genius, but very simple, thing about this is that items on the list can have ‘parents’ and ‘children’ (i.e. dependencies).

5. See at a glance what other people are doing

It’s trivial to share your Google calendar (either all details or free/busy) with other people. And you can then ask them to do likewise with you. If they only use Microsoft Outlook’s calendar then suggest they use Google Calendar Sync!

Things I Learned This Week – #25

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Doug Belshaw

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

This week I learned to make my freakin’ mind up and stick to it, that there’s a lot to be said for not putting yourself in positions you know are going to be frustrating, and that you’re onto a losing battle when you try to reason with a 3-year old. :-p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW25

Tech.

Apple’s newly-revamped MobileMe looks good. If I had an iPhone anymore. And didn’t have GMail. For free.
Americans, eh? Got to love them. Why should the US President have an internet kill switch?
Clay Shirky’s got a new book out about technology and society. Guess what? It’s awesome (apparently).
Google, apparently, classify mobile users as ‘repetitive now’, ‘bored now’ or ‘urgent now’. Which is probably a good way to think about it, actually.
Not sure whether to buy a new gadget? This flow chart should sort you out.

Productivity & Inspiration

This is the best presentation on how to do a presentation I’ve seen for a while!
Scott Berkun’s got four factors that need to be in place for us to do our best work. And you know what? He’s right. 😀
Here’s 10 mistakes people make when they think. I definitely over-think things.
Need some feedback from others? Apart from using BetterMe, here’s some top tips!
We all get bored sometimes, but it’s how you deal with it that matters. Here’s 6 pieces of advice (I like the advice r.e. ‘being a journalist’ – what about a social anthropologist?!)

Education & Academic

Michael Gove, the ~~prophet of doom~~ UK Education Secretary, has outlined how the setting up of Free Schools is going to work. If, as he reckons, it leads to parents and teachers setting up schools in the most disadvantaged areas, I’ll eat my metaphorical hat.
YouTube launched an online video editor this week. Hopefully, this will mean the demise of the awful, crash-prone, but seemingly-loved-by-teachers Windows Movie Maker:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YsQ6f125GY&w=640&h=385]

The Angry Technician reminded me this week why, in many ways, I don’t miss being the resident techie in a school.
The Google Scholar team now have their own blog.
AQA, an exam board in the UK, is developing separate exams for boys and girls.

Data, Design & Infographics

The first issue of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics is available online, for free. Nice!
A short documentary about Web 3.0 and the ‘semantic web’ (I haven’t finished watching it all yet, but it’s good so far!)

You can guarantee that at every World Cup, people will whinge about the ball. Which is why I liked this interactive New York Times feature on the evolution of the World Cup ball!

There’s not a lot of point in information for it’s own sake. Which is why I liked this trailer for a forthcoming activism video, in itself a great example of a well-designed product!

Who’s the best footballer in the world. Messi? Ronaldo? Nope, it’s either Sergio Ramos or Xavi Hernandez. I’ve got proof!

Misc.

There’s an interesting response to a recent New York Times article entitled Do Not Disconnect: Wired Parenting Has Both Benefits and Costs over at the Geek Dad blog.
Every sitcom (in the US) uses the same newspaper.
I don’t know if anyone else spotted it, but it’s the beginning of the end of estate agents in the UK. This week Google announced that you can now hunt for properties for sale via Google Maps. As soon as there’s an easy mechanism for getting your house on there yourself, it’s game over.
You can get a refund for iTunes store purchases. Here’s how.
From the inevitable-but-funny department: Chatroulette Developing Genital Recognition Algorithm

Quotations

If we did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves. (Thomas Edison)

Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out. (Titus Livius)

As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information. (Benjamin Disraeli)

Do or do not, there is no try. (Yoda)

You don’t have to get it right; you have to get it going! (Mike Litman)

Weeknote #6

Posted on June 19, 2010 by Doug Belshaw

This week I have been mostly…

Attending #cetismob

I was down in at the University of Bolton at a mobile technologies event hosted by JISC CETIS. Mark Power did a great job at making sure it was a relaxed affair with really quality sharing and networking opportunities. Well done! 🙂

Delegating

It was the home stretch this week before the launch of the Open Educational Resources infoKit I’ve been working on since I started at JISC infoNet. So there was plenty of delegation to do, especially to Lou McGill, who’s worked tirelessly and to a consistently high standard on it!

Getting back to my productive self

My productivity took a hit after my indecisiveness over the Dell Streak. Now that I’ve settled on it, I’ve learned my lesson in terms of making my mind up and sticking to it! Turns out every decision I make is a productivity decision…

Starting marking scripts

Ever since I, along with a few others, was recruited during my PGCE course at Durham I’ve marked History examination papers for Edexcel. I used to do AS Level Russia, then they moved me to AS Level Germany, and this year I’m marking GCSE Germany.

I’ve got absolutely no problem with the online marking system itself: it’s quicker than doing it on paper and suits me. Of course, I’ve got to virtualise Windows XP on my Macbook Pro so I can use Internet Explorer 6 and some proprietary software, but that in and of itself is no big deal.

What really winds me up about Edexcel is their organizational inefficiency and the general lack of anyone knowing what they’re doing. The emails they send out force you to spend half an hour figuring out what they mean and, of course, not understanding means you are obviously morally or organizationally deficient in some way. Gah.

The sheer horror of the obviously-doing-it-to-save-costs online standardisation procedure could be a whole other post in itself, but I’ll spare you that. Suffice to say that, given my experience yesterday (for which I took annual leave) and the fact that I’m not teaching History at the moment, I’ll not be marking for Edexcel again in the near future!