Month: January 2017

Chapter 3 of my new audiobook on productivity is now available!

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Doug Belshaw

I’m right in the middle of creating an audiobook entitled #uppingyourgame: a practical guide to personal productivity (v2). It’s a side project that I’m aiming to have finished by mid-2017. I’m pleased to announce another chapter is now available!

Chapter 3 is concerned with the third of the three ‘pillars’ of productivity: Exercise. This chapter explains why exercise is crucial to a holistic and sustainable system of productivity. You should be able to finish listening and start implementing straight away!

As usual, I’m using my OpenBeta publishing model, meaning that this product will get more expensive as I add more content. The earlier you buy into the process, the cheaper it is! If you buy Chapter 1 now, I’ll send you every iteration until it’s finished.

Buy now for £3

(click the button to see the proposed chapter listing)

Need a sample? Here’s a two-minute intro:

Note: I’ll email existing backers and keep posting here when each new chapter is available. The ‘canonical’ page for this audiobook, however, is here. That will always be up-to-date!

Weeknote 04/2017

Posted on January 28, 2017January 28, 2017 by Doug Belshaw

This week I’ve been:

Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Amongst the jumble of links in Issue #243 were some thoughts about what ‘taking back control’ means in terms of individual use of technology.
Recording and releasing Episode 73 of the Today In Digital Education (TIDE) podcast with my co-host, Dai Barnes. Given this week included Data Privacy Day, we gave this one the tile ‘A Safer, More Private Internet (Part 1)’. We’ll be recording the second part in the next couple of weeks, to coincide with Safer Internet Day on February 7th.
Discussing the potential writing of a real, dead-tree book with a publishing company. More on that once I’ve got around to filling in the proposal forms, etc.
Talking with Queen’s University, Belfast about an upcoming keynote and workshop.
Setting up my new laptop, a Dell XPS 13 running Ubuntu Linux. The resolution of the screen is pretty insane — even higher than the Chromebook Pixel I used to own.
Starting to plan for my Safer Internet Day sessions at the International School of Geneva in a couple of weeks’ time.
Finishing off the what is a co-op? page on We Are Open website.
Planning and conspiring with my co-operative colleagues during our January co-op day. We covered all kinds of things that I need to write up. If you’re in London on February 15th you might want to come along to our BADGE BOOTCAMP workshop.
Submitting a proposal for the Creative Commons Summit in Toronto at the end of April. The call for proposals has now been extended to February 3rd.
Attending BETT 2017, the (don’t-call-it-an) educational technology trade show. I was really just there to meet various people, so it was great to catch up with those who had been there at the first TeachMeet BETT, nine years ago. Too many people to list here, but it was really great to see Julian, Dawn, Lisa, Zoe, Andrea, Ewan, Tony, Oliver, Susan, Dughall, Oliver, Leon, Ian, and the whole gang. Afterwards I had dinner with Eylan Ezekiel, who’s always both entertaining and deep and meaningful. I wandered around today (Saturday) to see the usual blend of the ridiculous and the sublime, and had lunch with Gavin Henrick.
Writing:
- Improving students’ experiences of learning through alternative digital accreditation (Discours.es, 28th January 2017)
- Experimenting with push notifications (Open Educational Thinkering, 25th January 2017)
- The Flatter Organisational Structure Of The Future (Open Educational Thinkering, 24th January 2017)
- The vicious cycle of 9-5 ‘open’ offices (Discours.es, 23rd January 2017)
- Linux apps I install by default (Discours.es, 22nd January 2017)

Next week, I’ll be working from home on Monday and Tuesday, and then heading back to Jersey to work with Victoria College.

I make my living helping people and organisations become more productive in their use of technology. If you’ve got something that you think I might be able to help with, please do get in touch! [email protected]

Experimenting with push notifications

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Doug Belshaw

One of the advantages of reading Hacker News regularly is being exposed to the blogs of pretty technical people. Naturally, they’re the kind of people who are likely to be the first to implement new technologies.

Recently, I came across a blog that had a pop-up from the address bar. It asked me if I’d like to turn on ‘push notifications’ for new posts. I’m used to Google Calendar, Slack, etc. asking for these kinds of permissions, but it was a first for a blog.

After a bit of investigation, it would seem that implementing this myself in a manual way would involve more than just a half-hour tinker. It was then that I came across PushCrew, a service that offers a WordPress plugin. Configuration couldn’t have been simpler.

For the last couple of weeks, visitors to this blog have seen the following notification:

So far, 29 people have opted-in. Given it’s likely the first time most visitors have seen this kind of thing, I’d expect these kinds of numbers.

Hopefully, this is a useful development for people. I’m happy to experiment with it for a while, and gain your feedback. It’s free for up to 500 subscribers, so it’s not costing me anything for the foreseeable future

To me, it’s a half-way house for people who, with the best will in the world, are never going to subscribe via RSS, don’t want blog post emails cluttering up their inbox, and who might miss updates via social media. It’s also cross-platform, and built on web standards.

Let me know if you think this is useful (and if you’re thinking of adding it to your own blog!)

Image CC0 Frank McKenna