Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Tools of the Trade

Some quick tools of the trade - maybe these tips will help you - 2012 edition.

+ Action Journal from Behance. Not so much the journal per se, but the thinking behind it. In short, everything that matters is actionable.
+ Twitter - I have a list called the 150. 90% of my interactions come from this group of people, named based on Dunbars number. [Although right now its 168 or something.]
+ Most of the Google products:
+ Google Reader. Just about all web reading can be done via rss now. Not just blog posts although that makes the bulk of what I subscribe to. But did you know you can save a google search and subscribe to it via Reader? I use feeds for terms I'm interested in, like my name, 'student missions,' and other topics I want to know about. You used to be able to grab an rss feed of a twitter search, so again, use that to stay current on something. Rss something you want from craigslist too.
+ Google Docs. For just about any kind of document. Best part - real time collaboration with someone else - you can chat with someone there. Second best part - revision history. Third - use it as cloud storage for any kind of file.
+ Google Chrome. Best part - print anything to a pdf.
+ Google Voice. Calls and texts that you can route to any phone. Get the extension for Voice in Chrome.
+ Google Calendar. Our family uses multiple calendars. My wife has full edit rights on my calendars.
+ Delicious. Yes I still use this. Its Pinterest for men.
+ I used to create a new flickr account every year. I'm not sure I'm going to do this in 2013.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the list. I have borrowed your 150 list idea and have found it so much easier to manage the noise. I have also gone back to Google Reader as well.

    I use Evernote as a catch all inbox of notes and resources to reference and being able to use it on the desktop, smartphone and tablet is super helpful. I also found a web app called If Then (http://ifttt.com/) that dumps tweets and blog posts that I star into a notebook in Evernote that makes it easier to find and reference later. They have a bunch of tasks you can set to automate.

    Next you need to do a post on practices of the the trade.

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  2. good stuff ben. i use a temp google doc as a catch all for stuff like that too.

    hmm. i will think about that idea of practices of the trade....

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