PRODUCTIVITY: Use free file transfer services securely to move files around

Monday, November 13, 2006

I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.

May I suggest a most simple work around?

If you have a big glump to transfer and it even MIGHT be private … …

(i.e., if you are NOT absolutely sure it’s public info. AND bear in mind, from my time on Wall Street, I know that interest in public info by a registered rep is in and of itself sensitive. So you may always want to err on the side of caution!)

… … then encrypt it.

Now before everyone runs for the silver bullets and garlic, it’s almost trivial.

Get any of the free zip utilities. Take your file and zip it up with the password option. (Make the password easy live NEVADA, DOPEY, or CONSTELLATION. Just not “password”!) And, upload your encrypted and compressed file.

(If you make it an executable, it’s easier the receiver.)

The receiver takes the file download and is challenged for the password.

That allows you to use a free utility service for private information. If you are really paranoid, encrypt it twice with different packages and different passwords.

imho

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: Blogger in chief?

Thursday, November 9, 2006

November 13, 2006
Fortune Magazine
Page 51

Blogger in Chief
Jonathan Schwartz, 41
CEO Sum Microsystems

>10% of Sun employees blog … including general counsel

So there’s probably nothing illegal about blogging with some common sense.

>read what people thinking without walking around

Sounds like status reports.

> “Always worry about what people aren’t telling you”

Good advice.

> Ditch the desktop

A recommendation to be expected from the “Computer is the Network” company. And, what does one do when the net’s not there.

>Forget balance

True. For hunters, there’s no balance. For farmers, there’s balance, sequence, and order.

==

n.b.: There was no way to find this printed page on the net. Or at least I couldn’t find it. I would have thought that, if I went to “November 13, 2006 Fortune Page 51”.fortune.com, I’d have gotten it. Hmm?

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: A bloger triggers a rant about backing up

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

[This poor person just wants to copy some stuff from one blog to another and has no copies other than what is on he blog]

>Copy over some posts from one blog to another

My observation is that you have all your “eggs” in the WordPress basket. No insult intended to WordPress I use them to … BUT …

… being a belt and suspenders kindda guy …

… and having “lost” more data than I’d care to admit over my career …

… two instances of which occurred at WordPress …

I’d suggest you need a backup.

WordPress now facilitates an XML output from your blog to local file.

Anally, OCD-like, I have:

(1) BLOGDESK client that I write almost all of my stuff on. It has a copy. If I don’t write it on BLOGDESK, then I still cutnpaste it to BLOGDESK and let it do the heavy lifting to my blog. SO BLOGDESK has a copy of EVERYTHING.

(2) FEEDBLITZ sends a daily summary copy (one message of all posts) to a dedicated email account where it is retained forever on my local desktop in Outlook and in that dedicated GMAIL account. SQUEET sends each individual post to that same account.

(3) I use RSSBANDIT which also makes a copy locally for a week.

(4) Often I use EDITPADPRO fro complex articles, that I can’t dash off in one sitting, those are stored locally in a BLOG directory forever.

Since I have been doing this, I haven’t lost a thing.

If you did this, you’d have more choices how to move stuff.

AND, you’d have a recovery strategy.

IMHO you’re taking an unnecessary risk.

Back in my younger days, I had a data drive that the corporate IT types were backing up for me. (Yeah, you see it coming!) So fat dumb and happy, I created content. Emails, white papers, spreadsheets. One day my hard disk died. NBD! Call pc support, they come slide a new one and press the big red easy button to restore it. Oooops, no data found. Turns out that NO ONE in the enterprise was backed up. I was just the first fool to find it. I lost several years worth of data. I was able to pull bits and pieces for all over but no comprehensive store existed. Not only that, but I didn’t know all that I had lost. To this day, I can still remember from time to time, tuff I have to recreate. (Luckily, I violated company policy and certain CYA things I cced to my home email. Now I do it as a matter of course. Encrypted of course.) I will NEVER make that mistake again!

So, no one needs to pay tuition for that particular lesson. You can learn from my mistake. (Trusting others to back up for you!) You must have a backup strategy that INCLUDES testing. How do you know that the data can be recovered. In this example, I can go to gmail and SEE my blog posts.

imho fwiw ymmv.

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: Divide big tasks into lots of little “next actions”

Sunday, November 5, 2006

My alumni ezine used to be a giant pia. Each week it was a mad rush to do the stuff needed to pull it together. “Getting Things Done” says to focus on next actions. So, what I did was over several months, divide this big glump of work into parts. Small. Discrete. Little lumps. So for example, one task is to create the framework for the next week’s issue. It takes AT MOST fifteen minutes. So, now on Saturday night, while I am waiting for the Yahoo Group to accept my submission and say “Our you sure?”, instead of playing a game of Solitair, or alternatively pounding on the refresh button, I create the next week’s framework. Obvious you say? I’ve been doing this for 8 years and it just never occurred to me to get that much of a head start on the next week’s work. So, I have carved this particular turkey into lots of parts. I use Google Calendar to chastise me when I fall behind. But, all in all, it’s been working well. An hour a night, has meant no crazy Friday / Saturday wee hours, making mistakes, trying to get it done.

Lesson Learned: Kissing small frogs is less disgusting than big ones.

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: Life long learner

Friday, November 3, 2006

http://kentblumberg.typepad.com/kent_blumberg
/2006/11/lifelong_learni.html

http://tinyurl.com/y2k6ro

Kent Blumberg’s blog about “Leadership, strategy, and performance” has a great find.

It points to Wayne Hurlbert’s blog “Blog Business World”

http://blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/2006/10/
lifelong-learning-after-you-think-you.html

http://tinyurl.com/wko4x

***Begin Quote***

Legendary Hall of Fame baseball manager Earl Weaver once said, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

***End Quote***

Ah hah, now that I am that formerly small jet of water (x-spurt), I have to begin learning all over again.

Sigh.

Yes, Universe, I know, “green growing; brown dead”!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: 1and1 (my wsp) offers a great deal

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Dear XXXX, You may want to shop around. $9 per month is a lot of money. For example, 1and1 has better deals. I host Jasper Jottings with them http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=9113251 and, while I have a pro package for my consulting business, they offer a “beginner package” (that’s pretty impressive) for 3$/month. So, I’d urge you to shop around. 1and1 offers commercial grade facilities at amateur prices. Fjohn

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: Used it to throw a quick alumni dinner together

Saturday, October 21, 2006

http://doodle.ch/

Schedule meetings in a flash with Doodle
meetings | web 2.0 | time savers

***Begin Quote***

Need to schedule a lunch meeting? How about a winter-camping weekend with your buddies? Doodle promises to tackle these and other scheduling challenges by creating simple polls: Everyone “votes” on…

***End Quote***

It’s simple. It works. It’s a neat use of technology. I like it.

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: Drinking from a firehose

Saturday, October 21, 2006

WIth the popularization of RSS, it has become apparent to me that the amount of content generated by the internet wildly exceeds one’s ability to keep up.

(Hey, I’m a quick learner. It only took a year of trying to keep up to grok that fact. It was slammed home when I missed reading my RSS feeds when “stuff” got crazy. it’s overwhelming.)

SO, it’s time to “adjust” the strategy:

(1) Ruthlessly prune what one attempts to keep up with.

(2) Look for sources of “distilled” DIKW.

(3) Compartmentalize. (For example, my alumni feeds have been moved to Google reader tied off the alumni Google throw away id.)

(4) Seek “editorial” blogs that have high value content (i.e., Opton’s Six Figure Learnings http://execunet.blogspot.com)

(5) Develop ruthless methodology to prune feeds with in a category. Like creating a category of feeds called “Productivity” with subcategories of Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Lead. Add Platinum at the top if you want five. Periodically promote or demote feeds.

(6) Focus on the meme discovery sites or the peer-voting sites.

Start asap. The tide is rising.

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: GTD, FIREFOX, and GMAIL tied together

Friday, October 20, 2006

FROM THE MYLINKEDINPOWERFORUM

***Begin Quote***

Re: Some Options Which Make It Easier To Read MLPF Messages
Posted by: “Bill Vick”
Thu Oct 5, 2006 11:06 am (PST)

Vincent – I’m a big fan of David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done or
GTD’ and a tool that can help you using in Gmail is the free Firefox
plug-in GTD for Gmail. Very, very slick way to tag and control
tasks, priorities and such and keep on top of things.

You can find it at http://www.gtdgmail.com/.
Bill

***End Quote***

An interesting tool that I’m trying.

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: WIN (What’s Important Now?!?)

Thursday, October 19, 2006

http://www.freetalklive.com

I picked up a good productivity tip from the “younguns” at Free Talk Live. (The term “youngsters” seemed to torque their shorts a little when they read my email on their show.) In my daily commute, I listen to their FREE podcast. And, every so often, I mine a nugget. Here’s one.

Mark described his technique for deciding what to do do NEXT.

(That’s a problem I have with lots of urgent, important, trivial, nagging, projects, and processes that all compete for my time and attention. And, I have a job too.)

He described it as WIN – – – “What’s Important Now?”

Seems like a good approach to me. So now on each task switch, interrupt, or time out, I ask myself what is it?

Help’s me focus.

Capturing good stuff is important all the time. Hence this log entry. ;-) Excuse me, time to WIN!

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Posted by reinkefj

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