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- Offline access to public and shared folders
- Long-dead ORDB starts producing false positives
- Old friends re-united by Softalk Mail Server
- Softalk Organizer in beta
- Softalk Share Server reviewed in Personal Computer World
- New Softalk Organizer imminent
- Great Outlook add-ins
- Office managers are the real VIPs
- Recruitment difficulties
- Softalk Share Server beta going well
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Scobleizer on email and productivity
Robert Scoble, aka the Scobleizer, says he is close to 'email bankruptcy'. He's just had breakfast with Merlin Mann (who writes productivity blog 43 folders) who introduced him to the term email bankruptcy.
This is when you get so behind on your email that you delete everything and email everyone to say "sorry, I got your email but I just can't deal with it/am deleting it, so if it's important email me back."
Luckily this isn't Scoble's idea as it is probably the dumbest productivity tip I've ever heard. Effectively what you are saying to people is that "I'm more important than you, so get lost."
Everyone has to deal with information overload and the worst possible thing you could do is to make it harder for someone else just because you're overloaded.
My tip - Robert should take a day off blogging to sort his email and then switch to using OfficeTalk 
tags: Robert+Scoble, Scobleizer, 43+folders, email, productivity, David+Allen, GTD
Getting Things Done online seminar on team productivity
If you're a fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done then you should check out his online presentation on 'Best Kept Secrets for Personal and Team Productivity' on Tuesday, October 10, 2006, 1:00-2:00 PM EDT (that's 17:00-18:00 GMT). You can register here.
You might also want to check out Stuart Prestedge's post on Getting Things Done using OfficeTalk.
Thanks to Lifehack for the tip-off.
tags: lifehack, productivity, gtd, software, officetalk, team
18 ways to say focused at work
Lifehacker points to an interesting post with 18 ways to stay focused at work. OfficeTalk makes it really easy to use some of these tips:
1. Write out a daily task list and plan your day. You can schedule any OfficeTalk task simply by dragging it onto your diary. The Activities view is also really useful as it will just show the tasks that are due on the day, week or month that you are viewing.
2. Allocate time slots colleagues can interrupt you. This is where OfficeTalk knocks the socks off the competition. Not only can you easily view colleagues' diaries (if you've been granted permission) but you can also create groups and view diaries alongside each other. Meetings mode will search for free time slots. Makes it really easy to let people know when you and can't be interrupted.
3. Apply time boxing. This is something I've always done, but I've never called it time boxing. Working on something and then switching to something else does keep you fresh and for me certainly helps me to think better. Using OfficeTalk you can mark a task as being partially finished so that colleagues can see where you are on it. We also use the notes field and time stamp to keep a note of what's happening, making it easier for colleagues to update clients if you're not available.
4. Setup filters in your email. Not only does OfficeTalk let you create all of the rules you would expect to filter your email you can also set flags for follow-up or assign a task to yourself or a colleague.
There are 14 other tips to check out - not all of which I would agree with. For example the 'Do not check personal email in the morning' wouldn't work for me as all of my email accounts go into into OfficeTalk so that I can keep track of all of my conversations and tasks. The history and pending views on contacts are ideal for refreshing your memory before you speak to friends or business contacts.
tags: productivity, collaboration, email, scheduling, calendars
To maximize or not to maximize
I recently purchased a new computer for use at home and opted for an Apple Mac over a PC, simply because I felt I wanted to explore my creative side and Windows reminds me too much of work. After unpacking it and placing this work of art on my desk, I turned it on and started getting to grips with MacOS.
Now, being a man, I am only able to focus on one thing at a time and consequently I generally make extensive use of the maximize button in Windows, so that I am not distracted by the clutter of all the other windows. So you can imagine I was somewhat horrified when I realized that Apple don't actually provide a maximize button. They provide what is called a "zoom" button, which at best maximizes only in the vertical direction.
I heard it said that Apple claim there is no need for a Windows style maximize button because it would make it difficult to drag and drop between different windows. Now I can readily understand that some Mac users are happy with their "zoom" button, but quite frankly, it surprises me that Apple, who build their business on providing a great user experience, haven't given their users the fundamental choice of being able to completely maximize a window. Is it just me or do other Mac users have a strong opinion here?
Good new developments in IM but is it enough?
The world of instant messaging is changing but I do wonder if the big players have really "got it". First I see that Microsoft has released Windows Live Messenger. Then Stowe Boyd reports that Yahoo has some interesting ideas in the pipeline for its Messenger. Both sound really good and tempt me to try them.
Except for one major stumbling block - they still don't talk to each other. I currently use Trillian and Skype. My IM contacts are spread across AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Skype (I don't think I know anyone who still uses Google Talk). Trillian means I only need to run the one client. I also run Skype because I use SkypeIn to give me a London and New York phone number.
Text messaging (SMS) never took off until the mobile operators saw sense and allowed inter-network messages. IM can't become a viable business communications tool until the three (four if you include Skype) big players grow up and make it simple to connect with anyone on any IM network/client.
The one feature of OfficeTalk that we never use anymore is Notify. Years ago when I first stated using OfficeTalk it was one of my favourite features but for us it has long since been replaced with IM.
OfficeTalk wish list
On the OfficeTalk forum there is a post by "an all-time supporter and former distributor" that creates an OfficeTalk wishlist. I thought that this was worth 'promoting' to the blog. Use the comments to let us know what's on your wishlist.
Webrunner's wish list was:
- synchronization with Pocket PC.
- connection to exchange server.
- importing of file structures (complete directories).
My wish list is:
- synchronization with Pocket PC (after years of using a Palm I've just switched to a T-mobile MDA Pro (which is a badged HTC Universal running Windows Mobile 5).
- proper notes similar to those in Outlook - can be very basic and only need categories and ability to have public or private links.
- ability to duplicate projects or create a project template. Many of our projects are the same thing where we have to repeat the same tasks over and over again. The ability to copy an old project structure and then edit it would make this much quicker.
- directly dial contacts using Skype (or other VOIP system) and automatically opening a conversation (caller recognition and opening a conversation would be even better).
- synching/linking OfficeTalk tasks/projects with mind mapping software such as MindManager (interestingly this was one that Softalk joint CEO Stuart Prestedge also mentioned recently in his post on Getting Things Done with OfficeTalk). My projects frequently start in MindManager and its frustrating and time-consuming having to convert all the arms into tasks.
What's on your OfficeTalk wish list?
Why a lot of Web 2.0 sucks!
Some of the whole Web 2.0 thing is great - the social media/networking part.. A lot of simply sucks. The fundamental flaw for me is assuming that people will want to or are able to do everything online.
It might work for the geeks and techno early adopters but out in the real world it ain't going to happen anytime soon. This Techcrunch post about 14Dayz helped highlight it for me. $99 for an online time tracking app! Why would I pay that much for something I can use only some of the time?
Most of us don't live in a world where you have constant internet access. Wifi hotspots still only cover a tiny part of the world and cost far too much.
It's the same for a lot of these cool looking Web 2.0 apps such as Writely, 30boxes and voo2do. If they only work when you are online then they don't work! I want to be able to work when I'm in the park, on a train, in a cafe or at a meeting.
What does work are desktop apps that can be synchronized over the net. It's great to be able to access my calendar, to-do lists, contacts, email, documents etc on the net from any PC but it's more important to be able to work where I want, when I want, on what I want.
For most people in most places web-based apps won't do that for many years to come. The future for me is web-aware desktop (and palmtop) apps.
NOTE: These are my personal views and not necessarily the views of Softalk.
Getting Things Done with OfficeTalk Part II
On Thursday Stuart Prestedge (Softalk's joint CEO) posted his first entry on Let's talk business. It's very long but well worth a read. And it's actually worked for me. One of the many (many!) things on my to-do list in OfficeTalk (like Softalk "we eat our own dog food" - read Stuart's post to understand) was "Buy Dave Allen's Getting Things Done". Well I've done it.
I only started reading it over the weekend so it's still too early to make a judgment but I'm hoping it will provide some guidance or inspiration.
Getting Things Done with OfficeTalk
Hi everyone! My name is Stuart Prestedge and I am the joint CEO of Softalk. This is my first blog entry so forgive me if I go on J.
Up until recently I’ve been so busy that I’ve not had time to write any of the blog entries that I’ve had in mind but I hope that that will change in the future. Part of the reason for this change is down to a book I have almost finished reading by David Allen called Getting Things Done.
Now I, like most of you I’m sure, am a very busy person – too much to do and not enough time to do it – and, to be honest, I like it that way. It certainly beats twiddling my thumbs. The trouble with being so busy is that it is not always easy to keep your priorities straight – and some things, inevitably, get forgotten about altogether (until it is too late at least). David’s book (GTD) has, I hope, helped me to start changing that. And whatsmore, I have what I believe to be (almost) the perfect tool to put David’s suggested methodology into practice – OfficeTalk.
GTD suggests a five stage process for organizing your life (and this may be just your professional life or your whole life). These stages are collect, process, organize, review and do. I won’t go into too much detail – for that I recommend you shell out the $15 or so and read it youself (I actually live in the UK and accidentally bought from the US Amazon site so had to wait 2 weeks for it to arrive. I couldn’t wait that long so went to the local bookstore and bought another copy – there are plently of people in my company who’ll want to read the other one when it comes).
Anyway, at Softalk, we eat our own dog food so to speak and we rely on OfficeTalk for everthing, but, until reading GTD, I would say even my use of OfficeTalk was not optimal. If you are anything like me, your email inbox is full of messages which you are not quite sure how to reply to or how to handle generally and your task list is incomplete and full of big and little tasks. The big ones - you are not sure where to start and the little ones? Well, they’ll get done if I can find a couple of minutes when there’s nothing more important to do. As a consequence to this situation, I was constantly scanning up and down my emails to find urgent, important or easy messages to tackle (not necessarily in that order I am afraid to admit).
As a person who prides himself on efficiency, I realised that this is a wasteful exercise as I was constantly reevaluating the same emails again and again and as the list grows, items got missed. Additionally, because my task list was incomplete, I had always got things on my mind (big and small), which were always there, making me not quite that 100% efficient person I aspire to be.
Reading GTD, it dawned on me that OfficeTalk is the perfect tool for implementing the five stage process and following the flow diagram David describes for processing and organizing my “stuff”. I realised that my inbox should not be used to store packets of work that I have to do or think about or investigate or delegate but it is perfect for collecting my stuff.
Anyone can dump stuff into my inbox (even spammers get the odd item in there) so why can’t I? So now I use my inbox to collect all my stuff. I email myself anything, big or small, that I need to do, think about, delegate or even dream about doing one day (like skydiving, or integrating mind mapping into OfficeTalk). But the key is that it doesn’t stay there! This, I think is very important! If it did stay there, it would all just get lost again in all the other stuff. This is where the processing and organizing stages come in – and where OfficeTalk comes into its own.
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Softalk Products
Categories
Recent Posts
- Offline access to public and shared folders
- Long-dead ORDB starts producing false positives
- Old friends re-united by Softalk Mail Server
- Softalk Organizer in beta
- Softalk Share Server reviewed in Personal Computer World
- New Softalk Organizer imminent
- Great Outlook add-ins
- Office managers are the real VIPs
- Recruitment difficulties
- Softalk Share Server beta going well
Scobleizer on email and productivity
Robert Scoble, aka the Scobleizer, says he is close to 'email bankruptcy'. He's just had breakfast with Merlin Mann (who writes productivity blog 43 folders) who introduced him to the term email bankruptcy.
This is when you get so behind on your email that you delete everything and email everyone to say "sorry, I got your email but I just can't deal with it/am deleting it, so if it's important email me back."
Luckily this isn't Scoble's idea as it is probably the dumbest productivity tip I've ever heard. Effectively what you are saying to people is that "I'm more important than you, so get lost."
Everyone has to deal with information overload and the worst possible thing you could do is to make it harder for someone else just because you're overloaded.
My tip - Robert should take a day off blogging to sort his email and then switch to using OfficeTalk
tags: Robert+Scoble, Scobleizer, 43+folders, email, productivity, David+Allen, GTD
Getting Things Done online seminar on team productivity
If you're a fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done then you should check out his online presentation on 'Best Kept Secrets for Personal and Team Productivity' on Tuesday, October 10, 2006, 1:00-2:00 PM EDT (that's 17:00-18:00 GMT). You can register here.
You might also want to check out Stuart Prestedge's post on Getting Things Done using OfficeTalk.
Thanks to Lifehack for the tip-off.
tags: lifehack, productivity, gtd, software, officetalk, team
18 ways to say focused at work
Lifehacker points to an interesting post with 18 ways to stay focused at work. OfficeTalk makes it really easy to use some of these tips:
1. Write out a daily task list and plan your day. You can schedule any OfficeTalk task simply by dragging it onto your diary. The Activities view is also really useful as it will just show the tasks that are due on the day, week or month that you are viewing.
2. Allocate time slots colleagues can interrupt you. This is where OfficeTalk knocks the socks off the competition. Not only can you easily view colleagues' diaries (if you've been granted permission) but you can also create groups and view diaries alongside each other. Meetings mode will search for free time slots. Makes it really easy to let people know when you and can't be interrupted.
3. Apply time boxing. This is something I've always done, but I've never called it time boxing. Working on something and then switching to something else does keep you fresh and for me certainly helps me to think better. Using OfficeTalk you can mark a task as being partially finished so that colleagues can see where you are on it. We also use the notes field and time stamp to keep a note of what's happening, making it easier for colleagues to update clients if you're not available.
4. Setup filters in your email. Not only does OfficeTalk let you create all of the rules you would expect to filter your email you can also set flags for follow-up or assign a task to yourself or a colleague.
There are 14 other tips to check out - not all of which I would agree with. For example the 'Do not check personal email in the morning' wouldn't work for me as all of my email accounts go into into OfficeTalk so that I can keep track of all of my conversations and tasks. The history and pending views on contacts are ideal for refreshing your memory before you speak to friends or business contacts.
tags: productivity, collaboration, email, scheduling, calendars
To maximize or not to maximize
I recently purchased a new computer for use at home and opted for an Apple Mac over a PC, simply because I felt I wanted to explore my creative side and Windows reminds me too much of work. After unpacking it and placing this work of art on my desk, I turned it on and started getting to grips with MacOS.
Now, being a man, I am only able to focus on one thing at a time and consequently I generally make extensive use of the maximize button in Windows, so that I am not distracted by the clutter of all the other windows. So you can imagine I was somewhat horrified when I realized that Apple don't actually provide a maximize button. They provide what is called a "zoom" button, which at best maximizes only in the vertical direction.
I heard it said that Apple claim there is no need for a Windows style maximize button because it would make it difficult to drag and drop between different windows. Now I can readily understand that some Mac users are happy with their "zoom" button, but quite frankly, it surprises me that Apple, who build their business on providing a great user experience, haven't given their users the fundamental choice of being able to completely maximize a window. Is it just me or do other Mac users have a strong opinion here?
Good new developments in IM but is it enough?
The world of instant messaging is changing but I do wonder if the big players have really "got it". First I see that Microsoft has released Windows Live Messenger. Then Stowe Boyd reports that Yahoo has some interesting ideas in the pipeline for its Messenger. Both sound really good and tempt me to try them.
Except for one major stumbling block - they still don't talk to each other. I currently use Trillian and Skype. My IM contacts are spread across AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Skype (I don't think I know anyone who still uses Google Talk). Trillian means I only need to run the one client. I also run Skype because I use SkypeIn to give me a London and New York phone number.
Text messaging (SMS) never took off until the mobile operators saw sense and allowed inter-network messages. IM can't become a viable business communications tool until the three (four if you include Skype) big players grow up and make it simple to connect with anyone on any IM network/client.
The one feature of OfficeTalk that we never use anymore is Notify. Years ago when I first stated using OfficeTalk it was one of my favourite features but for us it has long since been replaced with IM.
OfficeTalk wish list
On the OfficeTalk forum there is a post by "an all-time supporter and former distributor" that creates an OfficeTalk wishlist. I thought that this was worth 'promoting' to the blog. Use the comments to let us know what's on your wishlist.
Webrunner's wish list was:
- synchronization with Pocket PC.
- connection to exchange server.
- importing of file structures (complete directories).
My wish list is:
- synchronization with Pocket PC (after years of using a Palm I've just switched to a T-mobile MDA Pro (which is a badged HTC Universal running Windows Mobile 5).
- proper notes similar to those in Outlook - can be very basic and only need categories and ability to have public or private links.
- ability to duplicate projects or create a project template. Many of our projects are the same thing where we have to repeat the same tasks over and over again. The ability to copy an old project structure and then edit it would make this much quicker.
- directly dial contacts using Skype (or other VOIP system) and automatically opening a conversation (caller recognition and opening a conversation would be even better).
- synching/linking OfficeTalk tasks/projects with mind mapping software such as MindManager (interestingly this was one that Softalk joint CEO Stuart Prestedge also mentioned recently in his post on Getting Things Done with OfficeTalk). My projects frequently start in MindManager and its frustrating and time-consuming having to convert all the arms into tasks.
What's on your OfficeTalk wish list?
Why a lot of Web 2.0 sucks!
Some of the whole Web 2.0 thing is great - the social media/networking part.. A lot of simply sucks. The fundamental flaw for me is assuming that people will want to or are able to do everything online.
It might work for the geeks and techno early adopters but out in the real world it ain't going to happen anytime soon. This Techcrunch post about 14Dayz helped highlight it for me. $99 for an online time tracking app! Why would I pay that much for something I can use only some of the time?
Most of us don't live in a world where you have constant internet access. Wifi hotspots still only cover a tiny part of the world and cost far too much.
It's the same for a lot of these cool looking Web 2.0 apps such as Writely, 30boxes and voo2do. If they only work when you are online then they don't work! I want to be able to work when I'm in the park, on a train, in a cafe or at a meeting.
What does work are desktop apps that can be synchronized over the net. It's great to be able to access my calendar, to-do lists, contacts, email, documents etc on the net from any PC but it's more important to be able to work where I want, when I want, on what I want.
For most people in most places web-based apps won't do that for many years to come. The future for me is web-aware desktop (and palmtop) apps.
NOTE: These are my personal views and not necessarily the views of Softalk.
Getting Things Done with OfficeTalk Part II
On Thursday Stuart Prestedge (Softalk's joint CEO) posted his first entry on Let's talk business. It's very long but well worth a read. And it's actually worked for me. One of the many (many!) things on my to-do list in OfficeTalk (like Softalk "we eat our own dog food" - read Stuart's post to understand) was "Buy Dave Allen's Getting Things Done". Well I've done it.
I only started reading it over the weekend so it's still too early to make a judgment but I'm hoping it will provide some guidance or inspiration.
Getting Things Done with OfficeTalk
Hi everyone! My name is Stuart Prestedge and I am the joint CEO of Softalk. This is my first blog entry so forgive me if I go on J.
Up until recently I’ve been so busy that I’ve not had time to write any of the blog entries that I’ve had in mind but I hope that that will change in the future. Part of the reason for this change is down to a book I have almost finished reading by David Allen called Getting Things Done.
Now I, like most of you I’m sure, am a very busy person – too much to do and not enough time to do it – and, to be honest, I like it that way. It certainly beats twiddling my thumbs. The trouble with being so busy is that it is not always easy to keep your priorities straight – and some things, inevitably, get forgotten about altogether (until it is too late at least). David’s book (GTD) has, I hope, helped me to start changing that. And whatsmore, I have what I believe to be (almost) the perfect tool to put David’s suggested methodology into practice – OfficeTalk.
GTD suggests a five stage process for organizing your life (and this may be just your professional life or your whole life). These stages are collect, process, organize, review and do. I won’t go into too much detail – for that I recommend you shell out the $15 or so and read it youself (I actually live in the UK and accidentally bought from the US Amazon site so had to wait 2 weeks for it to arrive. I couldn’t wait that long so went to the local bookstore and bought another copy – there are plently of people in my company who’ll want to read the other one when it comes).
Anyway, at Softalk, we eat our own dog food so to speak and we rely on OfficeTalk for everthing, but, until reading GTD, I would say even my use of OfficeTalk was not optimal. If you are anything like me, your email inbox is full of messages which you are not quite sure how to reply to or how to handle generally and your task list is incomplete and full of big and little tasks. The big ones - you are not sure where to start and the little ones? Well, they’ll get done if I can find a couple of minutes when there’s nothing more important to do. As a consequence to this situation, I was constantly scanning up and down my emails to find urgent, important or easy messages to tackle (not necessarily in that order I am afraid to admit).
As a person who prides himself on efficiency, I realised that this is a wasteful exercise as I was constantly reevaluating the same emails again and again and as the list grows, items got missed. Additionally, because my task list was incomplete, I had always got things on my mind (big and small), which were always there, making me not quite that 100% efficient person I aspire to be.
Reading GTD, it dawned on me that OfficeTalk is the perfect tool for implementing the five stage process and following the flow diagram David describes for processing and organizing my “stuff”. I realised that my inbox should not be used to store packets of work that I have to do or think about or investigate or delegate but it is perfect for collecting my stuff.
Anyone can dump stuff into my inbox (even spammers get the odd item in there) so why can’t I? So now I use my inbox to collect all my stuff. I email myself anything, big or small, that I need to do, think about, delegate or even dream about doing one day (like skydiving, or integrating mind mapping into OfficeTalk). But the key is that it doesn’t stay there! This, I think is very important! If it did stay there, it would all just get lost again in all the other stuff. This is where the processing and organizing stages come in – and where OfficeTalk comes into its own.
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