June 2008 Archives

If you haven't been using Drop.io you should.  This is like the Swiss Army Knife of file sharing and they keep adding new features all the time.  It's easy, you don't need to create an account, you can control privacy on drops, and you can even control how long a drop stays online. 

An intriguing feature of Drop.io is the ability to add drops by phone, which are saved to your drop page as mp3 files.  There's also number for conference calls, but these won't be recorded to your drop.  I haven't tried it yet, but the fax option appears to be interesting as well.  Faxes can come in and out of your drop.  To receive a fax, however, the sender has to use a special cover sheet.  I don't send faxes very often myself, but this will be handy when I have to, and I could do it easily from home instead of waiting until the next time I work.

Drop.io has recently added document viewing with Scribd's iPaper.  Since iPaper is flash based, it allows people to view your documents even if they don't have a compatible program (Office 2003 vs. Office 2007 for example).  I'm also a huge fan of Scribd and do enjoy it when things I like are compatible with one another.

I see a huge potential for Drop.io in the area of collaboration or group work, especially with so many different ways to connect to the drop. 

There's a lot of reasons to hate Twitter these days, but I'm a believer in Twitter and I feel there's just as many reasons to love it.  Twitter is a great communication tool (when it works), I also think there's ways to use Twitter as a productivity tool that will probably never be beat for me.  Bkkeepr is only one of these services using the Twitter API that I've been trying out lately, but it's simply a mobile book tracking (and bookmark) tool that you update using Twitter.

Just use a bookmark, you're probably saying.  I do.  But, here's why this is useful to me.  I borrow tons of books from the library, I don't usually read all of them before they have to go back for holds, but I do start them.  I request them again to continue reading but usually end up with 4 or 5 post it notes with pages numbers written on them.  With Bkkeepr I can keep track of where I stopped in those books on one page (no more paper, woo hoo!)  I can update that page easily using Twitter direct messages.

The profile page is extremely simple to follow.  I'm currently only reading one book, but my profile page has a few entries for the pages I've stopped at along the way.  I can start as many books as I want though.  I can also tell bkkeepr when I've finished a book.

I also like the badge for bkkeepr.  It's just a simple text badge, no fancy formatting or crazy logos.  I might add it to my sidebar just because it's so simple.

There's links included on title pages to conveniently add them to your other favorite book tracking sites like Goodreads or LibraryThing.

Twitter's API has allowed people to come up with some amazingly unique and simple tools.  The mobile capabilities of Twitter have helped some of us find some creative ways to manage our thoughts, time, and assets.  It's also the reason why I can't give up on Twitter quite yet.

Being so inherently digital, you might never think that I have an obsession with paper.  I love the way it looks, and the way it feels.  I especially enjoy a clean sheet of paper.  I always remember how happy I was to pull out a new sheet of paper in school, and how sad I was to have to write on it.  The first words I wrote on the sheet always had to be perfect, if they weren't then it felt like I let the paper down.  I do still rely a lot on paper.  I like holding paper books (although audio is quickly becoming my preferred format), and journal articles on paper (yes I print them from databases, it's so difficult to read them online).  I still buy paper calendars every year that I stop using after a few months.  I prefer to read my magazines analog style.  I buy notebooks that mostly remain unused (with the exception of my moleskine, which only works because I have imposed no organizational system to confuse and befuddle its purpose as a notebook of randomness).

Given all that, I always thought I would be the last person in the world to finally say, "I'm going paperless."  Well it's time.  Paper is controlling my life, and it's sucking my time.  I really believe it's beyond GTD too.  Paper just seems to be the way we operate, even still in a digital world.  There's the junk mail, the non-junk mail, the paper receipts, the little notes we write to remember, the keepsakes.  We're drowning in it, and a lot of it is because we just like paper.  Paper is a thing we can touch, and see.  Paper has a place, and if doesn't have a place you can make a place for it.  Digital exists in random formats, it can exist in many places at once.  Some of us still have not been able to wrap our heads around digital, but the shift will happen, and needs to happen.  Sometimes paper is good, and we need it, but often, with the right tools, it's not necessary.  This epiphany has been brewing for awhile.  It seems every few months I spend entire weekends sorting through paper.  Weekends that could be better spent doing other things. 

How do you go paperless in a paper filled world?  Like with most digital technologies, the way a person uses it, and the tools that they use are a matter of personal balance.  My desire to become paperless seems a bit schizophrenic at times too.  The tools depend on the place I'm at, or the access I have at that moment.  The key is to know what tools you have an how to use them.  However I do admit this is rather natural for a librarian, this is how we approach our jobs.

Mail is a huge issue, my solution is to try to deal with it as it comes in.  This doesn't always work for me, and at the moment it's a bit piled up.  Moving bills and statements to paperless is a step in the right direction though.  Plus it's now in my inbox, which is grand central to my life.  From there I can delegate to Sandy or deal with it as it comes in. 

Where I've made the most success is with receipts.  I just don't take them anymore.  I never did anything with them anyway.  If I do get them, they no longer go in my wallet, where they would pile up for years, they now go in my purse where I shred/recycle them when I get home.  I now keep track of my expenses when I'm out using Xpenser.  This simple web app takes my expenses either by Jott, Twitter, IM or SMS, and yes I have used all of them depending on the situation.  Jott works well when I'm recording messages by myself.  If I don't want to announce to the world how much money I just spent at Borders then I use SMS.  Sitting at my computer IM and Twitter also work very well.  I get an email, which is a nice reminder to transfer those purchases to Quicken the next time I'm at my computer, a practice I sometimes neglected in the past has taken a drastic upswing with a few simple changes in productivity. 

An added bonus of Xpenser is tracking my gas mileage.  When I purchase gas I also send the price I paid per gallon and my car's current mileage to Xpenser in the note field.  I use these numbers to then update FuelFrog next time I'm at my computer so I can keep an eye out on my current mileage.  All without bothering with little bits of paper.  The reports make it easy to glance at similar purchases at once for quick comparisons of purchases.

My new favorite tool is Evernote.  The updated version of this note taking service is now in public beta and I think it's a fabulous way to sync information from computer to web.  The mobile version is currently inaccessible to me and my phone, but I think when I finally get a decent phone this will be an indispensable app.  I don't care for the Windows client interface, but it works, and it can still sync to digital.  I've already determined that Evernote would be a service that I would actually pay money for because it is incredibly useful.  I'm able to integrate this with Jott, I can call in notes directly to Evernote without being at my computer or online with my phone.  I would love to use Evernote as a repository of all things digital and all things that become digital.

The bridge to all of these things for me has really been my phone.  My failure with paper has been syncing the digital with the analog.  One day I realized that when I'm not at my computer I do always have my phone, that's when the eureaka moment hit me.  I can use voice, or text, or the phone's browser to keep the flow of information digital without being at my computer to produce a digital output.  It works, and it's because of these tools, and the APIs, and the simple ways that these systems talk to one another that it does work. 

Once I clear the paper off of it, I will be using my scanner more to archive things in digital formats.  I want this stuff out of my life (in the physical sense) and not taking up space.  I hope less paper also means more time for blogging, which I noticed has taken an obvious dip in the past month.  Now you know it's because I'm buried up to my neck in paper.

The search box on my blog stopped working.  I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who uses it anyway, and I can still search entries through MT, so I'm not too upset.  I think it happened with the upgrade sometime ago.  Instead of trying to fix it right now I'm going to try out the Lijit search widget to see if that works for me.  I currently have it searching more than my blog; I've added del.icio.us, Tumblr, Flickr, and Viddler to the search.  The first test search I tried didn't work, not sure if has to go through some indexing process first... but it's still working better than my normal search box did so we'll keep it around for awhile.

**Update**

I should really read help before posting.  So it turns out it indexes using Google, maybe I should remove the noindex/nofollow from my HTML then.  It might seem weird that I have those in there, but I honestly hate having my blog indexed in Google... it makes me feel like an authority of things, which I'm not, and I would rather people discover my blog through other networks.  I prefer the smaller, more intimate blog audience I guess.

I suppose it's about time I come out of hiding from Google.

I do like Facebook, while I'm not on it as much as I used to be, I still try to check it once a day.  My profile has got a bit out of control though.  I've been adding a lot of friends lately too, mostly awesome librarians, but I realized that compared to my other networks, Facebook is probably my most diverse.  I have old school friends, new school friends, people I meet at conferences, people I meet online... the personal/professional lines are criss-crossing on Facebook more than any place else.  I'm ok with adding professional friends on Facebook, but it puts more pressure on me to make sure I'm managing my online profiles a little more effectively.

The biggest reason why I like Facebook as opposed to all other social networks so far is that I get more control over who sees what on this network.  Given the nature of my network, this seems necessary too.  Of course, I also co-wrote a paper on privacy in Facebook this past semester so I'm well aware of just how granular Facebook's privacy settings are.  I think it's an often overlooked benefit of Facebook.  I know most don't care about the specific privacy features on the site, that's fine, some people do and I think it's nice to have those options available.  My personal thoughts on privacy are that each person needs to manage their identities to the point where they feel comfortable.  I'm still trying to find that balance for myself, but the specific thoughts I have on privacy online are probably best kept for another blog post.

There are some people that use Facebook as their main starting point for everything, I don't.  I use GMail, Twitter, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Del.icio.us, and a whole slew of other services that I have instead.  I like that I can put some of these services into Facebook using apps.  For me Facebook is just another place to aggregate things about me.  Yesterday I went through my applications and added a few that seemed useful, while deleting a whole lot of junk I've been collecting on the profile over time.  I also changed some privacy settings with the apps (yes you can control specific privacy settings with certain apps, it can be tedious but quite useful if you're concerned about privacy).  Also, this article from ReadWriteWeb about making Facebook useful had some good suggestions for apps, I did use it as a guide as I went.

Events

I use Facebook more for discovering events rather than managing all of them there.  Facebook's Events application is of course necessary, especially if you want to keep up on your friends' birthdays.  The Upcoming Application adds events that you are watching or attending through your Upcoming.org account to your profile.  I recently discovered an application called fbCal which allows you to view your friends' birthdays (and another link for upcoming events) in Google Calendar (or preferred calendar).  This is great application for freeing you from the burden of checking your Facebook profile everyday.

Professional Profiles

The nice thing about some of the privacy settings in Facebook now is that you can control how professional your profile appears to some of your contacts.  It does take some planning and a little bit of forethought when you add new apps to your profile (all apps are automatically defaulted to all of your networks and friends), but I don't think people have to be excluded from a network list just because someone thinks it "isn't professional enough".  The Professional Profile Application makes it easy to include your resume on your Facebook profile, and if you already have a LinkedIn profile it's even easier, it just pulls your resume from there.  The Business Cards Application allows you to create a tagline and attach a business card to your profile.  If you use Facebook to contact people professionally it can be attached to messages as a sort of signature.

Sharing Files

Box.net's Files Application allows users to share files with one another.  I personally like Box.net and I do use it on occasion, but my new favorite file sharing tool is Drop.io, I would love to see a Facebook application for this one instead.

School

The ReadWriteWeb article mentioned the Blackboard Sync Application... well as much as I loathe Blackboard, this one seemed useful, except for this nice message when I tried to add it:  "Your Blackboard system administrator has blocked access to Blackboard Sync for Facebook."  Good one WSU...

One feature I miss from old school Facebook is the ability to add my classes to my profile.  The Courses 2.0 Application fills in that gap.  If some of your other classmates are also using this application you can connect with them on there, as well as manage your class schedule.

To Dos and Calendars

There are quite a few applications to manage your to do lists and calendars, but like I already mentioned, I don't prefer to manage my life through Facebook.  I use external sites like my GMail, I Want Sandy, Twitter, and Google Calendar for personal productivity, but if you're somebody who does like to use Facebook like this, there are quite a few apps available for you.

Social Networks

Facebook started adding support to import outside social networking sites into your news feed.  I do prefer these to applications.  The reason why is because I do have problems with buggy applications killing my internet connection.  I also like simplicity.  Currently I'm importing my blog as Notes, Flickr, del.icio.us links, shared items on Google Reader, and favorite songs on Last.fm.

If you're on Twitter and/or FriendFeed, there are also a couple of applications available to put those services on your profile.  The Twitter Application will let you update your Facebook status with your tweets, this never really appealed to me though.  My new favorite site seems to be FriendFeed, the FriendFeed Application is decent.  There are lots of things going to there that are ending up on my FB profile too (like Twitter and del.icio.us), I like it on one hand, but I also wish I could avoid some of the duplication.  The profile app gets a little long too so I've put it in the extended part of my profile.

I'm playing around with a lot of location based services lately, but Dopplr is my favorite so far.  The Dopplr Application is definitely included in my profile, I'll decide if I'll be adding more later. 

I like Skype, I would like to use it more so I added the Call Me on Skype Application.  I haven't advertised my Skype presence much.  It is one of the tools I have considered using for virtual ASIS&T meetings next year.

The As Seen On Application links my profiles from other sites.  I basically copied what was already on my blog... those things are hard to keep track of when you're using so many different sites.  I think I've resorted to only including the sticky ones.

Music

I went a little overboard with the music apps before, and I think these are the ones that were killing my profile.  I've limited myself to three different ones.  I've added the Last.fm Music Application, the Music Application (this is a Rhapsody app), and I kept TuneSocial because I've been saving my CD collection to that.  The compatibility features of the Last.fm application seem especially cool.  I have the Rhapsody application added because I'm a subscriber, but I do feel that Rhapsody constantly fails with social stuff and keeping their stuff locked up tight behind closed doors.  I mostly listen to music through Rhapsody though so it's something I'm pretty tied to.

Books

I do keep track of the books I'm reading through the Books iRead Application.  I think if I can get my data exported to GoodReads or LibraryThing easily, I might switch to one of those other ones instead.  It's really helpful for me to keep track of books I want to read, sometimes I forget.

Movies

I'm not a big movie person, I used to have the Movies Application installed, and it's pretty good if you like movies, but I'm also a Netflix user so I really don't think to go on there and rate movies.  I also work in a library so knowing what movies are new or coming out is never an issue with me... whether we like it or not, librarians are constantly getting recommendations from patrons on books and movies.  I have installed the Netflix Movies Application, it shows the movies I have at home as well as what's in my queue (which I have to admit is a little scary right now, I should really clean that up).  The application on the profile is a bit bulky though, I've put it in the extended part of my profile.  Although with Netflix I'm going down to one movie a month because I just haven't been watching a lot lately.  I really don't want to cancel my account though, I love Netflix!

People

Funny thing about this RRW post, it says to find people using Spock's people search app... sorry, that just ain't happening.  I don't use Facebook much to find people, people usually find me ok.

Fun Things

I like the Friend Wheel friend visualization, also newly discovered Nexus Application for sorting through friend connections.

Fun Cards is installed but profile disabled.  I just like sending birthday cards on people's birthdays!

Geocaching Stats add a widget to my profile with my current count of geocaching finds.

Memorable Web Address for Profile is just a simple application that makes your Facebook profile URL a little cleaner and shorter.

The Where Is It Application is profile disabled, but this is a nice one for attaching maps to messages or wall posts.

Of course you can't forget the xkcd Feed Application.  Every Facebook profile needs a little funny.

Might Use More

I found that I installed the Extended Info Application and never used it.  It looks a little involved, but it could be a great way to customize my profile a little more in depth.

Apparently you can send video using Facebook Mobile using the Video Application?  I can shoot video on my sucky phone... although not sure if this is something I am interested in trying out.

Why Not?

Gifts, why not, it's a Facebook thing. 

The Photos Application isn't one I use much, but when I take pictures of people that are taggable on Facebook I like to include those pictures there.  Using Flickr kind of makes the Photos app unnecessary for me.

Groups, I join them, but they're not as useful or interesting as Pages.  I think groups are more of an identity thing.  But Pages do rock!

Posted Items is a another Facebook thing, I don't use it much, other than to post things about Facebook.

SuperPoke is currently profile disabled, but it's probably the only completely meaningless and annoying application I still have installed.

Settings

There are lot of different privacy settings and friend management features I still want to go through.  Some people don't like to "categorize" their friends, but for me it's really a way to keep track of how I know a person.  This is especially important if you meet a lot of people online or a few times every year at conferences.

Now the challenge for me is to keep from adding more stupid applications to my profile here on out.