Posted by greg on Nov 25, 2009 in
Productivity 
With all the solutions out there around cloud computing, I would have to say these guys are the best. What Dropbox allows you to do is have a folder on your computer that contains a local (cached) copy of your data. Your real data is copied up to your Dropbox account. You can have your shared folder mounted on as many computers as you want and access the same data, keeping everything consistent. In addition, you can share content from your Dropbox account to other users so they can have access to the files you allow them to have access too. This sure makes it nice when you are working on a project and you want to be able to collaborate with each other online in real time with out emailing documents back and forth, flooding your inbox. It also has versioning control, so when two or more people are editing the same file, one on person saves it, it will save it with the file name-the user name of the user.
Once a file is modified, it is then synced locally to your computer’s Dropbox folder so you have access to it while you are offline. If you do edit it offline, it will then sync the file back to your Dropbox account once you are back online!
Posted by greg on Jan 27, 2009 in
Internet,
Organization,
Productivity 
I think Google is a great company. I mean really. Where would be today with out Google. Left at Yahoo or AltaVista for that sake.
I’ve been using Google’s Docs, and I’m loving it. For my work, I have to share a lot of Spreadsheets, Word Docs and sometimes Powerpoint Presentations. Versioning becomes an issue. Google Docs is great because it allows you to either upload an existing document or create a new one online and share it out other people that have a Google Doc account. You both can be logged in to your account and access the same doc from separate computers and literally see the changes being made live online. Its sick. More recently, I tried hitting Google Docs from my iPhone and Google has a special site created just for mobile devices. I love it. I know Apple is attempting to compete with this product with their iWork solution, and I tested that too, but to be honest, its not at the same level of service Google offers. For one, its very iWork centric (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). Looks like they are going to $$ for it also. Google is free. There are limitations to Google, for instance they can only accept Word, Excell, Powerpoint, StarOffice, and a few other types of Docs. And two, there is a limitation on the size of document than can be uploaded. If they had a service that will allow me to buy more storage for my ‘documents’. I will gladly pay.
Great Service. You should try it out.
Posted by admin on Jan 3, 2008 in
Productivity 
Stephen Covey speaks about his Time Management Matrix in his best selling book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. I have read this book several times. Each time I look through it, I find something that I can apply in my life.
There are many times we feel that we are in crisis mode, putting out fires, reactive to situations or have a since of hopelessness because of outside influences. Other times we may feel proactive, on top of tasks, influential and organized. The question is, how do we maintain the feeling of control in our lives, and not be in crisis mode all the time?
Stephen Covey does an excellent job in his illustration of Time Management Matrix. The Time Management Matrix is a quadrant in which we spend our time. As you can see in the model above, if we live our life by the influence of others, we are in Quadrant I & III. These would be outside interruptions, some one else’s problems thrown over the fence for us to take care of. A lot of our time is consumed in dealing with the day-to-day things in these two Quadrants. We usually do not have a lot of control of Quadrant I unless we some how free up some time elsewhere. Quadrant III is simple. just learn to say no.
Going back to our original question, how do we maintain the feeling of control in our lives, and not be in crisis mode all the time? It’s simple, we need to invest more time in Quadrant II. How do we do that? We do that by stealing time in Quadrant IV. Quadrant IV is time wasters. Laziness, doing nothing, surfing the internet, unproductive activities. As we take time from Quadrant IV, we invest time into Quadrant II. We become proactive. We begin to plan, forecast and balance our life. We invest in continued education or vocational training to increase our knowledge so were better prepared in our professional activities. We make our selves more marketable. We develop leadership skills and become influential to others.
As we invest more time in Quadrant II by taking time from Quadrant IV, Quadrant I will shrink. As we learn to say no to Quadrant III, you will find you have more power to invest in Quadrant II which in turn you will become more proactive and productive individual.
To read more about Stephen Covey, visit his website http://www.stephencovey.com. I highly recommend his books.
