Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Why have one home page when you can have ten?
Just discovered a very cool Firefox feature. If you have several web pages open in tabs, and then click Peferences/General in order to set your home page, Firefox gives you the option of setting your home page to "current pageS". So if you like to check your bank...
Speed feeding
Part of the plan with the telecentre.org ecosystem is to bring relevant content into telecentre.org sites using RSS. In the case of event sites -- like the Capetown site that is the very first telecentre event site to get up and running -- we'll use special tags...
Event blogging with Drupal
This is Information Society Week in Capetown, and one of the events taking place is the first telecentre.org workshop to use the new Drupal-based event platform that I've helped develop. The good folks at Bryght have set us up with a freelinking module that lets...
This is your brain in binary
As part of my ongoing quest to find a Mac counterpart to the Personal Brain (thanks to Jerry Michalski for ruining my life with his software demo) -- and as part of my re-evaluation of all my productivity apps in the wake of my Treo purchase -- I have been playing...
Movie Central digs me out from Six Feet Under
Today's online customer service award goes to Movie Central --- that's the (Western) Canadian equivalent of HBO. I emailed the address listed on their web site last Monday (August 8th), as follows: Subject: Six Feet Under season 5 hi, I've somehow missed Season 5 of...
Coding for deliberation
One of my favourite organizations working on dialogue and deliberation challenges is the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD). They've done a great job of building community among people doing civic engagement, dialogue and deliberation work, and...
In search of the perfect host
Rob and I seem to be in the market for a new web host. We've been delighted with our current hosts, Ace of Space, but as our site and domain empire expands, it's beginning to look like it would be economical for us to get a hosting package that allows unlimited...
You got your Treo in my custom RSS feed
I've been talking a lot about RSS on this site for some time now. And lately I've been talking about Treos too. Now you can have both great flavours in one thanks to this little demo of how the best sources of custom RSS feeds can help you find everything you want to...
Rob Cottingham » A little something for the Getting Things Done crowd
OK, Getting Things Done fans: my extremely witty and brilliant husband has got a must-see web page: Rob Cottingham » A little something for the Getting Things Done crowd
My kingdom for a link*
Rob thinks my new comment form is lame and desperate. I say, maybe he would reassert some claim to even participating in our rank war if he actually deployed a little strategy himself. As any politician knows, you've got to ask people for their vote. And any...
The Harvard Business Review
Why have one home page when you can have ten?
Just discovered a very cool Firefox feature. If you have several web pages open in tabs, and then click Peferences/General in order to set your home page, Firefox gives you the option of setting your home page to "current pageS". So if you like to check your bank...
Speed feeding
Part of the plan with the telecentre.org ecosystem is to bring relevant content into telecentre.org sites using RSS. In the case of event sites -- like the Capetown site that is the very first telecentre event site to get up and running -- we'll use special tags...
Event blogging with Drupal
This is Information Society Week in Capetown, and one of the events taking place is the first telecentre.org workshop to use the new Drupal-based event platform that I've helped develop. The good folks at Bryght have set us up with a freelinking module that lets...
This is your brain in binary
As part of my ongoing quest to find a Mac counterpart to the Personal Brain (thanks to Jerry Michalski for ruining my life with his software demo) -- and as part of my re-evaluation of all my productivity apps in the wake of my Treo purchase -- I have been playing...
Movie Central digs me out from Six Feet Under
Today's online customer service award goes to Movie Central --- that's the (Western) Canadian equivalent of HBO. I emailed the address listed on their web site last Monday (August 8th), as follows: Subject: Six Feet Under season 5 hi, I've somehow missed Season 5 of...
Coding for deliberation
One of my favourite organizations working on dialogue and deliberation challenges is the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD). They've done a great job of building community among people doing civic engagement, dialogue and deliberation work, and...
In search of the perfect host
Rob and I seem to be in the market for a new web host. We've been delighted with our current hosts, Ace of Space, but as our site and domain empire expands, it's beginning to look like it would be economical for us to get a hosting package that allows unlimited...
You got your Treo in my custom RSS feed
I've been talking a lot about RSS on this site for some time now. And lately I've been talking about Treos too. Now you can have both great flavours in one thanks to this little demo of how the best sources of custom RSS feeds can help you find everything you want to...
Rob Cottingham » A little something for the Getting Things Done crowd
OK, Getting Things Done fans: my extremely witty and brilliant husband has got a must-see web page: Rob Cottingham » A little something for the Getting Things Done crowd
My kingdom for a link*
Rob thinks my new comment form is lame and desperate. I say, maybe he would reassert some claim to even participating in our rank war if he actually deployed a little strategy himself. As any politician knows, you've got to ask people for their vote. And any...
OneZero
Using online contests as a marketing tool
If you’re running online contests to promote your work, you want to encourage people to participate as widely as possible. Here’s how to create a compelling and fun contest.
DoodleBuzz offers a new way of visualizing the news
DoodleBuzz is a fun tool that presents news stories from your search, arranged along the outline of your doodle. But there’s a practical value to this gee whiz app.
4 steps for calculating ROI on social media
Establishing the ROI from your social media spend is an inexact science, but these four simple steps can help you get in the ballpark.
Tips for a successful Facebook application launch
Contests are one way to get your Facebook app off to a strong start — but there are other options.
5 reasons to send Direct Messages on Twitter
In answer to a question posted in LinkedIn, I’ve offered five reasons to use Twitter’s DM function — including to communicate something that is too short to be worth emailing.
Using B2C social media for B2B marketing
Think of your social media presence as a party: you’re inviting lots of pretty people (the end customers), who in turn will bring in lots of smart/rich people (your customers).
Three steps for companies getting started with social media
Listen. Think. Engage. These are the three steps every company should follow.
10 steps to get your e-mail inbox to zero every day
Learn the simple system I used to get from an inbox of over 2000 messages to an empty inbox — and to keep it there.
JSTOR DAILY
Using online contests as a marketing tool
If you’re running online contests to promote your work, you want to encourage people to participate as widely as possible. Here’s how to create a compelling and fun contest.
DoodleBuzz offers a new way of visualizing the news
DoodleBuzz is a fun tool that presents news stories from your search, arranged along the outline of your doodle. But there’s a practical value to this gee whiz app.
4 steps for calculating ROI on social media
Establishing the ROI from your social media spend is an inexact science, but these four simple steps can help you get in the ballpark.
Tips for a successful Facebook application launch
Contests are one way to get your Facebook app off to a strong start — but there are other options.
5 reasons to send Direct Messages on Twitter
In answer to a question posted in LinkedIn, I’ve offered five reasons to use Twitter’s DM function — including to communicate something that is too short to be worth emailing.
Using B2C social media for B2B marketing
Think of your social media presence as a party: you’re inviting lots of pretty people (the end customers), who in turn will bring in lots of smart/rich people (your customers).
Three steps for companies getting started with social media
Listen. Think. Engage. These are the three steps every company should follow.
10 steps to get your e-mail inbox to zero every day
Learn the simple system I used to get from an inbox of over 2000 messages to an empty inbox — and to keep it there.
THE VERGE
5 ebook features that tap the power of social note-taking
Peter Meyers has a useful blog post on 3 ways to improve ebook note taking over at O'Reilly Radar. As he points out in his post, note-taking is one of the ways in which print books still kick the ass of digital books, since they allow you to "[j]ot notes anywhere you...
5 ways technology can reduce the family stress of business travel
When you’ve got kids, business travel is especially stressful. It’s hard for them to have mum or dad away, and it’s hard for you to miss them. Here are 5 ways that technology can help.
This 40th birthday brought to you by Apple
What's the right way for a geek to celebrate the big 40? In my case, as many of you now know, the answer was to spend the previous 40 days blogging. That met my need for ritual, but what about the day itself? I wanted to do something memorable, something that would...
How to quickly remove unwanted tracks from your iTunes smart playlists
I like to create new iTunes playlists for lots of different purposes: for parties, workouts, for a regular day of work. In principle, the smart playlists feature works great for this -- just select a couple of criteria like "added in the past 100 days" and "BPM [beats...