Archive for ‘Technology’

February 14th, 2012

Getting Shit Done

It’s taken a few years, but I can now pinpoint the single biggest obstacle to getting shit done—and I am ready to reveal my secret.

In writing this, I think it is important to say that I consider myself generally to be an organized person. My bills get paid on time, client goals and projects are accomplished, and my consumption of a diverse range of media sources continues to enliven and enrich my life. I am a devoted user of Evernote, the single best note-taking and information-tracking tool I have found, and at the same time I also love my old-fashioned jotter, which fits in a pocket and doesn’t require any batteries (and can be “recharged” with Post-It notes, which are both thinner and cheaper than the index card inserts it comes with). While I am not formally a follower of David Allen and his “Getting Things Done” movement, I admire the concept and track some of the information sources in related spheres, such as Lifehacker.

However, my understanding of the impact of all these things on my life—together with two small children and a working spouse with her own set of needs and demands—has started to crystallize a little differently of late. In a pre-digital age, daily life could produce enough junk to overwhelm, just on its own. With email, the web, social media tools, and more options for tracking content and ideas and tasks than one can shake a stick at, “overwhelmed” can seen like an underwhelming description.

Fundamentally, though, I am not convinced that the volume of relevant information is that much greater than it ever was; the problem is determining relevance quickly—and then moving on. Thus, the single biggest challenge to efficiency? Procrastination.

For me, what I have noticed (in particular since my July 2009 about-face and decision to embrace Facebook and Twitter) is that there are two consistent—and generally well-meaning—procrastination zones that create problems, one as information is coming in, and the other as I’m pushing it out.

To address the problem in the first zone requires focus a heavier focus on relevance, and an effort to control (or curtail) digressions. This is the area where Facebook and Twitter can cause mayhem, along with all the things one needs to do for work (if not properly organized) or at home (like the non-tax-related papers one encounters on the way to doing one’s taxes).

The second zone demands a high-intensity focus on information management, managing both the flow of materials and the (rapidly proliferating) new toys tools to help get things done. For instance, I have been contemplating switching my meetings to a psychiatrist-style 50-minute hour, (or a 25 minute half-hour) in order to guarantee time between activities, during which I can write down or assign tasks, file papers, respond to email, etc. It’s the delaying of these small tasks that often create larger and more complicated tasks hours or days later.

There is no doubt that sometimes procrastination and digression can be beneficial; it is during this time that the stimulation of creativity and free associations can help solve problems or come up with new ideas. But digressions in the digital age seem are much worse, it seems: it’s too easy never to turn things off, to keep going, link by link, from dawn to dusk and back again.

And that’s fine, as long as it isn’t stopping you from doing what you need to do.

July 10th, 2011

Not My Ethan Lewis Problem

My friend Ethan Lewis recently wrote a post for his blog about his ranking as an Ethan Lewis within Google’s search results, and it’s interesting reading for a few reasons. First of all, I think Ethan should be congratulated for openly writing about something that many of us probably do, but as many of us don’t want to talk about. (“Ego-surfing,” he calls it, sourcing the term to Wikipedia.)

On the other hand, Ethan’s post has the benefit of suggesting that people should do this sort of thing—and I can say, from the perspective of a recruiter for my firm, that an amazing number of people seem not to Google themselves, or to have any awareness at all of how the internet represents them.

But Ethan gets to a more interesting question when he writes about understanding Google’s page ranking algorithms, and his desire to wind up on top just by being himself. No “SEO” or “search engine optimization” techniques—which is good, because much of this is pay-for-link spam, a curse of the web. He wants to be the number one Ethan Lewis on Google just by virtue of being, well, the number one Ethan Lewis. That seems to me to be a reasonable ambition.

Still, I think boosting Ethan Lewis to number one might, by necessity, require a few small and entirely natural (i.e., not SEO-type) changes. We know that search engines look at incoming and outgoing links, and about the ranking for pages on both sides. The system is mutually reinforcing, which is why link spam works (until the algorithms are tweaked to eliminate it… until it pops up again…). So one idea might be for Ethan to pull his Icarus P. Anybody blog into his http://www.ethanlewis.org/ domain name, perhaps with a subfolder or sub-domain. (I highly recommend WordPress for this. Blogger stopped supporting FTP publishing, and I made the switch very easily.) While I appreciate the origins of the blog’s name, it does kind of work against natural identification with Ethan himself. And, anyway, the name wouldn’t have to change—just the web address.

There’s also the Google Profiles tool, which lets people set up specific profiles within Google itself. Now that doesn’t guarantee visibility, and Ethan has a profile of sorts through Blogger—but the Blogger profile probably doesn’t get a whole lot of visibility, whereas Google’s maneuvers into the people/profile business might help. Getting a LinkedIn profile is another useful approach.

Of course, Ethan also wrote: “Another thing that affects my ego-surfing is that I want to be the top result on Google when searching for “Ethan Lewis”, but I don’t want to do any work to get there.” So the above suggestions might sound like work. I suppose there’s some truth to that.

And then you just have to ask: will my writing this post for my friend Ethan Lewis, with links to his website and his blog, help boost his ranking? Maybe. But he didn’t pay me to do it.

****
Update: I posted this entry, and then I sat down to read the paper. Yes, the actual newspaper. The New York Times‘ business section has a story today–another in its great “Haggler” series, by David Segal–about Google search results and a number of “lead generation” companies that have figured out how to scam the results, specifically in the locksmith business. “Picking the Lock of Google’s Search” is worth reading, especially in light of the above. And meanwhile, in what is presumably an oversight on the part of the Times’ web editors, there’s no link to Ballard Lock & Key, the subject of their story, so I’m including one here. Small consolation, no doubt.

June 16th, 2011

How you like them Apples?

June 9th, Thursday

I’m sitting at home, working on my computer–a late-2008 edition MacBook Pro, all appropriately up-to-date on its software, etc.–when the cursor starts going haywire. My hands are not on the trackpad, yet it’s jumping all over, it’s right-clicking, it’s opening windows and files; it’s possessed. Every attempt I make to control it is like Ouija Board combat, it just doesn’t want to do what I want it to do.

I closed the lid and let the machine sit. Ten minutes later, I try again. It works, briefly, and then is possessed again.

I forcibly quit all open programs and turn off the machine. Time for bed.

 

June 10th, Friday

On the iPad, I search for a range of related terms like “possessed MacBook trackpad,” and get lots of results with a range of inconclusive answers. One suggests resetting the “PRAM,” wherein you unplug the computer, take out the battery, and then press the power button to clear all electrical charges. Another suggests the problem is caused by swollen batteries. I open up the machine, reset the “PRAM,” and in the process check my battery. Doesn’t seem swollen.

I reboot, and I get about 15 minutes of time before … the Possessed Trackpad takes over. Mere seconds after that, it has shrunk the icons of the items on my desktop to miniscule items of something like 8×8 pixels, while also opening 20+ PDFs in a folder.

I reboot, switch batteries. I get another 15 minutes in, but not more. I manage to get TimeMachine connected and get a back-up process going–and then effectively lock the cursor out by switching on the screen saver.

The back-up completes, I turn off the computer, and I go to work. Over the weekend, I hardly touch it.

 

June 12th, Sunday

It’s still not working. I check my AppleCare status–good through November!–and make a date for Thursday with the Genius Bar folks.

I try running the computer with no battery. I have no evidence that the battery is the issue, but I wonder whether it’s too hot and affecting the trackpad. This technique works for the standard 15 minutes, before the Deus in Machina takes over again.

 

June 13-15, Monday – Wednesday

I give a lot of thought to cloud computing, which sounds fairly attractive right about now. The idea of being only moderately dependent on a single computer is alluring at times like this. (I’m writing this on a 10″ Sony Vaio running Ubuntu Linux. I try to run a Microsoft-free home.) I have my iPhone and my iPad, plus the Vaio, and aside from my files all locked up on the Mac, things aren’t so bad. Normally, I don’t like the “cloud” idea, because internet access can be so unreliable (not to mention slow); I don’t want every interaction with my files to be dependent on an external connection of some kind, a point echoed by David Pogue in his review of the new Google Chromebook.

I also give a lot of thought to how dependent I am on all this tech shit. How miserable it makes me when it’s not working. How obscenely addicted we are to something that’s been with us less than a half-century, yet feels as integral as food. Granted, I *work* on a computer; my job would be harder without one. Granted, I got my first computer in 1981, when I was 10, and I have been working with computers for the majority of my life.

But still. It sucks when they’re broken and sucks to realize how much it seems to matter.

 

June 16, Thursday

The good folks at the Genius Bar are kind and comforting. A trackpad issue, clearly; it can be replaced, free of charge and in under an hour. We’ll call you.

They call me. Actually, it seems like the display isn’t working properly either; with your permission, we’d like to replace it. Free of charge, and it’ll take another hour. Ok, sure, great. Thanks!

They call me. Actually … well, we’re sorry. We’re sorry it’s escalated like this. We’d like to send it out to our diagnostic repair shop, off-site. There seems to be an additional problem, maybe an electrical issue, can’t tell–but they can sort it out, and any part that needs replacing will be replaced. Free of charge. It takes five days, starting today. Did you back up recently, because if they replace the harddrive… (Yes, I backed everything up.)

And there we are. The MacBook Pro is in the shop, in the care of AppleCare. I remain impressed with the quality of service Apple provides, and feel good about the likelihood my computer will be fixed. Not to mention that I’m still left with more computing power than most people.

And yet feel naked without my “core” machine. Services like Evernote and GoogleDocs help keep me going–yay, “cloud”–while not entirely diminishing my sense that all is not right with the universe. There’s been a disturbance in the Force. I just want my damn computer to work.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE, 29 June 2011

Apple called me on June 25th to tell me my computer was ready, a few days later than originally estimated, but it’s hard to complain in this situation. I picked up my MacBook Pro on Sunday, June 26th, and they walked me through the servicing as I booted up the computer. It had been given a new TrackPad and display, as mentioned previously–and also a new motherboard, new hard drive, and a new cover. (I’m not sure why it needed a new cover, but perhaps the original was damaged in the process of repair…) The motherboard alone costs north of $500, and all told it was probably $1,000 in new parts and who knows how much more in labor. In theory, Apple is sending me an itemized invoice–but all costs were covered by AppleCare. I usually pass on extended warranty programs, but I definitely got my $350 of value out of this one.

This story would not be complete without the tale of renewal that goes with it. Once the machine was booted up, the third screen asked me if I wanted to restore my computer from a TimeMachine backup. I closed it up right at that spot, and went home. At home, I connected the external hard drive that is my TimeMachine backup, and hit the option for restore.

I have had to do this once before, and it is always a nerve-wracking few seconds: everything depends on whether the backup itself has worked. But it had, like a charm–and 90 minutes later, my computer had been returned to it’s original state, with all my files and all my settings intact. (First thing I did after that? Update it with all the files that had been in holding since the repair process started … And then I ran another backup.)

Back when I had a Dell, I had one of the worst computer repair experiences ever. The man who came to fix my computer (after making me sit at home all day) spoke virtually no English, and didn’t have the right part. When he came back the second time, he had the part, but because of his language deficiency wasn’t in a position to tell me what was wrong with the computer when it still didn’t work. In the International Herald Tribune recently there was an article about design and functional items, and how good design can help users with even complicated tasks. I think Apple products sometimes need more descriptive support than people think, at least for some users. But the author is dead on in describing the ease of use issue as central to Apple’s strengths. This experience just proves it, on a few fronts, from service and repair to restoration. Apple products may not be infallible, but few are. What matters, though, is how the systems manage the fallibility, and whether it’s designed to protect and help the user.

June 14th, 2011

Going Mobile

It took me long enough, but I’m happy to say that both sascha.com and thetruthasiseeit.com now feature mobile-web-enabled versions. You won’t see ’em unless you load the site on an iPhone, BlackBerry, or other such device. But they’re there, and they work.

Thanks to the folks at Brave New Code for their WPTouch “plugin” that makes all this work so easily.

While you’re at it, and regardless of which device you’re using to browse, go check out my latest posts on the other side.