box.net

box.net / evernote premium / jing pro / live mesh / screencast.com / xobni — View Comments
5
Feb 09

My "Getting Things Done" System

Finally, after all these years, I think I have a system. I have never been more buried in email than in the last few months. I used to LOVE email, obsessed with it, checked it constantly- drove my wife nuts. Now, I am quickly beginning to hate email. My obsession(s) have simply grown to texting, instant messaging & tweeting. I can’t have my info fast enough. And I surely don’t want to miss anything.

To support a greener lifestyle and reduce clutter, I try to work in a paperless. environment. I have been looking for an electronic way to capture and store, “my stuff”. I have a ton of it and you never know when you might need it. Believe it or not, I find that I need alot of it often.

So, one of the best self-help books I ever read was given to me by my good friend, Jeff. Getting Things Done is hardcore, I am not as good as others, but I have learned to keep my inbox to a minimum. GTD says zero each day, my goal is less than 20. There is quite a bit more to GTD but this was a huge takeaway for me.


Anything I want to store as part of an ongoing “project” goes in Evernote. I have developed a very simple system for organizing. I use the notebooks in Evernote for projects or sub-projects. I name them by @projectname ( I wish they had subnotebooks). The way to organize data in Evernote is via “tags”. I didn’t get it initially and I am not sure I am 100% sold, but I am running with it. So, I place multiple tags on each posting in a notebook, usually with a #subject, *contactname, keyword. Seems insane, but it remembers all my tags, so many of the @, #, * are very similar. I simply pick them from a list. So, lets say I have a call scheduled with *jim. I can sort by “*jim“, all the topics are then listed by #subject and I have all my notes, clippings, attachments (with Evernote Premium) and things that are high priority I tag with a #1. Seems complicated, but it is working really well. Any files stored other places, no problem, hyperlinks handle that.

Now, all “other” email, not pressing,”FYI stuff” I delete and use Xobni to search, sort, find attachments etc. It is the coolest “find” of last year. I saw a post thought the name was cool, INBOX backwards and it is a SCORE! Go grab it, trust me.

Working in the CAE world on multiple computers and being a globetrotter I deal with massive file sets (CAD, CFdesign, images etc), bigger picture stuff then stuff I’d store into Evernote. I used to carry around a 100GB external drive and though I was bad ass, found that this did nothing but get filled with data. So, I still have that (3 actually) but for the important documents I use 2 systems. The first is Live Mesh. Very cool way to flag a folder on one machine, upload the content to the web and include a folder on another machine. So, I have the data in 3 locations, seems like overkill, but it allows me to work seamlessly on local drives (external drives) are shady when dealing with CAD and Simulation files. Live Mesh is free and allows 5GB, not too bad. Live Mesh used to be all I used when I had a Windows Mobile phone. As there was a mobile version as well.

BUT I just jumped on the iPhone bandwagon and Live Mesh is no dice for iPhone. I also use my beloved Ubuntu Netbook, doesn’t play nice with Mesh. So, I use my trusted box.net as well to share mostly Office docs back and forth among all my devices. It has an awesome iPhone client and Open Office works like a charm on my netbook.

Last but not least is Jing Pro. I used to be a fancy SnagIt/PPT guy, still am for some things, but my new way of communicating is to use Jing to grab a quick screen capture and pop it up to my free screencast.com account and shoot you the link. It is like receiving an audio/video voice mail, text or email Nothing more powerful to clicking a link, I am talking to you and showing you exactly what my question is, no heavy file transfer etc– just a simple link. Jump in for free with Jing, upgrade to Jing Pro as needed.

When I read all of this back, it even looks overwhelming to me. BUT, I feel like my efficiency has gone WAY up, everything is nice and orderly. No major effort keeping everything in synch, all the tools seem to just do it for me.

I am not sure that David Allen had this in mind when he developed GTD, but this is how I make it work for me.

What’s your system like?

box.net — View Comments
6
Oct 08

Sick of FTP’s, shared and external drives — cloud computing is alive and well with box.net

I have 3 and counting external drives that I have countless amount of data stored for the infamous, “just in case” situation. So, we are talking about ~500GB of data. Some of it is necessary for immediate access and some of it, would be awesome to share with others.

I have easy access to an ftp site and it works, for the most part. It doesn’t have a very slick interface and it is a real drag to “share” and “collaborate” with others. People constantly struggle accessing ftp sites.

I started cruising around looking for an alternative. A friend sent me a link to dropbox.com. Looked interesting, but fell short on some of the features I needed. I then found box.net. Here is a breakdown of the comparisons.

Not to mention, it will quickly become a staple for those that are entering the “netbook” way of life. I think what I love most about box.net, is that they have really seem to have thought of quite a few things – such as emailing docs via Google Mail & Outlook, working in conjunction with efax, blogger, zoho, twitter, facebook etc.. So, from a user’s experience, I love that it is a multi-dimensional product. They even scored a deal with Autodesk to upload and translate certain CAD data.

Here is their CEO giving some of the details…

But, the biggest announcement is that they are partnering with Dell and are being bundled as a part of the new Dell mini 9. I love where all of this is going. I am going to see if I can score a Dell mini 9 with Ubuntu fully loaded and begin living and computing via the clouds.