Perry

Hewitt

Tag: productivity

  • Friday 5 — 2.13.2015

    Friday 5 — 2.13.2015

    homepage

    1. With the rise of sideways traffic via search and social, the homepage of a news site isn’t the single navigational portal it once was. Still, it’s an important brand asset, and defines organizing principles for content. Here are 64 ways to think about a news home page.
    2. Balancing being informed with staying productive isn’t easy. It requires effort to find the right smart filters, be they human or algorithmic, to be up-to-date without devoting hours each day. Here’s how one woman audited her daily media habits to improve what she reads. Spoiler alert: there may not be a lot of value in links found on Facebook.
    3. Apparently millions of Facebook users have no idea they are using the internet. In developing countries, many new users are coming online solely through Facebook, which has serious implications for those trying to reach them. These studies are consistent with my wholly unscientific observations about Vietnam and Cambodia.
    4. Data visualization geeks can debate the efficacy of circular timelines. I liked the distinction drawn between information visualization to amplify cognition versus data decoration and data art.
    5. These days Google has a keener understanding of what you are looking for — and serves it up to you directly. Search for topics like the weather or a movie title, and Google will serve up relevant, local data above any linked results. This week Google added a compelling new category for avid symptom searchers: medical information.

     

    Weekend fun: Here’s hoping your Valentine’s Day goes as smoothly as it did for these Tiny Hamsters. Boston will need all the romantic meals, flowers, and chocolate as it can get, as snow threatens to cover even more of our athletes.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.

  • Friday 5 — 8.1.2014

    Friday 5 — 8.1.2014

    1. Product HuntIn less than a year Product Hunt has become an essential daily ritual for the tech obsessed. How did it get there? It identified a clear problem: “Help me find the latest new, cool things.”Then the team made a bunch of smart decisions, including launching with an early, buggy version (and improving from there!), starting a consistent, daily email driving users to the site, and conducting initial personal outreach to build the community. Read more about Product Hunt’s first year.
    2. Productivity apps help you demolish your to-do list, and manage/filter information overload. Increasingly, users are starting off with mobile apps, but the real benefit emerges when the apps work across multiple screens. Supporting mobile and desktop pays off — these connected-everywhere apps drive wider distribution, and create a stickiness that promotes retention by increasing the switching cost.
    3. When people picture a hot startup, they generally have in mind the latest consumer-facing technology. But developers (and their lagging indicator, VCs) are discovering enterprise tech is back in vogue: it’s a large market opportunity with a pressing need for growth and change. So maybe now it’s cool to be boring.
    4. Here’s one theory why responsive design can’t be your only mobile strategy. While there’s no easy way to discuss mobile without invoking well-trodden holy wars (“can we ever say above the mobile fold?” ) there are a few good points here about cell network latency, the need for speed, and the importance of testing on actual devices.
    5. As more organizations recognize and formalize the need for content strategy, how do you explain and demystify the terms of art? The content strategy term of the week has you covered: start with taxonomy.

    Weekend fun: Executives at Yahoo probably lie awake nights thinking of ways to make their products and services better. You know what would vastly improve Yahoo Answers? Audra McDonald singing them, that’s what.

     

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.

     

  • Friday 5 — 7.11.2014

    Friday 5 — 7.11.2014

    1. linkedin connected appLinkedIn launched an app called Connected to simplify and enhance networking. The app provides members with more information about the current status of their contacts, including new jobs, media mentions, and the dubious milestone of the “work anniversary”. The calendar sync allows for pre-meeting intelligence, which means pushing you information about contacts just ahead of your meeting with them. Standalone apps have been offering similar functionality for a couple of years, but I suspect the breadth of LinkedIn’s user base will make it difficult for new entrants to compete.
    2. Monthly subscription costs for digital services, now available to you via a single, impetuous click on your smartphone, can really add up. Streaming media services like Netflix and Spotify and storage services like iCloud and Dropbox make life easier but tend to accrue. Here’s are some quick tips on how to reduce your monthly payments for digital services.
    3. What happens before, during, and after the moment you sign up for new social networks says a lot about the culture they are trying to foster, and the specific behaviors they are trying to encourage. Here’s a step-by-step review of how Instagram onboards new users.
    4. In any web design meeting, there’s someone who wants to know exactly what’s above the fold. But in this era of myriad form factors and scrolling on your smartphone, there is no fold. Really, there isn’t.
    5. How do you make time for social media — but not automate to the degree that you’re mistaken for a robot? Here are 10 time-saving social media tools to consider.

    Weekend fun: Maybe you and your friends have a bunch of random stuff on your Instagram feeds. But it likely pales in comparison with what the TSA posts. 

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.

     

  • Summer reading picks

    Summer reading picks

    widener libraryWith Memorial Day and Harvard’s commencement in the rear view mirror and temperatures in Boston threatening to stay over 50º F, it’s time to start thinking about summer reading. Not a lot slows down at work, but I invariably put together an overly-ambitious summer reading list. This year, I’ll try get through at least five of them, lest the sea of tweets reduces me to faking cultural literacy.

    A few useful lists as starting points:

    Many swear by goodreads, but the site feels too vertical a social network to stay connected with more than periodically. Also, I trust someone’s reading tastes far more when served up within the context of an overall social network profile. After all, how seriously will you take a satirical novel recommendation when it’s posted among 74 toddler pictures?

    Mostly I read on Kindle for iPad, but for vacation I rely on the physical books, which are excellent for resisting the temptation of toggling to work email. Summer provides an opportunity to shut down the laptop and with focused attention — something too often in short supply.

     

  • Friday 5 — 5.9.2014

    Friday 5 — 5.9.2014

    Email in bed

    1. You likely don’t need a set of graphics and stark statistics to remind you how much work email has encroached on our personal lives. Also: thoughtful essay on how excessive corporate email promotes burnout rather than productivity.
    2. Email marketing is a staple of corporate and nonprofit outreach, but how do you get those overloaded recipients to open it? See these five tips for email subject line that attract readers.
    3. Here’s a comprehensive rundown on LinkedIn strategy for evolving from a resumé parking lot to an online newspaper. Growth plans include investments in mobile, international expansion, and “delivering massively personalized experiences.”
    4. WordPress.com parent Automattic closed $160M in funding on a $1.16B valuation. Known for its robust developer community and emphasis on clean user interface, WordPress now powers an astonishing 22% of 10 million websites today. The investment’s a strong bet on WordPress to continue its growth beyond niche blogging to become the best publishing platform in the world.
    5. Smartphones, smart watches, smart toothbrushes are now all available to contribute to our families’ personal data exhaust streams. These data streams are loyalty cards on steroids, providing a live feed of behaviors which when aggregated are a potential goldmine for retailers. Prediction: myriad law suits to emerge over parents’ use of their children’s personal data in return for discounting.

    Weekend fun: Perhaps amusing only for soccer fans, Arsenal players respond to mean tweets. Extra credit for gratuitous Vorsprung door Technik joke.

     

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.

  • Friday 5 — 12.27.2013

    Friday 5 — 12.27.2013

    The end of each year brings a slew of “best of” posts — here are five of my favorites:

    1. Flowing Data selected data visualizations that told great stories and made meaningful, real-world observations through data. See visualizations of everything from poisoned names to pizza to porn.
    2. Looking for a way to spend your gift card spoils from the holiday? ReadWriteWeb summarizes the best smartphones and tablets of 2013 (including the perennially underestimated HTC One).
    3. We’ve come a long way from webpages populated by Arial and Georgia only. Here’s a solid roundup of the best web and mobile fonts of 2013. Be sure to drop the term “semi-serif” in your next design meeting or at a particularly dull New Year’s party.
    4. Want to see some great typography in action? Line25 has rounded up 40 great examples from 2013. We’re definitely in the year of ubiquitous text-over-full-bleed-photo and endless scroll, but the type treatments are varied and interesting.
    5. With the constant distraction and our ever-shortening attention spans, productivity hacks can be a lifesaver. This list of best Mac OSX utilities can help you stay on track — my personal favorites Evernote and RescueTime are on there.

    Weekend fun: Before you put away the Christmas decorations, anyone who has ever sat through a ponderous brand presentation led by a creative director must watch the Santa Brand Book. And if people in 2013 have been more naughty than nice in reviewing your creative, consider implementing a Hater Translator.

    hater translator by mullen

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.

  • Friday 5 — 07.12.2013

    Every Friday, find five quick links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas. Source: the internet.

    1. What would reddit be without GIFs? Buzzfeed asks if imgur is not-so-stealthily taking over reddit from the inside.
    2. Coursera brought in $43 million in an allegedly oversubscribed round — raising their total VC funding to $66 million. Goals are to grow team, expand into mobile, and improve third party integration.
    3. The Washington Post reports on new research on women leaders and the Goldilocks syndrome. Still a double bind between being assertive and acquiescent, but some progress in perception of the assertive.
    4. For those of you obsessed with productivity hacks, IFTTT goes mobile with an iPhone app. Who knew back in sixth grade math that if-then statements would be an important part of daily life?
    5. Hard to believe that it was only five years ago that Apple’s app store opened its virtual doors. Here’s a recap of some of the significant advances during that half-decade, like the creation of a $10 billion new industry, and impact of a mobile workforce on enterprise IT practices.

  • How to manage your information diet

    information cloudIt’s beyond a truism that we live in an age of information overload. Email is overwhelming, connection is ubiquitous with most of us tethered to one or more mobile devices, and it feels like a new, must-see social web service emerges every day.

    Unless you’re a full-time social media specialist, there’s a lot more to your job than listening and posting on social channels. Apart from email, there are hours of meetings, and one would hope, some time carved out each day for focused work. So, how do you put yourself on an information diet that gives you what you need to survive and grow, but lets you stay productive?

    There are smart applications and tip-filled websites that will help you determine your own recipe for success, but here’s mine:

    • Start the day with filtered RSS feeds. Google Reader is a terrific service (although rumors of its demise persist). I keep a short list of feeds that are germane to my role and my interests, and prune the kudzu of sites I feel I ought to read frequently and mercilessly. A small number of recipes in IFTTT surface content to me more aggressively, like a favorite blogger’s posts as text message.
    • Schedule some of your social publishing. Now that you have great feed content, how do you share it? I mostly use Buffer to post; colleagues swear by Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. Scheduling enables sharing of relevant or interesting content throughout the day, but doesn’t replace listening and live interaction.
    • Use old-school Google alerts. Google Alerts is an undersung technology that still delivers a lot of value. Create terms that are tight enough a filter for only the truly relevant to slip through, and prioritize terms by importance (as it happens, daily digest, and weekly digest). Newsle is a great service for following real news about people in your social networks.
    • Select smart people as human filters. As digital moves into the C-suite, a lot of hedgehogs have to become foxes—moving away from an understanding of one big thing to represent a breadth of strategy, content, marketing, and technical knowledge. Topics I am fascinated by but rely on the deep expertise of others on the social web include: data science, information visualization, responsive design, and time management. Learn from others—and use social to connect and thank.
    • Hold 60 minute blocks for working where you don’t check email. Interrupted time is less productive time, but being realistic about small enough chunks to safeguard is what enables some focused work. I leave my phone facing up, and mark only a few folks for the VIP inbox on iPhone and iPad—if there’s a critical message I can see and address it, but no other noise breaks through.
    • Between meetings, read, act on, and delete email. This is easier said than done—but if the approach is to read it and get rid of it, it keeps the 1500+ received a day from overloading the system. When something becomes a task, move it to a productivity tool where it stacks up against your own priorities, not just the inbox-driven ones.
    • Find the right productivity tool. I’ve written about and tried a range of productivity apps supporting granular tasks and life goals, but Evernote, I just can’t quit you.  Task lists, document sharing, web clipper, IFTTT integration, audio, and Skitch make this indispensable. I was slow getting the app on my iPhone, and the recent addition has made even hallway conversations more productive.
    • Perhaps the biggest time saver/information management idea is a surprising one: carve out time every week to listen to colleagues and schedule regular 1:1 meetings, even if they are 15 minutes long. Try to put down the device and really listen. What’s your colleagues’ critical path? How can you help? How might you inadvertently be under-communicating or worse, hindering progress? Scheduling time in-person reduces email follow up, and builds the kind of understanding and connection essential for getting things done.
    [tweetable]Every knowledge worker with strategic projects, exploding inboxes, and looming deadlines can relate the the pain of the deluge of information.[/tweetable] These are my ways to wade in without drowning—what are yours?

  • 5 apps for self-improvement in 2013

    Having survived the near-miss apocalypse, today we’re all turning our calendars over to 2013. Many are pausing for a natural moment of reflection and resolution — all those things we were yesterday will henceforth cease to be, and today we begin again as our newer, better selves. At least until we remember where we hid the cookies.

    Here are five apps useful to those looking to track time, create new habits, or merely keep a firmer grip on their to-do lists in 2013. I recently read The Power of Habit, which underscored the importance of documenting what you intend to do in order to actually get the damn thing done. The social overlay is powerful in these aspirational apps — it’s one thing to tell oneself in the mirror of one’s intention to walk five miles a day, and quite another to tell a couple hundred Facebook friends. These apps promote behavior change by understanding the importance of social capital, and that “‘individual’ health behaviors are actually complex network phenomena” which play a part in spreading conditions like happiness to obesity.

    1. Wunderlist 2 :: Ideal for the task management obsessed, this app has elegant list making and sharing. Am still muddling through its recent (Christmas Eve!) upgrade and attendant syncing problems, but a really lovely user interface.
    2. Evernote :: This is my go-to productivity app, and Evernote 5 delivers a raft of useful, new features. It always makes me feel vaguely guilty — am I Evernoting to my full potential? — but features like the page camera and the audio are killer.
    3. Lift :: Think of Lift as cleanly-designed reminders to be that better person in 2013. Pre-set options include “Unclutter” (4,190 participants); “Go to gym” (10,867 participants); and “Tell my wife I love her” (3,426 participants — presumably the husbands are already hearing this, or the wives just can’t be bothered?). The social network feels like a big benefit here: if that many other people can unclutter a cabinet, why shouldn’t I?
    4. Everest :: Everest captures your long and short term goals and allows you break them into small steps. It’s designed to be a lush, photo-rich experience. As the name implies, much of the user content seems more focused on long-term goals rather than the banal day-to-day. (h/t Eric Kuhn for prompting me to check this out.)
    5. Timer :: If you’re anything like me, a task can expand to fill any amount of time allotted to it. There’s no hidden, killer feature — it’s set of lovely, clean programmable buttons that prompt you to keep yourself on track and on time.