Internet Explorer (IE7) Beta 2

After my previous post about IE7, I downloaded and installed it. It looks pretty neat – it's a different experience compared to IE6. I like those tabs. I had used tabs before on FireFox. Well, I don't use FireFox or any other browsers that often and that leaves me with IE6 today.

My observations and wish list for IE 7:
Although, I wish the icons / menu items were a bit intuitive. There could have been a different intent to have such an interface, or probably there is some option to set to have the classical menu instead of what it is now. It takes a while to figure out some of the options on the browser.

I found another issue with unicode. Inspite of changing to a UTF-8 encoding or different kinds of encoding, it doesn't render unicode characters well. Sure enough, i don't think i had the language pack installed – nevertheless, I would expect it to tell me about the language pack and not just render junk characters. Perhaps, I missed it?

Getting Things Done – David Allen

Okay – I have been reading / listening to personal organization related materials these days such as managing emails, Time Management, using other productivity tools etc.,

So, I am listening to a CD-set "Getting Things Done" by David Allen.  Back in school days, we were asked to memorize everything and be ready with the tasks that we needed to do, keep thinking about etc., Later on in the past few years as i read more books and be more practical I am hearing that "keep ToDos out of mind and put it on paper or where ever we have access so that it can be dealt closely". It makes so sense today – once we put those Todo items on paper we can allow our minds to think important things. David Allen puts it as "mind is like water" allow it to flow and be creative and not be limited to tasks that can be stored and retrieved when needed.

I found this summary notes wiki that would be really helpful since I am listening to the CD and not writing it down , mentions about 5 point work flow processing.

• Collect
• Process
• Organize
• Review
• Do – Take Action

One of the points he makes is – every task needs to have the Next Actionable Step and then it can be channelled to appropriate bucket. Just about few weeks ago, I cleared my personal email msn account inbox from over 1000 items to about 250 items – What did I do with 700+ emails that I had in my inbox?
- deleted unwanted emails
- read what was needed and deleted them
- moved to appropriate folders
- replied / forwarded appropriate emails (follow up items) and deleted them
It is so relieving – and wished if I had done it a long time ago instead of writing to people that I haven't checked my emails

3 line summary from the notes wiki page:

1. keep everything out of your head
2. decide actions and outcomes when things first emerge on your radar, instead of later
3. regularly review and update the complete inventory of open loops of your life and work

 {technorati tag: Productivity tools}

Workflow processing with MS Outlook

I was recently reading a book "Workflow Processing using Microsoft Outlook" by David Allen. i have been using microsoft Outlook for many years now, and I am sure many others do – but how many of us really use it to the full extent. Alright, I agree it is a huge product and there are many things that can be done. Yes, I have used some of them like Notes, Tasks, Calendar, Contacts etc other than Inbox. I also know many people limit the usage to inbox and not more. Well, I just said i have used tasks and notes – But not really to an extent of improving productivity. As I was reading this book, it makes me think I haven't really used these features better to the fullest yet.

if you are interested to know what more can be done using Microsoft Outlook, check it out….

IE7 Beta2 is available now…

Internet Explorer7 Beta 2 version seems to be available now. I just noticed some information on IE blog. IE7 Beta 2 can be downloaded from here. IE blog also links us to transcript of the chat they had few days ago. Most questions have been answered there and might be helpful to you if you are using IE7 Beta and have any questions. 

Feeds Stats on wordpress

WordPress has this new stats section now for feeds or at least I noticed as new couple of days ago. I am yet to learn how and when this data is created but on the cursory view it looks pretty good and helps to know what feed readers accessed my blog.

Research Lecture Videos online

Alex Barnett links to Microsoft Research Guest lectures website where you can watch the great videos. I just watched the video titled "Blink: The power of thinking without thinking". I had sort of read this book long time ago, but now i was able to watch a presentation by the author himself. Got to love this technology, we get to get more information that we need. Thank you Alex for sharing about the videos. Blink is about the making better decisions and how the brain works. He also gives many examples of the some of the decisions made by the people in daily life. Thats pretty amazing. Do check it out.

One other video I just watched (again, there is a link on Alex's blog) was the one titled Naked Conversations –  a fascinating book I read a month ago. I had also met Robert Scoble some time ago in one of the geek dinner events and wanted to read the book once it was released.

Check it out…

Blogs and News papers

I usually don’t listen to the radio in car – but it just happened to turn on the radio last night while I was driving. I tuned into 94.9 KUOW a little after 8pm.I heard the term Blog and I stayed tuned at that station. There was this discussion going on about Blogs and News Papers and most news paper companies having their own blogs. What the Pros and Cons of having Blogs over News papers, etc, etc. It was very interesting interview.

What got me was the term “Credibility”. The conversation said – it is all about the credibility of who blogs it when people read the information. Yes, very sure that there are hundreds of links / blogs discussing the same topic. So how do we know what the genuine ones are? Whom do we listen/read to? How are the blogs controlled for the accuracy of information that is posted? One of the things I remember reading in one of the popular blogs (I know you guessed it) that if you are not open/disclosed who you are and what you do, etc while blogging, it takes a long way to earn and build that credibility.

Personally, I haven’t read the physical news papers in about 7 years now. How many people do you think are buying and reading news papers today? I assume most people would hop on to computer/internet and go directly to the news sites like MSNBC, NewYorkTimes, etc. Technorati is another site that links directly to recent posts in topics of your interest (technorati tags). I think to most extent it makes sense to get information quickly than wait until the editorial paper comes out the following day or the following week – by then – you guessed – information might be stale.

Listen to the interview audio if you would like.

Where do you think NewsPapers are heading to in this information era?

(note: just my personal thoughts about blogging and physical proofread newspapers – post is as is from my thoughts and not reviewed)

Reset your Microsoft Passport Network password….

I have started receiving an email from Passport.msn.com recently in the past 3 weeks saying I had requested for a password reset. But I have never requested for password reset on this account. I am not sure if it is some sort of spam from somewhere else or if there really something somebody doing with my hotmail account. Here is what I received in email:

———————————
Hello <myalias>@hotmail.com:You recently asked to reset your Microsoft Passport Network password by e-mail. Follow the instructions below to reset your password, or to cancel your password reset request. TO RESET YOUR PASSWORD:1. Select and copy the following Internet address.https://accountservices.msn.com/EmailPage.srf?emailid = <deleted identity>

2. Open a browser, paste the link in the address bar, then press Enter or Return on your keyboard.IF YOU DID NOT REQUEST TO RESET YOUR PASSWORD:1. Select and copy the following Internet address. https://accountservices.msn.com/EmailPage.srf?emailid = <>

2. Open a browser, paste the link in the address bar, then press Enter or Return on your keyboard.Thank you,
Microsoft Passport Network Customer SupportNOTE:
Please do not reply to this message, which was sent from an unmonitored e-mail address. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.
——————————————————————

Surprisingly both the steps above point to the same URL. Has anybody else received such email from msn?

The power of blogging…

well, I don't need to write about the power of blogging as there are already number of blogs, white papers, articles and even books out there talking about pros and cons of blogging, the power of blogging, etc etc.
2 books related to blogging I recently read or currently reading:  
       Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble & Shel Israel
       Blogging with MSN Spaces by Katherine Murray, Mike Torres
   Naked Conversations is a great book to understand the concept of blogging; why to blog; live examples of people being successful in corporate blogging, etc.,
   Blogging with MSN spaces – helps you use lot of cool features in MSN spaces available. I am still half way thru' with this book but I found it very interesting.

I started this post to share my recent observation for the power of blogging. I often read Guy Kawasaki's blog. I often find valuable information for some of the things I wanted to learn. well, recently he had posted about request for topics or ideas to cover in his blog. Apparently, there were over 100 people responded and I am sure there would be over 100 ideas – it is a great resource of ideas for anybody to build on from. It is just amazing.

I don't know why I am thinking about the information age and knowledge sharing related stuffs today. I just remembered a talk I had attended long time ago by The Allison Group where I had heard about geCyberSchaft – that we have knowledge everywhere - it is now hard to process and use what we need. The power of building communities, blogging, forums – most times help build the hi-touch – build the relationship (as Robert says) with people.

Mentorship

Mentor as I read in one of the books recently and experienced most of these while I had(ve) the mentors for myself.

M – Serve as a Role Model

E – Encouragement – be a cheer leader / advocate to a mentee

N – Nurthure – Make the most of the mentee's talents to build 'em

T – Teacher – be  a coach – Give Constructive Feedback (be honest that helps Mentee to build his/her character)

O – Organization – guide through the metee's goals and action

R – Reality – Help mentee set realiztic and achievable goals – encourage and help them achieve each one of their goals

Not only must a Mentor know what to say but How to say it and when.

I was having a conversation with somebody and he happened to mention something similar to it – "Often to people it doesn't matter what you say, but How you say it makes the difference. " I believe this also counts the emotional factor into it.