Sam Harrelson

Sam's Personal Stream of Life 
Tags


Filed under

GMail

 
December 30, 2009

Looking Forward to the Year of Google Voice

A Google executive said the company has only scratched the surface of what it plans to do with Google Voice, the phone management application that lets users route calls to all of their phones from one unique number.
via eweek.com

2010 is going to be the breakout year for Google Voice.

Personally, it's been the most revolutionary app experience since I opened GMail for the first time on April 6, 2004.

I can't wait to see how the service improves.

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   GMail   Google Apps   web2.0  

Comments [2]

December 6, 2009

How I Get Things Done (Dec '09 Edition)

In my constant ever-evolving "Get Things Done" process, I've tried many solutions from OmniFocus to Google Tasks to RememberTheMilk to todo.txt to just a .txt file to... well, you get the idea.

However, I've been using a new flow for the past week that might have some real sticking power as it combines journaling with todo'ing (and my Moleskine) and has multiple entry/exit/access points.  Partly inspired by my pal and fellow GTD sojourner, Scott Jangro, I decided to share:

1. It all starts in the iPhone WriteRoom app where I daily create a new file labeled Year/Month/Date Day with tags like @sds (for school) @MH (for my daughter), @home (for home-related errands) etc. Some entries are todo's and some are just notes and pieces of info I'd like to remember from that day.  

 4163741187_fb53b99d01_o.jpg

2.  I keep a list of about a week's worth of journaled notes on my iPhone for quick reference:

4163741507_fb3bbcc97e_o.jpg 

3. These notes sync over the 'net with the SimpleText.ws (open source) instance that WriteRoom uses (which is simple and awesome):

4163722757_cc7c5fe16e_o.jpg

4. Daily, I do a quick refresh to see if there's anything I need to add/subtract or mark as very important for the next day and then email the note to two places... 

4163746287_ea7df1af10_o.jpg

GMail (where the notes go into special "Notes / Journal" label) and

4163753677_45f015083c_o.jpg

Evernote (where the notes go into a "Journal / Notes" notebook).

That's a great deal of redundancy (the notes also end up in a desktop folder that is sync'd with Dropbox and JungleDisk), but it's all pretty mindless backup that I don't have to fuss over. Plus, the physical act of my emailing the notes every evening to GMail, Evernote and the Dropbox folder forces me to stop for five minutes and consciously review the notes.  That's invaluable. Thanks for that idea, Scott.

So, that's how I get things done and record the things I do in Dec '09. 

I'm sure it will change either subtlety or drastically in the coming months. However, the basics have staying power!

 

 

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   evernote   GMail   GTD   iphone   WriteRoom  

Comments [4]

August 23, 2009

Interesting That You Get a Whole New Google Apps Account (25 gigs) With Wave

Not that I'm complaining since this is a developer release and all, but it is still interesting that your Wave account is so seperate from your main Google Account...

I wonder what the rollover process will be when Wave starts opening to the public on September 30?

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   GMail   Google   Google Apps   Google Wave  

Comments [2]

August 17, 2009

I wonder how anyone uses GMail or GReader without keystrokes...

Seriously folks, J and K. 

Start there.

It'll change your life.

I'm constantly amazed when I talk to "long time" GMail (or more rarely but more encouraging) Google Reader users who don't use the J or K or "tab + send" or the plethora of keyboard shortcuts that make these platforms SO much more valuable and intuitive.

I'm beginning to suspect that GMail is still behind Hotmail and Yahoo Mail in terms of adoption because folks haven't discovered J/K, Shift+1, Shift+3, Y, E, etc... 

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   GMail   Google   google reader   technology   web2.0  

Comments [12]

August 8, 2009

My OS (In Perpetual Beta)

Sent from my iPhone

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   37signals   backpack   friendfeed   GMail   GTD   Moleskine   Pinboard   Posterous   productivity   twitter  

Comments [12]

July 30, 2009

Great Review of @Posterous

Years of building and maintaining my Wordpress blog have resulted in my learning a lot about Wordpress and getting a lot of grease under my fingernails. Weeks of using Posterous has resulted in a media-rich blog with several posts per week. Tell me which service is more powerful.
via suntimes.com

I started using Posterous primarily as a photo-blog back in September of '08.

However, it's transitioned into my full time personal blog as I've changed up the samharrelson.com domain into a static landing (pointer) page.

Posterous solves so many problems for me.

Thanks to Andy Ihnatko for the great review affirming my love and thanks to the Posterous team for a fantastic product that has renewed my love of posting.

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   blogging   GMail   Posterous   technology   web2.0   Wordpress  

Comments [0]

July 26, 2009

FriendFeed Catchup in GMail

I absolutely love FriendFeed's GMail IM integration. It's how I consume most of my FriendFeed content as well as lots from my favorite folks on Twitter that I have piped into FF via the Imaginary Friends (now Rooms) feature.

So, if I miss a few hours and want to catch up on what is going on in the Valley or from the folks I follow (and left GMail open on my Macbook), I can just open up the "Chat with FF" message waiting on me in my GMail FriendFeed label and scan. Plus, I can go back and search topics or people I'm interested in after a few days.

Not completely practical for everyone, but I love the feature (and greatly miss the good old days when Twitter had the same IM integration with Track).


Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   friendfeed   GMail   Google   technology   twitter   web2.0  

Comments [0]