Way We Work

I am blessed with the opportunity to pretty much go and work anywhere in the world. Over the last couple of years, I got myself totally out of debt, (which in itself has given me a huge sense of freedom and I'll admit, pride). This circumstance, combined with my optimism and unbounded enthusiasm for all things CivicActions, I'm feeling empowered to go just about anywhere in the world to live and work. UPDATE: I love the idea of spending a year abroad as an itinerant digital worker.

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A few months ago I joined a new coworking space in Seattle, Giraffe Labs. Giraffe Labs grew out of a Seattle group called Saturday House. Well both got a mention on John Cook's Venture Blog over at the Seattle PI. As founder Anders Conbere was quoted:

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Yesterday while waiting at the Cancun airport with Aaron, Henry, Mirasol, Nedjo, Owen and Justine, a few of us got to talking about FriendFeed, Twitter and del.icio.us. Aaron and I are avid del.icio.us users, tagging all sorts of interesting sites. And we follow numerous lists and feeds thus pulling together some great information and redistributing it through the company.

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LIVE FROM THE ENGINEERING PLAYA DEL CARMEN RETREAT... I first used vi in 1984 while writing an Operating System for one of my classes. I probably really learned vi while playing nethack during the summer of 1984. I've used vi in almost every job I've had since then. Even when I was on windows, I used mks toolkit or cygwin. That's a 24 years of vi use. I know that we all love our editor. And I have no desire to get into an editor flame war. The point is that I that I've been using vi for a long time, and it's very comfortable for me.

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Recently I've been looking into new web2.0 and, I guess web3.0, and social media trends - sites and services that are popping up like mushrooms after a rain. I've found many interesting one and wanted to share a few, and at the same time ask that if you know of anything really cool that you think I might not know about, please send it my way, either by email/contact form or tag them on del.icio.us for:gregoryheller

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What is one of the best tips to get out of the creative slump? Need to find that extra juice for your Drupal theme? It may be simple, but I love to use Flickr for my inspiration! Flickr has millions of photos, and thousands of groups to showcase amazing work. Vandelay Design has compiled a list of 99 Flickr groups to help get you unstuck, such as: http://flickr.com/groups/webdesign-inspiration/ http://flickr.com/groups/illustrationnow/ http://flickr.com/groups/psdtuts/ http://flickr.com/groups/photoshop/ http://flickr.com/groups/designtype/ http://flickr.com/groups/yourvector/ Inspired! That's the way we work!

Without a doubt, the most productive time in getting through my inbox is when I'm on an airplane, sans Internet access. This week I'm exploring Freedom to help me accomplish the same result. Essentially, Freedom disables all wireless and ethernet networking on an Apple computer for up to 3 hours at a time. After the time is up, Freedom will re-enable your network adapters and display a confirmation that you're back online. If you absolutely need to pull the cord and MUST get back online, just restart your computer to reset. Let me restate that: just stopping or quitting the Freedom application will not re-enable your network adapters - and yes, this is purposeful! Freedom is a program designed to help you get things done, away from the distractions of network connectivity. http://www.ibiblio.org/fred/freedom/

"Who do you want to Jott?" These simple six words have changed my life. About four months ago, I found Jott.com, a simple and free service that lets me dictate messages into my cell phone that are transcribed instantly into txt and emails. However, the best part is these same messages can be time-delayed and you can have the Jott service send a reminder (i.e. "tomorrow at 5pm") straight to your phone. Given that I often find myself in the car or on the run, Jott has become one of my most used tools and provides just the perfect blend of simplicity with stellar technology.

Like many Web workers and folks who spend a lot of time online, I often use my Inbox as my master To-Do list. However, I am clear that with over 400 incoming messages a day, this process is not sustainable and I've needed to find a better task management solution. Over the last few days I've been playing with Cultured Code's Things.app for the Mac OS, and I don't know if I'm just high-in-love with this new application, or if this honeymoon stage will end soon. Still, I thought I'd post my first impressions and share my excitement with Things.app. Now, I'm not a huge GTD advocate (the framework Things is built around), although it doesn't seem to matter. What I've needed is a way to quickly add new tasks, prioritize them, add tags and notes and sort them by my contexts, such as work, home, wedding, family, etc. While Things has limited complexity, it still seems to be a powerful approach to task management and a perfect fit for how I organize my day. As I dive a bit deeper with Things, I'll update the blog with some additional thoughts after a few more weeks of regular usage. To try a free, beta version of Things (Mac OS only) check it out at http://culturedcode.com/things .

One of my favorite tools in the belt is TextExpander.

TextExpander has saved me countless keystrokes with customized shortcuts for the text I type the most.

See the screencast to get a sense of how I use this amazing app.