Scrybe - Check it out at Download Squad
I don’t often promote my writing at Download Squad here on my personal blog, but today I need to point out a post I did about an upcoming web-based productivity suite called Scrybe. This thing looks incredible, and if it can deliver on the promises made in the promotional video, it’s going to be a hit. Check out the comments at Download Squad too - it’s almost unanimous that people want to try it.
Here’s an excerpt:
Scrybe is an online organizer that is grounded in one word: context. The user interface is designed to always give the user context relating to the data they are dealing with. So if you’re working in your calendar, you can fly up to a year view, or dig down all the way to a day view, and all of the related information is intelligently displayed so that you never lose track of where you are. Watching the video on their site, you immediately get a feeling of “that just makes sense”. Google Calendar is good, but doesn’t appear to be as good as this.
Oh, and if you like it, please Digg it!
Tags: Download Squad, DownloadSquad, 43 Folders, 43Folders, Backpack, Getting Things Done, GettingThingsDone, Google Calendar, Google Notebook, , GoogleCalendar, GoogleNotebook, GTD, offline productivity, OfflineProductivity, online offline, online , productivity, OnlineOffline, OnlineProductivity, productivity, Scrybe, synchronization, 37 Signals, 37Signals
What’s New? Everything!
I have been quiet here lately, as well as on the other blogs I write at. Sometimes life hits you in the face, and extra-curricular activities have to take a back seat to what’s going on.
So, what’s going on? Well, for starters, I’m moving to a new job. I’ve taken a job in marketing at a software company that I previously worked for in a technical role. Marketing is the direction I’ve wanted to take my career for some time, and I know my new company’s technology and am excited by the direction they’re going, so this is an incredibly good fit. I’ll be working with some very close friends, which never hurts, but it’s truly invigorating to be excited about both the new role and the software I’ll be working with. Sometimes when an opportunity comes along, you’d be an idiot not to follow the path to see where it takes you. For me, I think this is one of those times.
As if wrapping up an incredibly busy project management role in preparation for the move to the new job isn’t stressful enough, Fran and I are also in the market for a new home. This will be our first purchase, which means a lot of firsts. I’m sure any of you that have gone through buying or selling a home know exactly what I’m talking about.
So, if you see me and I seem a bit stunned, it’s because I’m getting very little sleep, and dealing with more stress than I care to consider. All that being said, I couldn’t be happier with how things are going, and I think it will work out very well once the dust has settled.
Working at home in the buff?
For anyone that either works from home fairly often or knows people who do, this survey from SonicWALL might be worth a read. I’ll give you the juicy part:
All respondents were relaxed about their personal habits when working remotely. While about 39% of respondents of both sexes said they wear sweats while working from home, 12% of males and 7% of females wear nothing at all.
Just think about that next time you’re on the phone with someone who’s working at home that day… 
Tags: working nude, working naked, working from home, telecommuting
The West Wing Being Cancelled
It looks like my #1 favourite show on TV, The West Wing, is being cancelled at the end of this season. I can’t express how disappointed I am about this. Yes, the show has gone through some spells of relatively low quality episodes, but as of late the quality has come back to near Sorkin-era standards. It’ll be a shame to see it go. Here’s an interesting article on Slate wondering whether the show could be resurrected on iTunes. I doubt it, but it’s a nice fantasy.
Tags: West Wing, The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin
MSN Desktop Search Beta
At Buzz’s prompting in an email this morning, I have downloaded and installed the new MSN Toolbar Suite Beta with desktop search functionality. Although I understand that this thing has impressed Scoble (not surprising) and a few others, it may suffer from the Desktop Search on training wheels that Google’s Desktop Search also suffer’s from, which is that there doesn’t appear to be any way to edit a list of known plain-text file extensions that the user would like to index. Both Copernic and X1 have this invaluable feature.
One feature that none of the desktop search companies seems to have figured out is that indexing when a computer is on battery power is a Very Bad Thing. Why can’t they check to see if a computer is on AC or battery power, and only perform indexing when on AC (or at least give users the option)? This just seems like common sense to me, but has been completely overlooked in all of the Desktop Search suites I’ve tried.
I have to say that my brief experience with this new MSN Toolbar hasn’t been wonderful. There’s no obvious preview functionality like both X1 and Copernic offer. For me, that’s two strikes already against it. We’ll see how long it lasts on my system. The one thing going for it is that Buzz says that hooks have been provided to allow ActiveWords to build an agent to allow ActiveWords to have unfettered access to the toolbar’s search capabilities. That intruiges me.
By the way, ActiveWords rules.
[Update] Marc’s mini-review of MSN’s Desktop Search sums up my thoughts perfectly. Decent enough beta, but not good enough for prime-time.
