The iPhone 5 Parody: A Taller Change Than Expected
Funny parody about the new iPhone 5! Enjoy!
[tentblogger-youtube XNBP18nrRdw]
The iPhone 5 Parody: A Taller Change Than Expected – YouTube.
GTD + Evernote = The Secret Weapon
All twelve people who read my blog…most of you all friends or family…know me quite well. You all know me as a highly relational, “water cooler” guy, that seems to fly by the seat of his pants and is not real organized. That is a pretty fair assessment. I have fought for years with the ugly four letter words in my life called “discipline,” “productivity,” and “organization.” I always seem to try to find ways to be productive and more organized in my life, but often fail miserably.
While on vacation over Thanksgiving, I finally got around to reading David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity (or GTD for short). It is a really good read and makes total sense…and if I can do the concepts in the system, anyone can do them!
The biggest concept that I have taken from the GTD process is the goal of having a “mind like water.” In essence, when you are not thinking about all of the things you must do, but have a reliable system to refer to, you use much less brain power remembering–which frees you up to dream really big dreams and make a difference in the world. I know that I waste a LOT of energy and brain power worrying about “everything” I have to do and then I am paralyzed not knowing what to do next. I am finally getting more organized and have felt like I have found the “holy grail” of productivity with “The Secret Weapon.”
The folks over at TRUETONIQS have created a perfect system to go along with David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done (GTD). Their solution is a combination of an amazing, free application called Evernote, your email load, and the GTD process. It is really cool, and something I have been looking for quite some time now.
I have used “Things” for the Mac and iPhone, but have found it really slow to keep up with updates and bug fixes. The other negative with Things is that you have to sync manually over WiFi, not remotely over the cloud…not cool. Oh, and it is a bit pricy as well. Oh, and did I mention that Evernote is FREE!? AND…it works with both Mac and PC as well as all smart phone platforms! Sweetness!
What I love about The Secret Weapon is that these creative people are already using Evernote and training all of their employees to be more productive. It is working extremely well for them…and they want to share it with everyone. Here is an extremely creative overview of The Secret Weapon:
[tentblogger-youtube zQObM8qrE6g]
Make sure you check out The Secret Weapon website and watch all of their videos to get you up and running quickly with The Secret Weapon.
I found out about Evernote several years ago from Michael Hyatt’s blog, who has several great posts about practical, real world use of Evernote for everyone. Check them out. You should also check out Brett Kelly’s awesome e-book, Evernote Essentials, Second Edition. It is $25, but well worth the time and money to get you up and really proficient in Evernote really quickly.
So tell me, what system do you use to Get Things Done?
Apple’s iPad…Killed my Kindle??
Wow, the iPad is coming soon and it does a TON of amazing things that your iPhone, Macbook, and my Kindle does…all in a way that only Apple can produce. ?Going to have to save up my pennies for one of these!
So is it good for Amazon or not? Here is a good article by David Camoy that might shed some light on this new war that Jobs is waging against Amazon’s eBook empire.
Apple – iPad – The best way to experience the web, email, & photos.
Alltop.com and Pocket Bacon!
Ok, so I have been totally enamored by Guy Kawasaki’s blog and twitter.? I have read some of his books and his blogs for several years now, but the other day I listened to an interview of him on the Catalyst Leadership Podcast and became really interested in what he is doing.
He is a former Apple Fellow, “Mac Evangelist,” software developer, and entreprenuer.? Read more about him in this well written bio.
So here is where it gets interesting.? He has started this thing called “Alltop.”? Basically, it is like an “online magazine rack.”? Go check it out and begin searching all of your favorite topics…and maybe find some new topics you are interested in!? Actually, there is a whole topic on just BACON–what?? Come to find out, there are who blogs and websites dedicated to the greatness of bacon!
Here is where it gets even crazier!? There is an app for the iPhone called “Pocket Bacon!”? Check it out.? Wow, there is some amazing passion…all for bacon!? That is amazing!
Enjoy!
The Mac is Back
The Mac is back, baby! Ryan Hunter, our awesome IT guy at Forest Park saved my computer from having to be sent off to get a new hard drive! He did some sort of magic on this baby! He recovered all of my data, wiped the hard drive clean, and put it all back just like new! Thanks to this awesome application built into MacOS called Time Machine, I was able to get all of my documents and only missed about a weeks worth of work. . . pretty sweet.
Moral of the story. . . well two . . . 1. “You don’t know what you’ve got, til it’s gone” (sung in an 80s style Hair band kind of way!) and 2. Backup, Backup, and Backup again! Go ahead, spend the extra money to get an external hard drive and back up your data–often!
Thanks again Ryan! You are the man!
There’s a New Sheriff in Town–and he’s on the move!
I have had a PowerMac G4 tower for almost 5 years without a problem. It is still 
plugging away for me, but it sure isn’t very portable! There are times, like this week, when I have to do work from home and have to lug around the computer to so I can be around the family. But there is a new sheriff in town boys. (See comment from Brad Daily!) This brand spanking new Macbook Pro is going to (hopefully) last me another 5 years–but this time with a lot of portability!
I bought my first Mac in 1992 from my Sunday School teacher, who was a 
professional graphic artist. It was a Macintosh SE with a humongous internal hard drive of 40 MB!! I actually took out an installment loan for $1400 from Empire Bank and made monthly payments for a couple of years. It helped me write many a paper in both college at SMS and SWBTS. I loved that little thing and used it in ministry all the way until we moved back from Texas in 1998.
I got a PC in 1996 when we were living in Tulsa when my Mac hard drive (all 40 MB) crashed one late Sunday night while writing a paper for seminary. Of course the procrastination didn’t help as the paper was due the next day. Needless to say, the paper was a week late and we had an unexpected expense the next week. But once you go Mac, you never go back. Honestly the pricing was the major issue in not purchasing a Mac in seminary. My pastor at the time was a huge Mac guy, so the church I was serving in had several Macs in use and my SE (with new external hard drive–a whopping 100 MB variety) was my work computer.
I had a laptop at Hopedale when I was youth pastor, but it eventually died after we launched Finley Crossings. I had a lady walk up to me in the library a couple of weeks after that and gave me a check to go buy a new computer to do “whatever we needed it to do.” At the time, we really wanted to be able to do video and graphic design, so the Mac was the choice. The laptop version that would do what the desktop would do was way too expensive, so I gave up portability for power. It really is awesome to get the portability and flexibility back.