One of the really cool things about the service is that you can sign up to test features before they are released to the entire user base.  Right now I’m testing the new smart add feature, it’s awesome and i just noticed a really cool touch that I thought deserved sharing.

See the small window with the ? in the top left, it lists the shortcuts that you can use in the smart add box.  Seems pretty simple right?  The little window actually stays open after you click the question mark until you explicitly close it using the x.  Why do I think this is interesting?  Because it allows me to see those shortcuts as I’m using the tool, it doesn’t force me to go to another window or stop and hover over a link to get the info, it makes learning the app a lot easier, it removes the friction between becoming and advanced user.

1. 37 Signals Backpack – I had pages split up into categories then would use lists on the page to store the links to the sites, didn’t work very well because it required a huge amount of manual work
2. Delicious – The obvious and one of the most popular solutions, I don’t know why but I don’t like it, I’ve never been able to integrate it into my computer use habits.
3. Google Reader – Using the “Note in reader” bookmarklet and tags in google reader this has been the best solution I’ve come across so far (but the tagging can get messy)
4. Gmail – For a long time I would simply send myself an email and then move it to a bookmarks folder, didn’t really like this solution either
5. Posterous – Just signed up for an account here, it’s got a great bookmarklet as well but not sure about tags just yet as I’ve barely started using it!

For the past 2 years the amazing sales team that I work with at Q4 Web Systems have ventured out to San Diego for the annual NIRI conference. It’s a really important event for us and it’s always great to hear about it when the team get’s back.

This morning while I was going through google reader, I noticed this post from IR Web Report talking about some of the newer social networks (twitter and friendfeed specifically) and NIRI’s presence on both of those social networking sites. There is a friendfeed room dedicated to this years conference and you can follow niri08 on twitter.

I was really excited to see this, as part of my job going to these events doesn’t really make sense for me personally but I’m always really excited to hear about the event afterwards. This year it looks like I’ll be able to follow the event a little more closely and share in the experience even though I won’t physically be there.

It’s great to see these newer technologies playing a role in business sector that’s just starting to realize some of the potential of these new networks, it goes a long way to prove how valuable some of these services can be.

Future plans include (some might happen, all might never happen)

• an offline version of backpack
• a to-do list application that is driven by backpack lists
• a WPF client for doing various backpack things (reminders, journal and status updates)
• update status on multiple targets (backpack journal / status, twitter, pownce etc)

If you are interested in this at all please have a look at the code and let me know if you are interested in using it or contributing. Oh and any / all feedback is great too.

(video source: http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter)

It’s been about a month since I started using Rescuetime, it’s been a pleasant and eye opening experience. A few of my initial assumptions have proven to be on the mark and some of the others not so much

I don’t spend nearly as much time on my computer as I thought
I thought I was spending insane amounts of time at my computer when I first started using RescueTime, that’s what I subconsciously thought and I figured RescueTime would just reinforce this assumption, boy was I wrong. Over the month or so I’ve been using RescueTime it tells me that I am spending an average of 6 hours a day on my computer. Mind you there have definitely been some days that have been 12+ hours and some that have been much less (weekends get included in the totals and I have been spending next to no time on my computer during weekends lately). This has to be my one real big gripe with the app, I can’t specify times when it should record and when it shouldn’t, that would be a nice feature to see in the future.

I do a lot of work @ work, but not always at my computer
The metrics generally show that I am highly efficient and very productive when I am at work, but I spend around 5 hours a day out of a 8 hour work day doing stuff at my computer. This is an obvious indicator that I have a fair number of meetings as part of my work life, and I also know that I have been buying my lunch a lot over the last month so that makes for a longer period away during the lunch break. None of this particularly bothers me that much it’s just interesting to know this.

I know what you did last month!
Some of the really cool numbers I get out of RescueTime relate to what stuff I’m actually doing at work. I like to think that I am a developer but RescueTime let’s me know differently. This past month we decided to move all of our development servers in house. I was tasked with making this happen so an inordinate amount of time last month was spent in MS Remote desktop and working on infrastructure. One of the other great reporting features is slicing the time charts by tags. When I tag a program or url I usually do it in this format “work, development”, “work, client”, “work, support” that way I can look at a day and see how much each sub type I do relative to work related stuff. Again a really interesting way to examine your day.

Gooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllls
One of the greatest features of RescueTime is the ability to set goals for yourself. I set a few so that I could monitor how much time I spent in Google reader (I spend a lot of time reading feeds), how much time I spent working and how much time I spent in IM programs. These goals are prominently displayed on the dashboard so I can instantly see when I’m reaching numbers I’m not comfortable with. It’s helped me quantify what I thought were time wasters with real numbers (the data will set you free!)

Tagging just got easier
About 2 weeks ago a great new feature was introduced which has helped with the ongoing upkeep you have to do to keep the numbers in RescueTime accurate. Auto tagging looks at the sites and programs you use and does it’s best to tag them based on your historical usage patterns. In my first post, I was worried about how much time I would have to spend tagging new applications and sites, what happened is that after a couple of weeks the number of new sites and programs I used dropped significantly and I went from tagging every day to tagging every 2-3 days, auto tagging has made this even easier as I can just auto tag the whole list of untagged items and only manually tag the remaining few, a big time saver!

And the verdict is?
I love RescueTime! It’s really opened my eyes and made me aware of how much hard data can help you make better decisions about how and when to use your time to it’s fullest extent. I am really looking forward to the next few months as the data builds up and I get even more insight into how I spend my time on computers. If you are curious about what you do when your parked in front of the keyboard, you should install RescueTime and bask in the glory of your new found self awareness, the data will set you free!

(from Jeff Lins blog)

Seems like he was inspired by this set of notes taken from SXSW in Austin, Texas

Its a great video about how 37 signals has become a profitable business over the last 4-5 years without taking any venture capital funding or outside investment. Certainly a strange topic to discuss at a conference that is geared towards helping start up companies raise vc funding!

The tone of the video borders on hilarious at times with my absolute favorite part coming about 5 minutes just after David explains their business model (make a product, get some people to pay for it, make it better), he exclaims that its not rocket surgery!

Its really refreshing to see this kind of attitude in the high stakes work of internet businesses, and it goes to show that a commitment to your business, product and customers can make you just as successful as a huge exit to google or microsoft.

Now problems are understandable and everyone expects sites that have massive amounts of traffic to have some problems, but there has not been a peep from twitter (the company) about any of the issues that have been going on. It’s been since at least friday and not one word? Are they working on it? Going to be fixed soon? Later?

Twitter, where are you?

I’ve been asked by several people what twitter is and what is the value? I admit, we do live in a world that is riddled with information in all different forms. Twitter is just another one of those streams. But back to the value, it’s not an easy question to answer and it’s not a one answer fits all type of deal either. Twitter is effectively what you make of it. It’s not for everyone for sure but those who use it, do love it. The key thing though is that like myself everyone uses twitter in there own particular way. Twitter not a form of communication it’s a venue for communication and with that comes a vast amount of noise that you are responsible for cutting through.

Twitter is the perfect example of a network of trust. You don’t immediately start following hundreds or thousands of people, you begin with a few people that you trust. In my case some of the earliest people that I started following were tech blogger’s who’s blogs I’d followed. A couple of examples would be Robert Scoble and Scott Hanselman. Now these aren’t people I would necessarily trust in real life but in the digital world I tend to value and agree with a lot. What started happening is that I would see them replying to things people had asked them then I would go and look at that other persons twitter stream and I might follow that person or I might not, but that’s how your network builds out and it’s an interesting real world example of a natural built in human condition.

But again, back to value. It’s going to be up to you here to make it valuable for yourself. It’s easy to get sucked into the negativity of twitter but it can be something that is a positive experience. If it’s important to you, you can make the twitter experience work but you just have to give it a fair chance and at least a bit of your attention.