Good title right? Let’s just say I have been productive in many other others besides keeping CoolNerd updated. Well, I will do better this year. Okay enough of the guilt trip, I want to throw out a quick blurb about what I have been working on personally and professionally when it comes to being productive and managing projects and life in general. I will put out this disclaimer that I am not attempting to compete with the hords of productivity blogs and sites that are out in the WWW cloud.

About a month and a half ago, a friend of mine told me about Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen, and that it was changing his life in so many positive ways. I got the audio book and started listening to it to and from work. Little by little I started to see great advantages to many of the concepts he coaches on. There are loads of good sites on getting started with GTD, which a simple StumbleUpon or Google search will lead you too.

Here’s how I am doing GTD:

1. Treo 700wx - I know paper is a recommended way to get started, but I have my Treo with me all the time so that made an easier transition.
2. Pocket Informant 2007 - nice for the Treo to customize categories, lists, and a whole bunch of other cool features. This isn’t a necessary piece however to run GTD using the Treo.
3. Jello.Dashboard - very cool Outlook plugin that is very easy to install. I like Jello because I see at a glance my next actions, Inbox, contexts, projects, and calendar.
4. An In Basket on my desk
5. A Review Basket on my desk
6. I am in the process of building a tickler file system, but it is not at this point a highly critical piece to my GTD system because I don’t use paper that much.

That’s it so far for my GTD experience. There are tons of other things that I could be doing, but I figure I will ease into them as I create new habits and abilities. I will say, as most other GTD’ers do, that the weekly review is painfully hard - not because of my ability, but because I get so many distractions right during the time I have scheduled. I am gradually educating my co-workers and boss that I have a standing 2 hour block on Friday afternoons wherein I don’t want any interruptions.

Here are a few of the links I have found helpful:

• Getting Started - 43Folders.com provides a simple overview and steps to begin GTD.
• GTD in Windows Mobile - JeffKirvin.net outlines using GTD on Windows Mobile - very simple and easy to understand.
• Tons of GTD references - this site on zenhabits.net is jam-packed with great links to learn about GTD. I haven’t even covered the entire gammut yet, but many of the references on this site have shed light on how to cater GTD to my way of functioning.

Well There you have it - my simple post on GTD adding to the ginormous hay stack GTD references.

Happy New Year! Let’s make it the most productive year ever!

~CoolNerd

Earlier this year my wife and I decided we would organize a monthly budget into a Google spreadsheet so we could both collaborate and make sure we stayed within our means. This worked for about 3 months because of the pain it was to manually review our monthly transactions and plug them all into the budget spreadsheet. I first saw Mint.com back when it launched as a beta site, but chose not to sign up on the service because I wanted to wait until it was out of beta. Well about 3 weeks ago I signed up on Mint.com an “intelligent online money management” (Mint’s About section). 

There are so many very cool things about Mint.com, but the biggest thing for me is that I no longer have to spend 2 to 3 hours a month manually figuring out our budget. Signing up was extremely simple and having the site auto categorize my expenditures was amazing! This site is definitely in my top five cool sites!

With the advent of this summer I have several hikes and a high adventure backpacking trip to look forward to. My first objective has been to get in shape and My Fitness Partner and a great workout program from Outside.com my co-worker Glen (check out his site: glenerd.com) recommended have set me off in the right direction. My next objective is planning the hikes and the backpacking trip.

While browsing the Internet to find trail maps etc, I came across Backpacker.com and a free map tool called Trimble Adventure Planner. This software program is not super robust but provides some great tools for planning the hike.

Also Backpacker.com has it set up so you can download hike details from the website an import it into the Adventure Planner. So even if you don’t own your GPS unit you can benefit from the hiking and backpacking community on Backpacker.com to get some great details about the adventures you want to go on.

So for all you adventure hungry techies out here are some great tools to making your summer gnarly!

The MadeBig Game Arena just recently launched barely a month ago within the MadeBig social network and it has been gaining a lot of traction with it’s current users and new users. The unique thing with the MadeBig Game Arena is that is ties into the MadeBig virtual economy so that users who play the games win MB Coins. With MB Coins users are able to go the the MarketExchange - and there is some really cool stuff that is available on the MarketExchange (of course there are some pretty lame and goofy things too just like and classified like site that is out there).

With all the craze about casual games and social gaming that is going throughout the web, MadeBig has a unique situation where the users not only get a great selection of games and social interaction, but they can enjoy participating in a simply and fun virtual economy.

One big piece of news from today is the deal between Plaxo and Comcast - yep - another big merger. The purchase price is between $150 and $170 million. All in all I think this is a great move for Plaxo, even though they originally wanted $250 million. Plaxo has been making some great advances on there site over the past year, including Pulse - their version of the Facebook News Feeds and User Feeds. Even though Plaxo may not be as trendy and popular as Facebook, I do think with proper guidance and marketing it can be a great tool for a more business savvy audience and possibly an older generation.

For all you fitness buffs out there - here is a site that will help you all the way to cutting the flab, ripping the abs, and getting that much desired beach bod you have been aspiring for. This is one site that I wanted to use for a few months before posting a blog about simply to see if it is something that I would stick with. I have been tracking my fitness logs off and on over the past 4 years - both on paper and other online sites. By far My Fitness Partner is the easiest and most rewarding fitness tracking and fitness support site that I have used. Check out the screencast and see what I mean.

This is one of the coolest applications I have used in the past while - Jott, a very simple, user-friendly voice to text website. Using Jott I can call the Jott number and it will ask me “Who do you want to Jott” - I say the name of one of my contacts and the system responds: “Got it” - and then I can the message I want…after which it sends either a text message or email to the person I wanted to Jott. Awesome! You are able to create groups of contacts and in one quick Jott message it will send all those people the message. You can also import your contacts from Plaxo - which of course can have all your Gmail, Hotmail, etc contacts imported there.

Another cool thing too is to set up a Google calendar to integrate with Jott. I Jott my Google calendar, and it converts whatever I say into a calendar event. Truly this is a cool app!

Recently I came across one of the sweetest online tools for screen capture and screen video casting - it’s called Jing. This amazing little utility, built by TechSmith, makes it easy to capture the screen image, but the video screen recording is what I really keyed in on as a product manager. Often as a product manager we need to explain to our developers a random bug that occurs on the software or website, but when they go on to replicate it they don’t get the error so the developer will shrug and say “sorry, try to figure out how to replicate it and then let us know” - argh! Now with Jing and its connection with screencast.com, I can easily capture video and audio of anything that is on my screen. So I capture the bug or screen that I want and send a link to the developer and they are able to see what happens and from there they are generally able to fix the problem. Granted there are commercial, more robust screen video capturing software such as Camtasia, but this way my whole team (product managers, content writers, even customer service support) are able to capture the video and provide a link to easily show the dev team what is happening.

The whole video capture with Jing is awesome, but then the other day I started to play with the image capture piece in conjunction with Flickr - wow! I love using this feature! Now I can capture an image, edit the name, and share it on Flickr. Now with Flickr I am able to use the Flickr editing and notation features (Picknik) to indicate aspects of the image. I am using this for both bug issues as well as for doing research on the site.

The other day I was stumbling around and I came across this site with some great quotes about Product Development. One of my favorites from this list is from Seth Godin: “People don’t steal ideas. Ideas are cheap. Implementation makes the difference.”

One thing that is crucial for Product Managers is the ability for using communication when leading the product development. Often there are times when I try to be too diplomatic about a situation, and sometimes that is necessary depending on the circumstances and project. The most successful product managers use a the art “influencing, negotiating, relationship building and other similar similar skills” to make sure the product proves to be successful.

One thing I definitely need to focus more heavily on this year is to focus on the details more. Not sure exactly how to do it, but I am going to find out.

As a product manager I have been seeing more and more variance between this role and what a project manager is supposed to operate as. I’ll admit that until recently I saw very little difference between the project manager and a product manager. Was I ever wrong! I started to poke around the with this question and a slough of great resources was opened up to about this differentiation. Since my world evolves around web technology primarily I needed to find some specifics on web product management. With a few Google searches I found a great blog Rob Grady. He explains on a very simple level the importance of taking a web product beyond a short term project to a point where management continues through the entire “product lifecycle.”

From what I gather, the primary difference between product and project management is that project management is focused on getting the project launched on time and within budget and oft times with no regard to what features are removed to get it launched. However, for the product manager, the customers or users of the product take priority number one and they concern themselves with even the smallest of details. Product managers realize that the cumulation of many small issues can make or break the site and cause users to stop using the product.

With the coming of the new year I will be taking a “cool nerd” approach to Product Management and will be providing periodic updates on what I discover through research and application.