Yojimbo offers a neat feature that lets the user store information quickly, without interrupting work flow. Once the software is installed, a tab appears on the left-hand side of the screen on the desktop. Some users may like this feature because of the convenience of having a dropbox right on the desktop.

For those that would like a program similar to Yojimbo, but for PC, Evernote is certainly worth a look. Yojimbo is the simpler of the two programs as far as logistics go. However, Evernote does offer more features, including OCR. Both programs can store PDFs, however, Evernote allows the user to search those PDFs.

Yojimbo has several different default categories for storing your information. Users can create bookmarks, store images and type notes inside the program. If you want to see an overview of all the information you’ve put into Yojimbo, the Library category shows all of the documents that are stored in the program.

Tags

Because the simple categories aren’t always sufficient for organization, users can tag different documents in order to further classify them. If you plan to use this program extensively for keeping track of a project, this feature really does come in handy.

Notes

There really isn’t a whole lot to explain about the “Notes” feature. The user simply has to click the green “+” icon in the upper left hand corner of the program window and select “Note.” In fact, the whole program is simple to use, which is nice for new users.

Flags

For those that intend to use Yojimbo to help them organize tasks, the Flag feature is a convenient way to remind yourself of things that need to be accomplished. To flag an item, the user selects the item to be marked, then clicks the “flag” button at the top of the window. Again, the commands and interface are very easy to use.

Access

As far as I can tell, there are only two ways to access Yojimbo from a remote location. The product site says that Yojimbo can be accessed on other Macs through MobileMe. However, there is a product called “Webjimbo” that allows the user to access Yojimbo from the web or from an iPhone. The product does cost $30 to download, however.

Conclusion

Overall, Yojimbo seems to be very good at what it is intended to do. It helps the user organize information in an efficient and timely manner, and the user interface is very good. However, the product does cost a little bit ($39 for an individual version, $29 for educational), and Evernote is free. The main difference between the two programs is that (1) Yojimbo is made to be simple and user friendly, and so that it does not interrupt workflow. Evernote is more capable. It actually syncs to it’s own cloud-based web version and allows iPhone access without payment. (2) Yojimbo does cost a bit to use. Evernote is free, for the time being.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Review of DropBox Updated
• Contest Winner Announced
• iPod Contest – Review This Site
• Outsourcing Ideas
• iPod Contest Update

After Robbins was disciplined for drug use/sales, he sued the school system basically saying that not only was he falsely accused, but that they should have never turned the camera on in the first place. You can read some of the details of the case at Wikipedia. I think there are at least a few people working for the school that are committing career suicide here. Even if they thought the student had drugs in the picture, I can’t imagine why they would have acted on that information since taking a picture inside a student’s house is obviously a huge invasion of privacy. Even just admitting that you take pictures of students in their bedrooms seems like it would be enough to get your servers confiscated on child porn laws.

It is possible that more details will emerge that will make the school’s actions seem merely stupid instead of egregiously stupid, which is the way things stand right now. Regardless, this case is a good example of how important it is to understand privacy, particularly as it relates to technology you use.

Company Computer

Most companies have a policy that basically says “we own everything on your computer and can look at it whenever we feel like it.” I know that some people think this means they can ask for your computer to look at it. That isn’t the case. Many computers have software installed that will let someone in IT pull up your screen and watch “over your shoulder” without your knowledge.

I haven’t heard of any companies activating a laptop’s camera to check in on their employees, but I’m pretty sure it happens. It is just that companies probably aren’t dumb enough to tell someone they were being fired for something that was discovered on their webcam, as the school administrators had done.

Internet Access

If you are using your employer’s Internet access, anything you send or receive is fair game for them to look at. I know some people think that using HTTPS to connect to web-mail will keep their private emails private. This isn’t the case. If your employer can see your screen, it doesn’t matter if your email is viewed over an encrypted connection. Also, some employers use keyloggers that will keep track of everything you type on the keyboard. In addition, web pages are cached locally and someone that knows what they are doing can pull them out of the cache.

Even if you aren’t using your company’s Internet connection, you still need to be aware of how people can see what you are doing. I was in college when my  university wired all the rooms for Internet. With a bit of fiddling in my room, we discovered we could watch all the traffic for our entire dorm room. This meant that, every five minutes, we’d see everyone’s username and password go across the wire when their email program checked their email. You could also see who was in what chat room and what they were saying. And we weren’t doing anything shady like breaking into a server–we were simply watching all the bits of information that the system was transmitting into our dorm room over the network cable. (This was in 1995 and most schools now have a policy that specifically prohibit what we were doing.) This is worth thinking about when you fire up a connection at Starbucks. The signals you are sending to and from their wireless router are free game for anyone in the general vicinity.

Social Media

It is becoming easier and easier to post information to social media sites. My Blackberry can quickly send a photo to Facebook where I can share it with all my friends. However, just because you can share something doesn’t mean that you should. Many people have lost out on potential jobs because of something they posted on Facebook or elsewhere on the web. What might seem like a funny party picture may end up being the main Google hit for your name found by a potential employer. At least Michael Phelps knew what people were giving him grief about. You may end up suffering from a photo or rant without ever having the luxury of knowing what people are thinking about you.

I try to be careful about posting travel information until I’m back. I don’t really want it to be public that my house is going to be empty for the next two days while I go on a trip. This is surprisingly difficult. If a friend is having a wedding, I can’t say anything like “can’t wait to see you” without exposing the fact that I’m going to the wedding. Fortunately, my obscure travel plans aren’t the only thing that we use to protect our house. Neighbors, house sitters, dogs, etc. all come into play as well.  Still, it is good to be just a bit paranoid and ask yourself “what could someone do with this information” before posting something online. (There is even a site called Please Rob Me that compiles all the posts of people saying that they are away from home.)

Metadata

Pictures and files have hidden fields called Metadata. When you take a picture, it will usually include things like the make and model of your camera, exposure information, and (if supported) your GPS coordinates. Cell phone cameras typically have the GPS coordinate capabilities if it is turned on, so think about this. You post a photo of your new big-screen TV, and suddenly the entire world knows the exact coordinates of that television. Pretty useful information for a thief if you tell everyone you are going out of town for the weekend.

Some pictures even carry information that show what the original photograph looked like. This isn’t a big deal if you simply cropped the picture to make it better. However, a TechTV host learned about metadata the hard way when she posted some photos cropped to a headshot, but the meta data showed the full photo in which she was less than fully clothed.

It isn’t just pictures that carry this information. Word documents often contain your company name, your name and sometimes various revisions.  Dennis Rader, the serial murderer from Kansas, was caught when police tracked the document he sent on a disk back to the computer at his church where he created it. (I think he wanted to get caught. He asked the police if they could trace his floppy, and when they said “no,” he sent it in instead of using paper.)

GPS

Most GPS units in your car have a HOME setting. You hit HOME, and the unit will figure out how to get to your house. Some theives have started breaking into cars at sporting events and stealing the GPS units and any garage door openers they can find. The GPS takes them to the individual’s home, and the opener gets them in quickly and easily.

A lot of phones have applications that will let you track your friends and family using the phone’s GPS.  If it is completely private and you know everyone with access, that might be fine, but some do things like post your location to Twitter or your blog. This isn’t necessarily the information that you want to have out there.

Cell Phones

If someone gets your cell phone, what good would that do them? More than you might think. Here is a story that is floating around that I haven’t been able to confirm, but gives you an idea of what someone could do with your phone address book.

A woman lost her purse and cell phone. By the time she realized it and called her husband, the thieves had already texted the contact named “Hubby” with a message saying “I can’t remember our debit card pin. What did we change it to?”, and cleared out their checking account. So beware if your spouse is suddenly texting you for information that could give access to all your finances.

Of course, the address book works for good as well. I was in line with my two-year-old waiting for a butterfly ride at an amusement park when the two youngsters in front of me found a cell phone on the ground. They asked me what to do with it, so I took it and called the most recently called number. A lady answered saying “Greg?”. I said, “Is Greg missing his cell phone?” I told her where I was and she got the phone back for her husband.

Conclusion

I’m not trying to scare you away from using technology. There are a lot of good things that technology can do for you. If you live in complete fear, you’ll never leave your house in the first place. Of course, staying at home can be dangerous, too. You might get hit by a meteor. It is worth understanding that some of the things you make public can provide people with ill intent very detailed information about where and who you are. You can’t live under a rock, but understanding what information you are making available is important.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Past Post: Two Types of Technology Users
• Previous Post: Technology Users
• Two Types of Technology
• The Most for Your Minute
• Preparing for New Technology

Here are some of the principles I try to follow in creating presentations. Your mileage may vary, but this is what seems to work well for me.

Focus Attention

I like to use the visual presentation to focus people’s attention on what I’m saying and to help keep myself on track. If my slides make people stop listening to what I’m saying, they aren’t helping me. I keep my slides very clear–a white background and no header or footer. I’ve been debating whether or not I should add my company logo to each slide, but so far I’ve decided to leave it off in the interest of keeping everyone focused on what I’m talking about right then.

Minimal Words on Slides

Most of my slides contain a single word. A few contain a single sentence. This is very different than most presentations where the presenter seems to think they get paid more by fitting more words on a slide. My slide deck for a 60-minute presentation might be 50 to 70 slides long and only contain a total of 100 words.

I have seen a lot of people present for an hour with only 10 to 20 slides, each one containing 100 to 200 words. I’m not saying that this style can’t be effective, but it is a lot easier to lose people by throwing 200 words up on a screen than it is with a single word that tells everyone, “this is what you need to be thinking about right now.”

Images

I use images where possible. Sometimes I use them in addition to a word on the slide and sometimes I simply use an image. For example, in a recent talk, I wanted to give an example from the management practices of a casino. I could have had a slide that said “Casino Example,” but instead, I just used a photo of a slot machine. It helped get people’s attention and I don’t think adding text would have made it work any better. What I think would have been worse is to say “Casino Example” and then try to fit a couple hundred words on the slide of what I planned to tell them in person.

For images, I like using Hemera Photo Objects. For about $50, you get 150,000 photos of all kinds of things on a transparent background along with some decent tools to search for images. This gives me what I need about 85% of the time, and it lets me easily drag and drop images into Keynote (what I use instead of Powerpoint).

Anchoring and Context

When watching a movie, you can get a pretty good idea of where you are in the story by looking at your watch and seeing how much time has elapsed. This is particularly true for U.S. movies that generally have happy endings. I call this anchoring. Knowing where you are in a film isn’t particularly helpful for surprise endings or twists and turns, but in a presentation, it is very important. When you present information, people need to have context to put it in. If they know a general idea of what you are doing and where you are currently at, it is a lot easier for them to remember the information you are providing.

At the very beginning of a presentation, I like to lay out a general plan of what we are going to discuss. For example, the plan might be:

• Introduction
• Foundational Principles
• Strategies

I actually do this before the introduction–before I’ve even really introduced myself or the topic if the audience already has an idea of the content. That way when I do the introduction and then move on to the next section, we have already established a pattern and expectations.

In the example above, if I’m going to discuss 6 foundational principles, I will probably put a slide at the beginning listing all the the principles I want to cover, and then again at the end. That gives people an easy way to see exactly what is coming and helps bring closure to that topic by reviewing it before moving on to the next topic.

Final Thoughts on Presentations

The best way to get better at presenting is through practice, even if that means presenting to your dog or a video camera just to have an opportunity to run through the content before doing it for real. What works well for you is largely dependent on your personality.  Take the ideas here as suggestions, but make sure you take into account what works best for you, personally.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Past Post: Paradox of Powerful Tools
• Best Posts from 2005
• Paradox of Powerful Tools
• Opera Unite
• Reader Question – Memorization

EchoSign is a product designed to help eliminate physical paper trails. Keeping track of several different documents from the same transaction can be frustrating, especially if you want to work in a paperless environment. For those that prefer to keep the paper trail organized in computer files instead of physical files, EchoSign would be a great help. This Echosign review will attempt to familiarize readers with the basics of what type of problems the product solves and explain its use and pricing.

Pricing

Contracts have been faxed and mailed for years because of the binding laws associated with signatures. EchoSign allows the legal, electronic signing of documents. The free version of EchoSign allows the user 5 signatures a month, which may be adequate for those that only deal with contracts and other signed documents once in a while. However, for those that need to use the product on a daily basis, upgrading to the Pro version costs $14.95/month, Team (2-9 users) is $40/month and the Enterprise version for 10+ users costs $299/month and offers all of the available features.

Echosign Free

The free version, as mentioned above, only allows the user 5 signatures/month and the following features:

• Send Word/Excel/PDF files
• e-Signatures
• Fax signatures
• Performance dashboard

Echosign Pro

The Pro version, as in the aforementioned paragraph, costs $14.95/month, but with this fee comes a myriad of new features, including PDF encryption, other security precautions and other convenient features, such as mobile sign. Mobile sign works with a Blackberry, with Windows Mobile and iPhone as well as a number of other mobile browsers. Another convenient feature offered with the Pro version is Reminders. You can set the program to remind you to sign a certain document or remind someone else.

How Echosign works

It is as simple to explain as it is to use. The user can send a document with the following steps:

• Upload a document electronically or fax a hard copy
• Enter the recipient’s email address (may include a note)
• Click “send”

The program allows the user to either draw their signature or type that signature, both of which are shown below, respectively.

Echosign Review Conclusion

Some of what EchoSign offers can be accomplished with digital signatures. However, the barrier to entry is much lower with EchoSign and it is easier to get other people involved without requiring them to go through extensive setup on their personal computers. EchoSign allows users to send, receive and organize signed documents efficiently,  keeps track of all of your sent and signed documents and works across platforms. With these features and more available, Our Echosign review shows it is a viable option for those that want to be better organized or keep their workflow as paperless as possible.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Review of DropBox Updated
• Contest Winner Announced
• iPod Contest – Review This Site
• Outsourcing Ideas
• iPod Contest Update

Mozilla Thunderbird is an open source desktop email client (for Windows, Mac and Linux) that is based on the same basic principles as Firefox. While Firefox is the browser I prefer to use, I had never thought of using Thunderbird until recently. Upon trying Thunderbird, I found it to be vastly more efficient than using my web-based email on a daily basis.

According to Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher, “”If you look at the number of seconds saved over the population of Thunderbird users, it tends to be several lifetimes per year.” It’s nice to know that Thunderbird was developed with efficiency in mind. That being said, let’s take a look at the things that make Thunderbird 3 more efficient than the past version.

Setup

One thing that I really appreciated about the setup process for the product was that Thunderbird automatically detected the server settings from the other email account that I entered. I didn’t have to enter whether the account was POP3 or IMAP or any other sort of information other than the email address I wished to use and my name and password, making the setup process very streamlined.

Tabs

Tabs in Thunderbird work much like those in Firefox, except the user opens messages in the tabs. I found this particularly beneficial when trying to gather information from an assortment of similar emails. Being able to keep them all open and reference each message quickly saved me time and frustration.

Search

As with most clients, Thunderbird has a message search utility. However, the neat thing about this utility is that it allows the user to filter the messages and the service groups them under relevant categories. The search results automatically open in an appropriately labeled tab. One other neat thing is that for Windows 7, Vista and Macs with the Spotlight feature, the search results are integrated into the desktop search function, according to CNET.

Integration with OSX Address Book

For those that have a lot of email addresses stored in Address Book, this feature could save a lot of time.

Calendar Integration

According to several sources, add-ons are much easier to get with the new version of Thunderbird because of its built in, Firefox search engine. A couple of these add-ons allow integration with both the Google and Yahoo calendar functions. For those that already have a lot of information built into another account, this could also be a nice time-saving feature.

Smart Folders

Last but not least, Smart Folders make keeping track of multiple email accounts much simpler. The software combines all incoming messages into a single inbox, which means less time spent checking multiple accounts.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Encrypted Email Links
• Review of DropBox Updated
• Contest Winner Announced
• iPod Contest – Review This Site
• Outsourcing Ideas

Copilot

Copilot is geared for both company and personal use. It’s simple enough for family members to use to help each other, and competent enough for larger-scale use. Copilot offers a 2 minute free trial, but then the “helper” must purchase either a Day Pass ($5) or a Subscription (Pay As You Go, Unlimited Basic or Unlimited Premium).

The software runs on and controls Windows (must be 2000 or later) and Mac OSX (10.3.9 or later).

CrossLoop

CrossLoop is a free program designed minimize the hassle for both the helper and the person in need of assistance. The actual screen-sharing product is free, however CrossLoop does offer other services, such as wireless set-up and virus removal, that the user is charged for.

The download and connection process seems to be quite seamless and decidedly un-confusing.

Gitso

Gitso has a slightly less designed user interface, but it is still quite user-friendly, and free, to boot.

Gitso is cross-platform compatible and runs on Ubuntu, Mac OSX 10.5 (Snow Leopard support is “a bit wobbly”) and Windows (XP or later). The best thing about Gitso is that it is able to work on most platforms, as can be seen in the screenshot, above.

LogMeIn

LogMeIn supports both the Windows and Mac OSX platforms. The program offers features such as these:

• Copy and paste between computers
• No need for firewall, router or proxy configuration
• No need for firewall, router or proxy configuration
• etc.

The user interface seems to be fairly streamlined. However, to find the “free” service download, you must search through the menus at the top of the home page.

Mikogo

Like the previous desktop sharing programs, Mikogo is cross-platform compatible. It also is free, and allows the “helper” to screen-share with up to 10 participants, simultaneously. Mikogo would be especially good for business use because it allows one person to interact with so many others, all at once. This would allow for very productive use of a tech support session if you had quite a few people that needed the same kind of instruction.

NTR Connect

NTR Connect is another program that runs on both the Mac and Windows platforms. Upon downloading the software, it will automatically start a 30-day trial of NTR Connect Pro, then will revert to the free version, which offers basic connectivity services. Most reviews say that the software works seamlessly and is quite easy to use. NTR Connect uses standard security technology and is meant for either business or personal use.

ShowMYPC.com

ShowMyPC is another free collaborative program that works on Windows (XP, Vista, 7 and 2000), Mac OSX and Linux. However, potential users should note that the service for Mac has less features than the Windows version, and the Linux service is “View Only.” This product is primarily suited to those connecting from PC to PC, though the Mac and Linux support does allow basic screen sharing capabilities.

Team Viewer

TeamViewer is both Windows and Mac OSX compatible, and according to CNET’s Seth Rosenblatt, “TeamViewer is an excellent screen-sharing and file-transfer app that can be used to facilitate business collaborations as well as helping distraught relatives diagnose and cure computer problems.”

The software, as with most in this list, will work behind firewalls automatically, ensuring that all client’s computers stay protected from potential attack, while still letting technical support take place.

uVNC

uVNC is a reliable and solid remote connection service. It is fairly no-frills, though, and requires a bit of additional setup in comparison with the other products in this list. For the reasonably tech-savvy person, this is fine, but uVNC does not automatically route itself around firewalls and the application does not directly provide encryption of the communication between users. uVNC can only be hosted on Windows, but the application can control any computer remotely through a web browser.

Wippien

Wippien is a free program that is primarily for instant messaging, but can be used to control a remote computer, much like the process of requesting remote assistance in Windows Live Messenger. The connections made through Wippien are secure, P2P connections. The software assigns a unique IP address to represent the specific contact the user is communication with and encrypts all information sent through the connection. Wippien also works behind firewalls, eliminating any hassle that might come from such security precautions. Wippien runs on Windows (XP, Vista and 2000) and Linux.

Zolved

Zolved allows users to connect to or connect to and control the computer of another user. The software only runs on and controls computers running Windows, so this option isn’t for Mac or Linux users. The interface is nice and simple and the download process seems to be efficient, as well. As with the other products on this list, Zolved works behind firewalls and offers a secure connection to users.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• 5 Things That Save Me Time
• Your Locus of Control
• Links On Remote Assistants
• International Holidays
• Buying Software

1. Take some time to imagine the worst case scenario and how you would handle it. For example, what would you do if your laptop were dropped? What would you need to do if it were stolen?
2. Make sure you have some type of off-site backup. I put a copy of important files on a DVD and put it in a bank lockbox. I only do this once or twice a year, but it gives me something to go back to, if necessary.
3. Use an external hard drive for backup. This is usually a lot faster than backing up to DVDs or CDs. The easier a backup is to do, the more often you’ll do it.
4. Create a bootable backup. My primary backup is done by creating a bootable image on an external hard drive. If I were to lose my computer, I could use another computer to boot to the external drive and start working with all my programs and files from my last backup.
5. Don’t forget about backing up important software. If you have purchased software over the internet, you may not have any CDs for it. Make sure you could get these back if you lost your drive.
6. Automate as much as possible. The best backups happen automatically without any thought on your part.
7. Test your backups. I have seen people with very nice automated backup processes in dire straits because they never tested the backup. When I am designing a backup strategy for a client, I’ll usually try to create an automatic backup testing process as well. For the home user, it might be just a matter of testing to make sure you can open the files you’ve backed up every once in a while.
8. Don’t trust any media. Hard drives go bad. CDs go bad. Diskettes go bad. Memory sticks go bad. Pretty much anywhere you can store your data has some risk that it will go bad and your data will be lost. You should have your important data in more than one place so you won’t suffer a total lost if you hard drive fails and your backup media fails as well.
9. Label your backups. Doing backups is great, but unless you label your media, it will be very difficult to figure out what is stored where. You can easily lose a bunch of time sorting through 100 unlabeled CDs looking for the most recent backup.

Originally published November 13, 2007.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Tuesday’s Tip: Get a Good Pen
• Tuesday’s Tip: Travel Paper Folder
• Tuesday’s Tip: Handwritten Notes
• Tuesday’s Tip: Asking Yourself Questions
• Tuesday’s Tip: Pennies

The second type of document is an image based document.  This includes formats like .TIF, .JPG, .PNG, .GIF, etc.  These documents just represent a bunch of pixels.  The computer can’t edit the words themselves other than by deleting pixels and putting new pixels down.  You can’t copy a sentence and paste it into another program if you are using this format.

The advantage of the text-based formats is the fact that they can be searched.  If the document contains the word “Smith Contract,” a search on your computer for those words should show the document in the results.  With image-based documents you don’t have that luxury.  If you want to be able to find it, you had better name it using the keywords you might use for your search, put it in a directory with the name you will search for, or associate meta information with the document containing all the keywords you might use.

The advantage of image-based documents is the way they preserve the layout and non-text elements.  If you have to go to court to show someone signed a contract, you are going to want to have an image-based document with their signature. (There are some ways to do things with digital PKI signatures that will stand up in court, but that gets quite a bit more complicated.)

Of course, the problem is, you may have a hard time locating the particular contract unless you were particularly careful about where and how you saved it.

The PDF format solves many of these issues.  PDFs allow you to store a document as an image AND as text.  Think of it as two layers: you have a text layer that contains the words in a computer-readable format and you have the image layer that contains a picture of the document–including any pictures, annotations, etc.  So if you want to search for a keyword, it acts as a text-based document.  If you need to print out a copy of the document, it acts as an image-based document.

When you scan your document, you want to make sure both types of information are recorded.  To get text information from a scanned document, you need to use some type of optical character recognition.  Usually your scanner will come with some type of OCR software.  Many scanning programs will automatically add the text layer into a PDF.  The newer versions of Acrobat have OCR capabilities built in so you can take image-based documents and add the text layer with a few clicks.

In my work-flow, my scanner sends the image of each document directly to a program that  performs some optimizations, does OCR and then saves the results as a PDF in my document repository.

If you are looking at setting up a paperless office, you will need to consider how the character recognition takes place.  The more you are able to automate the process, the easier it will be to work with.

Note: If you are creating a PDF directly from your computer, there is a way to skip the image layer while still preserving the layout of the page.  If you start adding signatures and markups, it will create an image layer to put those items in.

Originally published January 17, 2008.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• DevonTHINK’s Classify Feature
• Quick Update: Paperless Office
• Is Acrobat a Necessity for a Paperless Office?
• Dealing with Signatures in a Paperless Office
• Four Important Folders on my Computer

Here is an example: when someone buys something from the online store, that information has to be manually entered into the accounting software. The customer information must be manually entered into the customer relationship management system. If a customer gets a refund, the accountant handles the refund, but then the information must manually be entered in the online store to adjust the inventory levels.

While all of their software is considered “best of breed,” none of it talks with the other parts of the process. When it comes to their productivity, they would be better off with fewer features and better integration.

Your Integrated Solution

When you design your personal work flow, make sure that integration is your top priority. For example, when you add a personal contact to your address book, does it automatically show up on your cell phone? If your spouse adds an appointment to the calendar on her computer, does it automatically show up in your PDA?

If you choose your solutions based on integration instead of features, you’ll increase your productivity–even if you have to sacrifice some features. If you choose your solutions based on features and ignore the integration aspect, the time savings benefits will be greatly reduced.

When you are looking for ways to increase your productivity, look for the right process–not the right tools. The best time management software/gadget/planner in the world is only as good as the process it enables. A well-designed integrated process with average tools is much more productive than the best tools, but no integrated process.

Originally published June 25, 2007. Oh and this client is now using a fully integrated system that doesn’t have any of the duplicate entry issues described above.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Dealing with Gadgets
• Skydeck
• Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Review
• Redeeming Your Time
• Higher End Scanners

This word processor was developed by SourceGear Corporation as an alternative to other office software. However, SourceGear stopped developing the software, and a group of open source developers took over creating the later versions of the product.

AbiWord is unique in that it can be run on a myriad of different operating systems:

• Microsoft Windows
• Mac OS X (10.2 or later, Intel and PowerPC)
• Linux
• React OS
• BeOS
• Solaris
• etc.

System requirements for AbiWord seem to be pretty reasonable, overall, and it seems to work much like its non-open source counterparts. One final, useful thing about AbiWord is that the developers offer real time support through chat and also provide a user manual.

Bean

In today’s fast-paced world, the technology and software that we use has become  a reflection of the way we try to multitask. Instead of focusing on doing one thing well, software has become bulky and, at times, a bit inefficient for the task at hand. Sometimes it just makes more sense to simplify. Bean is a simplified word processor that allows the writer to focus better. Fewer distractions = more focused writing.

This word processor runs only on Mac OSX 10.4 through 10.6. However, it will run on both PowerPC  and Intel Macs. One thing that potential users should note is that Bean is only partially compatible with Word. That being said, as the developer says, Bean is not intended to be a replacement for Microsoft Word. It is geared toward convenience and efficiency, and because of this fact, does not have some of the features of Word.

So, if you are frustrated with a clunky word processor and own a Mac, Bean might be worth a look.

LyX

LyX is an interesting piece of software with a unique set of capabilities. According to Wikipedia, the software is becoming popular among social scientists and other researchers for its ability to manage multiple files. LyX is also excellent for those that need to type a lot of mathematical formulas. For chemistry and math teachers, the advanced abilities of this software could help make their work much more productive. Traditional word processors, such as Microsoft Word, aren’t primarily designed to create documents filled with formulas.

LyX runs on several operating systems, including the following platforms:

• Linux/Unix
• Microsoft Windows
• Mac OS X

Potential users should be aware that LyX is not a traditional WYSIWYG editor. It does, however, offer a “preview” option so that the user can see what the document will look like in its printed form. Those making a transition from a traditional word processor may want to take some time to adjust to using LyX for producing documents, rather than just leaping directly from a traditional word processor to LyX for all their work.

This guide for using LyX offers some really good information on using the processor as well as an overview of what the software is intended to do, how the focus of the product differs from a traditional word processor, and other various helpful facts.

IBM Lotus Symphony

Lotus Symphony is most likely the closest thing you can get (in the free software realm) to Microsoft Office without actually purchasing Office. Symphony supports most file types commonly used in today’s business world, includes equivalents to Powerpoint, Word, and Excel (Presentations, Documents and Spreadsheets, respectively) and runs on the following operating systems:

• Mac OS X
• Microsoft Windows Vista with Service Pack 1, XP with Service Pack 3
• Some Linux platforms (SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP2, RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.2, Ubuntu 8.04)

For a more in-depth look at Symphony, see our article entitled “Lotus Symphony Review.”

Open Office.org

Open Office is, perhaps, the most venerable and reliable alternative to Microsoft Office that is in existence, today. Developed and maintained by Sun Microsystems, the software has been around for 9 years. According to the website, Open Office reads files from most common software packages. The Open Office developers have even had reports of the product opening files that the “original software package had said to be corrupt and unusable.” Open Office runs on many different platforms, including the following operating systems:

• Microsoft Windows
• Mac OS X
• GNU/Linux
• Sun Solaris

Because Solaris has been under development for quite some time, the software is quite stable. The fact that the software is also open source allows anyone and everyone to send in reports of any bugs, which are then considered by developers and used to improve the software. Another neat thing about Open Office is that there are no licensing fees, so you may make copies of the software and give it to friends, family and others that may need it.

Neo Office

Neo Office is a Mac only word processor that is basically a modified version of Open Office. According to the site, the modifications are the addition of “extremely stable Mac OS X code that has been in daily use by hundreds of thousands of NeoOffice users since 2003″ and “significant speed improvements to the OpenOffice.org code.”

For those who would like a more stable and efficient version of Open Office for Mac, Neo Office might be worth a look.

Yeah Write

Yeah Write is a Windows only word processor that takes a rather unconventional approach to information in put. This processor uses a Q&A type interface in order to put the necessary information into a document template. Yeah Write is free, but in order to get the version that contains more templates, the user must pay about $20.00. The product is compatible with Windows 98 through Vista, so it should be a viable option for just about any Windows user.

Jarte

A slogan for this word processor located on its website is “Does your word processor handle like an ocean liner?” While this is amusing, some of us may find it all too true. Jarte was formulated as a lightweight alternative to powerful, but unwieldy word processors such as MS Word.

Jarte runs solely on Windows, is based on Microsoft Word Pad (making it quite stable), and can open the file extensions RTF, DOC and DOCX. According to the website, this processor would be particularly useful to students. It contains adequate features for the person that simply wants to write, but does not have too many features for the user to sort through when making editing decisions. Another plus for cash-strapped students is that the price is right.

KWord

KWord is a word processor that was developed with a unique purpose, in mind. KWord is designed to be more content friendly than the average word processor. In this program, text is designed to wrap around the images in the document being created, even after images have been manipulated. KWord runs on the following operating systems:

• Microsoft Windows
• Mac OS X
• Linux/Unix Systems

JDarkRoom

JDarkRoom is a minimalist word processor that allows for distraction-free writing. For those that want a simple, fast and focused program, this might be a good choice. However, JDarkRoom does have some useful features you wouldn’t expect to be on a minimalist word processor, such as word count.

This processor runs on the following operating systems:

• Windows
• Mac OS
• Linux

Google Docs

While the other word processors on this list are desktop software, Google Docs is an online word processor. It has the neat perk that the user can edit documents from any computer. All documents are stored online, therefore they can be accessed from any computer that has internet capabilities.

Since Google docs runs within a web browser, it should be compatible with all platforms. The document sharing capabilities of Google Docs would be very useful to anyone that works on documents for collaborative projects.

Did we miss your favorite free word-processor?  Please let us know about it in the comments.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Dvorak Keyboard
• Paradox of Powerful Tools
• Imaginary Voice in my Head
• Ease of Collaboration
• Reader Question – Memorization

So why spend the time on this?  As we switch to doing more business over the internet, secure communications are going to become much more important.  Even if you don’t have a use for encryption right now, you probably will over the next 3 to 5 years (if not before).  There is a lot of value in understanding why encrypted emails are secure–even if you don’t understand all the complicated math behind it.

I find it frustrating that so few people and businesses use encryption and a digital signature on their emails.  If businesses would use encrypted emails, they could just send me a PDF of my bill instead of requiring me to login and download my bill from their website. Many of the processes that currently require printing on dead trees and then using dead dinosaurs to transport sheets of paper through the mail could be done electronically if more people would use encryption.  This article is me doing my little part to help raise awareness of how encryption works. If you want to help save paper and think this article is useful, please pass it on to someone else.

Encrypting a Document

To use a digital signature or encryption you must have a digital id.  A digital id used to do two things.  First, it can be used to encrypt files and emails so that they can only be read by the person they are intended for.  Second, it can be used to “sign” or place a digital signature on a document to guarantee that it arrives in the same state it was originally sent and no one has added or changed things.

A digital id consists of a public and private key.  Your public key is shared with everyone.  Your private key is kept private.  These keys are text documents full of what appears to be random numbers and letters, but with the proper algorithm, these numbers and letters have a very unique property.

If you take a document and run it through an algorithm with your public key, you get back an encrypted document.

Once it is encrypted, the public key can’t be used to decrypt the document. The process is one way so it doesn’t matter if other people have the public key, they can’t read the document.

To decrypt the document you must have the private key.  If you give the encrypted document to an algorithm with the private key, you will get back the original document.

An Example

Lets start with Tom and Suzie.  They want to communicate securely to keep Hitler from reading their messages.

First Tom, sends Suzie his public key.  This usually happens automatically when Tom sends Suzie a normal email message.  Their email programs handle sending Tom’s key and recording it on Suzie’s side of things. When Suzie sends Tom a regular message, Tom gets her key as well.

Suzie takes Tom’s public key and uses it to encrypt an important message.  Then she emails the encrypted message to Tom.

But wait! Hitler intercepts the message by infiltrating Suzie’s ISP and breaking into her email.  He now has the encrypted message that Suzie sent to Tom.  Hitler also has Tom’s public key that Tom sent to Suzie.  However, no matter what Hitler does with the public key, he can’t decrypt the message.  The only thing that can decrypt the message is the private key that Tom keeps safe.

When Tom gets the message from Suzy, he takes his private key and uses that to decrypt the message.  He can now read Suzie’s email.  It doesn’t matter who else gets a copy of the email that Suzie sent. Tom is the only one who can unlock it as long has he doesn’t share his private key.  If he wants to reply to Suzie, he simply uses her public key to encrypt his reply and sends it back to her.

Signing a Document

With an understanding of how documents can be encrypted, we can look at how to “sign” a document using a digital signature.  This is very different than a scanned signature that merely attaches an image of your written signature to a document or email. An encrypted document does three things.

1. It guarantees that the document was actually sent by the sender.
2. It guarantees that the document wasn’t modified in route.
3. It guarantees that no one else can read the document.

For a lot of communication, item three isn’t necessary or even desired.  For example, if I want to send a message out to 25 people, chances are pretty high that it isn’t extremely confidential.  In fact, sending a separate message to each person encrypted with their public key might be quite a burden.  However, I still may want each recipient to be guaranteed that the document came from me and that it wasn’t modified in transit–we want to put a digital signature on it that says guarantees who sent it and that it wasn’t modified.

Outside of email, I may want to post a message on a website that can be read by the world where anyone can check to make sure that the message hasn’t been changed from when I wrote it and confirm that it was truly written by me.  A slightly different example of this is when a company posts a piece of software or a patch for existing software.  The people who will download it  want some way to know that they are getting a legitimate file and not a virus that was posted by hackers to trick people.

This is where signing a document (or file) comes into play. Signing a document (applying your digital signature to it) guarantees the first two items on the list, but does it in a way that allows anyone to read it.  People can verify your digital signature without getting a digital id for themselves.

This can be difficult to explain, so I am going to simplify the math a bit.  My version won’t be nearly as secure as what is actually used, but it will give you a good general idea of how it operates.

Checksums

First, let’s talk about checksums.  A checksum is a simple way to send an extra piece of information along with some data that can be used to make sure that the data is the same on both sides.  In human terms, this is kind of like asking someone to repeat a number back to you over the phone.  While repeating information back works fine for short numbers, it could be a bit troubling if you have large amounts of data.  So we create a short cut.  Let’s say that, for some reason, I’m trying to give you the values of 100 checks over the phone.  I’m reading them from Excel and you are typing them into Excel.  In the end, we want to make sure that we didn’t miss anything.  I could have you repeat all the numbers back to me, but that would take a long time.  Instead, I might ask you to give me the total.  If your total matches my total, then one of two things happened:

1. We successfully transferred the numbers verbally.
2. We made some mistakes that perfectly canceled each other out.

Since option two is pretty unlikely when dealing with a large list of numbers, we can assume (with a reasonable degree of certainty) that we didn’t make a mistake.

Computers use checksums in a similar way.  Back in the days of modems, computers would send an 8 bit byte where the last bit was a checksum.  So, the computer might send a binary message that looked like this:

01101010

The first 7 bits contained the data: 0110101.  The last bit is the checksum was used to tell if there were an even or odd numbers of ones present in the data.  In this case we are using a 0 to say that there are an even number of ones.  If the receiving computer got a byte where the number of even bits and the checksum bit disagreed, it would ask for that data to be sent again.

This type of approach reduces accidental errors.  However, it does nothing toward preventing someone from intentionally changing the data.  If you wanted to change the data en route, it would be simple to flip the checksum bits to match whatever you wanted to send in the data.  We need a way of generating a checksum type value that is hard to fake.

Hashes

In simple form, a hash is an algorithm (or set of steps) that you can run a piece of data through (text, a file, etc.) and get out a number that represents the original. You can’t recreate the original from the number, but for most practical purposes you can use that number to represent the input.  In other words, it will be very difficult to find another input file (or text) that will produce the same output.

Let’s construct a simple hash of the following text:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy hound.

Our hash is going to be created by multiplying the number of letters by the number of words.

38 letters
9 words
38 x 9 = 342

So now if I send you this message, I can include the number 342.  You can do the math on the message you receive and it will give you a pretty good idea if the message is the same as what was sent.

Obviously, this type of solution will only protect against unintentional changes in the data.  If someone  changes the email in route, they could just as easily change the number “342″ to match whatever the hash is for their modified message.

If we want to protect against this, I can send the hash value through a different channel.  For example, I could send you the message via email and then call you on a secure phone line and say, “the hash value is 342″.  That way if someone wanted to modify the message, they could only change it to something that produced a hash value of 342.  (In our very simple hash algorithm, this would be hard, but doable. With the complex hash algorithms that are actually used, it would be impossible, for all practical purposes.)

Obviously, it is inefficient if I have to call you up on the phone. We need some way to put a secure channel in the email.  If I try to encrypt the hash number with your public key, the message is only readable by you–I might as well just encrypt the whole message.  If I encrypt it with my public key, then I’m the only one who can read it–not particularly useful either.

But look what happens when I encrypt it with my private key.

We now have the value 342 encrypted in a way that can be opened by anyone with my public key. Since my public key is the only thing that can decrypt that value, it guarantees them that I was the one who originally encrypted the number 342.

If someone wants to change the message and change the hash value, they would have to be able to encrypt it with my private key.

So, when you send messages signed with a digital signature, the hash value guarantees that the message hasn’t been changed.  Encrypting the hash value with your public key guarantees that the hash value, itself, hasn’t been changed.  This is normally handled automatically by your software, and it will give you a warning if you get a message where decrypting the hash value produces a different number.  The encrypted hash value is added as a small attachment or added to the bottom of the email.

Conclusion

And there you have it.  You now understand encryption  and digital signatures better than 99% of the population.  If you are interested in starting to use encryption for email, I recommend getting  a free set of certificates from Thawte or Comodo. (Thawte may be canceling their free program, so Comodo may be the better choice.) The setup process is fairly simple and they have instructions on how to get various email clients configured.

As I said before, this article is me trying to do my part to help society move from paper to digital.  If you want to help, please take a few minutes to share this with someone else.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Digital Signatures
• Using a Digital Signature?
• Dealing with Signatures and Email
• Dealing with Signatures in a Paperless Office
• Paperless Infrastructure

1. Put Your Entire Message In The Subject

Just because you can see the entire subject as you type it, doesn’t mean it will show up for your recipient the same way. Depending on their email program, it might even truncate it.

2. CC A Bunch Of Unrelated Recipients

If you need to send something out to a large number of people who don’t already know each other, don’t put them in the CC field. That broadcasts their email address to each other. There was a case a few years ago where a real estate agent did this to a group of people who were all looking for apartments in New York. People who received it were able to sell the email to other agents for thousands of dollars because it contained the email addresses of qualified leads.

You can use the BCC field if you need to send messages out to a bunch of people. Put your own email address in the TO field. That way recipients can’t see each other’s email addresses and no matter what they hit, any response will come back to only you.

3. Hit Reply All Instead Of Reply

I don’t really know how you could do this accidentally, but I’ve seen it happen many times. I’m guessing that some people have mail programs where the Reply and Reply All buttons are very close together. Other times, I think people are just being lazy and hit Reply All (to 100 people) instead of taking the time to add the three people who need to see their reply.

4. Send A Message To A Superset Of People Who Need It

Lets say you have a group called “Administration” that contains the CEO, CFO, COO, CTO, CSO, and all the other “C” executives. Don’t send a message to the group when it really only needs to go to a smaller number of people in the group.

Sometimes people are too lazy (or don’t know how) to figure out who is in the group they are using. With Outlook, you can click on the + by the group name to show a list of everyone in the group.

5. Leave Out Punctuation

writing in all lowercase with no punctuation doesnt make you look intelligent take the time to use correct punctuation it will make your message easier to understand

Arghh. That was painful to write. Email is often considered informal, but punctuation rules are there for a reason. They really do make it easier for people to understand what you are saying. In some cases, leaving out punctuation can give your sentences an entirely different meaning.

6. Leave Out Paragraphs

Similar to leaving out punctuation, writing one big blob of text does not make your email easy to read. In fact, many people will skip over long messages that they can’t easily scan–especially if they happen to get your message on a cell phone or Blackberry.

Okay, there are my six suggestions of things to avoid in email. If you have any suggestions to add, please leave them in the comments.

Originally published January 31, 2008.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Tutorial Sites
• Setup Your Email to Look Professional
• Tuesday’s Tip: Turn Off Message Notification Sounds
• Dealing with Signatures and Email
• The most important part of Mobile Email

The hackers then did everything they could to embarrass the victims by posting things online.  This ranged from making a minister look like he was having an affair to creating a panic that someone was going to commit suicide.

I’ve previously talked about how it is a good idea to use different passwords, if not for every site, at least for every type of site.  (You don’t want to use the same password on a site run by some kid you don’t know as what you use on your banking accounts.)  After this incident, I would recommend doing your best to create a unique password for every site you need to log into.

There are programs that help with this.  I use 1Password because it keeps things very simple, works on multiple browsers and will automatically log in for you (once you supply the master password).  I have over 300 passwords for various websites, so the money on the app is well worth it, for me.  A free manual approach would be to use something like password chart.

Regardless of how you manage your passwords, make sure you aren’t betting your security on someone else to follow good security practices in the way they encrypt and store  your password.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Password Chart
• Password Creation Technique
• Password Resolutions for 2009
• 10 Tips for Creating Secure Passwords
• 5 Things That Save Me Time

I took off running downstairs for the fire extinguisher in the kitchen.  My mom (who happened to be in the room) calmly walked over and put the fire out by stepping on it. It turns out that the fan had been wired together by my 11 year old brother, who had hooked a 12 volt automotive fan into a regular household wiring cord with an automotive switch, shorting the connection between the two wires.

Anyway, the point is that, while my mom’s shoe was definitely not the perfect fire fighting tool, it was the best thing for the job.  By the time I had gotten the fire extinguishers and then figured out how to turn it on, the fire would have spread on the carpet and done quite a bit more damage.

There are times where the best tool to use is the one that lets you accomplish the task immediately–even if it is slightly awkward to use.

Originally published March 15, 2007.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Tuesday’s Tip: Organized for Happiness
• PDF Creation Test
• The Power of Paper
• Experiment with Online Tools
• Previously Popular Posts

In my experience people either have extremely secure passwords like J!*xurQ1# that are so difficult to remember that they have to write them down (which defeats the security of a password) or extremely unsecure to start with, like Jonny (the name of their spouse). The goal of this post is to give you some ideas on how to generate secure passwords. The tips start out with some simple ways to come up with terms and end with ideas of how to combine these terms into secure passwords.

It should be obvious that you shouldn’t directly use any of the examples shown here. However, some of these ideas should be useful in generating your own secure passwords.

Here are a collection of tips for creating useful passwords.

1. Use Different Character Classes - Many systems require that your password be from a variety of character classes. The letters a to z are one character class, A to Z is another, 0 to 9 is another, and the symbols are a fourth. In general the more character classes you use in your password, the more secure it is. So “guitar” is less secure than GuiTar which is less secure than Gu1T&r. One simple way to add different character classes is to capitalize all vowels or consonants.
2. Use Letters from a Phrase – Use the first letter from each word in a phrase, line from a song, etc. “There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea.” could become Tahitbots.
3. Numbers From Word - Use your phone keypad to convert a word to its numerical equivalent to use as part of your password.
4. Keyboard Patterns – Creating terms from rows of adjacent keys. 12345 is not very good, but \][po combined in the ways specified below can make for a secure password that would be very difficult to guess and is fast to type.
5. Use More Than One Word - Single word passwords are easy to break. If a hacker runs a program to try a bunch of words from the dictionary they shouldn’t be able to figure out your password. Choose words that you will remember, but that someone else won’t be able to guess. So a password like shinynail or flyingrock or tallwater are more secure than single word passwords.
6. Ideas for Passwords – Sometimes coming up with a password can be pretty difficult. Keep in mind you need to choose terms that you won’t often talk about. Here are a list of ideas to help come up with words:
   • Choose two objects from a picture that you’ll always remember. For example: a drawing at your grandparents house, the illustration from a children’s book, a painting at an art museum, etc.
   • Choose two terms from a memorable purchase. For example: bluev6 (first car), thinibm (first computer), gold3crt (engagement ring), 7ftgrand (piano), pinedoor (first house), sunshore (honeymoon destination).
   • Look through a catalog and choose terms based on something you see.
   • Look up a random article on Wikipedia and choose a word found or related to a word you find in the article.
7. Separate Your Two Words With Symbols and Numbers- For example: pine&1&door, kit!2!cat, etc.
8. Modify the Password For Each Site- In theory, the most secure password strategy is to use a completely different password for each system. In practice, this means you’ll have to write them down. By choosing a secure password and modifying it based on where it will be used, you can keep from having to write passwords down, but still have a slightly higher level of security. Here are some examples showing how they were created
   • blue.Mv6 for Amazon.com – blue and v6 from first car. M from the second letter in site name.
   • blue.Av6 for SAP logon – same as above.
   • thin!5!ibm for Amazon.com – thin and ibm from first computer. 5 from the number of letters in the site name.
9. Multiple Passwords for Different Types of Sites – Another option to keep from using the same password on every site is to use two or three passwords based on how secure the site is. For example, your banking sites might all use derivations of the bluev6 password. Ecommerce sites might all use a derivation of a different password and community type sites might use a third. The goal is to make sure that a rogue administrator at a forum you frequent isn’t able to get to your 401k.
10. Date Based Component – Some systems require you to change your password every 180, 90, or 60 days. (One client had set up their system to require a password change every 30 days!) If you are familiar with the cycle, you can add a date based component to your password and change it each time it is required. For example J10 could be added when you need to change your password in June of 2010.

Originally published June 18, 2007.

Follow Productivity501 on Twitter..

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:

• Password Chart
• Password Creation Technique
• Using Different Passwords
• Password Resolutions for 2009
• 5 Things That Save Me Time