Month: October 2007

FriendFeed.com – Just Aggregating Your Friends’ Feeds?

“…if you’re brilliant enough to create Google Maps, Gmail, et. al, move on to inventing a flying car or something.” – Rex Hammock

A while back, when I was regularly publishing to multiple sites, I had a thing I called the gFeed that pulled all those feeds (probably a half dozen at my peak) into a single feed.

Sure some people subscribed to it (I believe some still are) but straight aggregation isn’t actually that useful1 – and if you’re crazy enough to want all my feeds, your crazy enough to know how to get them yourself. Soon, FriendFeed will start offering to do the same for you or me, or us.

The value isn’t in the aggregation, it’s in what happens after ther aggregation.

While my exposure to FriendFeed, Streamy, and FeedEachOther is very limited at this point, they all feel too “social network” heavy at this point. Unfortunately, that’s not the biggest missing piece in today’s aggregators.

1. I’ve stopped promoting the gFeed because it’s easier for both of us if I publish more in fewer places.

Why I Prefer Working Outta the Home Office

“You’d think working in close proximity to your co-workers would keep you accountable, but most times it has the opposite effect. We actually attempt to hide ourselves in a cloud of co-workers hoping no one notices our lack of speed and productivity.” – Arik Jones

Unless everyone in the office is working on the exact same part of the same project – where the office should be excited and alive – the office should be dead quiet, otherwise someone is being distracting.

Between email, IM, and phone, I have close virtual proximity to my co-workers. These are far lower-fidelity interruptions (and therefore more productive) than a shouting over the cubicle wall or hanging out next to my desk.

Many offices I’ve been in were too much about socializing around reality TV programs for my taste. The most productive offices I’ve been in? I had a desk in the back corner of an otherwise empty room. Made me think I should just work from home.

Distraction Elimination Week: Day 1: Audio

Each day this week, I’m minimizing some distraction on my MacBook Pro. Today, it’s the unnecessary and often redundant audio noises.

In the OS X Finder, go to System Preferences > Sound and make sure all three checkboxes are unchecked.

In Mail.app, go to Preferences > General and select "None" in the New mail sound: pulldown menu and uncheck “Play sounds for other mail actions" 1

In SpamSieve, go to Preferences > Notifications and uncheck "Play sound".

In Adium, go to Preferences > Alerts and select "None" in "Sound set". Name this set "Quiet" at the prompt and click OK.

In Transmit, go to Preferences > Transfers and select "None" in "Transfer complete sound".

1. You may also notice that I’ve also changed my "Check for new mail" frequency to "Manually", that’s to minimized Mail.app’s visual indicators – we’ll talk about that later this week.

ELSEWHERE:
Arik Jones’ is also fighting distraction.