Tools for blogging

Maintaining a blog sometimes is a difficult task, specially when you’re in the middle of a battle. It takes discipline and the belief that your ideas and experience could improve someone else’s.

There are some tools to assist you in writing a blog but I discovered that my old palm and a simple sheet of paper can work better than new editors or browser plugins that allow you to post from any webpage. Maybe I’m facing a corollary of KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid).

On the other hand, reading many blogs is almost impossible without a specific tool. I had a good time using RSSOwl and now I’m using GreatNews, both are free. I tried the Google Reader version of it but I’m usually offline when reading the blogs – usually at the airport.

I also use my iPod to follow podcasts. If you’re a project manager I recommend Jerry Manas Project Results Podcast.

What are you using to follow my blog? Leave your experience as a comment here!

Comments

TimeTo

I just licensed a new software for my personal organization system: TimeTo . It tries to conciliate your schedule with you to-do list, automatically scheduling your tasks based on priorities and deadlines. It has helped me in maintaining the concentration on what I’m doing at each time and how much time I spend on doing each type of task. Additionally, I have a very powerful way to complete my timesheet. I can tell you exactly what I was doing at a specific time in the past. It is not easy to conciliate it with GTD and I still keep my lists on my Palm but I have improved my focus and I’m achieving more. I suggest you to give it a try.

An experience in customer care

After some months desiring a DVR (VCR-like equipment with a high capacity hard disk) I found a Sony HDD250 for 20% of the regular price in a prestigious US store. The price was due a small scratch and a missing manual. I bought it! Back to Brazil I downloaded the manual and installed the cables but…the remote control did not work - it was of another equipment. OK, I should have noticed that but… I was VERY frustrated. The wrong side of customer care: 1. I wrote BestBuy. In a canned answer they suggested me to phone the store attendant or returning the equipment. They neither tried to understand my problem. 2. I talked to Sony (I have two of their “universal” remote controllers). Answer: if the code was not in the manual I could not operate the DVR. They suggested me buying a replacement control from a company that …did not sell it. In another demonstration of “customer care”, their product forum has many complaints about not being possible to manually setting the clock - and no answer

Travel Plans

As vacation season approaches, our interest in traveling increases. I addition to my recent trip to India I have made some other trips on the job or on vacations and I collected some interesting websites that can assist in planning trips, cross-country meetings or even dealing with other cultures. Have a nice trip! First of all, what time is it … there? To avoid calling someone in another country without noticing it is 4:00AM. I strongly suggest consulting TimeAndDate . In my personal page, I have two links to this site: one to the “Personal World Clock” and another to the “Meeting Planner”. It works great when my group is organizing concalls with people in India, in Europe, in Brazil (of course) and in California/USA. Another preoccupation: how much is it? (or how much it was, when you’re creating your expense reports). I usually recommend oanda website converter. It allows you to convert between many currencies in specific dates and also allows you to print a convenient conversion

Wronowski

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