Got the right Orvet blog feed?

A few of you have mentioned problems with my FeedBurner feeds. First of all, sorry about that. I don't know what caused it, but I do know how to fix it.

Here's the easy way to get everything working flawlessly:

1) Make sure you're subscribing to http://feeds.feedburner.com/OrvetDigital and not one of my older feeds.

Did that solve the problem (this post should be at the top of 'Orvet Digital | Blog' in your reader of choice)? If so - excellent, you're done! If not...

2) Unsubscribe from the current Orvet Digital feed (even if it appears to be correct) and re-subscribe to the feed listed above.

Problem solved? Good! If not, contact me from the bottom of this page and I'll help you get sorted.

Thank you for your patience, and for wishing to stay subscribed.
/Jaan

David's PBWiki raises $2m

Congratulations to David Weekly and his company PBWiki. They closed a $2 million round with Mohr Davidow Ventures yesterday.

It couldn't have happened to a smarter, and nicer, guy. Dave, you deserve all the good things that come your way. How ever, I'm not entirely sure about those strange soft drinks you guys have in the kitchen... they're good but... very odd ;)

Here's my first post about David from 2004 when he launched IMSmarter.

XO

Last nights Refresh DC was very cool indeed.
The main event was a presentation on accessibility - "Understanding The Real World Wide Web and Why Web Accessibility Is Crucial" - by Justin Thorp. Good overview, and Justin is a very laid back yet engaging speaker.

He had also promised a surprise, and he delivered!

Justin had managed to get his hands on one of the (currently) extremely rare XO Laptops (aka "The $100 Laptop").

First of all, yes I want one! I'll happily sign up for the rumored program where anyone who buys one also has to buy a second XO for a child in a developing country. It's a win-win. Heck, I'd say make it 1+2! We need to get as many of these machines out to the people that really need them.

First impressions:

- The key board feels nice, a bit like those roll-up ones as Cindy pointed out.
- Impressive screen.
- The XO is smaller than I thought, which is only a good thing
- It's even better looking in real life. It's a gem.

WWDC - save a buck. Or 400.

Don't forget that there are some savings to be had by signing up early for this years WWDC.

GTD Carson style

This is a reposting of how I found nirvana in "GTD Carson style". I originally wrote about it in November but I was told today that it can't be found in my archives any more. I blame the gnome who lives in my server.

.....................

How do we stay on top of client work, manage the business, follow up on new leads, get to the post office, have a life, and a trillion other things with out dropping the ball?

I've read quite a few posts on GTD, including those over at Web Worker Daily, but none has had such an impact on my work as Ryan Carson's simple yet effective system for OmniOutliner.

I have been a OO fan since the day I found it pre-installed on my PowerBook. When I started using it the way Carson suggested it is has become indispensable to me.

Take a look, maybe it'll help you get things done.



More on GTD from the man.

Smaller blogs rule (too)

I'm a fan of Tony Hung's Deep Jive Interests. It's refreshing to read a non tech person's view (Tony is in medicine) on our lil' world, and all that goes on here.

I also tend to pick up useful suggestions in the recommended reads postings. Today (actually on Feb 11) I bookmarked a very handy dandy Ruby on Rails tutorial.

I mention this because lately I've found myself gravitating more towards lesser known blogs. DJI is no unknown, don't get me wrong - lot's of people read it, but it's not a mega industry destination. For that I am thank full.

No doubt a larger audience will find Tony's feed in the coming year, yet I'm not afraid that he'll loose his unique perspective. Why? He's in medicine, and tech seems to be a fascination not a career choice.

Highrise is coming

37Sig's "CRM" tool is around the corner. Luckily, yet not unsurprisingly, they do not call it CRM. (No one should use that term. It is horrid, useless and in many ways incorrect. )

"Highrise is a shared contact manager that helps you keep track of who you talk to, what was said, and what to do next. Like Basecamp helps you collaborate on projects, Highrise helps you collaborate on people."

Until we all get our collective hands on it, I wanted to draw your attention to a couple of good examples in copy writing.

In the posts' "Scenarios" section, created to make the tool and its uses relevant to its audience (us), there is no corporate babble.

Example 1:
Jason could have written:
"Set reminder to send Thank-you note to client contact"

Instead he expressed himself in human English:
"Set a reminder to write Steve a thank-you note next Friday"

Example 2:
Could have written: "Review conversations with contact at partner company"

Choose to write: "Review all conversations I’ve had with Chris from Apple"


Plain English wins every time. Don't make it more complicated than it is. Neither your customers or your team members will thank yo for it. Are you a human? Do you do business with humans? Then speak like a human!

Update: A few more words from Jason about Highrise just posted.

"Highrise won’t have pipeline reports or any numbers. It’s not a CRM tool in the traditional sense. It’s a lot closer to an address book than something like Salesforce.com. Just as Basecamp doesn’t have traditional project management staples such as Gantt charts, Highrise doesn’t have traditional CRM tools like sales pipeline reports or charts.

Highrise is about people, communications, conversations, and tasks. It’s not about numbers."

Need versus want

I was talking to a friend about presenting formats. We ended up looking at some interesting clips, including a couple of ignite style presentations from a Seattle tech get-together in December.

The idea is that you have a short time, usually 2 minutes, to present. To keep you on your toes your slides will automatically change every 10-20 seconds.

This is by no means an ideal format, but it does force a presenter to think about what they need to say, as opposed to what they want to say. A key benefit of ignite style presentations is the Attention Span Factor. It's impossible to get distracted from the rapid-fire spiel. And it is very inspiring (igniting) because the energy level is high and the presenters' passion shines through.

Here's an example:

Click To Play
(will open in a new window, sorry it's a blip.tv thing)

More Ignite vids here.

On presenting to VCs I would still stick with Guy Kawasaki's good ol' 10/20/30 rule. 10 slides, 20 minutes, font size 30. Unbeatable.

Updated: turns out the Web 2.0 Expo will host a 2 hour Ignite session on April 15.

SF's WiFi - Episode... who knows!

San Francisco's city wide WiFi project moves at the speed of an old 14.4 modem.

Here's one of my previous posts on the topic.

Cisco + Five Across

Cisco goes Web 2.0 by picking up Five Across. Surprising, yes, but it also makes perfect sense as Matt Marshall explains in his story on VentureBeat.

I must admit that I hadn't thought much about Five Across since I wrote about them back in 2004. I'm just glad to see that a fairly low profile company like FA gets noticed by Cisco.

Well spoken, Mr. Drucker

“[People decisions] reveal how competent management is, what its values are, and whether it takes its job seriously.”

“Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.”

“Altogether, an increasing number of people who are full-time employees have to be managed as if they were volunteers. They are paid, to be sure. But knowledge workers have mobility. They can leave. They own their ‘means of product,’ which is their knowledge.”

“[The relationship between knowledge workers and their superiors] is far more like that between the conducter of an orchestra and the instrumentalist than it is like the traditional superior/subordinate relationship. The superior in an organization employing knowledge workers cannot, as a rule, do the work of the supposed subordinate any more than the conductor of an orchestra can play the tuba. In turn, the knowledge work is dependent on the superior to give direction and, above all, to define what the “score” is for the entire organization, that is, what are its standards and values, performance and results. And just as an orchestra can sabotage even the ablest conductor — and certainly even the most autocratic one — a knowledge organization can easily sabotage even the ablest, let alone the most autocratic superior.”"

Peter Drucker

Found here.

Companies that don't get it: j2

I've used my free eFax/j2/jConnect account for several years, and apart from the occasional unsolicited "promotional" fax (presumably to cover their costs which I think completely acceptable) I've been happy with it.

Today I received an email with the friendly subject line: "jConnect Account Suspension Notice". Turns out I had been foolish enough to receive more than my alloted 20 free fax pages in a calendar month.

Here's the crazy part. Instead of giving me the option to pay for the extra pages which I'd happily do, I am forced to either accept j2 canceling my account, or sign up for J2's "premium" service, an $180 a year expense, to keep my fax number. Or as j2 puts it in its customer centric, friendly tone of voice "Upgrade to jConnect Premier™ immediately, or risk losing your account."

The email, and the J2 customer service rep I reached on the phone, both pointed out that by signing up for the account in the first place, I had accepted that this would happen.

Trust me I hadn't, not knowingly at least. But that should teach me a lesson to read the fine print!

When I ask about number recycling the rep tells me that my number will most likely go back in to the fax # pool and be given to some one else soon, probably not later than approx 2-3 weeks from today.

So that would give me just barely enough time to tell the people who normally fax me to...well, not fax me on that number.

But no. The account will be suspended in "about a week" unless i pay up! Great, that means I can either have my faxes bounce, or worst case scenario, be sent to some one else if the number gets redistributed before I can't get hold of everyone by then.

Expressing my unhappiness with this the rep informs me that j2 has been in business for 14 years, and is a public company, and that they've never had this type of complaint before. (Isn't it funny how customer rep's always say that last bit?)

I was, in my humble point of view, pretty much strong armed in to signing up for at least a month of service, at $15, to protect the integrity of the information people wish to fax me.

I fully intend to cancel my account as soon as I've distributed my new fax number (which will be with either MyFax or TrustFax - nice people, good reviews, low prices).

j2? Never ever again - not for my personal fax needs, not for any of my current or future businesses.

Any company that feels the need to conduct themselves in this way is not worthy of my business. IMHO they just don't get it.