Short and sweet.  I was browsing Google Help today to find the article on the differences between a Google account and Google Apps (a topic for another time), when I noticed this little tidbit:

For any product available through Google Accounts but not currently available in Google Apps (e.g., Blogger), you can use your Apps address without any issues. But in the future, when we add more products to Google Apps (hint! hint!)…

So…is Google inviting the rumor mill here or are they telling us that they’ll soon offer Blogger as a Google Apps product (as well as a Google Accounts product)?  If the latter, how will the Blogger product fit in with the existing Google Sites product for organizations? 

in the corner!

In the “wall of shame” series, I got an email today that stated “Please fax in all documents. We can no longer except documents  by E-mail.”

Pause to reflect.

OK.  So, about 7 years ago when I closed on my house, my mortgage company could not send

documents by email.  And of course, they forgot to fed-ex the documents as well.  So we sat around for 6 hours through several attempts to fax an entire tome of contracts to the closing firm.  The first 12 attempts failed at page 40 or something.  After that they started sending it out in 30-page batches.

Here are are now, and people can’t receive documents over email?  What happened to technology? The environmental movement? Common sense?  And to top it off: No longer

?!  I mean, you are a ludite or live in a cave with a single fax line, I understand.  But to have seen the light, and then step backwards about 10 years?!

Whoever you are, get with the times!  While you’re at it, start accepting digital signature.  I can show you how…call me!

OS X

A few months ago I got another call from a friend, giddy as a schoolgirl, telling me they got a Mac.  I’m not sure what it is about these machines:  It’s not like switching from Honda to Volkswagen.  People who get their first Mac act like their life just changed: their first baby may have just been born but they’re asking me what to do to their Mac.  They’re teenagers again, who just bought their first car.  Freaks. (Or was I the same way back in the last ice age when I got my first mac?) No matter.  This is not a social studies course.  I get questions about “what to do first” on a new Mac, so I’ll address them here.

But first a correction.  People seem to “switch” to mac these days.  I’m personally not keen on that word choice.  ”Switch” implies a fairly dramatic (if not major) change.  You switch a light off or on going from darkness to light or vice versa, for example.  I’m guessing the Apple marketing geniuses love this idea that you’re putting something behind you, switching

 to something new and exciting.  But I think it’s more of a shift. Like shifting from 2nd to 3rd: you’re still driving the same car on the same road, but you’re moving better now.  Apple goes to lengths to remind us that we can now run Windows on a Mac, so even when you’re switching, you don’t have to, really.  Parenthetically, I know only few people who run Windows on their Mac, and they have specific requirements such as server software that require Internet Explorer.  Even Windows devotees will tell you not to run IE but I’ll again leave this philosophical tangent for a later time, like after a few martinis at Old Ebbitt.

One last thing by way of introduction: this is not purely an entry-level “top ten” list on how to use the Mac.  There are plenty of these.  I’m assuming most of you have some, even minimal familiarity with OS X by now, have installed the software updates (your Mac will have told you to anyway), and are able to use Safari to get to this article.  If you don’t, follow along anyway…but if you are not yet comfortable with a one-button mouse, I suggest browsing Apples Mac 101.   

Now on to step 2.

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I came upon this article in the New York Times when doing research for a blog post.   I figured, what better way to introduce a new “productivity” category?  These are some astonishing figures:

the cost of unnecessary interruptions is $650 billion per year

This is mostly mundane matters, in large part dealing with email, IM, SMS, etc.  The majority of the cost is in the time it takes to get back to work

28% of a workday is spent in interruptions

For those familiar with Stephen Covey’s quadrant, this is in the “Not Important, Not Urgent” category.  Another 20% is spent in meetings (though whether these are important or ugent is not addressed), and part of 25% is spent writing “productive” emails.  This is almost 3 hours in a 10 hour workday.
On the email side, new terms are hitting the street such as “email apnea” (the condition of holding your breath when you realize you have 300 new emails), and “email bankruptcy” (where you have so many emails you have to delete your inbox and try again.)   Gmail recently added a “take a break” feature in Gmail, which locks you out of your mail for 15 minutes.

In light of this, I’ve decided to add a few more things to my list of email productivity.

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sent from you blackberry?

About a year ago, I was sitting next to a business executive type on a plane back to DC.  As soon as we touched down, he brought out his blackberry and started feverishly tapping at it.  Someone asked him about the blackberry, and he confidently exclaimed that it’s made him 25% more productive, or some such.  So I said to myself,  Hold your horses, there, skippy!

Now, I don’t know the guy.  He may have data to support his claim. But let’s break this down. His grand claim means that in an average 10 hour workday, his blackberry allows him to reclaim 2.5 hours for other tasks.  What does he do on his blackberry that gives him that time back, that would be done less efficiently without the blackberry?  Email is a lot clunkier to type on a blackberry, so it can’t be it.  Most people claim that they can get rid of email quicker since they check it on a blackberry while not at the office, and act on it, freeing up on-computer time.  And it’s fair to assume that this guy may have a one-hour commute each way. Hopefully he has someone driving him around too, because I know none of us are so dangerous to reply to email on the blackberry while driving.  Then, there’s meetings.  You can of course check your email in the middle of a meeting.  Speaking of efficiency, if your meeting is so trivial that you use it to check your email on your blackberry, wouldn’t it be more productive to not have the meeting in the first place?  Or do you think your lunch buddy really enjoys watching you check your email?

I’ll tackle a few other points in a bit.  I, like many of us these days, look at efficiency and productivity as it relates to our full lives: our work, of course, but also our hobbies, our personal time, our family.  The blackberry and similar devices has, for better or worse, erased the work/personal lines that used to exist at 0900 and 1700 every day.  I check email at home, at the restaurant, while I volunteer…If I’m not efficient in these places, I’m not efficient at work either.  Spending 2 hours working at home after dinner does not mean I am 2 hours more efficient.

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