Citymapper app

Posted by William Gallagher

I spend a hell of a lot of time travelling by public transport: it is the handiest thing ever, when it works and when you can find your route. You won’t be surprised to know that I try a lot of apps for this purpose and I’ve just reviewed this one for MacNN.

Actually, review doesn’t cover it: I’ve evangelised Citymapper.

Give Citymapper a round of applause: its taxi listing includes the typical price for that distance – and it does so in the local currency. If you need the convenience and speed of a taxi, this info is a real benefit.

Distressingly, it also tells you approximately how many calories you’ll burn off if you walk. Let’s just gloss over that.

Hands On: Citymapper 5.01 (iPhone) – William Gallagher, MacNN (17 March 2015)

Read the full piece.

The origins of the photocopier and the future of 3D printing

Posted by William Gallagher

They are two different things. Yet the unexpected, gigantic, enormous bang of photocopying and the way it went from non-existent to all-pervasive is likely to happen with 3D printing. Let it. It’s good. In the meantime, The Smithsonian Magazine has profiled the origins of the familiar photocopier and found some gems:

…in 1959, Xerox released the “914”—the first easy-to-use photocopier. The culmination of more than 20 years of experimentation, it was a much cleaner, “dry” process. The copier created an electrostatic image of a document on a rotating metal drum, and used it to transfer toner—ink in a powdered format—to a piece of paper, which would then be sealed in place by heat. It was fast, cranking out a copy in as little as seven seconds. When the first desk-size, 648-pound machines were rolled out to corporate customers—some of whom had to remove doors to install these behemoths—the era of copying began.

Or more accurately, the explosion of copying began. Xerox expected customers would make about 2,000 copies a month—but users easily made 10,000 a month, and some as many as 100,000. Before the 914 machine, Americans made 20 million copies a year, but by 1966 Xerox had boosted the total to 14 billion.

How the Photocopier Changed the Way We Worked — and Played – Clive Thompson, Smithsonian Magazine (March 2015)

Read the full piece.

Firefox and Chrome users stay in their jobs longer

Posted by William Gallagher

Now if it this were about Internet Explorer, you could joke that users stay longer in their jobs because that browser is slower. But it isn’t about that, so we can’t. Instead, a firm has found that people who uses these other two browsers have certain characteristics.

Cornerstone’s researchers found that people who took the test on a non-default browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, ended up staying at their jobs about 15 percent longer than those who stuck with Safari or Internet Explorer. They performed better on the job as well. (These statistics were roughly the same for both Mac and PC users.)

People Who Use Firefox or Chrome Are Better Employees — Joe Pinskermar, The Atlantic (16 March 2015)

The thinking is that these are non-standard browsers. That is, if you use them, you chose to go get them and it’s the act of even looking into alternatives that marks you out with these distinctive characteristics.

Read the full piece.

A month of networking

Posted by William Gallagher

Sounds like torture, doesn’t it? But writer Rachel Gillett did it so you don’t have to – and yet you may want to take her advice. She documents the whole month so do read the full piece but here’s why she did it plus the opening of week one:

I spent the past month doing something most people dread: networking.

As an introvert, the month-long challenge to work my way up to being a superconnector was both a painfully difficult and surprisingly rewarding experience.

WEEK 1: GET TO KNOW YOUR COWORKERS
During the first week of the challenge, I eased into networking by inviting coworkers to lunch. This low-pressure situation promised to help us practice our conversation skills. I asked my coworker Rose to invite another colleague, David, to join us for lunch—and on the walk to our lunch spot I felt very deeply the true awkwardness of this scenario.

I think we were all aware of the social connotation when someone asks you to lunch. One can’t help but wonder, what’s the motivation here, what’s the angle? So as we sat down to eat, I wanted to dispel any fears of a hidden agenda. Our networking lunch was simply an occasion to get out of the office, get to know each other better. After brushing the initial awkwardness aside, we enjoyed a delicious family-style meal of somosas, saag paneer, chicken tikka masala, lamb korma, and naan. We ate like kings, kvetched like yentas, and it was great.

“Be you, be real,” Judy Robinett, author of How to Be a Power Connector: The 5+50+100 Rule, suggested during our live chat. “Connections happen on a personal level first. You want folks with a good head, good heart, and good gut.”

My Painful (And Sometimes Fun) Month Of Networking – Rachel Gillett, Fast Company (16 March 2015)

Read the full piece.

Using Evernote to write books

Posted by William Gallagher

It’s a piece from Evernote.com so, you know, there’s not going to be a lot of criticism here but still:

Every day, people rely on Evernote to compile, catalog, organize their research and writing.

For author and chief Business Insider correspondent Nicholas Carlson, Evernote was the primary tool he used to write a 93,000 word book. In six weeks.

That boils down to an average of 2,500 words every day.

This week, Nicholas stopped by our Redwood City HQ to talk about how he used Evernote as the comprehensive writing workspace for his newly published book, “Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!”

How to Write a 93,000 Word Book With Evernote – Taylor Pipes, Evernote Blog (18 January 2015)

Read the full piece.

Better networking for beginners

Posted by William Gallagher

From Harvard Business Review where they’re probably more into setting up contracts and contacts in hard business than writing, but still:

Meet in person if possible. In a globalized world, geography often intervenes. Last week, I had an initial call with a friend-of-a-friend in Singapore, and we’re not likely to connect in person anytime soon. A phone call is a good start (they’ll at least remember your name and know something about you), but it’s a much weaker form of connection than the alternatives. Video conferences are slightly better; as I describe in my forthcoming book Stand Out, my friend John Corcoran, a Bay Area podcaster, makes sure to conduct his interviews with Skype’s video feature, even though he only uses the audio tracks, because he wants to establish a face-to-face connection. But wherever possible, find out when the person will next be in your city (or vice versa) and make a plan to connect then to cement your new tie.

The Right (and Wrong) Way to Network – Dorie Clark, Harvard Business Review (10 March 2015)

Read the full piece.

Just a quarter of an hour

Posted by William Gallagher

Writer Sallie Tams has a blog post with a huge amount of solid, good, even great advice about getting on with things. Do read the whole piece but this is one section I especially liked:

YOUR STARTER FOR 15 – what can you do in the next 15 minutes that advances you towards the goal? There are 96 opportunities to do this every day – take just one of them and use it to get one step closer to where you want to be. You will be astonished what you can achieve in 15 minutes. I did this with my extremely derelict and over-grown garden when I moved into this house. Initially I was completely overwhelmed and had no idea where to start but by giving myself 15 minutes every night and a little longer at weekends, got the task done and the results were edible (as you can see above) – how great is that?

Done Really Is Better Than Perfect – Sallie Tams, One Word After Another (15 March 2015)

Read the full piece.

Man’s Neuroses Really Putting Genuine Compliment Through The Wringer

Posted by William Gallagher

The Onion:

SANTA CLARITA, CA—Instantly mobilizing in response to a coworker’s positive remark about his job performance, local marketing assistant Devin Brandt’s neuroses really put the genuine compliment he received through the wringer Monday, sources confirmed. “There had to be an ulterior motive hidden in there somewhere, right? Or maybe he was being sarcastic.”

Man’s Neuroses Really Putting Genuine Compliment Through The Wringer – Mental Health, The Onion (17 February 2015)

There’s not a huge amount more to this on The Onion’s full piece but you must read it because you recognise Every Single Word, don’t you?

Weekend read: BlackBerry’s home town decline

Posted by William Gallagher

It’s a little after 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and I’m sitting in a freezing rental car outside the BlackBerry headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, looking for signs of life.

Five years and several billion dollars ago, these buildings would have been full, and the windows would have been dotted with busy silhouettes. But today, it’s a ghost town.

The life, death, and rebirth of BlackBerry’s hometown – Kevin Roose, Fusion (8 February 2015)

Do read the full piece: it’s absorbing and also a little more uplifting than you might expect given Blackberry’s fortunes.

Unconvinced: To Do Lists are Evil, Schedule Things Instead

Posted by William Gallagher

Prolific productivity writer Eric Barker – hang on, you can’t have lazy productivity writers, can you? – argues that whatever doesn’t get scheduled doesn’t get done. He has a point. I disagree with the logical extension of this that To Do lists are therefore worthless and the calendar is king. Here’s the core of is argument:

To-do lists are evil. Schedule everything.

To-do lists by themselves are useless. They’re just the first step. You have to assign them time on your schedule. Why?

It makes you be realistic about what you can get done. It allows you to do tasks when it’s efficient, not just because it’s #4.

Until it’s on your calendar and assigned an hour, it’s just a list of wishful thinking.

How to be the most productive person in your office — and still get home by 5:30 p.m. – Eric Barker, The Week (18 September 2014)

Read the full piece for more but I’m unconvinced. I seethe logic and I am actually scheduling times for certain things every week yet, I don’t know. I have a recurring task to check the Writers’ Guild email inbox that I’m responsible for. It takes about two minutes if there is email in it, less if there isn’t. I could schedule an hour for that and relax for 58 minutes.

But I think you’d argue that it would be sensible to schedule an hour for doing, say, all Writers’ Guild stuff. That’s certainly less time-consuming than taking each Guild task and assigning a time to it.

So let’s say Tuesdays at 9am, I do Guild work. That’s what I need to schedule, not every single damn task in it. And come Tuesday at 9am, what will I open to start work? My To Do list.

I nearly skipped pointing you at this piece because I think it’s one good point puffed up to be a whole article. But there is an interview within it with a professor who sounds remarkable at getting a lot done. So do have a look, if only for that.