I was attempting to get a multimedia message off the iPhone today and noticed a nice bit of news. 3G has finally arrived from AT&T
Whoohoo!!!
3G arrives from AT&T!
December 4th, 2008 | by matt | in the news
Dec
04
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The Missing Save Button
December 3rd, 2008 | by matt | apple, micro$oft
Dec
03
At work, our corporate network is mainly all Microsoft. Sure there are roles filled by some linux machines and for our ISP services, its almost all unix/linux. But for email, calendaring, document sharing, its Micro$oft all the way.
I’m the black sheep of the office running OSX on a mini. I’m “testing” software, honest =)
Due to the nature of the corporate network, I find it is just easier to run the Microsoft office suite which means working with Entourage on a daily basis. Its not the greatest thing in the world, but it gets me by.
One of the things that I have noticed is when I am creating a todo item or calendar event, ‘save’ is not on the toolbar as an icon.
In theory, I should assume that the application is auto-saving my item and I won’t be prompted.
Wrong!
Yes, you can select the “Always save changes without asking” checkbox and get the following:
But why should I have to jump through that unnecessary loop. Unless I am hitting delete, it should save my meeting right away. Or, give me a save button on the tool bar so I can click that, get the basic meeting there and add more later rather than possibly having the application/computer crash in the middle of my new todo item losing everything.
Normally, this isn’t a big deal. But Apple has a long history of saving without having to hit save. Just check out the System Preferences as a great example of this. Here is a shot of the Energy Saver.
Notice something missing here? I don’t see “Save” or “Apply” anywhere. But when I close the window or hit the back arrow, I also don’t get some ugly ass prompt. It has already saved my new setting automatically. Nice!
Maybe I’m being overly picky on this one, but it seems that Microsoft is missing some of the user experience that would take their application to the next level.
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My Inbox is out of control!
December 2nd, 2008 | by matt | tips & tricks
Dec
02
I’ll admit it, I’m an email pack rat. I don’t like being this way, I just am. I’m terrible about deleting emails. I send myself links to read at a later point in time. I often use my inbox as a todo list by sending myself messages of things I need to do. There is a freaking todo list in my email client (Entourage) for goodness sake. I have a backpack account with 37 signals. Good lord, why am I using my inbox as my todo list. This is nuts.
Its time to stop. In the past I had heard of people having zero messages in their inbox. Merlin Mann is most noteable for quoting the term ‘Inbox Zero’ and you can read more about it at 43 Folders and there are some great videos of the inbox zero concept given by Merlin Mann himself.
To start off, my work inbox had 3770 items in it. Freaking ridiculous! There are messages in there from 2006! 2-0-0-freaking-6!!! So, here is what I did to solve this issue.
First, I created 3 folders.
- Archive – This folder is for everything that I don’t have a specific folder for concerning a project, but may need to access this email at some point in the next few days. Now, in order to keep the size of this folder from getting out of control, I setup a rule that will check the messages in this folder on a regular basis. If messages in this folder are over 30 days old, they are automatically moved to a local archive off of the Exchange server.
- To Respond – This folder is simply for messages that I need to respond to, but I need to either research something or more thought on my part is needed so I put messages in this folder to respond to by the end of the day. I do not let this fill up. It is always empty before I leave for the end of the day.
- DMZ – technically, I’m cheating a bit here. I’m taking everything that was in my inbox and moved it to the DMZ folder. What this did was allow me to start having an inbox zero box now. I didn’t have to go through all 3,770 messages and get it down to zero. I started now. Refreshing, quick, and I’m off to a good start.
Its only been a 1/2 a day with this new habit, but good habits have to start somewhere. So I’m going to set a small goal of keeping my inbox clean for the rest of the week. If I’m still on track, the next goal is the rest of December. Small steps, small steps.
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