Archive for October, 2005

10-31-2005

Make Control Panel Applets More Accessible

One of the tweaks I like to make on any Windows machines I work on regularly is to
Make Control Panel Applets More Accessible

Solution #2 (Windows Me/2000/XP only):

* Select Settings in your Start Menu, and then select Taskbar & Start Menu.
* In Windows Me and Windows 2000, choose the Advanced tab, and turn on the Expand Control Panel option. In Windows XP, choose the Start Menu tab, choose Classic Start Menu, and click Customize.
* Now, the Control Panel menu (in Settings) will display a list of its contents, rather than just opening a separate window.

Posted by Matt in tech | No Comments »

10-30-2005

Article on Pandora online music service

My most recent article for Playlistmag.com, “Pandora brings users personalized radio stations,” was posted last week. For the article, I interviewed Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, an online music service that streams personalized radio stations based on individual tastes:

A new Web site debuted recently, called Pandora, seemingly in answer to my musical prayers. Not only does it let users create a customized and personalized station of 128Kbps streaming music, Pandora lets users create up to 100 such stations.

Posted by Matt in music, tech, writing | No Comments »

10-26-2005

Great Notes from Getting Things Done: the Roadmap seminar

I just finished reading some notes from David Allen’s Getting Things Done: the Roadmap seminar posted on the From the Belly of the Beasts blog. In particular, the following item jumped out at me:

Use “draft” instead of “write” (less intimidating to have “draft proposal to yada yada” on your list than “write proposal”)

It’s subtle, but I think it would be useful to help change my thinking about writing. It fits in well with one of the themes of The Now Habit:

Work for an imperfect, perfectly human first effort.

I’m also curious about the paperclip exercise mentioned toward the bottom of the notes. Anyone know more details about it?

Posted by Matt in business, lifehacks, writing | No Comments »

10-22-2005

Notes on Making it Happen by Mackenzie Kyle

I just finished reading a book on project management called Making it Happen. It’s written as a novel that details the story of a project management novice who is suddenly asked to manage the rollout of a new boat design. Though the story wouldn’t keep my interest on its own, it made learning the basics of project management more engaging. I’ve added my notes on the book to my wiki page of book notes.

Structure of an Assignment

  1. GENESIS
  2. DESIGN (describes the final product in enough detail so that you could produce it)
  3. EXECUTION PLAN (Project)
  4. EXECUTION
  5. REVIEW
    1. (Review of Design)
    2. (Review of Execution Plan and Execution)
    3. (Review of Genesis)

Posted by Matt in business, communication, general, reading | 1 Comment »

10-19-2005

Advanced Email Searches in Google Desktop

Google Desktop Search has made finding information on my computers much easier. I now put a lot less thought than I used to into where I store files. Recent versions even feature searching of Thunderbird email messages, which is much faster than the search features built into Thunderbird itself.

Somewhere recently I found out about the advanced operators, specifically for searching email. I’m already finding them to be very handy:

Advanced email search
You can restrict your search to look for matches within email message headers. The available email search operators are:

  • Subject:
  • To:
  • From:
  • Cc:
  • Bcc:

Sample usage:

  • subject:spirit returns all emails with the word “spirit” in the Subject: field.
  • subject:”Will Eisner” returns all emails with the exact phrase “Will Eisner” in the Subject: field.
  • subject:(spirit eisner) returns all emails with both words “spirit” and “eisner” in the Subject: field. Both words must be present in the Subject: field, but they can be in any order and do not have to be next to each other.
  • subject:spirit eisner returns all emails with the word “spirit” in the Subject: field and the word “eisner” anywhere in the email, including the body.

You can combine multiple email header restrictions in one query. For example, a search on [subject:spirit from:denny] will return only those email messages that have both “spirit” in their Subject: field and “denny” in their From: field. As with the other operators, you cannot have a space between any email header operator and its related search term.

Posted by Matt in communication, tech | No Comments »

10-17-2005

My Own Crazy, Random “Chris Rock Thing”

I ran across this funny story by a lady who found Chris Rock’s cell phone:

CALLER: Is Chris there?

LAURA: [Puzzled, with curiosity piqued] Uh, Chris… who?

CALLER: Chris Rock.

LAURA: [Incredulously] Chris Rock!? As in, the Chris Rock?

Coincidentally, it reminded me of the time I saw Chris Rock. . . in Prague. I had only been in the city for a day or two. I was walking around in the touristy area, not far from the clock tower. I passed by a guy walking in the opposite direction who looked exactly like Chris Rock. I did a double-take, but it still took a few seconds for the possibility to register that it actually could be the Chris Rock. It was hard to believe, since the guy was walking around by himself, with no entourage.

I found out later that Chris Rock was in fact in Prague filming a movie with Anthony Hopkins. I even saw some of the exterior shots being filmed. Bad Company has been out on DVD for a while, but I still haven’t gotten around to watching it.

Posted by Matt in general, movies, travel | No Comments »

10-10-2005

sending and receiving faxes online

Thanks to the Internet, it’s now pretty rare that I need to receive faxes and even more rare that I need to send them. Recently I’ve needed to receive a few, so I did some searching to find out what the latest online options were. I came across an excellent online faxing FAQ, which includes recommendations broken down by usage.

Q: Kevin, I appreciate the detailed information about fax services in your FAQ, but it’s too much to digest. Please help me choose an inexpensive and reliable service that’s right for me.

A: OK, because you asked for it. Choose what type of user you are and you’ll find my recommendations.

Posted by Matt in communication, lifehacks, tech | No Comments »

10-03-2005

Form Testing Bookmarklet

I’ve been creating a lot of web pages containing email forms lately. To help streamline testing of the forms, I modified the AutoFill Anonymous bookmarklet to create my own AutoFill Testing bookmarklet. It will fill in any text fields with testing and email fields with testing@example.com.

Posted by Matt in bookmarklets, tech | No Comments »