The 43F wiki is up.

Nick Sweeney says Damn You Merlin Mann
Originally uploaded by caterina.

I’m back from ETech and starting to recuperate a bit. It’s amazing how just a few days and nights can be so exhilarating and exhausting at the same time (esp. if one of those nights is spent on a fake beach with a lot of English people who drink like sailors). (Incidentally, if you have a pulse and a POP account, I probably owe you at least two email replies at this point, so accept this massive group apology until I can shovel my way toward the light.)

I reckon that if my technical prowess were more mature, I might not have to confess that all my favorite conference stuff inevitably happens outside the sessions—although in the case of ETech, the ones I caught were all very good. But there’s a weirdly “Disney World” quality to wandering around a hotel lobby bumping into, literally, dozens of clever, hilarious people whose work you’ve admired and enjoyed for years. Such a thrill for me. Like meeting Santa, Han Solo, and The Monkees all in the same friendly bar.

Spanking new Moleskine Reporter notebooks look really nice. Can’t wait to pick one up.

Life Hacks Live : Danny O'Brien
Originally uploaded by up4.

Life Hacks Live

Cory has posted his excellent notes from our talk at ETech today.

Danny: I had a TV show in deep cable called 404 NOT FOUND. We obsessed with the segues, “That was a cold way of chilling your computer and another cold thing is penguins and now Linux” — we used to obsess about these.

The good thing that came out of this was before commercials, my co-presenter Dave Green would turn to the camera and say, “And now, a few short films about capitalism.”

And now a few short presentations about Life Hacks. I’m using a 10 minute timer to ensure that I talk as fast as possible.

ETech ahead: expect delays, next seven days.

Great article on dealing with high email volume that focuses on what you can do to craft email messages that are easy to process, read, and answer.

Gina talks with Ian Capstick, who coordinates complex press interactions for NDP party MPs using a favorite tool of ours.

Giles was able to use some bits from email exchanges we had in his very good intro to using Macs for GTD. I especially like the tools overview.

Etech next week; fun stuff coming.

What context do I put my Next Actions in? :: MarkTAW.com

Mark Taw consistently provides some of the most lucid and realistic productivity advice I’ve come across. Today he eloquently addresses a common question of beginning Getting Things Done nerds.

If you have 15 lists, but they’re all full of things that you can do from the same starting point, you have 14 too many lists. It doesn’t matter if it’s a phone call, email, or going to the printers to pick up your business cards, your lists should contain no more detail than that. And don’t complain to me that your list would be too long that way, breaking it up into more lists doesn’t give you any fewer Next Actions, it just lets you procrastinate some of them more by putting them on a list you’ll ignore entirely.

Rules of Thumb 2
Originally uploaded by hotdogsladies.

Last month, I mentioned a series of books by Tom Parker that I had loved in college, called “Rules of Thumb,” and I’d lamented that they were out of print (since I couldn’t find my old copies). Imagine my delight when a bit of closet refactoring turned up this dog-eared veteran.

Here are a few of my old favorites:

Friday means its time for our weekly do-si-do of bulleted beauties.

Little spoon of JavaScript helps track outbound traffic from your site.

Handy little tip to avoid unnecessary drill-down, plus a plug for an old Mac evergreen.

Excellent ALA article on use cases for non-nerds....I wish all clients were smart and patient enough to walk through this level of detail before they started choosing new drapes and doorknobs.