Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.
Gmail Outage or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love GTD ContextsMerlin Mann | Aug 12 2008Like thousands of people yesterday, I was annoyed and inconvenienced by Gmail's unexpected 2-hour dirtnap. But, wow. Apparently, it just irrevocably hijacked the whole day for some folks. And even sent a few into a Dark Afternoon of the Soul that most 19th-century Romantic poets would have found a bit histrionic. Now, as a user, polemicist, and nemesis of Apple's MobileMe problems, I'm not here to criticize the frustration about a broken cloud service; I know that feeling all too well and have the dents in my wall to prove it. But, I do want to talk about some strategies you can choose to employ whenever a change in access to anything unexpectedly rearranges your day. Because things do break, and there's no reason you have to break with them. read more »POSTED IN:
Google Docs Adds Over 300 New TemplatesMerlin Mann | Jul 17 2008Google Docs recently added over 300 templates for a variety of business documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Need templates for a calendar, a letter, a resume, or even Avery-compatible labels? You're good to go. My favorites are in the eclectic "Miscellaneous" section, where you'll find templates for athletes, parents, wedding or event planners, wine nerds, screenwriters -- even "animal guardians". read more »9 Comments
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Philipp Lenssen's excellent AdSense tipsMerlin Mann | Jan 2 2008Having noticed Google's new "Newbie Central" site, Google Blogoscoped's Philipp Lenssen posted a swell pile of his own best tips for improving AdSense performance on your site. Linked here because (at least IMHO) it's depressingly rare to find useful, non-douchey advice about making money with a website. Typical of the sage stuff from PL: read more »POSTED IN:
Gmail IMAP Settings, Straight from the Google's MouthMatt Wood | Nov 19 2007This may not count as a real find since it's on the Google's own support site, but this list of recommended IMAP client settings is interesting in that it differs from many of the Gmail IMAP how-to's I've seen so far. Regarding Sent mail: Do NOT save sent messages on the server. If your client is sending mail through Gmail's SMTP server, your sent messages will be automatically copied to the [Gmail]/Sent Mail folder. ...and Junk folders: read more »POSTED IN:
Google releases iPhone-friendly gCalMerlin Mann | Sep 25 2007Updates from Google Docs and Google Calendar Whoa, check this out:
As an iPhone user and recent convert to gCal: Daddy like. POSTED IN:
gDocs and Apple would taste great togetherMerlin Mann | Sep 22 2007I've become an ardent Google Documents fan over the past few months -- especially as its support for Safari has improved (didn't say perfect; just improved). I use it for collaborating with clients and 43f guest authors, as well as for managing small projects and keeping various small teams organized. Personally, I find it simpler than a wiki and a lot more powerful than using a static .doc. My favorite use right now is to use a single shared document as a common space that 4 or 5 people have access to and that they can use to give each other to-dos, ask questions, etc. I know stuff like Basecamp does this better and certainly with more sophisticated features, but I'm really attracted to the simplicity of the one-document approach -- especially for informal, remote teams. I think my gDocs cincher was the first time that it occurred to me to see if I could even look at my documents on my iPhone; I was gob-smacked to see that it actually worked. Obviously it's not optimal for doing lots of editing, but you can see and perfunctorily edit your documents without a laptop, and that's just pretty mind-blowing to me. read more »POSTED IN:
Free MP3 of Inbox Zero talkMerlin Mann | Aug 3 200743F Podcast: Inbox Zero - Google Tech Talk A lot of folks with slower connections (or who just aren't crazy about internet video) have written to request an audio version of the Tech Talk on Inbox Zero I gave at Google last Monday. Google has very kindly permitted me to share that with you, so here you go. Thanks to everyone who wrote to request it. Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here: read more »POSTED IN:
Vox Pop: Managing actions from list emails?Merlin Mann | Jul 30 2007During the Q&A portion of my Inbox Zero presentation at Google the other day, an audience member stumped me with a question about how to manage action around mailing list distributions (the question starts at about 48:22). He said he frequently receives email requests and questions that are also distributed to the other 20 people on his team. He describes a "waiting game" in which team members hang back to see if other people will respond first -- at least partly out of not wanting to duplicate effort or flood the sender. I thought it was a really intriguing question, although I said (and still believe) that distributed email would not personally be my first choice to handle this kind of communication. Well, based on the reaction in the room that day, I gathered that this is a common dilemma for Googlers. Funny thing is that, since the video went up, I've received a lot of email from people outside the Googleplex who share the same problem -- a few of whom were aghast that I wasn't aware what a huge pain this is for knowledge workers. And to an extent, I'll admit those folks were mostly right. read more »POSTED IN:
Google Tech Talk: Today @ 2pmMerlin Mann | Jul 23 2007A reminder to any Googlers out there that I’ll be giving a Tech Talk on Inbox Zero today at 2:00 pm in the Seville room on the Mountain View campus. Hope I’ll see you there. (And many thanks to Dick Wall for the hook-up!) read more »POSTED IN:
Vox Pop: Google Desktop Day 1?Merlin Mann | Apr 5 2007So far, Google Desktop for the Mac isn't moving me. I like the idea of it a lot. Integrating my Google and local searches and theoretically improving on Spotlight's UI and indexing foibles are laudable goals and, to my mind, could be useful additions if they're done properly. But, based on, admittedly, just 24 hours' usage, it hasn't provided a lot of new usefulness for my own purposes that isn't better served right now by a combination of Quicksilver and Spotlight. When people ask me (ad POSTED IN:
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