Back to the main page of this blog The Podcast Network Website
Want to host your own show on TPN?

The Productivity Show #37 - David Gray (Global Geek)

download link

I thought it was time to go back to the technology of productivity, and who better than David Gray of the The Global Geek Podcast, to discuss all things geek and beautiful.

Patient Admin Systems! - Tony sold ‘em, Dave now uses them. They record things like blood pressure straight into the patient record. They didn’t in my time! They now have bandwidth to move X-Rays. They didn’t in my time!
Frogs - Love of all things Frog
Getting Things Done - Dave needs the pressure to perform. Once you start, you stick with it. Use the deadline to drive you.
Geek Distraction - A disease. Cool stuff. Twitter.
Twitter and Second Life - Help or Hindrance to productivity? Twitter as a quick blogging and marketing communication tool. No need to engage in a conversation. It doesn’t have to be just a social networking tool. Make sure you control the tools and they don’t control you.
Twhirl - Twitter client running on Adobe Air. multiple accounts, cross posting to Pounce and Jaiku.
Chat - As a knowledge sharing productivity tool to find things.
Second Life - For sky diving! Improved levels of communication. Great potential meet up service. Easy to get distracted but a good potential video conferencing tool so you don’t have to physically travel. Greener to use video conferencing than all that real transport.
FeedDemon - RSS Feed/Reader gives Dave 10 fold productivity for reading a large number of websites. Subscribe to specific searches in your reader for key words that come up on the web. Dave has 281 feeds and 9848 unread items! I have 24 feeds and no unread items in my SharpReader RSS Feeder.
Follow the Readers - Robert Scoble will read the sites for you so you don’t have to! Or try Louis Gray for early geek stuff. TechCrunch, Mashable for early news on tech. You might have to avoid sites with too many postings because it will snow you under.
XP - Vista No Thanks.
Notepad and Google Docs - for creation and sharing documents.
Thunderbird - For email. Getting off Thunderbird is a bit difficult. Rooting email via Gmail.
Tucows and Domain Direct - Not good for my pop3 email. Go Go Daddy. Gmail spam filter is very good.
BlackBerry - For tasks and contacts but not sending email.
Cheapo handset for making phone calls - That’s what mobiles are for aren’t they. Nokia 2310. Pre-paid call divert to another mobile. Vodafone Australia pre-paid won’t let me do it.
iPod for music - In the car. No radio for 3 years. No TV in over 3 years. Dave watches when he wants to watch.
Tony doesn’t listen to The Global Geeks Podcast because the show is too good!! Similarly, Merlin Mann, Kathy Sierra, and Guy Kawasaki, are too good to read! You want to save them to study them in more detail but never get round to it.
RocketDoc - Get rid of your icons and look like an Apple! Dip cursor to look at applications and clean up your desktop.
Launchy - Launching applications with short cut keys. And word completion as you type for which application. Not good for Tony if you have the memory of a goldfish, but good for most people. Index your entire Start menu. Makes it much easier to launch applications.
Skype - For VoIP of course. I’m recording this podcast on to CallBurner.
Roboform - Password manager. Plugs into your browser and Roboform fills in your password and can generate different passwords for each website. Dave has 90 site passwords. Or Keepass which is an open source product.
Tony’s Software on new 2GB Laptop - Office2007, Outlook2007, MindManager, GyroQ, Skype, Firefox, Gmail, Microsoft CRM. No Twitter, RSS Feed, or Second Life yet.
Gmail Plugins - Better Gmail via LifeHacker, to change the Gmail interface.
Desktop Search - I’m missing my Google Desktop search at work. Will it slow the laptop down?
Life Streaming - Aggregates all your content, Blogs, Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, into a single feed of yourself, or of other people you want to follow. FriendFeed, takes data from all your sites and puts them in one aggregated place, or track other people. Shareaholic to share links you find, straight into Twitter, Facebook etc.
The Future is Mobile and Wireless - Mobile web applications.
What takes up Dave’s time? - Podcasting! Trying to record live, to save time.
Pressure needed to perform and Get Things Done - Remember those last minute assignments and essays. Never Again!
Kill the Perfectionist - Near Enough is Never Good Enough! Just Do It, to overcome the perfectionist. Action Action Action. Kids will kill the perfectionism.
Plan in Real Time - No long term life plan. Recent guests tend to be living in the present and organically growing their goals. Finishing tasks no matter how small. Completion.
Footballers’ Favourites - Try video blogging. Traveling. Midnight Oil. Worst Habit.

5 Responses to “The Productivity Show #37 - David Gray (Global Geek)”

  1. GTD Power Links 03-17-08 « Geeks Guide To Getting Things Done Says:

    […] The latest edition of the productivity show…I thought it was time to go back to the technology of productivity, and who better than David Gray of the The Global Geek Podcast, to discuss all things geek and beautiful. […]

  2. Chris Yeung Says:

    David hinted at a simple definition of RSS: a Blackberry for reading websites.

  3. Cynicalgeek Says:

    FYI: I used Launchy but finally switched to Enso for my launcher. Give it a whirl!

  4. Dave Gray Says:

    @Cynicalgeek I have had a look at Enso before, I actually found it to be a bit over complicated. I must admit it was the description that turned me off and I have not used it.

    @Chris Yeung I am yet to be convinced that there is a simple def for RSS - just bloody useful comes to mind. But there are ppl out there that your idea would mean nothing too as well. It is a hard concept for people that are noobs to the whole thing that’s for sure.

  5. Hugo Says:

    I use Dash as my launcher. I think i like it but i’m not sure. it’s better than launchy as it’s more programable but it can be a little shy sometimes.

Leave a Reply