RescueTime

Following the recommendations and positive reviews from Lifehacker and others, I just set up my free RescueTime Lite account and so far I am lovin' it!

I had been looking for a "time tracker" app to record my overall time budgeting and make sure that the actual hours & minutes of my days were being spent on my actual big hairy P1's.

RescueTime gives you a fantastically useful overview of where all those minutes are going, broken down by day, category, application, and website or activity.

Getting set up is a no brainer - it took me less than two minutes to create a user account and download the tracker app to my MacBook Pro.

Once the app was installed, within a few hours my metrics started appearing at my "Dashboard" user page at RescueTime's website. The various charts and displays look great and are super intuitive to follow. This is exactly what I had hoped for - and all for free!

Honestly, the free version of the app is so good that I will probably pony up for the "Pro" version if only to reward the developers for building such a beautiful product. The "Pro" version apparently does give you some pretty juicy bells and whistles, such as: more granular tracking of time spent working on individual documents (as opposed to just apps and sites), setting of alerts for goals, and unlimited data storage (the free version tops out at two months' worth of data).

At any rate, I can already see this tool is going to be an incredibly useful nugget in my ongoing quest to turbocharge my own personal productivity. Thanks guys for a fantastic product. Highly recommended.

EDIT: I just got my first "Distraction Alert" - time to get back to work!

How To Speed Up Your iPhone 3G / 3GS Running iOS 4

Been doing a bit of research on this topic; here is a synopsis of the tips I've collected from around the web, in no particular order...

1. Turn Off Spotlight Indexing

Navigate to Settings > General > Spotlight Search, and turn search indexing off for as many items as possible. "This reduces the overall workload of the system, so it appears to give an overall performance boost that is significant." (Source: RoughlyDrafted.com)

2. Cold Boot the iPhone

Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button along with the Home button for ten seconds or longer, which will kill the phone and initiate a reboot. You'll know you have achieved a cold boot when the screen goes completely dark and the Apple logo appears. Note that some users apparently have to hold the buttons down for longer; your mileage seemingly may vary. (Source: RoughlyDrafted.com)

3. Restore your iPhone using DFU mode.

Put your iPhone into DFU (Device Firmware Update) mode by following the instructions here or here. From there, restore your iPhone using iTunes. (Source: iSmashPhone / iPhoneHeat)

4. Reinstall your OS (and/or downgrade to 3.1.3) using iTunes.

Full instructions here, and here. (Credit: Findtut.com and Apple Insider)

EDIT: Lifehacker has an even more thorough article on this process.

5. Manually close your running apps.

Hit the Home button twice to bring up the list of running apps. Hold down one of the app icons in the system tray until all the icons start to wiggle, then hit the red minus signs to begin quitting the running apps one by one. (Source: poster Zaphon at Mac Rumors)

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Postscript: Here is an anecdotal report from at least one developer who seems to think that the current iOS 4.1 beta has improved the performance of his iPhone 3G. Hopefully, this bodes well...

NYT: 'Blue Screen of Death' Caused Gulf Oil Disaster

This just in: Prolonged use of Microsoft Windows may cause explosions, death and massive environmental disaster.

Problems existed from the beginning of drilling the well, Mr. Williams said. For months, the computer system had been locking up, producing what the crew called the “blue screen of death.”

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/us/24hearings.html

iOS 4 Speed Tips

For those poor unfortunates who, like myself, are still stuck with last year's technology, here is a blog post offering tips on tweaking iOS 4 performance when running on older hardware (e.g. the iPhone 3GS, in my case):

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/07/07/how-to-speed-up-your-iphone-3g-running-ios4/

Antenn-aid for iPhone 4

This is awesome.

iPhone 4 In Use - Comments From The Technorati

This just in: Engadget delivers an interesting redux of on-the-street reportage from their staff and other tech journalists, attempting to get to the bottom of the "iPhone Death Grip" issue:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/yes-the-iphone-4-is-broken-no-the-iphone-4-is-not-broken/

Consumer Reports iPhone 4 study flawed?

Quick hit here from the blog of former RF engineer Bob Egan, who somewhat debunks Consumer Reports' recent iPhone antenna testing:

http://mobileanalyst.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/iphone-4-report-consumer-reports-study-is-full-of-crap/

Habit Forming Apps: Streaks & Routines

Quick note re: two iPhone apps I've found helpful in attempting to create new habits and rituals in my life.

Streaks is billed as a "motivational calendar" that simply allows you to track the number of consecutive days in which you achieve a specified objective. That's it. Sounds simple, but the single-minded focus of this app makes it (for me) exponentially easier to track my day-by-day progress in forming new habits. Compared to more feature-rich tools, its simplicity makes it something which I actually use... precisely *because* of its simplicity, in fact.



Routines is a dead simple checklists app that lets you check off recurring tasks of varying frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) and context (home, work, etc). Perfect for keeping oneself focused and tasked on sequential activities (e.g. working out, or my "morning ritual"). This is a "freemium" app that is quite useful in its free state, and only costs a buck or two to upgrade to the full version.



Together, these two little apps have greatly helped me in creating and tracking my daily "on-ramps" to productivity. Check em out!

Evernote

Been meaning to post a quick shout out to Evernote, my favorite productivity app at the moment.

I am using a bastardized version of Bobby Travis's "one notebook" tagging system to incorporate a GTD-based structure into Evernote - basically using Evernote tags to create a Next Actions / Projects / Reference type of structure for incoming notes.

Evernote is in many ways a perfect solution for the "universal inbox" of GTD lore. Pictures, text, voice notes, emails, web clippings - all of these can be squirted right into Evernote from any app or device. PDF's and pictures get "munged" in the background and converted into searchable text.

Once in Evernote, incoming notes get tagged as either Next Actions (with context based tags e.g. @AGENDAS, @CALLS, @EMAILS etc), Projects, or Reference items. I got fairly anal with the Reference tagging structure and created single-letter tag headers from A through Z, with nested tags alphabetized hierarchically thereunder.

Working great so far...although I do miss having a single consolidated "top level" view of all open action items (a la Things or OmniFocus).

More to follow.

New MacBook Pros finally imminent?!?

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/04/10/macbook-pro-updates-imminent-really-part-numbers-appear/

Film at eleven...

MenuMeters

Nice little discovery for those who (as I am) are attempting to eke out every last drop of horsepower from an aging MacBook Pro:

http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/

The package comes with CPU, disk activity, memory and network usage meters. Setup is a breeze and the meters live unobtrusively in the menu bar (hence the clever name). It is released as open source freeware - please consider donating if you find it useful.

Very nice tool.

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MacBook Pro: The Wait Continues...

Poster ckelley at MacRumors.com reports building a 2.66GHz Quad Core i5-based Hackintosh that runs circles around a Core 2 Duo-based iMac:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=890167&page=19

Steve Jobs, are you listening? How about a 17" MBP with Quad Core i7 in time for May Day? Please? Bitte schön? Por favor?

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