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.