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Archives for June 2009

Coming Friday at 11:01 pm CDT: Custom URLs for Facebook Pages

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Facebook usernames are coming Friday night at 11:01 pm Central Time. This means that the url for your profile will be as simple as www.facebook.com/mattperman, rather than www.facebook.com/id=592952074?!#@4832

From the Facebook blog:

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You’ll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

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From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook. The one place, though, where your identity wasn’t reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like “id=592952074.” That soon will change.

We’re planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.

The New iPhone

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It will be available starting June 19. See an overview on the Apple site. Looks excellent! Key improvements include:

  • 2 times faster
  • Built in video camera (finally! — although I know you could take video before if you “unlocked” it)
  • Voice control — play music or place a call by voice
  • Compass
  • Spotlight search so you can search across the whole device (finally)
  • Send photos and videos in your SMS
  • Copy and paste (part of the software update, so it sounds like you have this even if you don’t upgrade the phone)

Google Wave

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You’ve probably heard about Google Wave. If you haven’t (or even if you  have), TechCrunch has a good summary of Google Wave that is worth taking a look at. Here’s the 40,000 foot view:

Everyone uses email and instant messaging on the web now, but imagine if you could tie those two forms of communication together and add a load of functionality on top of it. At its most fundamental form, that’s essentially what Wave is. Developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon out of Google’s Sydney, Australia offices, Wave was born out of the idea that email and instant messaging, as successful as they still are, were both created a very long time ago. We now have a much more robust web full of content and brimming with a desire to share stuff. Or as Lars Rasumussen put it, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”

Having seen a lengthy demonstration, as ridiculous as it may sound, I have to agree. Wave offers a very sleek and easy way to navigate and participate in communication on the web that makes both email and instant messaging look stale.

What Does That Really Cost?

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The cheapest option is not always the cheapest option. The management blog over at About.com has an introduction to the concept of Total Cost of Ownership. Here’s the start:

If I buy product “A” for $50 is that cheaper than buying Product “B” for $60? Well, that depends.

The concept of Total Cost of Ownership, usually abbreviated as TCO, helps us evaluate the true cost of the purchases we make for our companies, and for ourselves.

I would like to add another cost as well. I call it the “pain in the neck cost.” In other words, you need to look not only at the purchase price of the item and not only at the total cost over the life of the product, but also at the potential for problems and trouble and turmoil that the product will simply cost your sanity. This cost is intangible — you cannot necessarily assign dollars to it — but is just as real.

These days, when time is the new scarcity, the pain in the neck cost is more important than ever.

Don't Kick Yourself for Your Productivity Failures

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Good advice from Time Management from the Inside Out:

The worst thing to do is berate yourself for not getting everything done, for periodically procrastinating, and for slowing down from time to time. The time and energy you spend feeling guilty create a downward spiral of nonproductivity. Even the most productive people occasionally have off days. The thing that makes them good time managers is that they realize these things are a part of life, forgive themselves, make the necessary adjustments to their schedules, and move on.

Don’t kick yourself for your productivity failures. If you do, you might create a downward spiral that makes things worse. Besides, everyone has bad days.

The Productive Value of Unproductive Time

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From Time Management from the Inside Out:

Another reason people incorrectly estimate how long tasks take is that they overlook hidden time costs. Emily was a novelist whose goal was to write for three hours every morning. So she’d schedule three hours of writing time. That was logical enough; however, she consistently got only two hours of work done each day.

After paying attention to her habits, Emily realized it took her an hour to warm up. During this time, she read the newspaper, drank coffee, and gathered her thoughts. When she skipped this step, her writing was dreadful.

She had to accept that part of her process included warming up. For Emily to write productively for three hours, she needed to schedule four hours. To calculate how long it would take her to write a piece, she would have to allow for this transition time.

It is very interesting that this person spent one hour essentially doing other things in order to get “warmed up” for the writing she intended to do. It would be tempting to say, “that’s inefficient — she should just skip those things, and she’ll get more done in her day.” But, as she noted, if she skipped those “warm-up tasks,” her writing was horrible.

The lesson: Unproductive time is not necessarily unproductive. It may be an essential step in “tuning up” your mind for the high-level tasks it needs to do. If you cut it out, you may find that your productivity decreases rather than increases.

If you find this to be true in your case, embrace it. Don’t go overboard, but don’t try to change yourself. If you can get 4 hours of work done in 4 hours of straight work, that’s great. But if you “waste” the first hour, but then in the remaining 3 hours get the equivalent of 4 hours of tasks done, more power to you.

The New Nine-to-Five

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Good statement from the ROWE blog:

We shouldn’t be judging people for how they decide to approach their work.  It’s that simple. As long as the work is getting done, and as long as people have the freedom to operate in the best way to get that work done, then there is no crazy. And nine-to-five is not a badge of honor, but just one of many options.

I’ll be posting more about the nature of a results-only-work-environemnt (ROWE) in the future.