Several friends have asked me what they should put on their iPhone. So I decided to blog it.

Here are some of my technogeek apps:

My primary two apps I can’t live without:
First off, I am quickly becoming a big advocate of GTD. I’ll write more about that later, in the meanwhile, check out the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. And of course there is an app for that:

Nozbe (You can manage your tasks on your phone but you need to sign up first at the Nozbe Website)

And I put everything down now in:
Evernote: http://www.evernote.com

Other Cool Iphone Apps I use:

Cardsnap - Takes a photo of a business card, OCR’s it and puts it in
your contact list.
Pingle - Pings all your social networks with your status via Ping.fm
fex - Imports your Facebook contacts’ photos into your contact list.
Camera Zoom – digital zoom for the Iphone camera
FML - useless but funny
Phone Flicks – update your Netflix queue
Shazam – listens and identifies songs that are playing in the
environment around you.
Pandora – Great music app
Last.fm – another great music app/social network
mint.com – financial management from Mint.com
Dropbox – file storage accessible from iPhone
Urbanspoon – spin your way to lunch
Opentable - find a great lunch via Opentable
Bump - share contact info – iPhone to iPhone
What’s on? – what’s on TV tonight

iphone

I just found today a great tool called Twittercal. http://www.twittercal.com

With this tool, you can simply send a message to a twitter account and it will post an appointment on your Google Calendar.

I have Outlook syncing with my Google Calendar. I have an iPhone that is linked to my Outlook. So from any calendar or from Twitter I can set appointments.

First, you sign up for a twittercal account. (Actually, you are creating a link between your twitter account and gmail account.)

You then follow gcal (a twitter user), and from then on you send your appointments via a twitter post such as:

“d gcal Appointment with Sophia at 7pm tomorrow”

d stands for a direct message, gcal is the user you are sending the message to, and finally the appointment description and time.

Within a minute or so, it automagically appears in your Google Calendar.

Give it a try!

calendar, google, twitter

Anyone who works with SAAS products probably saw this coming:

Microsoft sees end of Windows era
Midori aims to uncouple its software from the hardware it runs on
Microsoft has kicked off a research project to create software that will take over when it retires Windows.

Called Midori, the cut-down operating system is radically different to Microsoft’s older programs.
It is centred on the internet and does away with the dependencies that tie Windows to a single PC.
It is seen as Microsoft’s answer to rivals’ use of “virtualisation” as a way to solve many of the problems of modern-day computing.
Read the story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7540282.stm

Microsoft, saas, Windows

Gmail has come up with an innovative response to the flood of email we get. Have Gmail write the responses for you!

You can read more here: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/autopilot/index.html

april fools, gmail, Humor

I just found out about Salesforce.com’s new product offering called “Service Cloud.” This offering allows an organization to tap into the power of various social networks such as Twitter or Facebook and utilize the information generated by the users of these tools to provide both content and feedback that can be reused and reshared within a service organization and partners.

I know that was a mouthful, but perhaps this video will explain it better:

http://www.salesforce.com/servicecloud/

facebook, salesforce.com, social networking, twitter

ChrisShaul.com has just activate a new feature that allows visitors to login to the blog using their Facebook login credentials. This way, you do not have to register to leave comments. All you need to post comments is your Facebook login. This site does not store or utilize your credentials. We only validate the login with Facebook.

Give it a try, by clicking on the login link on the sidebar. Then drop us a note. http://www.chrisshaul.com

chrisshaul.com, credentials, facebook, technology

I have a client who has about 60 employees, running two different business units. They are using Salesforce.com to manage their clients, partners, vendors, constituants, and others.

They are now looking at adding issue management through Salesforce.com’s Case functionality and using the force.com platform to develop a timesheet and expense tracking system.

All of this is done “in the cloud”. What is Cloud Computing? This video will help explain it.

cloud computing, saas, salesforce.com, Videos

This past week, I was in the Bay Area on Business. Watching the local news, within the same broadcast, they were talking about Virgin Megastores closing in San Francisco, as well as the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper struggling to stay alive. I couldn’t help but think about these are signs of not only a recession, but the final death throes of the old media.

We have reached the end of the Industrial Era and are well into the Information Era. In the Industrial Era, information didn’t happen in real time. In fact, it didn’t need to. There were no computers, email, Twitter, or Youtube. People hand prepared documents, mailed them, spent time reading the newspaper, and did things that were generally done over the period of hours, days, and weeks. Things were much slower then, but the culture did not demand the urgency of information that it does today.

Today, we get our news online, as we want, when we want it. We no longer prepare documents, we send PDFs via email. We instant message our peers for information who happen to be on the other side of the nation or even the world.

I always drive home the point that in Enterprise Software, it is an imperative that you must drive data to the source. In other words, you must put the origination of data right at the source. In a business sense, this means that you must put the key strokes or data collection right at the point in the process where the entry originates, such as at a quality check point on the shop floor, or with the employee for HR information.

In the bigger world, this is already happening with the coined term of “On-Demand”. Virgin is suffering due to iTunes. The consumers are directly sourcing the media. If you look at CNN’s iReport, you will see that news events are being reported by those closest to the news; usually people directly involved. People are Twittering about the airline crash that they are actually in! Talk about driving data to the source! And all of this information is being consumed by people who have a direct interest from anywhere in the world in real-time.

On the newscast, there was a pundit speaking about the death of the newspapers and how this is going to put traditional investigative reporters out of work. This is probably true, but many of these reporters are turning to new media reporting. I’m not in the journalistic world, but I would imagine that blogging, and independent reporting is becoming more the standard.

I work from home and “telecommute” (although this is a inaccurate word). I work with clients directly all over the world via web conferences, setting up systems and training them how to use these new tools. I imagine that the traditional workforce is slowly moving away from a centralized office and instead to independent teams of people who work independently from wherever they happen to be. No longer are we bound to the concepts of an Industrial model, rather we are free to explore our independent contributions to our “companies”, “teams” or other organizational system. We are moving to a world where the data is at the source.

I welcome your comments on this.

Era, Information, internet, technology

Tonight I was reading an article on the History of Burbank, California and I read that Burbank was built primarily around Olive Avenue.

So as I was reading I was wondering why certain streets are referred to as Roads, others being Streets, and finally major through-ways being Avenues. Does anyone else know????

Okay, here is what I found out.

A Road connects places (such as between two towns).
A Street connect people (areas where there are homes and businesses)
An Avenue is a Tree-Lined Street, usually wider than a regular street.

Not so useful, but interesting.

Here are my sources (primarily Wikipedia).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/26412-avenue-vs-street.html

Avenues, Burbank, Roads, Streets, trivia

A friend sent me this video, my first impulse was think what would be the application here? How could we use such a thing. It is amazing how we question new technology, even if we are involved in technology. Essentially, it is small computer video blocks that talk to one another. You can create and learn things by the order and 3 dimensions of manipulation. In the video, the presenter answers my initial question, what is the application. But I have a feeling that this just scratches the surface. Similar to how main-frames where designed with accounting as the first application. Now we use computers in all aspects of our life. I see these being similar. We would only be limited by our imagination of the applications that these could be used for.

Take a look at the video and let me know your thoughts.

computer blocks, Siftables, technology, TED