minimalisms. work smarter... not harder

Mobile Blogging

Archer — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:57:35 +0000

My wife and I run a blog and recently noticed we were spending too much time keeping up with our database on our self hosted Wordpress account rather than spending more time writing posts. Also, we were getting tired of shelling out dough for a slow database and rather than purchasing grid hosting on a warehouse sized playground, when all we really needed was a teeter-totter and perhaps a slide or two and maybe a sandbox- we came to the conclusion we had forgotten the golden rule ‘work smarter, not harder.’We challenged ourselves to find a way to save time and money, and accomplish a little more. We kept track of what was slowing us down- day jobs, kids, paper-thin social lives, and we realized we’d save more time by switching to mobile blogging.

The first step we took was to get a free Wordpress.com account and then point our URL to the WP address. We knew we’d be limited to the ‘rules’ of a .COM account, but we didn’t need much. The next step was to condense our social networking feeds. Instead of updating one account after another we took advantage of the ‘Publicize to Twitter’ feature that comes along with a WP.com account- a publicize to Facebook option it also available, but would not work for our fan page- or is it ‘like’ page now? To get our posts-turned-tweets to pass down the pipe to our Facebook page we used ‘Selective Tweets’ an app available for Facebook. There are others, but this one seems to work just fine, as long as we include a #fb in a post’s title, all our bases are covered. The next step was to download the Wordpress mobile app on to our Internet phones. With Twitter, Facebook, and Wordpress all available on our cells we could now have a sleeping baby in one hand and thumb out a post in the other. I’m sure everyone has their own way for mobile blogging, for example sending posts by e-mail, but we wanted a little more control and this system seems to work fine for us at the moment. You can’t do everything from a phone, but we’ve gained some much needed freedom since the switch. And remember- work smarter, not harder.

Feb. 8 is Clean Out Your Computer Day!

Jason Bosch — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:50:23 +0000

Today is clean out your computer day. We all know how difficult it can be to stay on top of regular computer maintenance, so make some free time today and clean it out. This is not just a wipe the screen type of clean either. It’s time to clean out old files, organize folders and it’s even time to open that machine up and get rid of all the dust that has been collecting. The people over at Web Worker Daily have written up a nice post in order to help you clean up your machine.

You can check it out here.

Cynicism — Conan O’Brien

Jason Bosch — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 03:33:34 +0000

I just wanted to post this. There is nothing more to say, I feel the words do everything they need to by themselves.

Please, do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, it’s just true.

– Conan O’Brien

Absolutely Brillant.

Keeping it Organized

Jason Bosch — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:05:52 +0000

For anyone who has had a computer for more than two months, you probably know how easy it is for your documents folder to turn into a mess. Most people who buy a new computer keep the default file organization system that is already on the computer, which isn’t really that great. Sure, it has separate folders for music, videos, documents, etc, but these folders can get messy. Dealing with hierarchy of folders can just become annoying and a huge waste of time.

As a video editor, I sometimes build folders by client then more and more sub-folders into that. Sure, it looks nice and clean, but sometimes it can take forever for me to just get to one file because I’m digging through folders and folders.

I have decided to try out a new folder structure that I have read in “Lifehacker, 88 tech tricks to turbocharge your day“. Its a pretty minimal folder structure and, to be honest, seems like it would work a lot more efficiently than dealing with complicated hierarchies of folders.

The book suggest using six main folders, but I decided to tweak the folders a little bit and I am going to use four main folders called docs, dosc-archive, junkdrawer and multimedia. As a photographer and video editor, I feel the structure would work better for me. Here is a breakdown of the folders:

docs - This is the folder that will hold all files that a currently being worked on or used. This folder can easily become a big one, so its important to purge as often as you can. Its a smart move to create subfolders in here, but keep it simple. Try to keep the hierarchy of folders at three. For example, you have a subfolder called clients and inside here you have a folder called acme. That’s a tree of only three folders, docs, clients, and acme. Keep it simple.
docs-archive – This folder will probably look a lot like your docs folder, but everything in here should be files that are currently not being used or not needed. Just here for archiving purposes. You should be going into your docs folder and purging it as often as you can into this folder.
junkdrawer – You can call this junkdrawer or temp if you want, but this is where all temporary files that you are working with currently should be held. Redirect your web browser to download files here. If you feel that something you downloaded will become important later, move it to the doc folder. Files in this folder should be cleaned out every few weeks and you can even get your computer to automate the clean up. You won’t have to do a thing. I will get into that in later post.
multimedia – This is where photos, music and video files go. I know people like to break these things up into their own little folder structures, but when you create an umbrella folder for files that are so large, it will help with your backup. You probably have a different way to back up your video files than you do your document because of how large these files can be. Inside this folder you can then create subfolders for each. This is help me a lot, because of all the photos and videos I have on my computer.

So, that’s the deal. I will give it a try and see if it works. I have a feeling it will. If you have an organization plan that you want to share leave it in the comments. I would love to make some updated posts about it.

Speed Up Your Morning (Quick Tip)

Jason Bosch — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:31:20 +0000

Remember when you were a little kid and your mother would lay out all of your clothes for you the next before a school day? Like everything else, your mother was on to something. By pulling your clothes out the night before, you were able to sleep a little later, have time to wake up and actually enjoy your breakfast.

If you find yourself always rushing to get out the door in the morning, it’s time to take note from ol’ ma and get your stuff ready the night before. I find it a lot easier to put all my stuff together when have more time to spare, so the night before a workday, I will usually pack my lunch, put any paperwork and books I need in my bag and, sometimes, I will put any files on my portable hard drive that I need.

On top of getting things all put together, you should also build what I like to call a “trail”. Think about what you do in the morning. I usually wake up, walk downstairs, take a shower, go back upstairs and get dressed and then I’m out door. Now during that routine, I walk by my desk, my end table and my kitchen table. All of these places are where I set stuff I need for the morning. I leave a “trail” for myself. My living room is out of this direct route I take, so I try not to put anything in there because I will forget it. After doing this for a while, it will become a habit. You will get home at night and place the things you will need in the morning, in these spots. Second nature. Muscle memory.

Its never a bad idea to build the “trail” either. Put a small table next to the door and use it has a key holder, a cellphone charging area, etc. One of the worst things you can do to yourself is just throwing your stuff down after a long day of work and wherever it lands, it lands.

Give this a try and let me know what you think. Do you have a better routine? Let me know about in the comments. I’m always happy to update the post with new ideas.

Form new habits with HabitForge

Jason Bosch — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:27:32 +0000

With New Year’s Resolutions being created, a new site called HabitForge has been created to help people reach their goals. Want to get into the habit of exercising everyday? How about doing homework as soon as you get home? Well, HabitForge with help you achieve your goal with a quite smart and simple process.

HabitForge states that it takes 21 days in a row to form a habit and remember, not all habits are bad. When you create an account at HabitForge you are asked what you want to achieve. I decided to start exercising everyday by doing 50 push-ups every night after work. You will then receive an email every morning asking you if you were successful at whatever you goal is. You can then check “yes” or “no”. If you check “yes” it will check one day off of your 21 day period. If you check “no” it will put you back a zero, meaning you have to start over. In addition to creating your new habit, you all tell HabitForge positive and negative information about your goal and every three days they will send you “motivators” to remind you why you are trying to achieve this new habit.

I highly suggest giving this a try with me. Its free and you have nothing to lose, but a lot to gain. Leave a comment if you are going to do this and I will follow you and vice versa and we can get a new habit together.

YouTube, Light as a Feather?

Jason Bosch — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:30:50 +0000

YouTube has been known to slow down computers that are underpowered or slow to begin with and now, with the new netbooks, a lot of people are using computers that don’t have enough power to display all the useless elements on a YouTube page and play a video. In an effort to speeding up the process, YouTube has just unveiled YouTube Feather.

YouTube Feather is a just a stripped down, minimalist version of YouTube. Thats pretty much it. No more waiting on useless elements to load. It pulls out all the advanced features that YouTube has, so that all your computer has to think about is the video.

Although, it was stated that you could not watch videos in high quality, but it seems to give many people the option to. Thats pretty all there is to say about it. If you’re the kind of person that doesn’t care about all the useless advanced features anyway, give it a try. You can go to their “opt-in” page and join.

Let us know what you think in the comments or if you notice any problems with it.

YouTube Feather

Nerrot

Jason Bosch — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:48:57 +0000

Torrents. Yup Torrents. You either love them or you loathe them, but either way, they are here. I, by no means, am encouraging you to use them…but if you decide to use them, why not use the best torrent sites out there.

A new torrent search site has been built called Nerrot and it couldn’t be more simplistic and minimalist. When you go to the site, it looks like a stripped down version of Google. Yup, even more stripped down than Google. Just type in the most descriptive search you can think of, hit “Grab” and it pops up a file for you to download. I love this idea and it saves so much time, but the only problem I have is that you cannot read the comments of the torrent, as you could other sites, to make sure the file is right, corrupt, etc. Although, I love the fact there are no pop ups and NSFW graphic material plastered all over the place, just clean and simple.

Nothing could be more bare-bones than this. Forgot about all the time that you would be wasting searching 10 different sites.

Check out Nerrot – Instant Torrent Download – Here

Instapaper

Jason Bosch — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:19:30 +0000

When was the last time you checked out all of your bookmarks? Is it getting messy in there? Its time to clean it out because less clutter helps you focus on what’s important. A majority of the time when I bookmark something it is because there was a cool article or something that I wanted to check out, but I didn’t have the time at that moment to dedicate to it. Now there is an easier way keep all these random bookmarks organized.

Instapaper is an online application allows you to save long text articles for reading later, when you have the time. The site is extremely simple and easy it use. After you signup, you just drag a “Read Later” bookmark to your bookmark toolbar and when you find an article you want to read a later date, just hit the the “Read Later” bookmark. Now, when you go to Instapaper site all your articles are laid out for your convenience. All the articles are broken up into an archive, unread, and favorite sections and you can even organize them further by building a folder structure.

Now, I bet you’re saying “Wow, Jason, this is amazing. It couldn’t be any easier!” But wait…there’s more! They have even created an iPhone app, so you can read while on the go, offline and online. You better believe I am going to using this everyday. Great work by the guys over at Instapaper.

Go ahead and make your life easier and register at Instapaper now.

Google Reader (Quick Tip)

Archer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:50:25 +0000

For those of you with Gmail I hope you’re using Google Reader. Google Reader is also available for those who don’t use Gmail-

Have you ever wanted a newspaper where every article is geared to your interests? I live in a small town where the local newspaper comes out only on Wednesday- so I turn to blogs as my “newspaper.”

I have about an hour in the morning to check tweets and blogs before I get to work, I’m always in a hurry, and I usually overlook something that could be a potential problem solver. I’m constantly starring new blogs that lead to other blogs and to other blogs. The same goes for tweets and retweets- it’s all very addicting. I needed something that would gather all of my favorite RSS feeds and sandwich them in column Twitter fashion. Since I’m a Gmail user- Google Reader is free and has worked great so far. It’s like having an obese Twitter of your favorite RSS feeds.

If you have a RSS feed obsession like I do the trick is to keep them organized and under control and I highly recommend Google Reader. There are other things you can do such as make bundles out of specific RSS subscriptions and share them with the public.

I’ve only been using Google Reader and no other feed readers- if anyone out there knows of any others that work better or would like to recommend, please leave a comment with a link.