Twitter versus Facebook

In the last 5 years, the most important digital places I spend time in are Twitter and Facebook. Surprisingly enough, they seem to be the most popular social networking sites too. Recently, I had a short morning conversation on Twitter with one of my followers about what  question these sites are answering. What is the reason Twitter and Facebook exists, after all? The following post was born out of this interaction.

Twitter and Facebook Question

The Twitter question is undoubtly: “What are you doing?”. As simple and dumb as it seems it responds to a fundamental need of human beings:  curiosity. It may have killed the cat, but made the humans happy too in the process, that’s for sure. A part for answering this question, Twitter is not doing more. I’m reading this, I’m cooking dinner, I’m hanging out with friends, these are typical Twitter actions. Sometimes, a conversation can last for hours, sometimes it ends in a tweet.

The Facebook question poses a little bit of difficulty, but in the end I think this is: “What are you up to?”. In the beginning, Facebook was just a place to keep in touch with friends, sort of a digital address book. In the last 2-3 years, the increased interactivity, fueled by a wave of new apps built on top of their API made Facebook more of  an entertainment place in which you are invited to play. Games, interactions or causes, all are sharing a subtle entertaining vibe on Facebook.

API Usage

Twitter is giving an API for creating different clients for the same environment. You can access the same rules, via a different skin or device.

Facebook is giving an API for creating different meta-environments. You can create your own rules, and engage users in a different, sometimes totally unexpected type of interaction.

General Context

Twitter keeps the context fixed, while Facebook changes the context frequently. That means, Twitter has a limited set of features, which remained fixed for a long time. The learning curve is faster than on Facebook, because of this simplicity. On Twitter you can focus only on interaction, on Facebook you keep focusing on adapting to the environment.

On Twitter you reach out to people, on Facebook you reach out to challenges, apps and complex interactions. Reaching out to people is spontaneous, unexpected and builds up social skills. Reaching out to challenges and complex logical interactions builds up intellectual skills. While they are surely more engaged than usual Twitter users, typical Facebook users are not as social as you would think they are. The abundance of social tools (poking, commenting on walls, liking, etc) masks the genuine message.

Adapting to a difficult environment is clearly one the most important evolution processes. While Twitter maintains a rather loose environment with fewer rules, Facebook is constantly loading it with new restrictions. Coping with every new change and improvement in FaceBook frustrates users but at the same time is making them stronger. On Twitter, the only challenge must come from within, there is only the internal motivation: to manage an increasing number of connections in small, standardized chunks of actions. Facebook users may become stronger but their social motivation needs constant challenge. Twitter users are building up social skills in a more natural way.

A typical Facebook user is a little more stressed than a typical Twitter user. He knows he have to cope with a new challenge at any given moment: being it a new environment rule (like tagging users or changing the look of the feeds or of the site) or being it a new gift or other request he receives from a new app. It’s like being prepared to face a new threat every second. It surely makes them more powerful but I don’t know if it’s making them enjoy their presence more.

A typical Twitter user is most of the time concerned only with his incoming or outgoing interactions. He can chose the level of those interactions by limiting or expanding the number of users he follows. He has a greater control of the game than a Facebook user, who, regardless of the number of friends, is exposed to an increasing number of stimuli. A Twitter user usually enjoy his presence or at least is constantly refining his game in order to enjoy his presence more.

Social Media Vocabulary

By “vocabulary” in social media I understand the interaction units. In a language you have words as interaction units, in a social media site you have a set of actions by which you can play that specific role.

On Twitter you have a limited and pretty much standardized vocabulary: tweets, replies and direct messages. You can post links and that’s that.

On Facebook, you have a virtually unlimited vocabulary. You can express with hundreds (if not thousands) of apps, you can play Farmville or Mafia Wars, you can write on walls, poke, or become a fan.

Usually, languages with a simpler vocabulary tends to become more popular. English surpassed French during the 20th century as an international language, partly because it has a simpler vocabulary.

Twitter or Facebook?

I favor simplicity in face of complexity. In my opinion, if it keeps the actual strategy, Twitter has a bigger evolution potential because it has fewer rules to be followed. It’s a simpler, much robust digital organism. Facebook is like a wrestler on steroids: impressive, hugely complex but ready to crush at any given moment. Its complexity is becoming its heavier burden.

I think in the long term the stake will move from adapting to a complex environment (Facebook) to adapting to a complex stream of interactions (Twitter). We, humans, are already incredibly complicated machines, we don’t need to create another hugely complicated environment to adapt more. What we need is to interact more, to create around us a new social model. In this regard, Twitter allows a bigger freedom and the human interaction throughput is higher in Twitter.

FaceBook keeps the game closed. The rules are changing and they are seldom changing by popular request, on the contrary. Facebook may succeed in creating a challenging environment, like a huge amusement park, where you want to go every once in a while for some thrills, but you can’t live your real life in an amusement park. Real life is outside an amusement park, real life is made of simple human interaction, of spontaneity and unexpected. I like a roller-coaster every now and then, but I can’t work and become useful in a roller-coaster.

For me, Twitter is Auckland, Facebook is Las Vegas.

Amazon Kindle 2 Review

Over the last few months I’ve been playing extensively with the new Amazon Kindle 2. In today’s post I’ll share some of my conclusions after quite a long period of constant usage. Since there already tons of technical reviews on the internet, I will will focus more on the day to day usage and on the insertion points on my daily routine, rather than talking about too much geeky stuff. But since we’ll be talking about a gadget, I will shortly go through some of the most important technical highlights of it.

Kindle 2 – The Gadget

Amazon Kindle 2 doesn’t have an LCD. Instead, it uses something called electronic ink, which basically means it will not have a backlight on the display. There is also a latency in browsing to a new page as well as changing the current screen (for the Home page or for the table of contents of the current book). Surprisingly enough, the screen is crispy and very comfortable. You must be in a suitably lighted space though.

The battery life was also a pleasant surprise. If not used, my Kindle 2 battery can last even a few weeks. If used intensively, the battery last at least 2 days in a row. For some reason I was not able to charge my battery using the original power outlet, but only by connecting it to the USB on my MacBook Pro. Might be something related to the voltage difference between US and Romania, but since the output it’s still a USB standard outlet, I doubt it’s that.

Kindle 2 is gaining huge points at usability. There are buttons on each side for next and previous page. The left side has 2 buttons, the up one is for Previous page and the button underneath is for the Next page. On the right side, the upper button will take you to the Home and the button underneath will trigger a Next page. I find it very convenient, since I’m right handed and browse forward with my right hand and backward with my left hand.

One very interesting feature is the table of contents for properly formatted books. I know this is not a Kindle 2 per se feature, and it’s coming from the ebook format, but I still find it very convenient. i have quite a number of technical books in my Kindle 2 and I go back and forth from the table of contexts to a specific chapter. If it’s a self-improvement book or a literature book I don’t do this so often, but on technical books I jump around quite often.

Which brings me to the annotations feature. Kindle 2 has a small keyboard on the bottom and although the keyboard shares the same color with the rest of the box, and I mean white, I find it easy to work with. If I would treat the Kindle 2 as a computer, the keyboard will be small, but if I’m using it as a book, the keyboard has just about the right size.

One annoying thing about Kindle 2 is the fact that I can’t change the font settings. I’m using it in Romania, where I obviously don’t have access to the Whsipernet network, so I can’t actually register it via mobile. It seems the settings are locked down by this registration, since every time I try to change fonts it keeps asking me to register my device.

And that leads to another important aspect of the Amazon Kindle 2: getting the actual books in it. Once connected to my MacBook Pro, it appears as a regular device, mounted below the hard disk. I can copy and paste from and to it whatever I want. However, the books must be in a proper format (and that would be .mobi) in order to be recognized.. Fortunately, Amazon provides an email service for converting .doc or .pdf documents into .mobi and it works pretty good. Basically, all the books I have on my Kindle 2 are generated this way: emailed to the email converting service at Amazon and then copied from the laptop to the device.

Note: at the time of writing, Amazon Kindle DX, featuring a screen of 9.7 inches and auto-rotation was just launched. Although I don’t plan to replace soon my Kindle, if you didn’t get one for you, maybe that would be a good moment. Amazond Kindle 2 costs 359 USD and Amazon Kindle DX cost 489 USD, but apparently it has as much as double storage space compared with Kindle 2.

Amazon Kindle 2 Insertion Points

As opposed to my iPhone, which is an almost ubiquitous device in my life, the Amazon Kindle 2, has less insertion points. I don’t use it all the time, it has different attention needs from my part. But when I use it, I do it for at least 30 minutes.

I read books whenever I got the chance. If I know I’ll be staying in some place longer than 1 or 2 hours I always carry it in my backpack. Once I’m done with all my twittering, email checking and browsing with my iPhone, I can safely revert to a much more relaxing activity like reading.

Kindle 2 proved to be a fantastic asset on my recent trips to Japan and New Zealand. Staying in a plane for more than 10 hours in a row (and doing this for 4 times in less than 2 weeks) can be quite a stressful experience. Introducing Amazon Kindle 2: I always carry it with the GSM antenna switched off, so it doesn’t really count as a phone. I can switch it on a few minutes after taking off and keeping on until we’re ready to land. It’s better than inflight entertainment, that’s for sure.

Most of the time I use my Amazon Kindle 2 in the afternoon, during Bianca’s sleep and sometimes in the evening. Reading before going to bed is also something that I should really like to do, if I would not spend that time taking care of my blog. Because of the time difference between my readers and myself I always find that the action on my blog starts in the afternoon and ends late in the night.

But once I’m done with the conversational mood, I find quite a little bit of pleasure taking my Kindle 2 and reading some fine piece of literature or self-improving text.

All in all, despite its drawbacks, Amazon Kindle 2 is a gadget with a clear place in my space.

ADD stages – Assess

ADD comes from “Assess, Decide, Do” and it’s a life management framework, initially described in this introductory post. As opposed to the regular productivity approaches, a life management framework focuses on a higher level integration and rejects the task checking approach as the only metric for measuring productivity performance.

In ADD, each individual can have only 3 main stages or can act in 3 main realms: the Assess realm, the Decide realm and the Do realm. Those stages are cumulative, in the sense that an imbalance in an early stage, like the Assess stage, can create negative consequences in the following stages. A balanced, constant flow between those 3 stages is the main metric of a fulfilling life management.

Today will talk about the Assess realm.

Evaluation

The Assess realm is the place where you will do most of your evaluation. You can evaluate your current situation, the outcome of a previously done task, a possible outcome for a possible task, in one word: everything. In the evaluation process you don’t necessarily have to DO, or DECIDE anything, but this process will deeply impact any of your deciding or doing activities.

Evaluating without the pressure of a decision or a deadline is a very necessary step. Too often I found myself lost in a decisional process or even in the middle of a larger project because I skipped or under-considered the evaluation/assessment step. Assessing something means you’re simply looking at something, you’re acknowledging the fact that something new (or worthy) have entered your focus.

Evaluation is only one of the possible activities in an assessment stage, but it’s usually the one that ends this very stage, by promoting the idea, the project or the task to the decision realm.

Information Management

The assessment stage is the one in which you’ll do most of your information management. Crunching new pieces of information, categorizing them, putting higher or lower in your value system is an activity which takes place in the assessment stage. Again, mixing it with a decision or a doing realm will do no good, as it will either slow down the decision or the doing process, either tamper it with undesired pieces of information.

Managing information is a static activity in itself. You’re not doing anything – doing, as in modifying your universe – while you’re managing information, you’re just classifying various inputs from the outside (or the inside world).

Feed-back

As the name implies, feed-back is an activity which takes place immediately after something was done, after something has been modified in your own Universe. Assessing feed-back is a crucial activity in the assessment stage, it really helps you understand if your actions were improving or wrecking your environment.

You take feed-back by comparing your initial status, the moment you started modifying something in your universe, with your current status. You will receive feed-back for a wide variety of sources: your physical senses (as in it’s colder or warmer than before)., your emotions (this thing makes me feel in a certain way), your memories (this looks a lot like something I’ve done before) or the people you interact with.

Feed-back is usually one of the earliest activities in the assessment stage, as it is often immediately required after an action has been finished.

Observation

Assessment cannot work without fresh information, it needs this as a comparison outlet. In the assessment stage you’ll observe a lot. Observation is an activity closely related to information management, but its place is at the very beginning of the information management. Observation is an input for the information management activity.

As any input, the clearer and less distorted, the best the results. Observing things as they are, and not as you imagine they are is an art in itself. Training observation is a difficult and delicate activity. Becoming a detached observer will make your assessment periods shorter.

Dreaming

Dreaming is the capacity of imagining things which are not yet real. Dreaming plays a very big part in the assessment period. Most of the time, you decide to do things based on deep and extremely emotional inputs, coming from what you call your dreams. Creating a newer and better reality comes from dreaming first, from the ability to imagine unborn things and ignite the triggers to create them.

The classical approach to dreaming is to either discard it totally as completely unproductive, or to classify it as procrastination, the activity in which you are preventing yourself from doing things, by inventing excuses. I do think dreaming is fundamental and is a very productive activity. As long as you acknowledge it as a very necessary step in the assessment realm.

Memories

The things you’re doing are becoming memories the moment you finish them. Accessing your memories is an important part of your life. It helps maintain an identity and a sense of coherence in time. Without memories, your perspective can become twisted. Most of the time, your value system is based on things you recall as being good or bad to you.

Keeping your memories in good shape – like in creating and maintaining a memories management system – will hugely impact your overall presence. Only after you understand the past you, the present you can become a reality. One very common pitfall in the assessment stage is clogging your perspective with unsolved memories, with things from the past which are crying for a newer approach.

Solving those situations in the assessment stage will take a lot of pressure from your decision and doing realms.

Meditation

Assessment needs a clear perspective. When you decide, you already move, when you do, you are the movement, but when you assess, your whole world can slow down, until it becomes stillness. Nobody will rush you. Meditation is one precious activity which can dramatically enhance your perspective. Seeing the world from a sill perspective is enlightening. Meditation can do that.

Of course, is not compulsory to use all of the activities described here, including meditation. As a matter of fact, in real life, it would be rather difficult to identify all those activities in an assessment session at the same time.

When To Move To Decision

The moment you stop assessing something you should immediately move to the decision realm. Staying in the assessment realm for longer periods can induce a sense of comfort and security, which, if not rapidly challenged, will be modified pretty soon  by “outside” factors. In other words, if you don’t move faster, something outside your control will force you to do it.

One thing we should definitely want to remember about assessment, and about the whole ADD paradigm, is that any process can contain smaller, or micro-ADD cycles. During the assessment cycle you may find the need to quickly decide and then do something, and then come back to your main assessment topic. In this respect, ADD is very close to the fractals definitions, in which the smaller parts are actually identical with the bigger parts.

But more on that in the next topic, which will be, of course, about the decision realm.

May Mariner Promo Code

It’s time for our monthly promo code here, for all Mac software addicted among you (and I know you’re a lot more than I thought). Once again, I remind you that his is an exclusive promotion for DragosRoua.com readers, you won’t find these codes anywhere else on the Internet. It’s one of the way I try to reward my users, by arranging special deals with other value providers in the field. As usual, I will get straight to the point, giving the code and then I will give some basic description on what you get and how to use it.

The Mariner Promo Code

for May 2009 is

moose

This code will give you an instant 15% discount on ALL Mariner software, including, but not limiting to, MacJournal, MacGourmet Deluxe, Story Mill, Contour, Write or Calc. This code applies even to packages for desktop suites you’ll find at Mariner website. All these are solid, stable Mac applications, developed by a company with more than 18 years experience on the online market. Oh, 18 years in the online mens several decades in other types of businesses, by the way.

How To Use The Promo Code

First and foremost, write it down on a piece of paper. It’s your passport to a 15% no question asked discount, so you don’t wanna misspell it. In case you don’t see it anymore on the screen, I’ll put it again:

moose

and then go straight here: Mariner eStore.

You’ll see just above the list of products a text field in which you can input the code you just wrote it. Well, put the code there and see the magic happening. All you have to do now is to browse and chose your package.

What You Get For This Promo Code

LATER UPDATE: The May promo code is available for Paperless too!

It’s so fresh from the oven that it’s actually hot. I just received this confirmation a few minutes ago from my fellow partners at Mariner that our May code is available for Paperless too.

Why is that important? Because it’s pretty rare to have an initial discount on a software that was just launched. But you, readers of DragosRoua.com, you deserve that. You really do. Now you have access to a state of the art piece of software, so versatile that I can’t stop thinking at a new way of using every 15 minutes, yet so simple that even a college kid could use it with no prior training.

What is Paperless? Initially a receipt database, it was transformed by Mariner into a full blown digital document application. I do intend to write a full review of paperless soo, so I will tell you for now just the basics. With Paperless you can scan your receipts (you can even take a photo using iSight!! how cool is that!) store them with a few attributes and then organize them in collections or smart collections. But the beauty is that you can insert in this not only receipts or scans, you can even import PDFs. Now you understand why I find a new way of using it every 15 minutes. Because the sky is the limit. You can use it to organize you software manuals, your books, your pcitures (yes, it can import JPGs too) anything.

Please hurry up and grab this, and don’t forget to input the promo code, so you can get your highly unusual 15% discount.

***

I’ve already wrote several in-depth descriptions of the most popular software packages Mariner sells, so feel free to look at the February and March promo code pages. For now, I will focus on something a little bit different than the usual software presentation.

There is no secret I use MacJournal to author my blog posts. Also, there is no secret that I am a GTD’er for more than 2 years now -although I adapted this over the years, trying to squeeze out the hype and keep only what’s useful in GTD. Well, out of this mix between MacJournal and GTD was born one of the most popular posts here: Power Blogging With MacJournal GTD style. If you’re on a Mac, I highly encourage you to give a read to that article, many users found it more than useful.

But MacJournal is versatile enough to serve as habit enhancement tool, not only a journaling and blogging application. In this post, How To Create A Habit In 15 days, I explain some of the techniques I use in order to control and change habits, whenever it’s necessary. The post features a  free donwloadable MacJournal template including all you need in order to start changing your habits right away.

And things are not stopping here: here’s a post on How To Write An Ebook Using MacJournal. A simple, yet elegant setup in which you make use of the Smart Journal features of MacJournal. This post also features a free downloadable MacJournale template including all you need in order to start writing your ebook in minutes.

You can start by downloading a free trial of MacJournal trying my templates and see if they fit your needs.

Some of you might think I’m a little bit too enthusiastic about this. After all, it’s just a blogging software not a coffee espresso machine. Yes, it’s right, it’s just a tool, but a great one. Some of you may think I’m doing this exclusive promotion because I am also getting a commission on each generated sale. For those of you who have thought that, congrats, you are right! It’s called affiliate marketing and it’s a great way to monetize one’s blog. I’m getting a commission for each generated sale and I find this much better than to clutter my blog interface with stupid ads that will only get in your way. I’m promoting only things I’ve used and liked. It’s verified. It’s transparent.

And if you don’t like MacJournal, please keep in mind that you already have a plethora of other choices. Just give a visit to Mariner Shop, enter the code

moose

and start shopping around. And hurry up, this code will be available only during May 2009!

The First 6 Months Of Blogging – Tools

That’s the last post from the series The First 6 Months Of Blogging and it will be about tools I use when I blog. Every activity is enhanced by tools and blogging is no exception to this. Today’s post will be rather technical or at least strictly focused on the technical part of the whole blogging process. If you came here directly, you may want to have a look at the previous posts of this series:

The First 6 Months Of Blogging – Writing
The First 6 Months Of Blogging – Promotion
The First 6 Months Of Blogging – Money

Without further ado, let’s start.

iBlueSky

iBlueSky is a mind mapping application for iPhone. I already wrote a review for iBlueSky, so if you’re curious you can go directly to that page. I’m often stroke by some idea or thought in the middle of something: while I walk, while I exercise or while I’m reading something. Most of the time I have my phone with me and I use it to quickly capture that idea. Mind mapping is sometimes faster than linear writing and it let me empty my mind pretty quick. I guess around 30-40% of my blog posts are ideas sketched using iBlueSky.

Evernote

Another fantastic application I use for capturing ideas is Evernote. Evernote lets you capture text, audio or photos using your iPhone (or anything else if you’re using the desktop client). One neat thing about photos is that Evernote process them for writing recognition and made them searchable, which is extremely useful. Evernote is well deserving a post on itself, but until then, I will just emphasize on its versatility as a capture tool. The notes are stored remotely on Evernote dedicated servers and can be accessed with the Evernote desktop client for further tweaking. Most of the time I record voice notes using Evernote client for iPhone which I process every 2-3 days on my laptop.

MacJournal

I do all my writing using MacJournal. I already extensively wrote about MacJournal here, and if you’re interested in more details you can always check the post about power blogging with macjournal, GTS style. I use MacJournal not only for blogging but also for writing ebooks. There is a post which details my ebook writing setup, if you’re curious. MacJournal is also offered with a significant discount to DragosRoua.com users, so feel free to check the monthly MacJournal promotion.

Woopra

When it comes to analytics software, Woopra is one of my favorites. I’m a veteran of Google Analytics and although I highly appreciate the reports in Analytics, Woopra has several things that make it stand out. One of the most important would be real time alerts: you can set up as many visitor alerts as you can, based on a countless choice of parameters, and Woopra will alert you in real time whenever the criteria are met. I can see in real time my visitors from StumbleUpon, Twitter or Digg, for instance. There’s a 50.000 monthly impressions limits to any Woopra account right now, but even with 50.000 impressions is enough to get an idea about your blog traffic.

Thesis

I use thesis, a commercial framework for WordPress, or, in plain English, a commercial WordPress theme. The main reason for using thesis is its flexibility. Thesis features a hooks system  by which you can greatly enhance your blog theme without compromising future upgrades. I already wrote about how you can customize thesis with some simple hooks for Twitter, Digg or StumbleUpon. Thesis also features an affiliate program for those of you who are interested in promoting it, you can sign up here.

Blog Audit

This is a wordpress plugin I wrote several months ago in order to assess my blogging progress. This plugin lets you create blogging goals like the number of posts you intend to write per day, per week or per month, the expected number of comments per post or per day and the expected number of pingbacks per post. After setting up your goals, you can asssess your pogress by checking up Blog Audit main screen and see if you met or not your goals. Blog Audit is in a very early stage, at the version 0.1 beta, this is the reason why I haven’t yet officially launched, but it can be downloaded if you want to play with it from a separate page dedicated to blog audit.

***

Those are my main 6 tools I used in my first 6 months of blogging. There were of course some other plugins or experiments in using other tools but none of them lasted more than several weeks.

Interesting enough, when I intended to write this post, I wanted a short list of applications, nothing complicated. Call it synchronicity, but today’s assignment at the “31 days to build a better blog challenge” is exactly that: write a list post.

I guess I just did

April Mariner Promo Code

I already told you about a long term partnership with Mariner Software, which produces, among other software gems, my journaling and blogging application of choice, MacJournal. We’ve been talking about this since February. Well, I’m writing this only to announce you that we’re up and going for the month of April 2008. I really hope that everyone who bought something from Mariner during March is happy, and hope that you will be too.

I said it many times and I will say it again: my readers are educated, intelligent people. I’m not going to insult you with a noisy sale presentation, I will just give you the basic info and you’ll know what to do with it. I’m also putting a lot of information from the other posts announcing the promotion, in case you missed them and you’re here for the first time.

The Mariner Promo Code

for April 2009 is giving you an instant 15% discount for any software purchased online by using the following code:

zebra

Yes, I know, is not very techie but at least is easy to remember. Speaking of which, this code is valid until the end of April. After that, the code will change, and all you have to do is to visit eDragonu again and see what else we prepared for you.

How To Use The Promo Code

First and foremost, write it down on a piece of paper. It’s your passport to a 15% no question asked discount, so you don’t wanna misspell it. In case you don’t see it anymore on the screen, I’ll put it again:

zebra

and then go straight here: Mariner eStore.

You’ll see just above the list of products a text field in which you can input the code you just wrote it. Well, put the code there and see the magic happening. All you have to do now is to browse and chose your package.

Oh, if you wonder if this is an affiliate deal, meaning if I have a part of it, I can assure you it is. I find affiliate programs a very good replacement to display advertising. Direct affiliates deals, like this one, means I already tried or used the product for a respectable period of time and I know what I’m talking about. Display advertising is still very intrusive and can link my blog to products or services which I don’t really endorse. By having an affiliate deal with a company I know and by endorsing products I already use, I’m sure that I recommend something good.

What’s In It For You?

A fantastic collection of Mac software. You’ll find below a list of the most important packages, including some tools I use for years now. But remember, you can always go directly to Mariner eStore put the promo code in the text field and then browse to find whatever might interest you.

Mac Journal

That’s my journaling and blogging tool of choice. This very post is written using MacJournal in a full-screen session. I like the green fonts on the black background, it just let me focus so well on what I have to write. If you don’t know what I talk about, feel free to download a free trial and if you’re in blogging or just started journaling. In fact, MacJournal it’s so flexible that it can be even customized for a GTD like approach. If you’re into GTD you may want to re read how I make my MacJournal GTD compliant. And you can even start to create a habit in 15 days if you want. Or even write an ebook using MacJournal.

Mac Gourmet De Luxe

I am a raw vegan for more than 7 months now so I needed a way to write down my recipes. But Mac Gourmet DeLuxe is not only a recipe application, you can also create fantastic wine collections. Not to talk about shopping lists, instantly updated from the recipe of your choice. But my all time favorite feature of MacGourmet is his nutritional database. Every conceivable ingredient is there and you instantly know how many calories, which vitamins or how much fat is in your recipe. Don’t believe me? Try to download a free trial.

Mariner Write

A lean and clean writing application for the Mac. Not bloated and not anemic. It’s just what you need for good looking, easy to write documents. On a rather crowded market, with Pages and NeoOffice claiming the peak, Mariner Write is the silent guy that just does the job. Download your trial if you don’t believe me and see for yourself. I have a long history of using text editors, from Windows Write on the Windows 3.1 days (anybody old enough here to even remember that it was a 3.1 Windows version?) going through all kind of Linux editors, like vim or emacs, but when it comes to quickly an cleanly write documents without hassle I chose the simplest and most usable variant. And Mariner Write seems to fit very well to this description.

Mariner Calc

Everything that was written above about Write can be said about Calc too. The only difference is that Calc is a spreadsheet application. An easy to use spreadsheet application. I, for example, I was practically raised with Excel, so any other option would be like I will break free from a restraining home. Again, don’t take my word for granted, go download a free trial and assess your needs. There is even a package of Writer and Calc (and that’s pretty logical if you ask me) so you can have everything in one shopping lot.

But that’s not even remotely all. You will find other gems in Mariner eStore, just don’t forget to put that code there. Here it is again:

zebra

And this gives you a 15% discount, no questions asked, for ANY Mariner software products. And that’s only the beginning, I do have other things going on for you starting with May, just be sure to continue to read eDragonu. You may even subscribe to my RSS feed, for instance.

Ok, that was it. Happy shopping!

Disclaimer: This is NOT an April 1st fool!

February Mariner Promo Code

Last year I was able to get an unbelievable sale promotion for my blog readers. It was a very special deal with Mariner Software for all their software,  including extremely powerful software like MacJournal and Mac Gourmet DeLuxe. It’s very important to note that that was an exclusive discount for all DragosRoua.com readers. Yeah, that’s you, pal .

I’m so happy to tell you that the promotion went incredibly well. In fact, it went so well that I couldn’t restrain myself and actually jumped on Mariner with an aggressive request to keep that promotion going. After several weeks of discussions I’m finally able to announce you a long-term deal which will enable you, the reader of eDragonu blog, to have access to one of the most feature rich and elegant software collection for the Mac OS platform.

I won’t disclose the whole deal because it will involve several other things I still have to do and there’s a lot on my plate that still needs some cooking. But the bottom line is that you will have access AGAIN to a classy selection of good Mac software at very competitive prices. And that is because you are one of the readers of this blog.

I know you’re a very intelligent person and I’m not going to offend you with a pathetic commercial presentation. I will just give you the essential details first, so you can jump right into it. After that, if you’re still not convinced about the value of this deal, you can read more about some of the incredible software you can buy in this package.

The Mariner Promo Code

for February 2009 is giving you an instant 15% discount for any software purchased online by using the following code:

goat

Yes, I know, is not very techie but at least is easy to remember. Speaking of which, this code is valid until the end of February, which means you only have two weeks left to jump in. After that, the code will change, and all you have to do is to visit eDragonu again and see what else we prepared for you. Toldya it will gonna be a long term deal .

How To Use The Promo Code

First and foremost, write it down on a piece of paper. It’s your passport to a 15% no question asked discount, so you don’t wanna misspell it. In case you don’t see it anymore on the screen, I’ll put it again:

goat

and then go straight here: Mariner eStore.

You’ll see just above the list of products a text field in which you can input the code you just wrote it. Well, put the code there and see the magic happening. All you have to do now is to browse and chose your package.

Oh, if you wonder if this is an affiliate deal, meaning if I have a part of it, I can assure you it is. I find affiliate programs a very good replacement to display advertising. Direct affiliates deals, like this one, means I already tried or used the product for a respectable period of time and I know what I’m talking about. Display advertising is still very intrusive and can link my blog to products or services which I don’t really endorse. By having an affiliate deal with a company I know and by endorsing products I already use, I’m sure that I recommend something good.

What’s In It For You?

A fantastic collection of Mac software. You’ll find below a list of the most important packages, including some tools I use for years now. But remember, you can always go directly to Mariner eStore [link] put the promo code in the text field and then browse to find whatever might interest you.

Mac Journal

That’s my journaling and blogging tool of choice. This very post is written using MacJournal in a full-screen session. I like the green fonts on the black background, it just let me focus so well on what I have to write. If you don’t know what I talk about, feel free to download a free trial and if you’re in blogging or just started journaling, I bet you will be sold after just a few days. I know I was. In fact, MacJournal it’s so flexible that it can be even customized for a GTD like approach. If you’re into GTD you may want to re read how I make my MacJournal GTD compliant.

Mac Gourmet De Luxe

I am a raw vegan for more than 6 months now so I needed a way to write down my recipes. But Mac Gourmet DeLuxe is not only a recipe application, you can also create fantastic wine collections. Not to talk about shopping lists, instantly updated from the recipe of your choice. But my all time favorite feature of MacGourmet is his nutritional database. Every conceivable ingredient is there and you instantly know how many calories, which vitamins or how much fat is in your recipe. Don’t believe me? Try to download a free trial.

Mariner Write

A lean and clean writing application for the Mac. Not bloated and not anemic. It’s just what you need for good looking, easy to write documents. On a rather crowded market, with Pages and NeoOffice claiming the peak, Mariner Write is the silent guy that just does the job. Download your trial if you don’t believe me and see for yourself. I have a long history of using text editors, from Windows Write on the Windows 3.1 days (anybody old enough here to even remember that it was a 3.1 Windows version?) going through all kind of Linux editors, like vim or emacs, but when it comes to quickly an cleanly write documents without hassle I chose the simplest and most usable variant. And Mariner Write seems to fit very well to this description.

Mariner Calc

Everything that was written above about Write can be said about Calc too. The only difference is that Calc is a spreadsheet application. An easy to use spreadsheet application. I, for example, I was practically raised with Excel, so any other option would be like I will break free from a restraining home. Again, don’t take my word for granted, go download a free trial and assess your needs. There is even a package of Writer and Calc (and that’s pretty logical if you ask me) so you can have everything in one shopping lot.

But that’s not even remotely all. You will find other gems in Mariner eStore, just don’t forget to put that code there. Here it is again:

goat

And this gives you a 15% discount, no questions asked, for ANY Mariner software products. And that’s only the beginning, I do have other things going on for you starting with March, just be sure to continue to read eDragonu. You may even subscribe to my RSS feed, for instance.

Ok, that was it. Happy shopping!

Exclusive 25% Discount On Mariner Software Products For DragosRoua.com Readers

OK, this is a commercial announcement and I’ll be very open and direct: as of today, you have 25% off for any Mariner Software products until December 31st 2008 via DragosRoua.com. Yes, you read it well, it’s 25% off for ALL Mariner Software products, not only the flagship product MacJournal. I’m so happy that we – meaning me and Logan Ryan from Mariner – finally put this together. It took some time and then some more communication processes, but as of today we’ve completed the promotion.

How can I use the promotion?

Yes, right, let’s skip the clouds on this one: first of all, go to the Mariner Software shopping cart (it will open in a new window) and at the top of the page enter in the promotion code field the following code:

eDragonu

Yeap, right. I’ve put it a little bigger, in case you miss it . And then click on the “Go” button. You will have to see a text like: “Promotional Pricing has been applied to all products below.”. Now check the products and you’ll see the new, discounted price. That’s all you have to do. Select your products – it will be a shame to buy only one in this promotion – and then go checkout. And enjoy. That’s really all you have to do.

How did we came up this?

I am a regular user of MacJournal and Story Mill, both from Mariner Software and I am satisfied with them. I use them at the core of my activities every day and I just do what I have to do in a relaxed and productive way. I’m not going to use words like “thrilled” or “excited”. First of all, because I don’t believe these words when I see a commercial presentation. They’re not for real. People get excited in completely different situations, or at least I hope they do, for their health.

And second, because I don’t feel this way about those products. I’m not excited when I use those excellent applications. I’m just so focused to what I do, and, on some very deep level, so thankful that those applications are not standing in my way, bloating me with unnecessary features that would distract me from what I’m doing. They are just good, decent, honest value for money software. And yet that is so difficult to find nowadays.

Another reason for this promotion is my intention to recommend only products that I’ve tried and I found useful. I will not endorse or promote products that I’ve never tried, only to skim a buck or two. There will be other offers or recommendation here, but you can rest assured that they will be following the same principle: only stuff I use and find useful.

What’s in the bag anyway?

If you’re ready to buy, just go there and place your order. But if you’re not, maybe a little more information about what’s in this promotion anyway can change your thoughts…

So, Mariner has a 18 years long history in making software for the Mac. They have several packages that would be of interest and I’ll try to briefly outline the packages I know or use.

First of all, there is MacJournal. I extensively wrote about it in the post about power blogging with MacJournal – GTD style and I highly encourage you to take a look at that post. Especially if you’re into GTD, but it works like a charm even if you aren’t. That post outlines my personal setup for my everyday blogging and journaling activities.  But if you’re not familiar with what MacJournal is, I’ll tell you that MacJournal is arguably the most used journaling software on the Mac platform. It lets you create, edit and manage journals. It also lets you publish entries remotely on your blog, or add rich media content like audio or video. You can create nested journals, or you can build smart journals applying filters to your existing content. Despite the feature richness MacJournal is still one of the easiest to use piece of software I used.

Story Mill is a book writing tool. I used to think that all you have to do for writing a great book is an idea, talent and time. Basically, this is still true. But Story Mills gives you a far more easier way to tackle a book writing activity. Oh yes, now you know: I’m writing a book and I’m using Story Mill for that. I can’t tell you more now, but most likely I will distribute the book electronically – this will be an ebook, in that case – and it will be something in the personal development field. And oh, did I already tell that: I’m using Story Mill to write it.

Another tasty piece of software included in this promotion is MacGourmet Deluxe. It’s a recipe and wine manager. I’ve used the demo version several weeks ago and it was a charm. I made a promise to myself that I will wait for the next promotion on Mariner website and then jump onto this one. Oh, but there is a promotion running as we speak, right? 25% off of ALL the Mariner Software products. Better hurry up . I’ve had a recipe website for years and I know how these things work and MacGourmet is a real asset. Seriously speaking, I think of using MacGourmet to write my raw food recipes and distribute them somehow. I don’t know when this will happen, but it’s in the plan anyway.

There’s plenty of other stuff to be included here, from Mariner Write to Mariner Calc, and also some great package value. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s also true: you can have now any piece of those simply great applications with a fantastic – yet time limited, so please hurry up – 25% off discount. The promotion last only until December 31st 2008, so just go there now and pick your choice. And, most important, don’t forget about the promo code:

eDragonu

Again, just in case you forgot it.

Why we’re doing this?

Because we both want to give more value, that’s the bottom line. I do write about productivity software and techniques, and Mariner Software makes software in that area. We both need to create better experiences for our users / customers. Putting together a special offer is one of the easiest and most direct ways to show this intention. Oh, you’re wondering if there’s something in it for me? Yes, of course it is. This is how a business works, everybody should win. So, every time you make a purchase with that promotion code I’ll be giving a part of sale. Keep that in mind if you decide to buy something from them.

Time Management For Mac OS: reviewing Slife

I’ve been a GTDer for more than 2 years but I have never ceased to look for new and better ways to improve my working process. The other day I received a comment from one of my readers on the post Manage Your Time As You Manage Your Money. It was something about a new time management application for Mac (and Windows, meanwhile) for time management, called Slife. It was a free download and I gave it a try.

The application is somewhere in the same league as time tracking services like Wakoopa, but there are some subtle differences that make Slife a very interesting baby. So, what is this Slife doing anyway?

Well, it basically tracks your time spent on your computer, with a higher granularity than other applications, letting you know not only with which applications you are spending the most of your time, but also which documents or web pages your are visiting most often (attention, twitter users ). So you will end up with some sort of report of the most used applications during your working sessions. The reporting is done in real time, with a clear, iCal-like interface (click for larger picture).

Time Management With Slife

Did you see those little points and dashes? That’s where the granularity I spoke above takes place, if you click on one of those spots you will see the exact document on which you spent time, in my case, of course, twitter . (more…)

Mind Mapping Online: Mind Meister at version 3

My first post about Mind Meister, an online mind mapping tool, was written more than one and a half year ago, and at the time the product was just about to be launched. In the last year Mind Meister has dramatically evolved from an experiment to a mature online collaborative suite. The other day I received an email from them announcing the new 3.0 version. They were sweet enough to call me a “key influencer” in that message and they also told me not to whisper a word before November 3rd, 14:00 UTC. How about that?

Well, it’s been well over November 3rd, the United States has it’s first Afro-American President, Barack Obama, things have settled, so to speak, so we can move on with our tiny little review.

Beforehand, you should know that Mind Meister has its own blog and that some of the new features are already outlined there, so if you are impatient, you can go directly to the related post on their mind mapping blog. But if you care to spend another 3-4 minutes around, here’s a quick list of what impressed me:

• very good support for tasks within mind maps – now tasks can have a priority, a start date, duration and an email reminder. Cool.
• new user interface with what they call “organic lines”, meaning the mind map will look a little more natural when you drag around the nodes
• export enhancements, especially in the export dialog area. Oh, you can export now in the MindManager format, the default format for all the mind mapping I do
• export related also, the ability to print the mind map via PDF integration
• there is an OpenId integration now, although I haven’t been able to sign up with my OpenId, I guess this is a temporary glitch
• new team admin interface (if you go for the business package, see pricing below)
• there is a new embed API, which, from what I could think right now, it would make a huge difference in the future. The ability to “script” my mind mapping is one of those things that make me think, you know…
• there were also a number of significant improvements in sharing – it’s a collaborative suite, after all, but I’ll be honest with you and confess that I haven’t used that feature yet. Although I think there is quite a market for such a feature…

All in all, this version 3.0 seems to bring important enhancements. More important, the price has been adjusted, so that a premium account is now 4 USD / month, and a business account is 6 USD / month. Worthy to note is the fact that there is also an academic package, at only 15 USD / year.

Power Blogging With Mac Journal – GTD Style

I started to use Mac Journal 2 years ago. Initially I was using it only for my journaling activities. I needed something a little more versatile than my plain text file structure, and with some searching facilities integrated. Fortunately, Mac Journal proved to have all this, and even more. I soon discovered that I can remotely publish to my blogs from within Journal, download posts into it (for backup or just convenience) and brainstorm my future posts.

During the past few months, since I decided to make from blogging my main activity – after selling my online publishing business – I started to use Journal intensively. In this post I’ll share how I use Mac Journal for blogging, how I set up my blogging environment and how I applied, using Mac Journal’s powerful “smart journals” feature, a GTD-like blogging scaffold.

Setting Up A Remote Blog From Within Mac Journal

This is not a mandatory step, as you can always use your online blogging admin interface, but it might be of interest. You can add a blog to your journal by selecting the option “Edit blog server” from the “Journal” menu. A pop-up with some simple options will appear. If you’re on a wordpress set up, as most of the people, you should check the “Movable Type” type of your publishing method. A good idea is to add “xmlrpc.php” to your post URL and the admin username. That’s it, you’re now connected to your blog and can start publish remotely. You can even download the entries from your blog into Mac Journal, by choosing “Download entires from blog…” from the same “Journal” menu. Of course, you can have more than one blog set up, if you have more than one.

Establish Your Blogging Habits

Mac Journal lets you apply some sort of meta data to your posts. That will not be transferred to your blog, but it’s a convenient way to organize your blogging habits. Some of that meta data is: status, priority and ranking. There are also others like: tags, annotations or even colored label, if you want, which can be used for some neat visual effects. Let’s see how we can use this meta data in order to set up a more productive blogging environment.

First of all, you need a congruent blog routine for this to work. If you’re going to use this on a daily basis, you have to establish some rules for your idea brainstorming or future posts. My data input set up is like this: whenever I add an idea for a post, I also add the status, which is most of the time “Not Started”, for ideas that are just popping out of my head, the priority, which can be any number from 1 to 5, and a rating and color label (this is only for internal auditing purposes).

The priority number is used for slipping up posts into “Next Posts” and “Someday / Maybe” posts and it uses a 3/4 threshold. Meaning any priority between 1 and 3 (inclusive) will go on the “Someday / Maybe” posts, and any priority between 4 (inclusive) and 5 will go into “Next Posts”. “Someday /Maybe” and “Next Posts” are smart journals. And they can get really smart, you’ll see. The rating and label are just metrics for auditing my blog activity. With a color label I can see at a glance how many working post I have, how many published, and so on. (more…)