Archive for AppGap Tips
by Celine Roque
May 7, 2009 at 8:28 am · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Web 2.0, Web Apps
Google is fond of keeping things simple, and this reflects in their services like Gmail. They are, however, also famous for being innovators – something that the variety of add-ons available on Gmail Labs would support. For power users who want additional features, try to look up what’s available under Settings > Labs. A few of the most handy ones are listed here:
1. Undo Send
Ever pressed the Send button by mistake? We’ve all been there. The results are often incomplete emails, forgotten attachments, and unintended recipients. By enabling this feature, when you press the Send button, Gmail will delay the transmission of your messages by a short while. A new Undo button will be available near the top of the page for about 15 seconds, after which it will disappear, and your email will be sent.
2. Forgotten Attachment Detector
A common blooper around the office is promising attachments, but forgetting to send them. This feature scans your email for the word “attached”. When you hit Send and it senses that no files were chosen, it will ask you whether this was an oversight or not, allowing you to edit the email further. Simple yet effective.
3. Tasks
Using an organizer is fine, but if you have a lot of email-specific tasks to accomplish, why not keep track of them inside Gmail itself? Enabling Tasks will create a text link in your side menu, and clicking on that will open a simple to-do list. It’s easy to add and delete tasks, set a due date, and create notes for each task.
4. Keyboard Shortcuts
Some of us are more comfortable navigating with a mouse, but others swear that keyboard shortcuts make their work flow faster. If you’re in the latter category, why not enable this feature? Don’t forget that you still have to turn shortcuts ON under Settings > General afterwards, though. Default keystrokes are listed here.
5. Email Addict
As various studies have shown, in order to be productive, you’ve got to take some rest every once in a while. The Email Addict add-on puts a text link near the top of the page that says, “Take a break”. Clicking on it will lock you out of Gmail, to force you to rest your eyes or get some other work done. This is handy for those who obsessively check their emails every minute. It also makes you invisible in Google Chat.
Do you use any of the Google Labs features in Gmail? Which one’s your favorite?
by Celine Roque
April 3, 2009 at 9:55 am · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Tips for Tough Times, Web 2.0
The Value of Role Models in the Downturn
Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter talks about the people and companies that have shown resiliency in this economy. “A time of cynicism and mistrust can be made brighter by focusing on heroes. And because every story of success is also a story about persistence despite obstacles, the lessons can be applied to one’s own situation, as a source of inspiration and practical tips.”
The seeeeeeriously cool way out of a downturn
On his blog, “Chief Happiness Officer” Alexander Kjerulf lists a few ways for organizations to stay positive during a crisis. “3: Involve employees in decisions… An intended byproduct of the focus group sessions was that information about the crisis and how it was being handled spread quickly throughout the organization. When the initatives were announced to the employees, most people had heard about them already, which created more trust.”
5 Startup Tips From the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed
Getting your business off the ground is hard, knows Andrew Warner, as he shares noted engineer Paul Buchheit’s advice in an article on Mashable. “Launch a scaled-back version. You can find a simple, scaled-down way of launching anything. “Tesla [the financially struggling electric car startup] spent a lot of money making these cars, but there are people making electric cars in their garages. So it’s always possible to do a scaled-back version of what you have in mind.”
Two New Ways To Find A Job: Auction Yourself Off At JobaPhile Or Do A TwitterJobSearch
TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld profiles two startups looking to give jobhunters a helping hand. “Developed by UK-based job search engine Workhound, TwitterJobSearch pulls up Tweets that are only job-related and links to the underlying job posting. Most of these seem to link to other job sites such as CareerBuilder or more niche job sites which all seem to be using Twitter to post their latest openings. But with TwitterJobSearch, you search across all of them, and results are ranked by both relevance and by how recently they’ve been posted.”
Reid Hoffman Tells Charlie Rose: “Every Individual Is Now An Entrepreneur.”
Leena Rao of TechCrunch features excerpts from Charlie Rose’s interview with Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. “But I think that one of the key things — the reason why I think risk tolerance is important is because what happens is people delude themselves they’re not taking risks. They say, oh, I’m going to get a job at, you know, Hewlett-Packard or I’m going to get a job — and that’s not risky. Well, look at current economic climates. Everything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it. And people who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don’t.”
It’s Not as Bad as You Think
On TechNewsWorld Ed Moyle discusses long-term investment opportunities like creating effective strategies, building better methodologies and training staff. “At a macro level, the equation is simple: The workload of certain areas in our security organization is directly tied to business activity. So when business activity is down — as is the case right now — organizations that were staffed to capacity prior to the downturn now have slack space in the workload of these folks. Since the cost of replacing these resources is high, it’s probably cost-prohibitive to adjust levels of staff to meet the change in the short-term demand.”
Steps Towards a More Sustainable Life of Less
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits shares his ideas on live better with less. “We work more than ever before, despite advances in labor-saving technology that mean we should be able to work less. We do so to support a lifestyle that has become more expensive than ever, because of the new levels of convenience and abundant consumer goods that we’ve become accustomed to. We can break out of this trap, by consuming less and then needing to work less.”
by Hylton Jolliffe
March 19, 2009 at 10:44 am · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Product Management, Talent Management, Technology Management, Webinar
As you know if you’re a regular reader of this blog, The AppGap last week hosted a discussion called “5 Big Ideas for Getting All That Work Done.” Moderated by AppGap contributor Anita Campbell, who was joined by leading commentators Jonathan Fields and John Jantsch, the webinar explored and shared insights on handling workloads that, in many cases, have only increased and gotten more stressful in these challenging economic times.
The major takeaways the discussion sought to explore:
- How to automate what you hate
- How going virtual can help
- How being “social” at work is good for business
- How to reframe what you do
- And how to get your head in the cloud, i.e., move more work to the web
See the end of this post to access the recording of the great conversation – hit play to hear it in place or download it as a podcast for later listening.
We hope you find it of interest and want to take the opportunity to point you to several other webinars The AppGap has hosted: Should your Business be friends with Facebook? from last June and a broad discussion on The Future of Work from early last year.
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by Celine Roque
March 9, 2009 at 1:52 pm · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Web 2.0
Now that we’re a few months into 2009, I thought it was appropriate to check on the popularity of certain key buzzwords related to this blog. For this, I used Google Trends, which does not reveal the actual volume of searches, but is useful nonetheless for tracking changes across time. These were the results:
Web 2.0, Social Network, and Social Media
Web 2.0 reached its peak in 2007, and though its no longer as talked about as it once was, it still enjoys significant search volume. Its related technologies, on the other hand, like social network and social media, are steadily gaining in popularity.
Blog and Twitter
In this second graph, we see the incredible rise in the popularity of the term “blog”, which it manages to hold to this day. Meanwhile, Twitter, which came much later, seems to have gained great momentum since the start of the year. This looks to bee in line with recent studies conducted on micro-blogging. Although its search volume is far from what “blog” currently enjoys, Twitter may just give it a run for its money in a few years.
Web App and Cloud Computing
The term “web app” is marching on steadily, increasing a little in searches for 2008 and is likely to do the same this year. In contrast, cloud computing is seeing a phenomenal rise, quite possibly because of economics and other factors pointed out by Anita in one of her previous posts.
Have you tried to use Google Trends for other keywords? What did you think of the results?
by Celine Roque
February 27, 2009 at 10:43 am · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Security
A recent survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute [found via DataTheft.org] had some startling information about data loss during times when businesses are downsizing:
According to our findings, 59% of employees who leave or are asked to leave are stealing company data. Moreover, 79% of these respondents admit that their former employer did not permit them to leave with company data.
Source: “Data Loss Risks During Downsizing” by Ponemon Institute LLC, February 23, 3009
The respondents were chosen among employees who were fired, laid off, or who left their jobs voluntarily. Since we’re seeing more layoffs across several industries each month, it’s no surprise that many employees who were let go are feeling vindictive.
But what seemed more alarming to me was that 67% of those who stole corporate data from former employees used the stolen data to leverage their new jobs. While it’s natural to feel angry and vengeful towards an employer when you’re let go during tough economic times, acting on them is another matter.
Obviously, this is bad news for companies as data theft might lead to security risks as well as loss of revenue. More importantly, the clients of these companies are threatened as well, since most of the stolen data includes email lists, customer information, contact lists, and other business information.
It is evident that security policies, non-disclosure agreements, and other contracts referencing data security are inefficient when it comes to preventing data theft. The study recommends several solutions to this problem, including auditing an employee’s electronic and paper documents as part of their exit interview, as well as monitoring the employee’s access to the corporate network before they leave.
Does your business prevent data theft? How worried are you about disgruntled employees stealing company data?
by Celine Roque
February 6, 2009 at 11:08 am · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Web 2.0
Email is integral to our daily routine, but Internet access isn’t always reliable for road warriors and home-based workers. Google has been trying to devise a way to enable offline Gmail access since last year, and now they’re ready to release it for public testing under Gmail Labs. One could argue that you could always use 3rd party email clients and POP3 to achieve the same results, however, the idea behind Offline Gmail is that you don’t have to install any other program, and still do all your email chores under the same familiar interface.
According to the official Gmail blog:
“Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online.
Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you’re on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you’re “borrowing” your neighbor’s wireless), you can choose to use “flaky connection mode,” which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you’re using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server.”
I tinkered with it on my account and glad to say it worked without any hitch. Here’s what you do:
1. Inside Gmail, click on “Settings” at the upper righthand corner.
2. Click the “Labs” tab.
3. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail and Save Changes.
4. When you go back to your Inbox, click the link that says “Offline 0.1”, again at the upper righthand corner to start setup. This window will pop up:
5. Click on the checkbox and Allow it to continue. Setups and synchromization will continue.
Currently, there are some limitations for Offline Gmail. For example, you cannot add an attachment to emails you compose offline or in Flaky Mode. The Contacts manager is also unavailable. Among the Settings tab, the only ones active are General, Labels, and Offline. There is also no option to set which emails will be download by Offline Gmail. It seems that emails that are less than a week old are automatically included, as are those which are Starred and Drafts, no matter how old they are. Trash and Spam are always excluded. Finally, this feature is only available if you set your account’s language to US or UK English. Although after installation, it will still work even if you change the language setting to others.
by Celine Roque
January 26, 2009 at 10:09 am · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Web 2.0
Many of us have, at one point or another, had the chance of working in an open plan office space along with a large number of co-workers. A recent article tackled this type of environment’s adverse effects on employee health and productivity. The findings may come as little surprise to some:
“Employees face a multitude of problems such as the loss of privacy, loss of identity, low work productivity, various health issues, overstimulation and low job satisfaction when working in an open plan work environment. Workers were plagued by insecurity… ever-conscious of their colleagues’ ability to see what they were doing on the computer and eavesdrop on their phone calls. High noise levels led to impaired concentration and low productivity… There was a higher incidence of workplace conflict, with people sitting so close to their neighbour that even a ringing phone could irritate.”
Given that most large office spaces use this kind of design for various reasons, this deserves some serious thought. A few of these issues, like office acoustics, may be resolved at a technical level, but others warrant a workplace culture that promotes courtesy. Simple things like keeping your voice low, decreasing the volume of your phone’s ringer, respecting your neighbor’s privacy, using headphones instead of speakers, and so on can go a long way if everybody did their share.
However, it’s not just outside forces that are creating distractions – we ourselves are guilty of introducing stress in our lives. It’s becoming common to see people checking email during meetings, sending text messages on the sly, or writing a report with chatting on the phone. Multitasking is becoming the norm, even if studies have shown that it doesn’t help our productivity.
I think it all goes back to courtesy, to others and to ourselves. Tone things down, block things out, and learn to focus.
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