Blog in Review

I’ll spare you what seems to be the bloggers’ traditional counting of posts and comments at year end. Instead, let’s just hit a couple common topics I write about and see where I’ve been or where I’m at. A fairly cursory yet, in my usual wandering style, year in review.

Process Management / Getting Things Done

I’ve been using a OneNote based system for about 6 months — a new record! OneNote just suits how I tend to work, think and collect data very well. I still stink at making sure I do my periodic reviews, but that’s nothing new. Google Calendar is starting to really help me there though, so there’s hope.

The downside? With my current crop of machines, only my work laptop has OneNote. That can cramp me up a bit, but paper is usually around.

Thanks to some recent offers at Giveaway of the Day, I’ve finally been exposed to EverNote. As the pricing model is cheaper and it seems to have much of the flexibility I like, it might be a candidate for a harder look in 2008. For now, I dabble with it by tracking useful links and information while playing EverQuest 2…

I started the year with a bunch of GTD or productivity related bloggers in my RSS Reader. Many have gone inactive, so if you have any good suggestions on who to follow, please drop me a note.

Online Office Apps

I did manage to get the employer converted over to Google Apps (hosted email) this year. That’s been going quite well. My own company, Solo Technology, has been using hosted since early beta as well. I also have a free Gmail account. Frankly, some variant of Gmail is by far my number one web destination.

In both cases of the Hosted Google, we don’t really use the Google Docs or Spreadsheets. They’re just not “sticking” with folks yet. While I’d like to use them (or Zoho) to mitigate some license upgrades for MS Office this year, I just doubt that I’ll be able to sell it. There’s always those 10% (warning, that’s a made-up estimate!) of documents that choke the online office apps. And that pisses folks off.

At work we use Zoho Projects with a fair amount of success. It helps that they take feedback and suggestions so well! We use it to do time tracking and rudimentary project planning (frankly, we’re more interested in time/task tracking).

I still think Gliffy is the bees knees for diagramming, I just don’t have enough opportunities to use it.

Not sure if I should lump these in with Office Apps, but Google Reader and Netvibes are definitely two that I’d have a hard time getting along without.

Speaking of Reader, when did it become fashionable to brag about how few posts you read? Or how few feeds you subscribe to? I’m probably missing it, but that seems like bragging that you don’t read or keep up with news. Now granted, keeping a list that isn’t full of overlapping articles is helpful — I don’t need to read about what ever Steve Jobs burps up next on 18 blogs, but isn’t it still advantageous to be well-read and informed?

Oh, and at some point it seemed like a cool idea to share my OPML file. Don’t worry, I’m over that now and it is no longer a link from my blogroll section. If you want to see it, just ask and I’ll send it.

Social Stuff

Just a year or two ago a lot of my posts here were about social things. Social bookmarking was a favorite of mine, but I was into all things social on the ‘net.

Now? I dunno, but I think I’m mostly over it or just missing the point. I toyed with Pownce but didn’t get hooked in. I’ve never uttered a tweet via Twitter. I don’t do flickr. I’ve started with Facebook but keep forgetting I have an account…. Heck, LinkedIn is probably what I visit the most and even there I don’t use it as much I’d like.

Oh, and while I enjoy the heck out of StumbleUpon during short stints of down time, I’ve yet to even begin to explore the social aspects of it. Digg? Hardly ever go there anymore. Seems like the post discussions aim to become cesspools of adolescent strutting and angst.

As far as bookmarking goes, I’m pretty entrenched into del.icio.us. I was bouncing back and forth between there and BlinkList until last January, but yet another outage at BlinkList convinced me it was time to move on. The awesome Firefox extension from del.icio.us doesn’t hurt either.

Know what though? Lately I find myself using Google Reader’s “star” feature as a bookmark collector. If an article looks interesting, I star it and then search that section later to find it. All too often, I forget to tag ‘em in del.icio.us.

Blogging

I’m still using the WordPress blog software. I also still spend some time volunteering in the support forums as well, although I did take a few months “off” at the end of this year when the day job was too busy. (as off as you can be for unpaid work )

I’ve bounced around a bit with anti-spam measures. I started the year with Akismet, switched to Spam Karma 2, tried Defensio for a bit and then switched back to Akismet. I’ve had a few “leaks” this past week, so pondering another return to SK2. Through it all, I’ve also been running Bad Behavior. It just plain simply rocks.

Once I relaxed a bit (see 31 months later) I’ve found that I still have a lot of fun writing articles.

Windows Live Writer is still my blogging client of choice. Hands down, it just makes life easier.

Browsers

I’m too fickle to even start on this topic. I’ve yet to stick with one for more than a month at a time.

Fini

Happy New Years! Here’s hoping that 2008 is a great one for all of us.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Google Reader Shared Items
2. Google Reader to Report Reader Counts!
3. Daily Browser Destinations
4. Google Reader – Offline
5. Linux Alternative for EverNote / OneNote?