Strictly Business

I have been making a conscious effort to use my iPad throughout the day, and thought I would share the Apps that I am finding the most beneficial:

1) Air Sharing – Turns the iPad into a Wifi / WebDAV hard drive for transferring documents to and from the iPad. With it’s built in PDF reader, it is a nice addition to iBooks for reading technical docs, white papers, etc. that cannot be pulled down from the store.

2) Things – An excellent GTD (Getting Things Done) oriented task manager.

3) Mind Node – A mind mapping tool that rivals Mindjet’s Mind Manager. Also supports exports to a variety of formats including Freemind.

4) OmniGraffle – I started using OmniGraffle on my Mac a few years ago, as an alternative for MS Visio. Now, I feel like I use Visio as an alternative to Omnigraffle. It’s a great app, and having a native version on the iPad will continue to come in handy for quick UI wireframes and technical diagrams.

5) 1Password – I already use this on my Mac and iPhone. It seamlessly syncs across all devices. With iPhone OS supporting Copy / Paste, password generation and management with this app have become transparent to the point that I do not have to think about it.

6) Wordpress – With all the additional real estate and a full sized keyboard, this app is much more usable on the iPad. In an effort to eat my own dog food, I am also using it to write this post.

7) Desktop – Supports both RDP and VNC for connecting to Windows and Mac desktops respectively.

8) iWork: Numbers, Pages, and Keynote – I am still not sure how often I will use these to create new documents, but they will definitely come in handy when reading / reviewing documents from others.

9) Mover – This is actually a vanilla iPhone app that allows for transferring contacts and photos between iPhones / iPads. I wish it supported more file types (Office docs, PDFs, video…).

10) Evernote – I go through phases of relying heavily on Evernote, versus other note management systems, but I keep coming back. My biggest issue stems from how I typically access Evernote from multiple devices simultaneously. I am going to make an effort to adopt it again and only access it from the iPad to keep the issues introduced from syncing and merging isolated.

11) Safari – I know this is the only App on my list which is embedded in the OS, but it’s still worth mentioning. With the added speed, battery power, and screen resolution, I can open Rally Dev and the Omniture report suite on the iPad and they are very usable.

Anyway, that’s my current list, in no particular order. Feel free to send me your suggestions / impressions, as well.

The big day finally arrived, and the wedding went off in Gloucester without a hitch. Liz and I have been absolutely humbled by the number of people that have sent us photos from the wedding. I have put together links to each of the albums below so that we can track them all in one spot. I have also included a link to our professional photos from Sharon’s Studio of Gloucester.

We owe a big thank you for everyone that took photos for us and captured this special day. Despite a few small “hiccups”, the entire day seemed to just fly by! Sorry for the non-”Business” interruption… Now its back to work!

Sharon’s Studio of Gloucester

Flickr Album

Dave & Kim

Mike & Benoite

John & Leena

John & Jennie

Flickr Album

Brian & Eileen

Recently, I noticed that one of my coworkers had submitted a question to LinkedIn Answers, regarding web monitoring.  I didn’t see the question until after it was already closed out by LinkedIn, but I responded to him privately.  I figured after going to the trouble of outlining all this, I might as well share it with the world:

In my consulting, I have typically suggested a comprehensive plan for getting inside the head of visitors.  In my opinion there is not one "all encompassing" solution for monitoring a web site, campaign, or in some cases each persona, since each organization’s objectives are different.  I believe that the full view can only be achieved by reviewing a site from multiple angles: [Read more]

For what seems like the 100th time (more like the 5th), I have migrated my web site to a new framework.  I am putting the finishing touches on my new site to take over for my previous Python / Plone-based site.  Some people might think this is the absolute craziest time in my life to be taking on such a big project (I am getting married in June, among other things), but thats exactly why "now" is the perfect time to do this.  In the next couple months / years I hope to have a lot going on both personally and professionally, so I have restructured things to provide a home for these different audiences and activities.  The site is now broken up into two major areas:

1. Strictly Business
   This community will serve as a home for all things related to my career and professional hobbies.  I have a number of small software projects that I have kept around and I plan on releasing here from time to time.  Additionally, I believe that a career-focused site is a great way to centralize my involvement in other web communities (YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, etc.).
    
2. A Lighter Side…
   Although my goal for this area of the site is similar to Strictly Business, I envision that the content and audience will be much different.  I plan to use this community as a vehicle to share my personal accomplishments, hobbies, and media.  My hope is to share much of the personal content that made it on my previous site that typically focused on Sailing, Labrador Rescue, and family activities.

[Read more]