Like the 1950s promise of a housekeeping robot, is IT productivity all just hype? Or is it us humans who need a little upgrade?

There’s no doubt that technology is continuing to revolutionise the workplace. And we all have to work smarter because we can’t work much harder. How does this productivity push play out in small businesses though? Especially when they are not accessing the infrastructure and support that bigger organisations have at their fingertips?

I was delighted therefore to learn that Microsoft featured some of my advice on their dedicated Microsoft Small Business Centre site.

After all, supporting smaller businesses in squeezing extra productivity and bottom line profits from their existing (or sometimes reducing) employee population through smarter working practices and improved collaboration and teamworking  has been an increasing focus of my consulting and training business over the past 3 years.

The truth is that upgrading people’s skills along with appropriate, simple, streamlined and integrated upgrading of technology can have a massive impact on the bottom line and deliver Results Worth Talking About.

Naturally, I would be delighted to support you, your team or people you may know, just tell me how now.

I’m also guessing that you work with real people and your business might even be shifting physical product. And, out there, with them, we use pen and paper – see the problem?

We often have to convert our meeting notes, our agreed next-actions, our scribbled thoughts and illuminating diagrams into a digital format so we can collaborate, prioritise and add value to them when we get back to our desks.

In my book, that’s always been duplicated effort – and by definition that is not exactly productive working. So, here’s how I have squared the circle…

Why my Montblanc pen has been replaced by my Echo Smartpen for business writing

I loved writing my meeting notes into my beautifully crafted, Italian leather bound journal with my masterful Montblanc Meisterstuck – I just got fed up with turning the pages back at the desk and rewriting it all into Outlook emails and Tasks, into my CRM system and into Microsoft Word and other digital collateral. So……

I reflected on an earlier conversation with my friend Rob May over at Ramsac and bought myself an Echo Smartpen – that was almost 3 months ago and now I’m nailing my colours to the mast because it works well and meets my ‘Rules for Tools’ criteria:

1. It is simple and natural to use
2. It integrates seamlessly with my other productivity tools
3. It makes me more productive

So, there you have it,

Richard ‘Mr Productivity’ Maybury recommends the Echo Smartpen

Use the non-affiliate links ( I dislike them as much as you do!) to find out more:

Discover more about the Echo from the official (Non-affiliate) Livescribe Echo site http://www.livescribe.com/en-uk/smartpen/echo/

I bought mine in a great package that beat the Amazon deal from (Non-affiliate) Micro-Anvika Make sure you grab a pen refill pack along with your order.

One important point to add at this stage, you will want to grab the ‘Myscript for Livescribe’ package to turn your handwritten notes into editable text through the magic of OCR for US$30

I have already been asked for some leverage tips on how I use my Echo Smartpen in my business, so stand by for that. Meanwhile if you have any comments or questions just drop them in the comments section below or call me on 01428 607763 for a brief chat.

Till next time … onwards and upwards!

So, what is Dropbox? Well, Sean describes it as like having a permanently connected memory stick – and he is right. Its a place you can put any digital stuff you want to access from anywhere - your other computers, your BlackBerry [other mobile devices are available ], or direct from the web from a third party computer. No more emailing yourself files or fiddling around for your memory stick in the bottom of your bag.

I have also created public folders within my Dropbox where I can securely share specific fun stuff with friends and family as well as allow other specific people to collaborate remotely with me on a more business level.

Using it is soooo simple. You use it like any other folder on your computer, simply drag and drop files into and out of it.

You get 2GB of storage space free with the Basic package but if you sign up through this Dropbox link you will get an extra 250mb free!

Sean is the brains behind the Outlook World Cup Calendar which I brought to you back in June this year.

Internet Explorer: Settings > Search Settings > and in ‘Google Instant’ at the foot of the page, select ‘Do not use Google Instant’ > at bottom right- ‘Save Preferences’

Firefox: Make sure you are using the unadultrated Google search page http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en .  Search Settings > and in ‘Google Instant’ at the foot of the page, select ‘Do not use Google Instant’ > at bottom right- ‘Save Preferences’

I hope this helps!

 Wave is a real time messaging platform that promised to revolutionize real time collaboration within distributed teams and I – along with many others – was excited by its potential, as my June blog Wave goodbye to email pointed out.

In pulling the plug, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, reminded journos that part of the Google ethos is to celebrate failure as well as success:

“We try things,” he said. “Remember, we celebrate our failures. This is a company where it’s absolutely okay to try something that’s very hard, have it not be successful, and take the learning from that,” he continued.

A lesson there for all of us I think. 

The Wave service will remain live for the time being but will not be developed further. Google will be taking the elements that worked and build them into other projects and it is also releasing other elements to third party developers.   

To paraphrase Dr Spock: ‘Its failure Captain but not as we know it.’ I also love the relaxed, informal way the CEO Eric Schmidt speaks with the journos on the announcement as you can see in this YouTube video: Google CEO Eric Schmidt on death of Google Wave

I wonder what will eventually kill off email as a collaboration, information flow, sharing and management tool? Thoughts?

See here for how I use Spinvox to keep on top of commitments on the run  You might also find my notes on using Outlook Rules to control the email deluge helpful in this regard.

Well, after a lot of bad financial press, Spinvox has been purchased by Nuance - famous for among other things, the speech recognition programme ’Dragon Naturally Speaking’. This should bring some welcome stability to a great service. I am still using and advocate it.

You can still download the free SpinVox MEMO service here: http://www.spinvox.com/memo.html

Remember to get in touch and ask how we can help.

Even if you do not have one of the limited release Wave invitations – even if you do not want the technology, you should be aware of how corporate and team communications will be changing soon in your world. Here’s the link to the 8 minute Google Wave video enjoy!

I have just checked out the Google Wave site at  http://wave.google.com/  Google Wave looks just awesome. It appears to answer the question ‘What would email look like if it were invented today?’  The answer is …… well, its like email/IM/wikis/sharepoint/social sites/web2 and everything else all in one package only better!

Set aside a little time to watch the demo video on the Google site. The first 18 minutes will give you a good idea of the future of communication and collaboration as Google sees it.

At first I thought I should only suggest you check out the first 18 minutes because that’s where so many Wows occur. But then at around minute 35 you see a bunch of people edit one wave report from different browsers in real time with no lag…. awesome. The creative and engineering team is the same one that bought us Google Maps.

Do check it out, at least the first 18 minutes. Catch the wave, I for one can’t wait to get wet!

It is called RescueTime and is a free browser based time management monitor which allows productivity geeks to understand exactly how they spend their computer time. They are currently in open beta phase and I have been using it for a while now and can confidently suggest you look at it.

Personal productivity is impacted by interference, much of which is internally generated, see Performance = Potential minus Interference (P=P-I)  One of the founders of Rescue Time, Tony Wright, says that the core mission of Rescue Time is to allow information workers to understand how they spend their time in an easy way. “We feel that the knowledge of how you spend your time will make you more productive and will nudge you in the direction of spending your time more deliberately and thoughtfully”.

I say it’s great because:

1. You don’t have to manually enter logs of how you spend your time, it does it for you automatically.
2. You can create categories within it to support your productivity goal setting
3. It is another Web 2.0 tool that I think has a good future, especially as the team is obviously working on its development.

Please note though that there are some issues with running RescueTime on Firefox 3.  Also I have not trailed the Teamworking option yet so can’t confidently comment on that although it looks good for the future!

Let me know what you think. contact us .

Spinvox is a cool, clean, currently free and priceless web based utility

… for turning voice messages you leave yourself on your mobile into email messages delivered right to your inbox. You have enough capacity to leave yourself bullet action points from a meeting. Your action points will be in an email waiting for you next time you open Outlook for you to run your process on them and other new emails in your inbox. I have been using it since September last year and think it is great!

You can download the free SpinVox MEMO service here: http://www.spinvox.com/memo.html

How I use Spinvox to stay on top of commitments on the run

I have spinvox on autodial on my mobile and simply call the service who then translate my voicemail into an email for me. If I have a number of action points I simply break them down into short, grouped memo messages.

Now the cool part. In my Outlook inbox I have created a rule to send all my Spinvox emails into an Inbox subfolder called ’05 Pending’ subfolder. (Tools> Rules and alerts> new rule>any email from spin-my-memo, send to 05 Pending subfolder). Because the emails in this subfolder are invariably commitments from meetings and discussions on the day, it one of the first subfolders I interrogate when I get back to my laptop. If I decide not to action that email on the day I will simply date it by moving the mail into a dated Outlook task. And the best thing for me is that……..

Spinvox is quicker than bashing Blackberry keys to create Tasks

Try it for yourself, you have nothing to loose. By the way I understand that Jott.com still has plans to provide their similar service outside North America but no dates yet!

Of course, you can always contact us directly to tailor a support programme to your needs.

Searching for emails is a real productivity drain, even in the most regimented of outlook folder systems. If you want really good Outlook search, with additional – very useful – functionality you have got to look at xobni.com , that’s ‘Inbox’ backwards!

I was introduced to it recently and I think it is great! So much so that I have disabled my current favourite search programme Copernic, which itself is so much better than any other option out there. There are many very good reasons for this strong suggestion….

I don’t know about you but I have always despised the horrendous hour glass in Outlook’s built in search and have been a big fan of indexed desktop search since the early days of Lookoutsoft.com (subsequently bought by Microsoft and incorporated into their main search offerings now), so I have some experience here.

Reasons why Xobni Outlook Search currently gets my vote

The main reason I like this programme is because it instantly identifies all emails in connection with a particular search word and displays dated thread summaries, with folder location, which you can then either read in Xobni panel or open fully in Outlook.

Other plus points are:

Outlook search only – so it is light!
Lightening fast
Suggests senders networks based upon content and allows you to navigate the inbox by people. Note, it does this from the ‘To’ ‘CC’ and ‘BCC’ addressees in your mails not from other snooping technologies.
Provides useful analytics
Contact data is extracted from emails
Links to Linkedin
Does not cost a penny!

Do yourself a favour and download it and let me know what you think of it.