Capitalogix

LiveScribe - All Things Fit to Print

I got a new gadget. It is a Livescribe pen that records both what it hears and what you write.

From a small sample of using it about a dozen times so far, I am impressed; Livescribe works great, and delivers immediate benefit at meetings and seminars.  I use it to review conversations and brain-storming sessions for clarification, or to catch something I missed the first time through.

It generates an interesting polarity of responses though. Some people get it instantly and want to know where they can buy them.  Others couldn't care less.  No one objected to its use during the meeting - and I suspect that it became invisible quickly.

It records about a hundred hours of surprisingly clear audio.  The pen has a camera, just above the tip, that captures the image of what is being written -- and synchronizes this to what you hear or say.  And if you go back and touch the tip of the pen to writing on the page, you hear what was being said while it was written.  You can even control the playback speed to go faster, or slower, when you want.

The Livescribe pen looks and feels nice.  It comes with a leather travel case and a dock to sync it with your computer.  There is well-designed software that lets you manage and share the results. Livescribe created a place to post "pen-casts" online, to share with your team.  You can limit who see it with an access control list or leave it open.  Click here for an example.

I'm sending my son to back to school with one.  It seems like the perfect environment for a tool like this. 

All-in-all, Livescribe is worth a try. For more information about this interesting technology, here is the Livescribe's site.

Here are some video demos.

It looks like college book stores and Amazon are expected to be the big distribution channels.

Word Cloud Text Toy

The image on the left is a Word Cloud of Bernanke's speech from last week. I used it in the prior Weekly Commentary.

The Word Cloud is more than just a text toy.  It is a data visualization tool that gives emphasis to frequently used words.

I used one from Wordle (and yes, you can make your own there).

Click the image to see the full version on the website.

I liked the result on Bernanke's speech.  So, I tried it on my list of goals and plans.  Here is the result.

 

Capturing To Do Items and Ideas to Get Things Done

An Old Take on New Ideas:

How many times have you tried to remember something that you knew you were forgetting? As I get older, it seems to happen more often. I'm not sure if it's because of age, or because I think more and do less. Nonetheless, I love having a process to capture, store, and retrieve, relevant information.

For years I've been "a gadget guy." I'm the guy that waits in line to buy the first hot new phone. I always have the best PDA, the newest laptop. And I constantly try different software to capture ideas, produce mind maps, or otherwise give me a creative and competitive advantage.

Surprisingly, the newest addition to my arsenal of productivity tools is a small pad of paper. Yes, I now carry a small pad of paper in my pocket, and I pull it out to capture ideas, phrases, and to-do items throughout the day. It's quick, easy, and I don't have to worry about it recognizing my handwriting. I recognize my handwriting.

Throughout the day, I simply write the ideas, phrases, key words - and of course the to do items that I should do, want to do, or want someone else to do.   

At the end of the day (or when my page is full) I call Copytalk and dictate the whole list into the telephone. A few minutes later, I get an e-mail with all of the items in electronic format. I then copy these and simply paste them into a web application called Toodledo, which is a categorized to-do list accessible online.

Toodle-do is a great place to help me get things done. It allows me to list each task, categorize it in ways I want, as well as create priorities, due dates, and different tags that you could use for locations or roles. I very quickly ended up with close to 1,000 to-dos sorted in many categories. So when I get an idea on something to write about, or come up with new development projects or things to talk about with friends, I have one place to go.  Best part for me is that when I'm looking for something, this list is easy to search, easy to find, and easy to keep up-to-date.

All-in-all, it's a pretty good system, and I love how it feels to empty my brain every day.

A Better Copy Than the Original

ClipMate is a little piece of software that I didn't expect to think much of.
Someone recommended that I try it, and I did; but without much hope.
Instead, I find that it's a utility that I use dozens of times everyday.

The simple description is that ClipMate is a universal clipboard enhancement that works alongside the regular Windows Clipboard and remembers every piece of data (both text and graphics) that you cut, copy or screen-capture.  Once your data is saved in ClipMate, you can select an item and it is automatically placed back on the Clipboard or directly to wherever you select. 

The author of ClipMate has been updating this program for over 16 years, and clearly listens to user suggestions.  The result is mature product that does more than I could have imagined.

For example, within ClipMate you can view, print, edit, reformat, convert to upper/lower case, search, rename, and reorder Clip Items.

There are several "heavy lifting" features such as pasting multiple items all at once, using Templates, and lots of "clean-up" functions like spell-check, format stripping, removing extra line breaks, spaces and strange characters (I call this de-crappifying the document). All-in-all, it does a lot of things well.

It's a Clip Organizer Too:

Once you start using it to capture data, you're going to want to find and use it too.  ClipMate allows you to store your clips in different folders, or collections, based on how you work, and to set retention rules accordingly. I suspect that many users keep their most-commonly used data in their "Safe" collection, while others spread it out by topic, project, source, etc..  Personally, I have a section for "Templates" that I re-use, Quotes, Things to Purchase, Web Sites, Passwords, Humor, even graphic elements. 

Beyond basic organization, it is searchable; so I can find something that I saved, regardless of where I put it.

ClipMate can hold tens of thousands of items, and its SQL-based search engine can find them all quickly for you.  Even if you decide to do nothing special with your clips - you'll always have the last 1000 clips at you disposal, ready to paste wherever you need them.  When you're ready to use a "clip", just select it in ClipMate, and it's "loaded" onto the system clipboard, ready for pasting into any program.  And with many programs, you can now drag/drop the clip directly from ClipMate.

Try it; it's an incredibly useful tool that you'll use everyday.

The Rhythm of Writing

Here is a trick I use to write better and more naturally. It is called "timed writing" and it has been easy and effective for me. This post will briefly describe how it works.

First, pick a song to listen to while doing the exercise. Then I get a piece of paper and a pen. When the song starts, begin writing. Don't type or use a computer. Don't pause, don't stop. Don't think. Don't correct your spelling or grammar. Just write. If you can't think of anything else to write write whatever you say to yourself; even if it is "what should I say here?" But, don't let the pen stop writing until the song stops.

Second, use another song to review what you wrote. When I do this step, I cross-out things I didn't like. I make notes, annotations, draw lines connecting one paragraph to another, insert comments or write trigger words. Sometimes I outline a different idea flow. But I don't stop until the song stops. This is a great time to check the intention and attitude of the piece. Sometimes I look at a paragraph and ask myself "what is this supposed to say?" And I write the answer. It is often a great headline, lead-in, or summary. When the song is over, I often take a break to clear my head.

The next step looks similar to the first. Put on a song, and re-write the whole thing … from the beginning … with the new structure, comments and whatever else comes out in the process. By this step, the piece is usually dramatically better than it was the first time. However, a few more changes often happen when I re-enter the piece into the computer.

Handwriting seems to access different parts of the brain and creative process than typing does.  Somehow the combination works for me.  Try this and let me know what you think.