A Place To Vent, A Place To Listen In...
Situation: You Want To Hear The Latest Watercooler Talk... Wurkpal is an anonymous online complaint forum, where people can bash their employers, etc. online without fear of retribution. It's also a place where bosses can log in and see what's being said about them. Whichever side of the bashing you're on, its worth looking at briefly. Obviously if you're not from large company, you probably won't see a lot of activity. For example, I was happy to see that there's no gantthead-bashing going on here. |
Posted on: July 29, 2007 12:06 AM
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Yet Another Free WP, Spreadsheet, and Presentation Alternative
Situation: You Have No $, but Need Something Like MS Office... ThinkFree is a FREE set of Software as a Service applications that not only claim to be an MS Office replacement, but they look a heck of a lot like the MS Apps they are aiming to replace. There's nothing to install and they give you 1 GB of free storage on there site. Once you have the documents stored on the ThinkFree site you can invite others to collaborate on them with you, tracking changes, etc. along the way. There's also something called Doc Exchange where you can share your documents with the world - allowing others to rate them, copy them, and easily publish them to their blogs. |
Posted on: July 28, 2007 11:56 PM
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Ending an Unproductive Conversation
Situation: You Really Need to Get the Hell out of a Meeting... (in a polite way, of course) The Popularity Dialer is a free service that will call your phone at a scheduled time, allowing you to end a meeting with "that guy that goes on and on about his next networking event" - or whomever you're trying to avoid. The boss call is particularly good, because it goes on for a while. |
Posted on: July 25, 2007 02:14 PM
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Extracting Key Points From Bulky Documents
Situation: You Have To Plow Through Dense Documentation Every Day of Your Life. MindSystems Theme Reader scans through your favorite Word document and presents you with a visual "Cliff's Notes" version in the form of a MindMap. This isnt just creating an outline from the table of contents - like you have in the standard MindManager setup. This tool uses Artificial Intelligence to really draw out themes, ideas, and keywords and drop them into a hierarchy. Here's how they say it works... What makes this different to search engine technology? This technology uses a type of intelligent scanning that is able to accurately detect natural patterns in information and apply a interpretation in a way a human researcher would. Standard search engine technology provides a powerful indexing system, but even the largest search engines can't control the relevance of the information returned by a search. This is controlled by the content and how or where keywords appear in a document.  I gave it a try using the free 21 day trial, running it against a fairly obscure 16 page doc I found on the web (The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution). This is one of those documents that I think I might like to read, but as I get into it ----- well, not so much.Themereader actually helped a great deal more than I thought it would, extracting a lot of information into a mindmap that really gave me a view of what the paper said without reading it. I'm sure its not flawless, but I think its helpful (click on the JPEG to see a larger picture of the MMP). |
Posted on: July 22, 2007 09:29 PM
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How Does One Become An Expert?
Situation: You Need to Get People to Practice Being "More Perfect". Harvard Business Review is great. I never read it when I have a subscription, but I buy it every month at the airport. In the July 2007 issue, The Making of An Expert goes over what gives a person that title. The article refutes claims that people are born leaders, presenters, etc. It presents some great arguments that say - if you want to be an expert, just spend a decade practicing in a way that promotes progress. They also touch on the importance of practicing well. The author argues that you can spend decades golfing, but if you never aim you won't get any better. I think this could be a really cool part of a career management plan. Every person should have the equivalent of a "trade" that they can rely on for future marketability. There are some simple business skills, today's "presenter" or "writer" = yesterday's "blacksmith" -- ensuring a better job no matter what the future holds. |
Posted on: July 22, 2007 09:08 PM
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