scottdot.com

My wife and I were cooking dinner for our family last night and doing our usual exchange of, “So, how was your day?” I began telling my wife about running into a friend of mine who has his hands in many little startup companies and is really embodying the entrepreneur’s spirit. She shook her head, smiled, and gave a bit of a chuckle, implying that my friend has bitten off more than he could chew.

And then it occurred to me: doing business and coming up with (and executing) new ideas is a lot like archery. Now I haven’t picked up a bow in many years, but hear me out. Let’s say you have a quiver of arrows on your back, and in your lifetime you only take one arrow and shoot it down range, fully expecting a bulls eye. Slim chance unless you’re an expert archer and marksman. What’s wrong with being the type of archer who is grabbing multiple arrows and taking lots of different shots, sometimes at different targets? Which archer is going to have a better shot at the bulls eye. That bulls eye could be the next big thing.

Whether you apply this to business or even spending time doing something new with your family, I think we should shoot many arrows. Many will be a hit, some will be a complete bust, but at least you had the courage to try.

[This post is also published on SoulFoodRevolution.com, where I am going to begin doing a semi-regular guest column.]

These days, I’m as busy as ever, a mixed blessing in some situations. While I don’t have a lot of free time to play more Mario Kart on the Wii, I do have a lot of fun projects and clients to keep happy. Here’s a brief list of some of the stuff I use to stay productive:

• Cashboard: Cashboard is a slick little web application, complete with integrated Dashboard widget for Mac OS X, that I use for managing tasks and time tracking on projects for clients. They even have a free version that lets you manage up to two projects. Subscriptions are nicely priced in different tiers depending on the amount of projects and contacts you need to manage.
• Anxiety: Anxiety is the best, most minimal To Do list I’ve used on the Mac. I’ve tried other apps like The Hit List, but keep coming back to Anxiety. It’s lightweight and very well integrated with iCal.
• Mozilla Thunderbird: Don’t get me wrong, when I’m on my Mac, I’m a full-blown Apple Mail fan, but at work, we run Windows and Outlook is not my friend. I’ve got Thunderbird configured with a theme that closely matches the Mail experience on OS X, and a minimal folder/filing system that lets me use my inbox as a task list of pending projects. And speaking of email, I’m also a big fan of Merlin Mann’s “Inbox Zero” philosophy. Check out his great presentation here.
• iCal/MobileMe: I may be one of the few who doesn’t have constant troubles with Apple’s MobileMe, a service that syncs my desktop calendar and email with the cloud (online), so that I can pull up my schedule, emails, contacts, and more via web browser. I find the web apps very easy to use and stay connected with my main email account and calendars all day long.
• Google Chrome: Quite possibly the best web browsing experience available on a Windows PC. I love its minimalistic user interface and speed most of all. Sure, Firefox has dozens of great, powerful add-ons, but when you want a browsing experience that is fast, Chrome is where it’s at! Chrome works great with Apple’s online web apps for MobileMe that I mentioned above.

Coming soon: A Note on Unproductivity (or better known as the fun stuff I distract myself with)

Have you ever had the need to put together a teleconference with very little to no time? Forget WebEx, and you really don’t even need GoToMyPC.com. Why pay money if you don’t need to? All you need is a free account from DimDim.com.

Just a few weeks ago, I used DimDim on my Mac to share my screen with a client in Roswell, and another in Carlsbad. They were able to see my presentation, my Mac’s screen (and they were using Windows, so the cross-platform aspect is beautiful), and have a conference voice conversation all in one place. DimDim advertises that no software downloads or installs are needed, which is not exactly true. To share your screen and be a presenter, there is a small plugin (all major platforms) that takes about a minute to set up. The service’s email notification makes scheduling a meeting a snap and will send out an invitation to your attendees.

DimDim has found a permanent place in my toolkit for freelancing. A free product (premium subscriptions also available) saved me 4 hours in the car this month, give it a try!

I love a good overcast day, the gloomier the better. Why? There’s something about a gray sky that gets me up and moving, ready for anything, and ready for work. What about you? Take the poll below and let me know in the comments what kind of weather helps you be productive. I can make an educated guess that most of you would rather lounge on the couch with a book or movie during a rainy or snowy day!

Backups are essential today–we’ve all lost files at some point and we all know our hard drives will fail at some point. That is why it is important to have a firm strategy and plan in backing up your files. Whether you use external hard drives or an online service like Mozy, you’re better off using one of these options than nothing.

New blog Managing Your Digital Life (MYDL.ME) has some great tips and discussions going on about managing backups on your computer. Many of the tips center around Drobo, a hot little product that makes expanding your backup capacities a snap. Drobo appeals to photographers, video producers, and other creatives who rely on large capacity drives to accomidate a horde of gigabytes of data. If one of the drives gets full, Drobo lets you know and  you simply pop in a new, empty SATA hard drive and Drobo intelligently moves your data and recognizes the new elbow room.

I don’t have a Drobo yet, but I’m currently relying on Apple’s Time Machine in OS X Leopard to backup my data weekly to an external hard drive. What are you using to manage your backups?

The joys of freelancing are starting to bloom, as March is going to be a very busy month for me. I have a trip to Roswell planned to begin laying the groundwork for a major redesign for one of my clients. In addition, we also are aiming to launch a redesigned website for the Clovis Police Department this Spring, with loads of training to be done onsite and content to push!

Another project on my plate will be designing and launching Mitch Gray’s new website, SoulFoodRevolution.com. Mitch has some great ideas to help promote his books and seminars, and I’m excited to help him develop a site that will be rich in video content. Stay tuned for that one for sure.

I’ve been a tea lover for a couple of years now, ever since a friend of mine introduced me to Adagio Teas, but I may have stepped into the realm of a junkie in the past week.

My current brew of choice is Japanese sencha from Teavana. It has the bitter (but not too much) and almost seaweed taste that I’ve come to love in green tea. It smells like leafy, healthy green vegetables in the tin and while it steeps, and its color is perfect! As a matter of fact, I’m currently working on my third cup of the day while writing this! If you’re not into the bitterness aspect, you may want to read about sencha’s health benefits. Of all the teas I keep in my desk at work (rooibos’ are also a favorite), it’s the sencha I keep coming back to. I’d drink more tonight if I didn’t have a bottle of sake waiting at home.

If the rest of 2009 has me as busy as the first month, future posts are endangered here on Scottdot.

Freelancing has officially begun, with three clients currently on board for web design services. It should be lots of fun, but also pretty involved, as the biggest project is a more ambitious website for the Clovis Police Department.

This month I’ve also been doing a lot of miscellaneous work for the Curry County Centennial, making use of a logo I designed in mid-2008. I put together a DVD with many historic photos of Clovis and Curry County, and I’m debating putting a version of this on YouTube. I really think it needs to be seen by more people, but sadly the photos are not my own to do as I please with them. I’ll be posting a better downloadable version of the logo in February.

So what’s on the horizon for the rest of the year? I’ve met a few local people on Twitter who are involved in web design and developement, and I’m thinking about starting a local web group. Another excuse to get coffee and “talk shop!” On that note, I’m also hoping to get the ball rolling on LEMUG soon, and perhaps a Spring launch would be more realistic.

Whether we like it or not, another year has flew past us, leaving us in the dust of all that happened, all we wish that happened, and all that we may have regrets about. I for one don’t regret anything too seriously from 2008, but only hope 2009 is more rewarding.

With that being said, I’m caving and compiling a short list of resolutions:

• Read more
• Keep camera at my side
• Take more photos (see above)
• Accomplish one major home improvement task each month
• Rekindling my love for drawing/sketching
• Make healthier eating decisions
• Strive to control clutter while reducing urges for material possessions

I don’t want to go too overboard, but that seems like a good start! Happy New Year everyone!

Rather than make resolutions for 2009, I decided to take a look back at things I could have done better or more of in 2008. Here’s what I have come up with:

• Keeping my backyard picked up
• Not giving my dogs enough attention (remember this?)
• I started two books (at least) that I did not finish
• Cooking a meal for my family at least once a week
• Spending too much money on Virtual Console and WiiWare games for the Nintendo Wii
• Spending hours watching bad reality shows on VH1 when I could have been more productive
• Not letting my wife pick more movies on Netflix
• I should have blogged a lot more

What do you wish you could have done better or more of in 2008? Let me know in the comments! I’m still debating if I should post a list of New Years resolutions for 2009, but if I were, it would probably look something like Kevin Rose’s list.