Category Archives: working

How to get work done: tips from home renovation expert… Spoke with my sister last weekend about good ways to go about getting a couple of home renovations done on schedule, without unexpected costs. (She’s a pro in the business). Order … Continue reading →

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Posted on June 5, 2011 by Amelia

The quicksand of email… personal, professional, newsletters, etc. Discovered a mega list of links to tips on how to be organized on The 99 percent recently. One of the links tells you how to empty your email inbox in 30 … Continue reading →

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Posted on July 18, 2010 by Amelia

Bikes, bridges and boats

Posted on April 3, 2010 by Amelia| Leave a comment
Bikes boats and bridges

Amsterdam view... Bikes boats and bridges

Wonderful trip to Amsterdam. Most photogenic moments, all captured on the iPhone: astonishing number of bicycles, the canals, bridges, and Dutch delicacies. Thanks to colleagues at our Cisco offices in Amsterdam as well as the folks at Blast Radius for being such wonderful hosts.

Here’s my Flickr set of photos.

PS about these photos and filters on the iPhone: I’ve tried out a number of the camera applications, and sometimes get carried away with the filters a bit. By default I usually use Best Camera now. It has enough built in filters that can be experimented with quickly to get a quick result that adds a little extra punch or flavor. I’ve also tried more bizarre things using JotNot, but it’s much more work with less predictable results. However, JotNot is awesome for capturing receipts and printed materials, like all your travel receipts and sending them to Evernote… so you can submit receipts easily on return home, or file them easy access before next April 15.

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Posted in inspiration, working

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My inbox thanks 37 Signals

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Amelia| Leave a comment

Fabulous! 37 Signals updated the design of emails that Basecamp generates to notify project members of messages, files, to-dos, etc. This might not sound like a big deal, but if you are using Basecamp as a tool across multiple projects and groups, the barrage of emails can become overwhelming. Since they were text-only, the messages were undifferentiated and required reading rather than scanning, even to get a sense of whether action was required. Sometimes it was easier just to delete them all and use project dashboards. The new design looks like a major improvement to me.

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Posted in ux, working

Trying out typekit

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Amelia| Leave a comment

I signed up for a free account on typekit. It looks like a really promising way to substantially improve typography and design online, without resorting to image-based text, sFIR or Flash, etc. I tested the free functionality on a single page. Unfortunately the free account only allows you to change two style identifiers, so depending on how your css is structured (my first test was with a site set up using a WordPress blog and theme), it’s pretty limited. I’ll probably bite the bullet and sign up for the first paid level to see what can be done. It’s less than $30 per year so not so painful. Need to ask the css experts I know how practical this would be for any large site.

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Posted in goodies, ux, working

Speak easier

Posted on October 31, 2009 by Amelia| Leave a comment

Wow, three days of training at Speakeasy in San Francisco. The trainers and format were wonderful. It was painful though: Three days of watching yourself speaking to others on video. Definitely scheduled a haircut and a wardrobe buff up. But at the end of the three days, working with a small group of other “students” from a variety of companies, I felt more prepared and more self-assured in talking with people in general, even one-on-one, as well as in larger group settings. The recordings showed the difference too. I received coaching on how to connect with the audience, whether one person or many, and how to speak with authority and authenticity. Top takeaways sound simple, but have big impact: breathe, speak in sentences, stay centered and connected. A great start at communicating more effectively with confidence.

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Posted in goodies, working

Memorable presenting

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Amelia| Leave a comment

Tips on how people “get” your points in visuals that accompany your talk or presentation best:

Harvard cognitive scientist Stephen M. Kosslyn, who studies how brains process images, wants to improve the world with his cutting-edge research. And he’s starting with four ways to make your PowerPoint presentations more human brain-compliant.

4 rules to remember:

  1. The Goldilocks Rule refers to presenting the “just right” amount of data.
  2. The Rudolph Rule refers to simple ways you can make information stand out.
  3. The Rule of Four is a simple but powerful tool that grows out of the fact that the brain can generally hold only four pieces of visual information simultaneously.
  4. The Birds of a Feather Rule: “We think of things in groups when they look similar or in proximity to each other.”

And on a very basic level, as with these four points, it’s easier to remember things named after something familiar, and even better if they’re connected with a story line. I heard a study recently where children were tested on how well they remembered sets of unrelated words… memory improved dramatically when the children had created a sentence using the two words.
READ IT HERE

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Posted in working