WYTI Links: 11.02.2007 -- Productivity Edition

Being a responsible steward of God's blessings goes much deeper than just how we handle and view money. We must be responsible for all of the blessings He sends our way.

When we stand on judgment, we will be held accountable for how we used the time we were given. There is only so much of it to go around. No one has any more or any less than anyone else. Therefore, how we use our time goes a long way determining our success in all areas of life.

Here are some "productivity" links for this week. Remember, I'm not necessarily the most productive guy out there, but I did read about it on the internet/play one on TV/stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night...

• David Seah. The subtitle for his blog is, "Better Living Through New Media." He has created many helpful applications for helping get things done more effectively and efficiently. Personally, I use the Compact Calendar for planning (right now, my 2008 version is covered in black, blue, and red ink) and the Desktop Flash version of the Emergent Task Timer (part of the Printable CEO Series).

• Skrbl. I haven't really used this site, but it looks like fun and sounds interesting if you work in a team setting. It's an internet-based whiteboard. All you do is share the URL to your specific board, and others can log in and edit the notes and information written there.

• Mozilla Firefox Cheat Sheet. If you're not using Mozilla's Firefox as your primary internet browser, you're missing out. Most importantly, it's more secure than IE. Additionally, it's far more customizable and efficient. Here's a comprehensive list of shortcuts and cheats for the browser.

• Classic Tie Knots (via Brooks Brothers). Here's a "how-to" guide for several different tie knots. Since many of us wear ties on a regular basis, this might be helpful.

• Building Strong and Memorable Passwords (via Corvus Consulting). You can't be too safe on the internet today. This is a helpful suggestion to creating unique--but memorable--passwords for each site you need login information. I've started using this technique for the various sites to which I login.

• How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off (via Steve Pavlina). Helpful tip here. Boy do I need to implement it into my routine.

• Make a 12 Sided Calendar (via Lifehacker). This is a fun little project. Definitely needs to be printed on cardstock.
  

Time is MoneyGoogle's Internet Accelerator

When we find a way to save time, we are in essence being more frugal. I want to share just one quick way to help save time.

I spend more time on the internet than most people, I'd say, and really most days probably more than I should! However, if I'm going to be looking at things on the internet, at least I can do some things to save time while on the internet. One of these time savers is of course to get high-speed internet. I cannot fathom going back to dial-up. In dial-up days I would usually do something else while I looked at things on the internet. For example, I'd read, and every time I finished a paragraph check to see if the page had loaded yet. With DSL, I basically just surf. In addition to high-speed internet though, I recommend an internet accelerator. Google's Web Accelerator is free to download and use, and helps to speed up page load times. One method of doing so is through 'pre-fetching.' When you go to a page, the accelerator begins downloading the links from that page into a temporary storage folder, in case you want to view them. This is a benefit, because over time it shortens the time you have to spend waiting on the pages to load. Since I purchased my new laptop in December, I have looked at 38,021 web pages. To view all of this information would have taken 3 solid days of browsing with my DSL connection. With Google Web Accelerator, I've spent just less than 2.5 days - I've saved 13 hours of browsing time in 6 months (click here to see Google Web Accelerator's report of my usage). That's a considerable amount of time saved, and time is money!