Make Your Spreadsheet Into a Custom Feed Reader

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Google | Leave a Comment

Did you know that your Google Docs Spreadsheets can be made into a custom feed reader?

Think about all the things you look at on a daily or less routine basis. Would it be useful to have all that stuff in one place?

Here is a quick run through for how to do it, and believe me it is easier than it looks!

Start a new Google Spreadsheet

Start_a_new_Google_Spreadsheet.png

Go to the Insert / Formula / More Formulas menu

Go_to_the_Insert__Formula__More_Formulas_menu.png

Look down the “Google” choices

Look_down_the_Google_choices.png

You can import from HTML, external data, XML, or a feed

To import a feed, simply use =ImportFeed()

To_import_a_feed__simply_use__ImportFeed__.png

For example, see what people are saying about you in Twitter …

For_example__see_what_people_are_saying_about_you_in_Twitter_....png

You will get all the results as they are created

You_will_get_all_the_results_as_they_are_created.png

See the links pointing to your site

See_the_links_pointing_to_your_site.png
media_1246636542298.png

Add a feed to monitor blog mentions

Add_a_feed_to_monitor_blog_mentions.png

In the first cell put the Google Blog Search URL for your search

Import the Titles from the feed

Import_the_Titles_from_the_feed.png

Import the URLs from the feed

Import_the_URLs_from_the_feed.png

Combine the Titles and URLs for each row to create links

Combine_the_Titles_and_URLs_for_each_row_to_create_links.png

You will get a full listing. Optionally shrink your B and C columns

You_will_get_a_full_listing._Optionally_shrink_your_B_and_C_columns.png

For full details on the functions used about, take a look at the Google help documentation here.

I am sure you folks are much better at this than me, how can you use these feed import features in cool ways? Please share in the comments …

Make Writing Documentation 101% Easier With ScreenSteps

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Productivity, Software Tools | 1 Comment

ScreenstepsIn my consulting work and product creation I have to write a LOT of step by step instructions.

When creating these instructions you basically have two choices:

  1. Use a video screen capture tool to make a walk-through, edit the video down, add voice over, convert to a usable video size and format, upload or send to client.
  2. Create a document using screen grabs, annotate with explanatory text, compile into a PDF, send to client or upload

For the first case I use a Mac application called ScreenFlow, while PC users will likely have heard of Camtasia. These work fine for video, where video is warranted and when you have the time and quiet to do this.

The second though becomes a laborious task. It is necessary to do lots of fiddly little activities, and switch between multiple applications.

That is where ScreenSteps comes in. What it does is enable you to be far more productive with the step by step instruction process, either using the built in tools (all the way from capturing images, adding arrows and annotations, through to exporting as PDF), or by integrating with your favorite applications.

You might think that integrating with your existing tools goes counter to what I just said about it removing task switching, but in fact this app does something very cool and forehead-slappingly obvious that I can not believe I did not already have a utility that does it.

What it does is watches your clipboard and any time you add an image to the clipboard it pastes it into the step by step workflow that you are creating. Once you are done you can stop this “recording” and then go through adding instructions and anything else that needs to be clarified. At the end you can export as Word to finish the document editing part, rather than send directly to a finished PDF.

You can even create your own templates to further automate the process.

There is a free trial, after which you need to buy either

I think it is a bargain considering all the time I will save.

See below for an example that I just exported:

Example

iPhone 3GS First Impressions

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under IT | 8 Comments

iPhone 3gs

A while ago I broke all the geek rules on this blog by declaring Why I am Waiting for iPhone

iPhoneThe iPhone is coming to the UK this weekend and I am shocked myself to tell you this, but I will NOT be in the queue to grab one.

The problem was not that I did not like the phone - I really did, the problem was that there were several features that I really needed.

I have gotten used to retrieving emails at the top of mountains, skype chat on frozen lakes, and remote managing servers from the beach. This gadget has allowed me to blog on planes and on motorways, and catch up with documents in several continent’s Starbucks.

…

Yes, I am an Apple-loving geek, and many of the iPhone features do have me lusting over the device, but after careful research I have found not one but ten deal-breakers:

1. Modem
2. 3G
3. GPS
4. App Support - (Skype, Remote Desktop, VNC)
5. Edit Word or PDF
6. Removable Storage
7. Camera + MMS
8. Downloads
9. Bluetooth
10. Java / Flash

You might be already aware that most of these are now fixed in the iPhone 3GS, so today I queued up with the other geeks early and grabbed my iPhone from the Apple store!

I did not keep my Pocket PC based smartphone for long. In fact for the last few months I have been using a combination of an iPod Touch and an aging Nokia n95 with the 3g connection shared via wifi. This gave me confidence that the platform could do most of what I need to do and my requirements actually changed over time.

Let us have a look at my check list to see how things have changed …

  1. Modem - You can now tether the phone to provide laptop internet data access but expect additional fees unless you jailbreak your phone to unlock it. I am disappointed from an over charging point of view, especially as you are supposed to get unlimited data!
  2. 3G - This was fixed in the previous iteration, but supposedly this version ought to be able to get the full 3G 7.2Mbps HSDPA speeds.
  3. GPS - Not only is there “Assisted GPS” support, but a compass for directional navigation (useful for when you are on foot), and screen rotation within turn by turn directions in apps like Tom Tom.
  4. App Support - (Skype, Remote Desktop, VNC) - Remote desktop support was the first to go, I no longer do any server management - all of that is outsourced and I am happy that way! But you can get VNC clients for iPhone if you need to. There is Skype, kind of. It is not 100% perfect (for example right now it is refusing to import my contacts) but it is there.
  5. Edit Word or PDF - You can not edit as far as I know, but using the Files Lite application I have transferred 200mb of PDF and other office documents for viewing, and you can also open them from email. Since I wrote the previous article, Google Docs has become far more popular for “road warriors” so I expect this to be less of an issue anyway.
  6. Removable Storage - No removable flash memory but I have signed up for the MobileMe “cloud storage” service and expect that will mitigate this problem.
  7. Camera + MMS - Yup :) In fact I am pretty happy with the autofocus 3mp camera, and video results, see below.
  8. Downloads - There are various workarounds, including some that involve jailbreak, but file management is still an issue as Apple seems to want to force us to only use the App store and be limited with what we can download.
  9. Bluetooth - Bluetooth is present but not great, an area for improvement. In fact the staff at the Apple store today said it was the one area where they were disapointed. That said, I am not a big BlueTooth user so can live without it.
  10. Java / Flash - I have come round to the thinking that the lack of Java and Flash is not a big deal, now that the YouTube solution of a custom application has been brought up to spec with the user login now enabled.

So I am super happy :)

Applications I have installed are:

The camera quality is very good compared to previous models. Although the megapixel count is not as high as the n95 at only 3mp, the autofocus does make a big difference to the actual results. See below.

Mon-keh

Video is not only good quality, but you can even edit right in the phone!

(I forgot to rotate the phone, but it does do landscape)

So, over all happy.

Let me know what you think in the comments …

Excel Productivity Video

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Yoav Ezer 
Filed Under Excel, Productivity, Video Tutorials | Leave a Comment

This is the first video from Cogniview’s Excel productivity training.

In my opinion, the approach outlined in this video is the cornerstone of productivity (Whether you are an Excel user or not). I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Part I

Part II

How Do You Create a Powerful StumbleUpon Profile?

Posted on June 12, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Software Tools, Web 2.0 | 4 Comments

Top Stumblers

It is clear from website traffic reports that not all stumbles are created equal.

Traditionally the rule has been to get as many votes as possible. Quantity is of course an important factor, it is a lot like a popularity contest in this regard. Using the share features, the web based toolbar, and Twitter to garner more votes has become commonplace.

Variety is also important, you do not want the same faces voting on the same domains, otherwise it looks suspect and the system shuts those votes down or discounts them.

There is more to it though. As well as quantity of votes, there seems to be a quality score going on as well.

  1. Weak versus powerful accounts send fewer initial visitors
  2. Votes after discovery amplify the original strong or weak vote, almost like a multiplier of an initial score
  3. More subsequent votes amplify the original review more or less strongly

Getting votes from strong accounts is essential if you are going to reap the full benefits of StumbleUpon.

So how do you create a good StumbleUpon profile?

Here is the official stumbleupon definition:

Top Stumblers are our most active and helpful community members. These members frequently suggest new sites to be included in our database, and frequently rate new sites they stumble upon.

When you submit a site, it is shown to other stumblers (for evaluation). If those people like your suggestion (by rating it I-like-it! often) your community ‘Karma’ will increase.

Your Top Stumbler rank will also increase by frequent rating. You do not need to rate every site you see, but if it stands out as particularly excellent (a website you really like) or bad (you don’t like it, or it is spam), make sure you rate it. This regular participation will increase your Top Stumbler rank.

That is useful to know for growing your own power account. Essentially, participate. A lot.

As well as having our own good accounts, we also need to make friends with other stumblers. How do you recognize someone who has a good account?

These are the very top StumbleUpon users. Notice anything about them?

Essentially a strong account will show a level of activity over the norm, a high number of “favorites”, and a high number of “subscribers”. Plus you can tell if they are a quality user, see how many testimonials they have and the kind of bookmarks they favorite.

Also look to see your compatibility rating to see if they like the same stuff as you do.

If you take a look at my StumbleUpon profile, I have a fairly good account even though I spend less than 30 mins a week on it. It is not up there with the best, but pretty decent.

There are a good number of positive reviews of my stumbling, and I actually participate in the service rather than pimping my own stuff :)

That is the key to most social networking, it is about participating and adding to the community rather than just taking from it.

With StumbleUpon what you put in you get back out. Your participation is rewarded.

As I say above, you do not want to be stumbling the same domains over and over, and that includes your own.

The main benefit of having a powerful account is to help other people. By doing this favor you will get noticed - people look at their web stats and see traffic coming from StumbleUpon, then look to see who submitted and reviewed.

Consider it another valuable “pay forward” tool in your social networking portfolio!

Get More Organized with Evernote

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Productivity, Software Tools | 6 Comments

How do you organize the tons of content that you are hit with each day? What do you do with the ideas, notes and to-do items that spring to mind throughout your work?

As a social media fan I have been getting a lot of use out of social bookmarking tools such as Delicious and even StumbleUpon. This has helped me store away web links, and organize them by tagging, but not the actual content.

For storing actual content that I find I have been using an excellent tool from Iterasi which allows you to “notarize” pages and save them online in folders and tagged for later access as if frozen in carbonite.

Evernote is a tool that aims to do both tasks, but in addition does a whole lot more, including text recognition in images - even hand written notes!

So you can record

I only heard about Evernote today from @masontech from DidIGetThingsDone, and I am glad I did.

The very best part, and the item that was most compelling to myself, was the fact that it syncs online, desktop and your iPhone. This means you have access to this content archive and all your notes wherever you are, even from your pocket.

So you can grab a piece of content from an ecommerce store or online review using your browser bookmarklet or plugin, and store it on the Evernote website. Later you can pick that note up while shopping on your iPhone. When you get home you can log into your desktop application and organize everything.

Very cool.

It does not end there. You Get Things Done fans can use Evernote to help you with your GTD productivity processes, as shown in this article. Very cool.

For now I am using a free account but will be upgrading to the premium account as it is only $5 a month which upgrades your capacity, speeds up image processing and removes the advertising.

Do you use Evernote or anything like it? Please let me know in the comments …

3 Seldom Used Ways to Get Quality Links to Your Blog

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Content Licensing, Copywriting, Creative Commons, Google | 2 Comments

Every site owner is looking for more links. Links boost search engine rankings, while sending direct, quality traffic.

When discussing link building you normally see only two tactics really discussed; linkbait and pitching/link-begging. There are other, potentially more effective ways though that bloggers seldom use.

Creative Commons

The first example of using fresh and free content to get links is through Creative Commons licensing. By setting a CC license on your content you can tell other people that your content is available to use under certain circumstances and with certain restrictions. So one example might be that you can use my content for free provided you do not change it and that you link back to where you got it from.

As the unethical people will copy your content any way, and Google is getting much better at recognizing the originator of a piece of content, the risks are low, and you do in fact get a steady trickle of links from this.

By using the CC WordPress plugin you can essentially make your CC license “official” and it can also appear in CC content searches.

Read more about Creative Commons for Bloggers here on this very blog.

Article Marketing

Article, or Ezine marketing is an older form of link building where you write articles and then submit them to special sites called Ezine Directories. The most famous is EzineArticles.com

People who need a steady stream of new content for their own newsletters, blogs or web sites then come along and are allowed to copy these articles providing they keep in place your author “resource box”.

This can provide both direct traffic and generate links for you. The direct traffic comes mainly from people finding your content on the directory site through less competitive search phrases due to these directories growing a good amount of search engine visibility. When web masters utilize your content on their sites, or their email newsletters appear in a web archive, that shows up as a fresh link to your site.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is a type of article marketing where you write for free for someone else in return for a link back to your own site. These are more personally negotiated, and take a bit more effort, but have the benefit of you being able to target which blogs you want to write for to get the best results, and can often have a link both from your author attribution and, if on topic and not forced, within the content.

You need to start the relationship first with the blog owner. Comment with intelligent responses, and befriend the blog owner in social media, that way you will be familiar and they will have an idea of the kind of ideas you are capable of. Then get in touch with some potential headline ideas for discussion. Do not send a fully written piece until you have at least briefly discussed what the blog needs and audience.

Summary

Getting links for your blog is not just about emailing site owners with pitches or link bait, so think creatively how you can get more links while helping other people share your content.

How to Use Google Analytics to Get a Better Picture of Your Twitter Traffic

Posted on May 22, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Google, Software Tools | 13 Comments

How do you know if your Twitter activity is paying off?

An obvious return on investment is more people reading your tweets and as a consequence checking out your website. This certainly does work, but apart from a gut feel that you are gaining visibility, how do you know exactly what you are doing is working, and in particular, the specific attempts that worked and those that fell flat?

Luckily the free and fabulous Google Analytics can help you out …

Track URLs With Campaigns

The problem is Twitter users rarely use the Twitter.com website to read and tweet. This means there are many many desktop and mobile applications, and these applications do not send referrer information to Google Analytics.

Google has a special URL builder designed to help you construct campaign URLs for advertising tracking, but we can use them for our Twitter linkage just the same.

The neat thing about hooking everything up in analytics is that you can track these visits all the way through to conversion, either as a subscriber or to see if the Twitter visitor buys from you.

Tool: URL Builder - Analytics Help

Of course this tool produces huge URLs, so your next job is to shorten down to preserve more of those precious 140 characters that we are allowed for each tweet.

I use a service called Cli.gs - interestingly Cli.gs also tracks clicks, or I should say attempted clicks as the number who reach the destination never matches what the service claims to have sent …

My Cligs

Now this is not an entirely clear picture because it only tracks clicks on the URLs that you have created. How can we track our total Twitter traffic?

Advanced - Google Analytics Profile and Filter

What about the traffic that we did not initiate, but came from Twitter and other microblog services?

To get around this we need to detect them and aggregate using Analytics Profiles and Filters.

First you need to add a new profile …

Analytics Settings - Google Analytics

… making it for an existing rather than new domain …

Create New Website Profile - Google Analytics

Once created you need to hit Edit

Analytics Settings - Google Analytics

Scroll down and add a new filter

Profile Settings - Google Analytics

Create New Filter - Google Analytics

Add the settings exactly as you see here.

Productivity in 140 Characters

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Productivity | 1 Comment

Since the beginning of this year I have had a growing desire to make it my mission to be truly productive.

That sentence in itself is a lesson in productivity. Note I did not say I had made it my mission, or actually made progress. I said “growing desire”. This means it is still largely a dream rather than something I have actually achieved :)

The truth is I have made some progress, along with my friend Cindy King who has been helping to keep me on track.

My productivity systems are coming together gradually.

Where I made a break through though was to focus on providing “value”, not “work”. Focusing on effort or work got me into trouble where I nearly burned out (more than once). By making sure I put value first, with reward later, I have been much happier and actually created better results for people.

A subtle difference, and maybe being pedantic, but makes a profound difference to the way I approach things :)

I’ve also discovered it helps to go with what comes natural to you rather than what other folks think you “should” be doing.

Due to some forced offline bouts, speaking engagements and recent trips, I have had a massive email productivity panic and this forced me to sort out my inbox for once and for all. First had to go all the non-essential email lists, either unsubscribed or filtered into folders.

In addition to “nuking the noise” I created two folders called “_action” and “_read” (the underscore puts those at the top of the folder list in my email client).

So now when I check my email I either

  1. Delete
  2. Mark as spam
  3. Move to read - once read they are either deleted or archived in particular folders
  4. Move to action - stuff that needs me to do more than read

Those actions are then part of my to-do list for the day, even if the action is that I need to acknowledge receipt.

I am still working on adding rules, for example I have a folder for lists that is for emails from list that are not noisy but still don’t require me to read as they come in.

Of course I have also bought the famous “GTD” book that everyone bangs on about, but I have yet to read it (too disorganized to find time to read the ultimate organization book!).

So now I am ready to learn from you guys, and here we get to the point of the subject line :) I asked on twitter if you have productivity tips, and I would like to open it up to you too if you have anything to add. Here are the responses so far:

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Twitter / @chrisgarrett

Get Free Content for Your Blog

Posted on May 11, 2009 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Blogging | 3 Comments

Yes we are opening  up this offer again, so if you would like some free content, check this out now!

My colleagues and I want to write free articles for your website or blog.

All we ask is that we can link back to our site(s) in the “about the author” attribution box. Seem like a good deal?

If so, simply fill out this short form and we will be in touch via email if we have something for you. (If you have multiple sites, please fill out the form for each one).

Click here to add your details and be on your way to getting some free, expert content for your site!

We have already written guest posts for several happy bloggers. Obviously there are only so many topics that we can write about that will be relevant to the work Cogniview does, but we have so far written about software tools, PDFs and ebooks, business and productivity. So while we can’t guarantee that we will write something for everyone, we will think very hard to see if we can come up with something brilliant for you, so don’t delay, fill the form out now :)

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