Anyone who knows me knows I really stress being able to play a computer like an instrument (and if you think you can, then prove it). Us geeky types are in front of our computers for 12+ (often 16+) hours per day, so every loss of efficiency translates into a huge cost in time -- and time is the most precious asset of any hardcore entrepreneur.
One thing I've done is to really customize my Google Apps email pane, with functionality from Rapportive (THANK YOU for the Highrise raplet, guys!), Boomerang, TwitterGadget, Gmail Auto BCC, Labs custom keyboard shortcuts, Send & Archive, etc. I've also found some great Chrome extensions, including 1Password, Bit.ly, Awesome Screenshot, and by far my favorite -- a Basecamp text auto save extension that saves what I've written in Basecamp when the page is closed.
You might also like my blogs on playing a computer like an instrument, cloud app + vanity URL, and switching to Gmail from Mail.app.
Here's what my email pane looks like, with a detailed video below that walking you through how I use everything.
My favorite feature? The awesome picture of my wife, of course! If I'm going to be looking at email for hours each day, I might as well make it enjoyable! I just replaced the standard Gmail logo with a custom image.
Anyone who knows me knows I really stress being able to play a computer like an instrument (and if you think you can, then prove it). Us geeky types are in front of our computers for 12+ (often 16+) hours per day, so every loss of efficiency translates into a huge cost in time -- and time is the most precious asset of any hardcore entrepreneur.
One thing I've done is to really customize my Google Apps email pane, with functionality from Rapportive (THANK YOU for the Highrise raplet, guys!), Boomerang, TwitterGadget, Gmail Auto BCC, Labs custom keyboard shortcuts, Send & Archive, etc. I've also found some great Chrome extensions, including 1Password, Bit.ly, Awesome Screenshot, and by far my favorite -- a Basecamp text auto save extension that saves what I've written in Basecamp when the page is closed.
You might also like my blogs on playing a computer like an instrument, cloud app + vanity URL, and switching to Gmail from Mail.app.
Here's what my email pane looks like, with a detailed video below that walking you through how I use everything.
My favorite feature? The awesome picture of my wife, of course! If I'm going to be looking at email for hours each day, I might as well make it enjoyable! I just replaced the standard Gmail logo with a custom image.
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CloudApp is the single most important productivity and efficiency tool I use each day. And if you've read my blogs, you know I use a lot of tools to make my time act as a force multiplier. But CloudApp is the most indespensible -- I literally use it 20 to 50 times each day (Rapportive is a close second).
Until you use CloudApp to experience its magic, though, it can be a bit hard to understand what makes it so amazing. So here's an easy, clear example of one of our employees, Nate, using CloudApp, so you can really get how it works.
We have a designer that works remotely. Nate wanted to ask the designer to do some work on an iPhone screen he was developing. Below is a screenshot of the conversation they had. (On a tangent -- we use GitHub, Basecamp & Pivotal Tracker in specific ways to manage projects via a Scrum methodology. Let me know in the comments section if you'd like me to write a post with an in-depth look at how we use these tools).
Here's the link Nate put into the thread, so you can see the same screenshot the designer saw: http://cl.ly/1H401K373S2d3Q0s1e1i
As I describe in this separate post on how to set CloudApp up on your computer, all Nate had to do to make that URL was take a screen shot of his computer (or phone). That's it. CloudApp takes care of the rest -- it listens on your computer for any screenshots you take, uploads them to the cloud, and turns them into a publicly accessible URL that Nate can then share.
Aah, such a small thing, yet so satisfying: