See here for how I use Spinvox to keep on top of commitments on the run  You might also find my notes on using Outlook Rules to control the email deluge helpful in this regard.

Well, after a lot of bad financial press, Spinvox has been purchased by Nuance - famous for among other things, the speech recognition programme ’Dragon Naturally Speaking’. This should bring some welcome stability to a great service. I am still using and advocate it.

You can still download the free SpinVox MEMO service here: http://www.spinvox.com/memo.html

Remember to get in touch and ask how we can help.

I have just checked out the Google Wave site at  http://wave.google.com/  Google Wave looks just awesome. It appears to answer the question ‘What would email look like if it were invented today?’  The answer is …… well, its like email/IM/wikis/sharepoint/social sites/web2 and everything else all in one package only better!

Set aside a little time to watch the demo video on the Google site. The first 18 minutes will give you a good idea of the future of communication and collaboration as Google sees it.

At first I thought I should only suggest you check out the first 18 minutes because that’s where so many Wows occur. But then at around minute 35 you see a bunch of people edit one wave report from different browsers in real time with no lag…. awesome. The creative and engineering team is the same one that bought us Google Maps.

Do check it out, at least the first 18 minutes. Catch the wave, I for one can’t wait to get wet!

It is called RescueTime and is a free browser based time management monitor which allows productivity geeks to understand exactly how they spend their computer time. They are currently in open beta phase and I have been using it for a while now and can confidently suggest you look at it.

Personal productivity is impacted by interference, much of which is internally generated, see Performance = Potential minus Interference (P=P-I)  One of the founders of Rescue Time, Tony Wright, says that the core mission of Rescue Time is to allow information workers to understand how they spend their time in an easy way. “We feel that the knowledge of how you spend your time will make you more productive and will nudge you in the direction of spending your time more deliberately and thoughtfully”.

I say it’s great because:

1. You don’t have to manually enter logs of how you spend your time, it does it for you automatically.
2. You can create categories within it to support your productivity goal setting
3. It is another Web 2.0 tool that I think has a good future, especially as the team is obviously working on its development.

Please note though that there are some issues with running RescueTime on Firefox 3.  Also I have not trailed the Teamworking option yet so can’t confidently comment on that although it looks good for the future!

Let me know what you think. contact us .

Spinvox is a cool, clean, currently free and priceless web based utility

… for turning voice messages you leave yourself on your mobile into email messages delivered right to your inbox. You have enough capacity to leave yourself bullet action points from a meeting. Your action points will be in an email waiting for you next time you open Outlook for you to run your process on them and other new emails in your inbox. I have been using it since September last year and think it is great!

You can download the free SpinVox MEMO service here: http://www.spinvox.com/memo.html

How I use Spinvox to stay on top of commitments on the run

I have spinvox on autodial on my mobile and simply call the service who then translate my voicemail into an email for me. If I have a number of action points I simply break them down into short, grouped memo messages.

Now the cool part. In my Outlook inbox I have created a rule to send all my Spinvox emails into an Inbox subfolder called ‘05 Pending’ subfolder. (Tools> Rules and alerts> new rule>any email from spin-my-memo, send to 05 Pending subfolder). Because the emails in this subfolder are invariably commitments from meetings and discussions on the day, it one of the first subfolders I interrogate when I get back to my laptop. If I decide not to action that email on the day I will simply date it by moving the mail into a dated Outlook task. And the best thing for me is that……..

Spinvox is quicker than bashing Blackberry keys to create Tasks

Try it for yourself, you have nothing to loose. By the way I understand that Jott.com still has plans to provide their similar service outside North America but no dates yet!

Of course, you can always contact us directly to tailor a support programme to your needs.

Searching for emails is a real productivity drain, even in the most regimented of outlook folder systems. If you want really good Outlook search, with additional - very useful - functionality you have got to look at xobni.com , that’s ‘Inbox’ backwards!

I was introduced to it recently and I think it is great! So much so that I have disabled my current favourite search programme Copernic, which itself is so much better than any other option out there. There are many very good reasons for this strong suggestion….

I don’t know about you but I have always despised the horrendous hour glass in Outlook’s built in search and have been a big fan of indexed desktop search since the early days of Lookoutsoft.com (subsequently bought by Microsoft and incorporated into their main search offerings now), so I have some experience here.

Reasons why Xobni Outlook Search currently gets my vote

The main reason I like this programme is because it instantly identifies all emails in connection with a particular search word and displays dated thread summaries, with folder location, which you can then either read in Xobni panel or open fully in Outlook.

Other plus points are:

Outlook search only – so it is light!
Lightening fast
Suggests senders networks based upon content and allows you to navigate the inbox by people. Note, it does this from the ‘To’ ‘CC’ and ‘BCC’ addressees in your mails not from other snooping technologies.
Provides useful analytics
Contact data is extracted from emails
Links to Linkedin
Does not cost a penny!

Do yourself a favour and download it and let me know what you think of it.