[Tech] my life hacks

I am not a programmer, those geek hacks are just meant to show my strategies to work more efficiently:- I put everything in text files, with this format: topicDATE.txt (example: for a meeting with pierre on june, 4th 2004 it is pierre06042004.txt) - easy to search (metadata are in the title) - easy to reuse the content (cut and paste) - email is textfile - contact list and todo list in texfie (more safe) - information retrieval is THE issue - I use SubEthaEdit (or xemacs if I use a PC) - I do blog: research journal + funky stuff: for me first as well for others as far as it is human readable. I put there all my ideas, publications, notes so that other people that might be interested could use this stuff. - I use XML standards RSS, FOAF for describing content. - I do backup on a regular basis (applescript that put the files on a ftp server) - I write out my goals (in order to compare several months after what I did to what I wanted to do) - my web aggregator is THE INTERFACE to knowledge (through RSS feeds) + to my timetable - I use lots of simple tools: - google - technorati (who linked me) - wikipedia - dmoz.org - wordnet: http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/ - ... - secret software: - I use synchronization scripts for updating my timetable (with phpcalendar) or for backuping (upload applescript) - I log my AIM/MSN/MOO conversation

I googled you !

Fab send me this interesting news about google. It is clear now google is a social tool used for dating, selection candidates for a position, check my importance (vanity google).... I like those quotes :

"For Jeanne Hornung, Google has changed the rules of dating. The San Francisco PR woman wouldn't dream of going out with someone until she checked his name on Google."

`Google is a proxy for the World Wide Web itself,'' said Jon Greer of Emeryville.

High-tech guru Stewart Alsop recently confessed in Fortune magazine: ``I didn't used to need to do this, but now I can't work effectively without being able to `Google' someone.''

Stanford University Professor Vijay Pande did a Google search on candidates applying for a high-level information technology job. ``It's part of the hiring process,'' said Pande. For that position, ``a person's Web presence is important.''

Why using a blog ?

After an interesting discussion with fabien and dks about weblogs, I've read an article concering this trend. Weblogs serve several functions : - selection of material: by reading some specialist's posts you can select relevant information. - personal knowledge management : the blog is an "outboard brain" according to Cory Doctorrow, this stance is consistant with the distributed cognition framework : the tool (e.g. the weblog) should be considered as a part of a cognitive system. - an opportunity for social networking (between editors and readers, and readers could also be editors of their own blog).

I should read more about content syndication and social networking tools :)

Anyway, the observation of particular clique (i.e. a kind of bloggers' mob) is incredibly instructive in the sense that it's today's form of on-line communities, fifteen years after the BBS or minitel stuff. Of course bingirl's blog is an interesting starting point for french readers...