Of Relevance

The more time I spend playing online, the more innovations just blow me away. But this one takes the cake.

It’s called “telepresence”, and in this video it was used to create a 3D virtual, live, image of a presenter, who could not physically attend a conference, but presented anyway. His image was projected onto the stage, and since it was happening in real time (think teleconferencing, but on steroids) the “virtual” presenter (who was actually in India at the time) was able to speak and interact with a colleague (his boss) who was “really” on the stage.

The virtual image is not projected onto the screen, but onto the stage. You really do think you are looking at a live person. (Well, you are looking at a live person, but he happens to be thousands of miles away).

There are many possible applications to this. The video mentions doctors “visiting” remote patients. But I immediately had another idea: If my deceased father was able to make a virtual “video” of himself (prior to his death, of course!) then I could listen to a message from him after his death, and see it coming “directly from him”. My daughter could “see” her grandfather, whom she now does not remember. The potential is tremendous.

In fact, this is so awesome that I was waiting for a “April Fool’s” kind of spoiler at the end. But no, it seems the Cisco people are really pulling this off. Watch it, it really is amazing.

If you use Twitter, and you are a South African, please add your name to this wiki.

It will give everybody an idea of how big the twitter community is in the country, and will also hopefully allow us to hook up with some twitterers that are slipping through the cracks :-)

Also, once you add your name, please tweet the link to all your followers, so we can cover as much ground as possible.

I did a very informal poll of those who follow me on Twitter (@EveD, btw) and the consensus seems to be that there are less than a thousand South Africans using the service.

But who knows?

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

I was directed to a Nerve.com site showing the 50 most popular advert parodies of all time. I love stuff like this, so was eager to see what made number 1. Well, I don’t know.

For some reason, NBC.com has decided that because of my geographical location, I am not entitled to watch the video. Which would be free to watch if I lived in the US.

This makes no sense, and has thoroughly pissed me off. You cannot play in the social media playground, if you are going to be a bully. We’ll kick you out.

As I have mentioned before, Gino and I are working on a book for a UK publisher, on the topic of Social Media. Actually, that should now be phrased in the past tense.

I had a careful look at the contract, and was horrified to consider the implications of some of the terms:

• We would be lucky to see any money before December NEXT year

• We were obligated to provide the publisher with updated versions for future editions at her request (and we know how often social media topics need updates!)

• Should either one of us die, the estate would not receive royalties for future editions

• Should the publisher successfully sue a copyright infringement case, she would keep all of the proceeds.

Quite a cheek, if you ask me. I kick myself for not reading the contract much more carefully before, but at least now I have a semi ready manuscript to take to market. Since neither Gino nor I expected to make big (or any) bucks out of this, we have decided to do the next best thing: issue the book online!
The original book would be about 60 000 words, which is a bit hefty for an e-book (I think), so we are probably going to split it up into the respective chapters that each of us wrote, and publish two separate books, under our individual names.

We hope to release the books concurrently, and although each of us is now responsible for their own book, we are assisting each other with the editing, the flow and the general tone. May I say that we have drunk far too many coffees during the process!

I am very happy that due to the nature of the book, the online medium seems the ideal space in which to distribute it. But I cannot help but wonder how many authors, who have penned their great masterpieces, have been conned or pushed into a tight corner by one sided contracts. It is my understanding that the book industry is a tough one, and maybe this is a clue as to why.

By the way, none of this has any huge impact on the Social-media-for-South-Africans book that I announced earlier. The format might change slightly, but the book will definitely appear soon on a shelf where all good books are sold ☺

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I have always wanted to work a four day week, and although sometimes I manage to accomplish this, overall what usually happens is quite the opposite and I end up working the weekend too.

But I came across this post from the very, very clever people at Signal37 where they explain quite clearly why working a 4 day week actually works out better for all concerned.

So, from today, on Fridays I don’t work. To clarify, that does not mean that I will not be online. I will probably even check my email. But I will not reply, unless I deem that the world would collapse if I ignored a crisis. And I will probably do a lot of writing, but only if I feel like it. But overall, Friday will be MY day, and to share it with me you have to be invited :-)

It will be an interesting experiment, but a worthwhile one I think. In order for it to be a success, I need to make up the 8 hours in the remaining 32, which translates into making each working hour more productive by working harder and smarter.

Some ways to do that:

• If I don’t keep a schedule, it is possible that I could double my productivity. This is taken from Marc Andreesen’s suggestion to simply not schedule any meetings. At first it sounds insane, but when I think how often I have had to break my work flow to reluctantly go to a meeting, it starts to make sense. Marc’s explains it like this”

When someone emails or calls to say, “Let’s meet on Tuesday at 3″, the appropriate response is: “I’m not keeping a schedule for 2007, so I can’t commit to that, but give me a call on Tuesday at 2:45 and if I’m available, I’ll meet with you.”

• Switch off email during the bulk of the day, so I can focus on task at hand fully. I cannot follow the 4 hour work weeksuggestion of only checking email once a week or so, but I can definitely live with only checking my email at the beginning and end of the day. I’ve heard it is also a good idea to “only touch an email once” ie deal with it immediately. All this will surely help me focus and save me time.

• Ignore the twitter stream I don’t think I am strong enough for this one!

• Stop chit chatting and taking unnecessary 15 minute coffee breaks. I do these to relax, but the whole point now is that I should stay focussed so I can relax properly on Fridays. Of course, I will still coffee, but not while taking a break. Simply sip it while I type.

• Log all time spent on each task for a week, and identify inefficiencies. This will probably be an eye opener.

• Outsource more. This is a big one. I already outsource some of my more mundane tasks to India or somewhere, and this has had a huge boost on time saved. In fact, I think I should write a separate blog post on this, because proper outsourcing can really change your work style, your productivity and – most importantly – your bottom line. However, I want to focus more attention to outsourcing work to companies “down the street”. This way, I can delegate work that I still need to keep a good eye on, without having to hire more staff.

• Make better use of productivity tools and principles, like Remember the Milk, Highrise, Get it Done etc. The learning curve on these is high, I think, but they work for so many people that I should start taking the plunge and making a more formal commitment. On the same note, I need to save time “for the future” by taking time to organize my work space, my filing system (especially delicious bookmarks) and improve my document naming habits.

I have a feeling that once I apply a more disciplined attitude to work, I will realize that not only can I take Friday off, but I can do more in the four day week than I did in the five day one.