Productive U Podcast » Lotus Notes

Be aware. Be very, very electronically aware. (VOL052)

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:24:22 +0000

Whether you look to Miss Manners, the Cybercouth Tiger, Mother, or some other manners maven, they will all say that being polite will make people more receptive to your message. So, how can we hone our electronic communication skills to this degree? Let’s take a look at a few of the most egregious e-mail etiquette errors and discuss how certain situations should be handled.

The first item on our list is the angry e-mail. E-mail provides a crucial benefit over face-to-face communication: you have a chance to carefully choose your words and compose an eloquent message. But e-mail can also inspire a confidence that may be lacking in live communication.

This can lead to the angry e-mail, and sometimes it’s all too easy to write things you would never say. There’s probably a reason you would never say those things, so it’s important to keep that in mind before pushing that Send button. Once you do, there’s no way to get that message back.

So if you’re angry, upset, or irritated in any way, it may be best to step away from the computer for a break. That way, you will likely cool off or relax and have a better frame of mind; after all, you probably don’t want to burn any important bridges.

Next, let’s talk about the plague of electronic communication: the forwarded chain letter. We’ve all gotten these and may have even been tempted to pass them on at some point. I mean, let’s face it: if we pass that message on to at least ten friends, we could suddenly inherit millions of dollars. And if we don’t, it could mean bad luck for the next seven years. But that is more than likely not going to be the case.

Chain letters were annoying enough when they arrived as paper mail, but in that form they cost money to send. With electronic mail, which is mostly free, chain letter forwards are even more prevalent, and just as bothersome.

Some of these messages make you feel guilty if you ignore them, or even threaten karmic disasters if you fail to pass them on to a specified amount of recipients. And then there those that imply technical catastrophes if you don’t click on something or delete a certain file. Please, friends: don’t fall for those.

So, you might ask: what is the best way to handle these unwanted messages? First of all, delete the message, especially if it is the kind that threatens technical disaster or asks you to click on a link. Second: if they are coming from a relative or close friend, ask them gently to not include you on the list for those e-mails unless they directly know the source. Remember, this may be the only entertainment dear Aunt Sally has.

Our dear friend, the Cybercouth Tiger, sent a note about a few other aspects of e-mail etiquette that he wanted to share with us. Here is what he had to say:

One of my avocations is playing stand-up bass in an amateur jazz ensemble. We have six musicians in the band, but using electronic calendaring is impractical for us. As a result, our rehearsals and gigs are scheduled via e-mail messages. This would be quite acceptable but for a few irritating habits of the members in the percussion section. They don’t seem to grasp the concept that only the band member serving as our organizer needs to know if they can or cannot attend a particular date. Being drummers (and in bands, it is always the drummers), they use Reply to All when Reply was all that was needed. We all get enough superfluous e-mail from spammers and bots without getting it from percussionists, too.

On top of this, the stick-wielding troglodytes don’t understand that typing in all capital letters is rude. I often must restrain myself from replying to them (not using Reply to All, of course) that, “ALL CAPS IS FORTISSISSIMO. PLEASE STOP YELLING!” While the decorum of a jazz band would never allow me to comport myself in such a manner with my band mates, I count it a privilege to be able to help you avoid the percussionists’ errors and harmonize with the groups with which you work.

Thanks for the advice, Cybercouth!

The tips for this week center around these ideas and a few others that will help you avoid behaving like a troglodyte, or any other unsavory character.

Reply to All With Care – Using the Reply to All feature in Outlook and Notes
Think Before You Send – Understanding Outlook’s message recall feature
Don’t Shout – Avoiding the use of all caps
Unread Letters – Manually marking messages as read or unread in Outlook
Need a Receipt With That? – Using read receipts in Outlook and Notes
Break the Chain – Dealing with chain letters in e-mail
Read it Later – Manually marking messages as read or unread in Windows Mobile

Enjoying these tips? Have any suggestions for future podcasts? Stop over and write a review of the podcast on iTunes, or drop us a quick note on Twitter @productiveUcast.

That’s all for this week. Until next time, remember to make Miss Manners, the Cybercouth Tiger, and Mom proud of your e-mail communication.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Where’s Waldo? Where’s anything, for that matter? (VOL051)

admin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:12:40 +0000

We have a special guest joining us this week, Ms. DigITal Entity. She is a computer chip with an extensive memory and a unique ability to communicate. We’ve all encountered situations where we wish we knew what our computers were thinking; well, DigIT, as she is known to her many friends and family, provides that insight.

DigIT and I will be discussing how to use different views when trying to locate files or other items on a computer.

Editor: DigIT, can you explain why this topic recently caught your interest?

DigIT: My regular computer operator (my human friend) was recently complaining that she could not find a file on her computer. I asked her which one and when she told me, I was able to find it immediately. I could not understand why my friend had trouble. She attempted to explain it to me, but I found her reasons confusing; she mentioned a strange character named Waldo that seemed to always be missing.

E: Oh, you’re referring to the Where’s Waldo book series. Those are fun—what don’t you get?

D: Why do you humans like Where’s Waldo? It seems pointless to me if you do not like looking for things.

E: Well, Where’s Waldo started out for younger children, most of whom would only be playing games or doing learning activities on a computer. The adults, like your friend, would typically be working; trying to produce things for other people.

D: She told me that finding a file is like looking at a Where’s Waldo picture, without the fun; that finding one file among all the other files should be easier.

E: That’s probably because Where’s Waldo is a game, and finding files is typically thought of as work for us. Maybe you need to understand that we humans see the two similar tasks as entirely different things. Work for a human is something we have to do if we want to eat, have a place to live, or have a computer. Something like Where’s Waldo is for entertainment, something we make a choice about doing, which has an entirely different value scale.

D: That explanation makes it somewhat clearer, although I doubt I will ever understand you humans completely.

E: It works both ways, believe me. So, were you able to offer any suggestions to make files easier to find?

D: I really do not find those Waldo pictures very challenging, and finding files is something I do without even thinking. I recommended that she try eliminating some of the files; even rearranging them might be beneficial. We discussed displaying the files in a different order, such as sorted by size or date.

E: Oh, yes, the Details view in Windows Explorer can sort items that way. It can be very helpful. But what can you recommend for locating other types of items, like e-mail messages? I often have trouble finding specific messages in my Inbox.

D: In e-mail, there are many ways to arrange items to make it easier to find the one you want, such as sorting by columns. You can also filter out some of the items to give you a smaller group to look at. In Outlook, Search Folders provide an efficient method of filtering messages by using a specific set of criteria.

E: Search Folders are great, and so are the built-in views.

D: I could elaborate further on changing views, but the options depend on which program you are using. My human friend said she was going to provide some tips for some of the most common software applications.

E: She did, and I’ll be sure to post those on the blog entry for this podcast. Any last words, DigIT?

D: Please try to remember the view options, and the other tools at your disposal, to assist you when searching for specific items. It is unfortunate that most of my family has not mastered the trick of talking to humans. If they could, it would probably make life for you humans much easier, but I am afraid it might also shock many of you.

By the way, here is a trick you can use for solving those Waldo pictures. Just look for the pattern in his shirt, then check for the hat and glasses to find the exact match. But I digress; I will stick to those bits and bytes.

E: Thank you for joining us this week, DigIT. We look forward to speaking with you again in the future to gain more insight on the computer world from your unique perspective.

Here are the tips for this week. You can find links for these in the blog entry for the podcast, at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

Thanks for listening to our podcast. If you have any recommendations for future episodes, be sure to let us know by writing an iTunes review, or by droppping us a line on Twitter @productiveUcast.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Move away from the mouse and keep your hands on the keyboard! (VOL050)

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:46:18 +0000

With the rise of smartphones comes the luxury of accessing our e-mail wherever we roam. These days, it seems that no matter where you go, you’re likely to hear the tap-tap-tapping of fingers across mini QWERTY keyboards and virtual keypads as people all around you type out those all-important e-mail messages.

Personally, the rhythmic tapping of fingers on a computer keyboard is like music to my ears. If there was a room with a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand computers…well, I don’t know if they’d eventually churn out a best-selling novel, but I’ll bet it would sound like a symphony in there.

This is one of the reasons I love using keyboard shortcuts while I’m working at my computer. When I’ve got a good typing rhythm going on my keyboard, I don’t want to have to disrupt the flow by reaching for the mouse to perform some commands (even though mouse-clicking can also be quite a pleasant sound).

Many e-mail clients support keyboard shortcuts, so when I’m catching up on e-mail correspondence, I try to make the most of those time-saving keystrokes. Everything from cutting, copying, and pasting text, to flagging a message for follow-up, and even sending the message, can all be performed right from the keyboard. If you’re doing something as simple as scrolling from the beginning of an e-mail to the end, you can avoid using the mouse altogether.

Even when you’re not composing a message, you can take advantage of many of the keyboard shortcuts that are available for organizing your messages and navigating through your mailbox. There are shortcuts for moving through messages in your folders, jumping directly to certain folders, moving or copying items between folders, and creating items such as messages and appointments.

Learning the keyboard shortcuts and teaching yourself to use them can take some time. I started off learning one or two, and found that I felt like I was working more efficiently when I could keep both hands on the keyboard. So I took the time to learn a few more, and eventually abandoned my mouse completely when I was working in Outlook or Gmail.

The tips for this podcast will focus on teaching you the keyboard shortcuts that are available for working with your e-mail, whether you’re in Outlook, Lotus Notes, or working on the go with a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device. The links for these tips can be found on the blog entry for this podcast, at www.productiveupodcast.com.

A Hands-On Approach to E-mail: Keyboard shortcuts you can use while composing a message in Outlook
No Mouse Required: Keyboard shortcuts you can use while composing a message in Lotus Notes
Control and Shift Your Mail: Keyboard shortcuts you can use in Outlook’s main window
Moving Multiples: Using the Ctrl and Shift keys to perform keyboard shortcuts on multiple messages at once
Get the Most Out of Your Keyboard: Shortcut keys for the BlackBerry e-mail application
Touch and Go: Keyboard shortcuts for Outlook on a Windows Mobile device

We’ll also throw in a few bonus links to sites that list keyboard shortcuts for some of the other popular e-mail clients:

Once you get into the habit of using keyboard shortcuts, you’ll find that they really can save a lot of time compared to using the mouse for certain actions. The best way to start using them is to learn one or two at first. After that, you may find yourself hooked and wanting to learn more. Then, when someone walks by your desk and mentions that you sound like a thousand monkeys, you can smile gratefully and accept it as a compliment, knowing that you are composing your own symphony of tapping keys.

That’s all for this week, but if you’re enjoying the podcast and the tips, be sure to write a review for us over at iTunes. Also, don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @productiveUcast.

See you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Whatever it is, make a note of it! (VOL045)

admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:00:15 +0000

There’s a joke by the late comedian Mitch Hedberg in which he recounts a transaction that he feels did not require any documentation: he got a receipt when buying a donut. As Mitch had stated in his trademark deadpan:

“I’ll just give you the money and you give me the donut…end of transaction. We do not need to bring ink and paper into this.”

This scenario might seem a bit ludicrous, even for those who prefer to document everything almost religiously. But with the increase in activity on social networking sites, the minutiae of everyone’s daily lives seems much more prevalent now than it was several years ago.

Think about how often you’ve seen your friends informing the world what they had for lunch via Facebook, Twitter, or any other site with status update features. Is this something they would have shared with you over a phone call a few years ago? “Hi, Dave. I just had a tuna hoagie. Okay, talk to you later.” Probably not; but as technology advances, we find ourselves equipped with new ways to keep track of all kinds of information.

It’s comforting to know, then, that this capability has some uses that are actually productive. E-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes, for example, make it particularly easy to document your appointments, tasks, and other activities. So not only can you set up an appointment to meet with a contact, you can also have a record of the meeting for future reference.

Outlook takes this a step further and allows you to associate a contact with other items, such as e-mail messages, appointments, documents, or tasks. Once the items are linked to the contact, you can view all this related content on the contact’s Activities tab. You can then filter this view to show only upcoming appointments with that contact, for instance.

The tips for this week will focus on those features that help you keep your appointments and tasks organized and well-documented. The tips include:

Your Presence is Requested: How to schedule a meeting in Outlook and Notes
Stay Active: Using Outlook’s contact Activities feature
A Noteworthy Feature: Making quick notes with Outlook’s Notes feature
“Dear Diary…”: Using the Journal feature in Outlook and Notes
Raising the Flag: How to flag items for follow up in Outlook and Notes
A BlackBerry Never Forgets: How to flag an e-mail for follow up on your BlackBerry

Enjoying these tips? Have any suggestions for future podcasts? Stop over and write a review of the podcast on iTunes, or drop us a quick note on Twitter @productiveUcast.

That’s all for this week. Until next time, remember: you might never need a receipt to prove that you bought that donut. But then again, you just might. See you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum