I was recently skimming through my beloved old 1934 edition of Progressive Indexing and Filing, which I inherited at a young age from my grandmother—probably my first piece of productivity porn (the book, not my grandmother.) On page 85, I stumbled across a delightful little gem. Apparently, not only did the David not invent the tickler file (news to me), but it's been around since at least 1934.

multipart/mixed: Turbo-Charging the Dymo LabelWriter

I love my Brother PT-65, which is regarded by many as the unofficial official label maker of GTD nerds (and which, quizzically, appears to have been discontinued :-().

The PT-65 has easily paid back its modest sticker price with three years of faithful service. Trouble is, I like using it so much that it's gotten to be kind of a pain to pull it out and Blackberry-thumb-type my bajillion labels via its teeny keys. Now, I want something that hooks up to my Mac.

Josh Carter's gotten me interested in the Dymo LabelWriter 330 Turbo via this handy tutorial from late last year, which covers basic setup info, plus a tip on speeding up the creation of a new label with Quicksilver.

Josh has good stuff to say about the 330:

The advantages of the LabelWriter, as I see it:

• The Dymo software is easy to configure for "power user mode" which eliminates all the extra dialog baggage, and then it's wicked fast to use. (Doubly so with Quicksilver in the mix.)
• You get to use your computer's nice keyboard. This is especially important for me since I use the Dvorak key layout.
• The Dymo labels are cheap and look totally pro, even better than a stand-alone label maker.
• Labels are the same size, so reusing a folder is as simple as sticking a new label over the old one, and it still looks nice.
• You can use fancy Mac OS X features like printer sharing if needed. (I tried it, it works great.)

Anybody using one of these units or similar? Care to recommend a label maker of any brand that hooks up via USB and works well with Tiger/OS X? I ♥ my little Brother, but I'm ready for Label Maker 2.0!

ideas are just a multiplier of execution - O'Reilly ONLamp Blog

Derek Sivers' short blog post from 2005 has been making the rounds lately -- it came to me via Chairman Gruber -- and I have to say, I can't stop thinking about it. I think this is really profound thinking around the fundamental misunderstanding many people have about the value of ideas.

In a nutshell, Derek says ideas are valuable only inasmuch as they can be multiplied by execution. So, if you remember your 3rd grade arithmetic, you can figure out the product of even the most fantastic idea when it's multiplied by zero execution.

I, too, frequently encounter this attitude of "Sign the NDA! Sign the NDA!" any time someone wants to tell me about their squirrelly idea for making a bajillion dollars on the internet, and I almost always end up saying the same six things to The Idea Men:

• alwaysBETA » The Tale of the Mechanical Virus - Fascinating -- Never heard of this happening before. At least now you can accurately announce there's a Mac-only virus spreading at the Google.
• Gary Voth Photography: The Forgotten Lens - "The 50mm lens is called a 'normal' or 'standard' lens because the way it renders perspective closely matches that of the human eye." Just bought one of these, and I totally love it. Lots to learn, but I'm working on it.
• Most Useful Mac Software | Tech Magazine - Good collection of Mac apps that non-power-users may not be familiar with. Recommended reading for taking your game to the next level.
• deadmoviestar: Lucky Luciano - My pal, Steve, recalls a memorable encounter in Miami with the late Mr. Pavarotti.
• Footnote - The place for original documents online - Share your own knowledge and research about historical documents. Stuff like Footnote makes the internet what it should be -- an affordance for collaborating on stuff you would never in a million years be able to do by yourself. Crowdsourcing at its finest.
• Jonathan Coulton: Fake Female Me is Busted - JoCo reports on a makebelieve internet sensation who had actually been signed by a label all along. Blechy. "The saddest thing of all is that she could have done this all by herself without the label and avoided all this negative reaction."
• Back in the saddle - I've missed Mr. Kottke, and it's swell to have him back up on The Wire. Although, I confess, I am also a huge fan of his and Meg's little interruption.
• Rands In Repose: The Laptop Herring - You and everyone you know needs to read this article twice. Now. "If you have no role in a meeting and stop going, or if you remove someone from a meeting, you’re going to create a conflict with whoever believes that you (or the other someone) should be in that meeting. This is great. This is the discussion you want to have: 'Frank, I’ve been to this meeting 12 times and I’ve no clue what I’m doing here. Please advise.'" - [via Daring Fireball]

Here's a wonderful tour de force on Concentration that's written for students and which includes tips on identifying distractions as well as a useful list of techniques for putting your attention where you want it to be and keeping it there.

A few I liked:

Using Gmail as your GTD mail implementation

Jon Udell: The LibraryLookup Bookmarklet Generator

I covered this one back in the bronze age of 43 Folders, but I wanted to highlight the awesomeness again today for those who might not have seen it the first time around.

As described in September, 2004:

I still can’t get over how cool this is. Jon Udell’s little wizard [direct link] lets you generate a bookmarklet for requesting a library book—based on the Amazon page you’re currently viewing. It’s clearly a flawless lifehack.

You just need to know your library’s URL and which system your own city uses (which Jon makes simple by providing preview links to see which style your system seems to follow). San Francisco folks, use “http://sflib1.sfpl.org/” and leave the default system of “Innovative” selected.

At some point over the years, Jon's bookmarklet fell out of my favorites bar (J'accuse, Amazon Prime). But today I was able to recreate my bookmarklet in about ten seconds, and now Bobos in Paradise is en route to the Parkside Library.

To modernize the tip just a bit, I'll mention that this (and many other browser tasks involving entering passwords) gets so much easier with the amazing 1Passwd. In this case, you can tell the app to remember your library card number and PIN and autofill the library login page automagically.

MWSF Drinking Game 2007
Originally uploaded by World Leader Pretend1.

We'll all be so drunk by 11am tomorrow.

[via Digg]

After getting used to Gmail 3 years ago, I swore I'd stick to web-based email. With IMAP now available, I set it up last week in Apple's Mail client on my desktop to integrate better with offline storage, emailing links, etc, and found myself changing my ways.