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Upcoming.org: MacBreak Weekly Live @ 21st Amendment at 21st Amendment (Tuesday, January 9, 2007)

Directions to 21A, from Moscone Center

Just a reminder that tonight’s live taping of MacBreak Weekly takes place at 21st Amendment starting at 6pm. If you’re planning to come to the taping, my advice is to get there early, because we’re anticipating a capacity audience (that’s a big reason everyone agreed it was better not to do this event at the Apple Store on Steve Day).

Leo, Alex, Scott, and I will be discussing today’s announcements and may even have some guests.

A propos of nothing, I will also take this opportunity to remind Mr. Bourne of his (often repeated) promise to buy everyone on MBW an iPhone on the day that they come out. Just saying.

If you come out tonight or see me on the Macworld show floor with MacBreak today, please say hi and introduce yourself.

• Thanks, Office Depot! - First off, a big thank you to Office Depot for sponsoring the 43f feed for the last few weeks. I was thrilled that they were our first sponsor because, personally, I drop a lot of dough at my Office Depot each month, and I think they’re a swell company. I have appreciated their support very much.
• A2 discount ends soon - There’s eight (8) days remaining in A2’s 10% lifetime hosting discount, so get in there while you still can.
• Advertising on 43f - Finally, just the occasional reminder that if you’d like to reach one of the smartest (and best-looking) audiences on the web, you can advertise on 43 Folders, via our pals over at FM. Big ads, little ads, ads that climb on rocks – we got you covered.

Thanks, and now back to our regularly-scheduled productivity programming.

Macworld is in full swing this week here in SF, and Merlin will be there, covering the expo floor for MacBreak, participating in a live taping of MacBreak Weekly, and much more. Details inside »

All subject to change, cancellation, force majeure, or ejection by security guard:

Monday

• 4:30-5:30pm - OmniFocus Meetup @ The Apple Store (Merlin will emcee the proceedings)

Tuesday

• Afternoon - On the Expo floor, shooting for MacBreak
  • Want us to stop by your booth?
• 6pm - MacBreak Weekly Podcast Live @ 21st Amendment (UPDATE: moved from the Apple Store)
• 8pm - MacBreak Weekly after-party @ 21st Amendment

Wednesday

• 9pm - DailyTechTalk’s open Macworld Party at Swig

Thursday

• 6pm - Mac Podcaster Meetup Live @ The Apple Store
• 8pm - MacMingle @ Jillian’s

Am I missing anything? Invite me via Upcoming.org.

Just some quick reminders and news on a few current discounts and special deals available for 43f readers.

• 30% off DEVONtechnologies applications - This one ends tonight. Check out with code “en-promo-43f-200610” for 30% off most all DEVONtechnologies apps – including the very swell DEVONthink Pro. After midnight tonight (GMT, I’m guessing?), she is, as Daryl Hall and John Oates might say, gone.
• 10% off A2 web hosting for life - Ends January 10th 2007. Signup with 43f’s web hosting service to get excellent pricing and service, plus a lifetime 10% discount. Just checkout with code “YLUSPXAWOAQAVL”. A2 are very patient and helpful with me, and I suspect they will be with you as well.
• 35% off 43f ad space - Federated Media continues to offer a perfectly zany 35% discount on all graphical banners that are booked through their zesty online platform.

In somewhat related news, the Working and Living Life Smarter Conference announced last month is being rescheduled to a TBD date next year. Registrants have been notified and received refund info, but you should feel free to ask any questions to either the conference’s organizer, Kay Ethier (sales at aboveandbeyondlearning daht com), or me. Will update when the new dates are announced – I imagine that we’ll have another discount to offer for 43f readers.

I’ll steal a page directly from Amber’s book on this one – if you have something that you think might make a good story for us to cover on MacBreak Weekly, you can add it to del.icio.us with the tag “mbwideas”. We check that page pretty regularly (I actually look at it once a day or so), so it’s an easy way to get your favorite Mac and Apple stories of the week into the queue for consideration.

This past week ended up throwing me a couple curve balls, so I only ended up finishing about half of the Inbox Zero articles I’d expected to – including the very in-demand “Okay, smart ass, enough with the hand-waving and tell me how to actually deal with these 5000 emails” post. Couldn’t not deliver that one.

43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero

Ever since I posted my suggestion about the email DMZ, I’ve received a steady stream of requests – nay, desperate pleas – to go into more detail on how I take an email inbox from overstuffed to zero and then keep it that way.

Clearly, the problem of email overload is taking a toll on all our time, productivity, and sanity, mainly because most of us lack a cohesive system for processing our messages and converting them into appropriate actions as quickly as possible.

I’ve fixed 95% of the upgrade problems I’d had, but I’m still getting the occasional report of trouble with the 43F RSS and Atom feeds. So sorry about that, because I know it’s how a lot of you all prefer to keep up with the site.

If you’re experiencing any kind of delays or if you notice items on the site missing from your feed, please ensure that you’re subscribed to http://www.43folders.com/feed/; it’s the only feed for the site that won’t move or change (and it’s the URL that all correct 43 Folders blog feeds should resolve to).

If you’re unsure of the feed you’re viewing in your reader, you might want to delete it and resubscribe. Further help awaits:

So, either I forgot about sending out a lot of requests to receive press releases or, more likely, an extraordinary number of people have suddenly decided I should be talking about their product on this site. Lucky me.

My mitzvah to you once and future senders of PR comes in the form of these million-dollar tips for promoting your product. Before you send email to (or, God forbid, telephone) Z-list bloggers like myself, please consider these friendly tips for not coming off as a complete tool:

The randy clusters of zeroes and ones which power the index cards which run the servers which make the 43 Folders blog come to your home computer set have apparently decided to unionize without telling anyone. Consequently, I suspect a wildcat strike may be behind a lot of the unreliable site behavior in the last day or so. So it goes.

I’m on it. I have bought the zeroes and ones an ice-cold keg of Miller Lite to keep them occupied while I’m upgrading to WordPress 2 and spinning the giant wheel that decides which of the 1400 or so plugins I have are now incompatible with each other. Yay, Wednesday! I rule.

Anyhow, I’ll post again here when I get things straightened out, but things are very likely to break intermittently (read: a lot) throughout today, so it won’t offend me at all if you want to go take a nice walk, do a bit of correspondence, or perhaps teach a small child how to make a pirate hat out of a newspaper. Of course, you can still drop by the wiki, the board, or the store; they’re still non-unionized, work for hard candy, and are just happy to have a warm place to sit.

See you on the other side. One hopes.

Edit 2006-01-18 08:42:58: Oh. And apparently MacSlash linked here this morning, too, I now learn. I think I need more coffee.

Edit 2006-01-18 11:40:15: OK, I think things are mostly stabilized for now. You’ll still hit little problems, but we’re steadily up. Special thanks to Bryan and Ben at A2 Web Hosting. They continue to rule. More soon.

Edit 2006-01-19 10:58:50: Huzzah. We’re 90+% back. We now return you to your regularly scheduled life hackery (with thanks for your patience with our awkward growing pains).