Kolz Blog

Filed under: Media streamers, Switches

Though Savant Systems' "Rosie" home control system is in pre-beta right now, its aims for the home automation and media server markets are still quite lofty, and the team seems to have the chops to back it up. The modular system is centered around the Rosie Server, which features dual Xeon 5100 procs, 32GB of DDR RAM and 2.25TB of RAID 5 storage. It's all controlled from an interesting touchwheel remote (that weird bowl-ish thing in the picture above) and various touchpanels, and can pipe high quality audio, 1080p video, and home automation commands throughout your home. Setup is purportedly 1/100th of the time of competing solutions, thanks to some fancy modular design. Savant is planning several packages for its system, including the Rosie Control, which includes a full complement of home control serial, GPIO and IR ports; the Rosie Video Switch, which packages the Rosie Control with an 8 x 8 HDMI switch; the Rosie Audio, which features iTunes-based media management and all sorts of high-end audio specs and outputs; and the Rosie Combo which throws it all together in one, and we're sure will cost your life savings. No word on when this is due or what it'll cost, but we'll be keeping an eye out for sure.

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GTD Facilitator Kelly Forrister interviews David about some of the keys to project management. One of the most commonly asked questions about GTD is how to manage discrete next actions within projects. Click here to listen now or click here to download. (mp3, 32:53). For access to all previous podcasts, check out our complete podcast feed. Related Links:

Join GTD Connect for more on Managing Projects
GTD Templates - Natural Planning Model
Free Article - Stalking the Wild Projects

GTD Facilitator Kelly Forrister interviews David about some of the keys to project management. One of the most commonly asked questions about GTD is how to manage discrete next actions within projects. Click here to listen now or click here to download. (mp3, 32:53). For access to all previous podcasts, check out our complete podcast feed. Related Links:

Join GTD Connect for more on Managing Projects
GTD Templates - Natural Planning Model
Free Article - Stalking the Wild Projects

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Gaming, Peripherals

Well it may not be the high-definition EyeToy HD IP webcam that gamers had been hoping for, but Sony has finally announced the (first?) official EyeToy for PS3, called simply the PlayStation Eye. With an array of four microphones, two zoom levels, and capture rate as high as 120fps, the Eye promises to deliver unprecedented cam-enhanced gameplay, although the VGA video resolution (and that's at 'only' 60fps) will probably nonetheless be a disappointment to some. Bundled in with the not-yet-priced package will be EyeCreate editing software, which allows users to add different effects to their content as well as record footage using time-lapse and slow-mo settings, among others. No word yet on other specs (still shot res?) or compatible games, either, but we imagine that a lot more info will trickle out as the Eye's planned summer release date grows nearer. Update: Well what do you know, Sony and Hasbro also announced Eye of Judgment, the visual, interactive-card driven game they demoed at E3 last year. Good luck keeping people from printing out their own cards from the internet, guys. Should be out in Europe this summer, and the rest of the world this fall. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Windows only: Yod'm 3D provides four virtual desktops for your PC, all of them contained in a spinning 3D cube. We've covered loads of virtual desktops in the past; they're great for cutting down on window clutter and improving your PC productivity. Yod'm keeps it simple, giving you four virtual desktops on a rotating "cube." Just press Ctrl-Shift and the left or right arrow key to cycle between them. (You can assign different activation-key combinations, which is good: I need Ctrl-Shift for Word.) You can also hold down the activation keys and drag your mouse left or right, which provides a better rotating-cube-in-space effect. If you want to jump directly to an open application in any desktop, you can click the Yod'm icon in the System Tray and select the app. My only complaint is with the method of dragging windows from one desktop to another: It's kludgy, and the desktops fly by too quickly. Other than that, I like Yod'm a lot. It's easy to use and just a wee bit fun. Of course, Most people feel pretty strongly about their favorite virtual-desktop tools, so I don't expect Yod'm to convert users of, say, Dexpot. But if you haven't tried virtual desktops, this is a fine place to start. Yod'm is free; the developer accepts donations. You'll need Windows 2000, XP or Vista to run it. —Rick Broida

Yod'm 3D [Chris 'Soft]

A interesting thoughtexperiment for yourself on the weblog of the dutch serial entrepeneur Boris VvZ (You don't want to pronounce his last name...) He tells about the difference about succesfull and less succesfull entrepeneurs. The less succesfull most of the time talk about possibilities with phrases starting wiuth "If Only..." while the more succesfull entrepeneurs always talk about "Despite..." Read the article and let it sink in for yourself. Food for thought for your own personal lifemanagement. Even when you're not an entrepeneur.

A title or a position can be akin to the Emperor's Clothes. We can become blinded by our titles; blinded to our impact and effectiveness in our role. We can become unable to see what others around us can see. They can create a hazard to our ability to see ourselves and our motives clearly. A title can open doors, but our staying power will come from our ability to influence others. The real strength of a leader is the ability to elicit the strength of a group. Our accomplishments are restricted by our ability to lead—influence—others. But how are we doing this—by force of power? If leadership is about influence then the acid test of leadership must be the following question: If you were stripped of your title – the politics of leadership, the power to punish and reward people – would they still follow you? Would you still get results from them? It's good to ask your self this question periodically and adjust your approach accordingly.

Windows only: Freeware program TCP Optimizer speeds up your internet connection by optimizing the internet settings in your Windows registry. I'm always dubious of applications promising to speed up your internet connection, but my tests indicated a slight increase in my download speed (and FreewareGenius saw even bigger improvements), so this looks like it might be a good one. Keep in mind that TCP Optimizer will make edits to your registry, so be sure you make a backup prior to making any changes (TCP Optimizer actually helps with this). If you give it a try, let us know how it worked for you in the comments. TCP Optimizer is freeware, Windows only. — Adam Pash

TCP Optimizer [via FreewareGenius]

by Adam Pash You don't need a hardware switch to share one keyboard and mouse amongst several different computers. All you need is the free, cross-platform application, Synergy. Synergy connects one keyboard and mouse to any computer on your network, making a dual- or triple-computer setup work more like a dual- or triple-monitor setup. Synergy even allows you to share clipboard data across your computers and operating systems. Today I'll detail how to set up Synergy on your home network to control all of your desktops with one mouse and keyboard.

How it works

Synergy uses one computer as a server - that's the computer that will be sharing its keyboard and mouse. The rest of your computers - the ones you want to control - will need to be set up as Synergy clients. The great part about Synergy is that you can customize the program to work with the layout of your computers. For example, if you've got your MacBook running to the left of your Windows PC, you can set up Synergy so that moving your mouse to the left of your Windows monitor will seamlessly jump your mouse across virtual space where it lands safely on your Mac. Whichever desktop currently holds your mouse is also the desktop to which your keyboard's keystrokes will be sent. Make sense? Add to that Synergy's clipboard sharing and you've got one helluva convergence app.

What you'll need:

If you'll be running one or more Windows PC's in your setup, download and install the Synergy Installer for Windows on each PC. (On the SourceForge page I've linked to, the current version is labeled SynergyInstaller-1.3.1.exe.) If you want to run one or more Macs on your setup, download and install SynergyKM on each Mac you want to use. Finally if you're running Linux, grab the platform independent version. The Windows and Mac downloads for Synergy both offer nice and simple GUIs for setting up Synergy, and we'll focus on those here. The *nix version of Synergy requires editing a configuration file and running from the command line. I won't cover that here, but this guide should help.

Set up your Synergy server

First, I'll walk through how to set up a Synergy server on a Windows computer: On the other hand, if you're using a Mac for your server, here's how to set it up:

Set up your Synergy clients

This is the really easy part, assuming you've already added the client name to your Synergy server (Windows | Mac). All you have to do is run Synergy, then enter the name of your server. On a PC, it'll look like this: On a Mac, it looks like this: Most importantly, just be sure you have the name of the server correctly entered. If you're sure the server name is correct but you're still having trouble getting Synergy to work, you can opt instead to enter the server's local IP address, which you can get on a Windows PC by opening your command prompt and typing ipconfig. On your Mac, the easiest way to find your local IP address is by running the Network Utility app and checking on the info tab. In case you needed to jump back to this point to set up your clients before you finished your server set up, Mac users can get back to their server set up here, and Windows users can finish up here. And that's that. Whether you're working on multiple platforms or you've got more than one computer you like using at a time, Synergy provides an excellent way to control all of the computers at your desktop from the comfort of one keyboard and mouse. NOTE: Every now and then you may notice that Synergy's clipboard data isn't transferring between your desktops. Normally restarting the server remedies this for me. Also, if this seems familiar, it's because lifehacker extraordinaire Matt Haughey covered this territory a couple of years back. Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who works seamlessly between his MacBook Pro and Windows PC with Synergy. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

All-things-Google blog Google Operating Systems offers an excellent primer on working with Gmail attachments, which the author says can be confusing. Here's a particularly great tip:

It's a good idea to select the files you want to attach before writing your email, because Gmail starts to upload them immediately, saving you precious time.

The author also refers you to helpful attachment-related scripts (like this one) and extensions and warns you against using Gmail for file storage (which he says could result in a locked account). Great stuff here for Gmail novices and experts alike. —Rick Broida

Gmail Attachments [Google Operating System]

Audiobook-download site Simply Audiobooks offers a selection of free public-domain titles. The books include Mark Twain's The Stolen White Elephant, Jack London's Call of the Wild and Joel Benton's The Life of P.T. Barnum. There are 11 titles to choose from, all of them in WMA format (which leaves iPod users out, unless they convert the files to AAC or MP3). Cleverly, the books are all divided into 3-5 minute chunks, which makes for easier navigation on portable players that lack bookmarking capabilities. Obviously this is nowhere near the selection you can find at, say, LibriVox, but Simply Audiobooks' titles are read by professionals, not amateurs. If you're a fan of audiobooks, you'll definitely want to add these freebies to your library. —Rick Broida

Free Audiobooks [Simply Audiobooks]

Tech blog eXoid dispels some of the myths about S3 standby mode and offers tips on using it to conserve energy. The author explains how to configure your PC to properly enter S3 mode (and why you should bother with it--namely, to save upwards of $35/month on your electricity bill). You'll also learn how to use S3 even when you need your computer to remain on, like when it's acting as a file server or remote access point. This requires venturing into Windows' networking settings, but he explains all the steps in detail, with screenshots. If you own a relatively new PC and want to take better advantage of its power-saving capabilities, you're sure to find this article enlightening. —Rick Broida

S3 Standby Done Right [eXoid]

Windows with the .NET framework only: Internet Explorer add-on Trixie runs Greasemonkey user scripts in IE. Wow! you say. Not so fast, I say. Like Greasemonkey for Firefox, Trixie can run snippets of Javascript (user scripts) on web sites you define. However, due to differences in the way the two browsers handle Javascript, not all Greasemonkey scripts work in Trixie. In fact, most of the coolest ones do not. Once Trixie's installed, get to its script configuration in IE's Tools menu, and choose Trixie Options. Trixie comes with a few Trixie tested-and-approved scripts for Bloglines, Hotmail and MSN Spaces. Unlike Greasemonkey, adding a script to Trixie is a little complicated: you have to drop it into the program's Scripts folder, located in C:\Program Files\Bhelpuri\Trixie\Scripts by default, then click the "Reload Scripts" button to get it listed in the menu. Also, Trixie scripts cannot be assigned to sites through the add-on; applicable web sites must be assigned in the script. Those aren't the only Trixie drawbacks. My all-time-favorite can't-live-without Greasemonkey script, Gmail Macros, didn't work in Trixie - neither did Gmail Super Clean or Greased Lightbox. However, the Inline MP3 player did indeed work, as do a handful of Trixie-tested user scripts. Basically, if you're stuck using IE for some ungodly reason and you're interested in customizing sites with Javascript - even on a limited basis - Trixie's for you. Trixie is a free download for Windows only, requires the free .NET framework to run. —Gina Trapani

Trixie [via O'Reilly Radar]

Well, I survived the collection and processing stages of implementing the GTD Methodology and along the way I made a note of five top tips that I would like to share with you on the Processing section of the GTD Methodology. I am presuming you have read my post on Processing, Getting In to Empty, where [...]

Web application PublicSquare offers a full-featured online publishing tool designed to help you create a webzine, community newspaper, newsletter, etc., with a simple, usable interface. While there are roughly 8.4 billion blog publishing tools out there, the more traditional news/magazine format is less available as a DIY web option. PublicSquare looks like it may bridge that gap. PublicSquare offers a free account with limitations - 2GB transfer/month, 10MB file upload space (if you plan to host a lot of images, you'll probably want to host them elsewhere). Overall the free account is a great option if you're just getting started and want to put together and manage an online paper. — Adam Pash

PublicSquare [via Download Squad]

Windows only: GOM Player is a freeware, lightweight multimedia player with support for most popular video and audio codecs you throw at it. GOM is designed with looks in mind. Not only does it have an attractive interface, but it's optimized for viewing several different display types (whether you have a high-quality display or TV output). While we generally recommend Lifehacker favorite, the cross platform VLC to play any media you throw at it, VLC isn't the prettiest or friendliest player around, and that (understandably) turns some people off. GOM offers somewhat of a middle ground, and should play pretty much any thing you throw its way. GOM is freeware, Windows only. Thanks Sam! — Adam Pash

GOM Player [via FreewareGenius]

The Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories weblog details how to organize and catalog a collection (think stamps, coins, or in this case, a super ball collection) using the popular photo sharing application, Flickr. Using a clearly defined tagging system, the author's collection is extremely well organized, and the post - aside from serving as a great demonstration of the benefits of tagging over a traditional folder system - offers a good framework that anyone with a collection could tweak to organize their goods in Flickr-style. — Adam Pash

Organizing a collection using flickr [Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories via Hackszine]

Photo by Joseph Zollo Amazing things happen when you connect a few computers together with cable or wireless signal. By now you've probably got several connected computers at home, sharing an internet connection, maybe a printer and files between them. But are you getting the most out of your home network? Today's top 10 lists our favorite networking techniques, all of which can be done with free software and a little elbow grease. After the jump, get your LAN on with our top 10 home networking tricks.

Lifehacker's Top 10 Home Networking Tricks

How do you trick out your network? What's on your top 10 home network list? Let us know in the comments. — Gina Trapani

Ever wish you could find a site you visited in the past? Google's impressive new Web History makes it possible. Here's the scoop straight from Google:

Web History lets you look back in time, revisit the sites you've browsed, and search over the full text of pages you've seen. All you need is a Google Account and the Google Toolbar with PageRank enabled. The Toolbar, as part of your browser, helps us associate the pages you visit with your Google Account.

In other words, yes, Google tracks the sites you visit, a fact that won't sit well with some users. But, wow, this is incredibly useful. You can view personalized trends (top queries, top sites, etc.); sort your site history by searches, web pages, news, images, maps and other criteria; and see "interesting items" based on your history. What are your thoughts on this sure-to-be-controversial new offering? Killer tool or privacy buster? Hit the comments to make your feelings known. —Rick Broida

Google Web History [via The Official Google Blog]

Appreciative Intelligence—the ability to perceive the positive inherent generative potential within the present—is an important component to develop as part of organizational culture. AI contributes to a high incidence of innovation and creativity and the potential development of previously unnoticed strengths in people. This happens by the actions of leaders at all levels, to encourage people to look at everyday issues—the commonplace—in a new way; by telling a new story.

Former Director of Astrophysics for NASA, Charles Pellerin believes that most projects fail around social and leadership issues. Both "unknown and unnamed" social undercurrents are at the root of many, if not most, project difficulties. NASA publication, ASK Magazine talked to him about project management and how social and leadership issues come to play in why projects fail. Here are some excerpts from that interview:

Can you explain what you mean by "social issues," and how they relate to leadership? I began to see a pattern repeated far too often when a successful project manager would get promoted or leave a project for some reason. I would replace him with someone who looked just as good on paper, but three months later, all of a sudden, the project started to fall apart. Milestones got missed. Reserves depleted too fast. I was frustrated that I couldn't anticipate and recognize the difference between project managers who were going to succeed and project managers who were doomed to fail. We could predict things like sensor performance. We could understand the detectors. We could understand the power systems. But we couldn't understand this one critical, invisible piece: What makes a good manager? Was it the magnitude of the Hubble telescope problems, launching it with a flawed mirror, which brought this all to a head? Yes, exactly. If you go back to what was happening at the time, we launched Hubble in 1990 and very soon thereafter we found that a technical person had made an error. At first we thought, "Now at least we know what the error was. We can figure out how to fix it." And that's just what we did -- we fixed it. This would appear to be a very happy story for me; I got a NASA medal for the repair mission. That's all well and good, but then I said, "Wait a minute. We should have had systems in place to find this kind of thing." The procedures are written. The engineers sign them. Safety & Quality Assurance stamps it all to verify that this is being done properly along the way. Hubble was the final straw for me. I needed to understand what had happened, because when I looked around me I realized it was commonplace. I mean, take a look at Challenger. It was not, in a sense, a technical failure. It was another human communications failure. I knew a bunch of those people. They were damn good managers and engineers, but they got caught in a story. They created an environment where it wasn't safe to tell the truth. That's interesting how you describe it as people who got "caught in a story." How do stories figure into this leadership quotient? The stories that you carry affect how you make decisions in your life. That's why I'm very interested in the stories we tell. We all perceive reality through the filter of the "stories" we believe. We create stories to make sense of our experience. And, we act within this context as if it were truth, because to each of us it feels like truth. You said that leadership was at the core of the Hubble mishap. Do you find evidence of this in other projects? Sure. Diane Vaughn, in her book The Challenger Launch Decision, said she was a year into her study before she realized that then-accepted accounts of what happened were wrong. Vaughn concluded that the disaster was caused by an "incremental descent into poor judgment." And she went on to say that the technical risks grew out of social issues. Notice the word "social" again. She realized that signals of potential danger had been repeatedly "normalized." That was okay in the context of the stories their culture supported.

This would help to explain the recent experiment reported in the Washington Post by Gene Weingarten to discover if violinist Josh Bell—and his Stradivarius—could stop busy commuters in their tracks. Surprisingly, he did not. If our story is to ignore street musicians and includes the belief that no famous musician would ever do it, then we will ignore street musicians and we will not scan the streets looking for our favorite artists. (If you haven’t read it yet, do so. It’s a great story.) Pellerin has been developing since his retirement from NASA in 1995, a leadership/culture assessment and learning system called "Four-Dimensional (4-D) Leadership." He states, “We began with workshops, and then added coaching, and now have Web-based diagnostics customized for NASA projects. Simply put, we make three measurements in each of the social dimensions -- directing, visioning, relating and valuing—that we believe are fundamental to effective leadership and efficient cultures. “I truly believe that we can identify and address the root cause of most project difficulties. That's my story. And many of the projects I'm working with are choosing to run that story as well -- because they see results. You know, no story is "good" or "bad." Some just get you the results you want and some don't.”

Filed under: Laptops Who says the people aren't in power? Not long at all after customers voiced their demands to have Linux pre-loaded across a wider spectrum of Dell machines, the company caved, and as we sit and ponder just what flavor of Linux will soon be available, we can't help but guess Ubuntu. According to Michael Dell's lineup of personal rigs, his prized Precision M90 is currently humming along with a copy of Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn at the helm, garnering speculation that it's at least in the hunt for being a Linux variety available on its forthcoming machines. Moreover, it appears that Michael doesn't shy away from open-source software at all, as VMWare Workstation 6 Beta, OpenOffice.org 2.2, Automatix2, Firefox 2.0.0.3, and Evolution Groupware 2.10 are also seeing a good bit of personal use. Still, the whole thing could be a complete ploy to make loyal users believe that the CEO really is just one of us -- after all, this same company did just reinstate Windows XP as an OS option. [Via Laptoping] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops, HDTV, Home Entertainment, Media PCs

It was but three months ago that Microsoft opened the flood gates to beta signups for Windows Live for TV, and now the mega-corp is soliciting the help of free laborers yet again to test out a potentially buggy and likely frustrating piece of forthcoming software. If you're still intrigued, Microsoft is holding an open signup to beta test Windows Media Center update for Vista, but we certainly hope you weren't counting on even a partial list of features, as the curiously bland signup page doesn't relinquish much of anything beyond procedural instructions. So if you're hankering for something new to try out, and don't mind replying to Microsoft's "surveys, bug reports, and other means as required," feel free to hit the read link and toss your name in the hat. [Via BoyGeniusReport] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

It seems HTC has finally gotten all of its leaves in a pile by releasing the much anticipated Windows Mobile 6 upgrade roadmap; while this news isn't a surprise, it's always reassuring to hear it straight from the manufacturer. Starting in April (the clock is ticking HTC) the updates will begin rolling out on HTC's European site for your downloading pleasure (link below). The list includes the HTC Advantage, HTC TyTn, HTC S620, HTC P3300, and the HTC 4350. All of you folks rolling with carrier-branded handsets will have to wait until June, and to make it a bit more unbearable, no operators or devices are specifically mentioned. HTC's rationale in choosing these handsets over others in their portfolio -- in case you are screaming "why not me?" -- is that devices with a focus on messaging will most benefit from the upgrade. Maybe it's just us, but aren't all of HTC's handsets focused on messaging? We will be bringing you a blow by blow as these things land, so if you see one posted and we haven't mentioned it, drop us a line. [Thanks, Sed] Read - HTC's WM6 roadmap [Warning: PDF link] Read - HTC Europe download site Permalink | Email this | Comments

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Web application Tabber tracks your friends' online activity so you can keep updated on the haps with your pals (that's cool-kid lingo). Tabber works like this: You create contacts (or import them), then add their various online bases of activity - like their blog URL, del.icio.us and Digg usernames, photo gallery, etc. Once you've imported all that information, Tabber keeps tabs on your friend's activities and lets you know when they've updated their blog, their photo gallery, or what site they just bookmarked in del.icio.us. So far Tabber is a bit sketchy on details (it's not clear, for example, which photo galleries it works with, but one would assume Flickr is included), but if you or your friends live an active social life online, this looks like a promising way to keep track of it all. — Adam Pash

Tabber

In April 1990, shuttle Discovery launched the Hubble Space Telescope into its planned orbit. However, within weeks it became obvious that there was a serious problem with the primary mirror. Authors Tojo Thatchenkery and Carol Metzker describe the events that followed in their book Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn.

Congress demanded an explanation for the failure. The project and its creators became the butt of late-night television jokes. Stress was high among NASA engineers, as were health problems. “It was traumatic,” said Charlie Pellerin, the former director of NASA’s astrophysics division, who oversaw the launch of the Hubble. Nobody could see how to fix the problem, which many seemed afraid even to address. Well, nobody except Pellerin. He not only had the initial insight to solve the problem but also found the funding and the resources to repair the telescope, for which he received NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal. What was behind Pellerin’s success? There were dozens of other people at NASA with high IQ and world-class technical knowledge—they were, after all, rocket scientists. They could perform the same analysis, use the same logic, and wield the same models and mathematical formulas. Pellerin possessed something more than the others did: Appreciative Intelligence. While he lived with the same conditions and circumstances as everyone else, his mind perceived reality very differently than others did. He reframed the situation as a project that was not yet finished, not as a completed product that had failed. He saw the potential for a positive future situation—a working space telescope. He saw how that positive future could happen as the result of technical solutions—a corrective optics package and repairs performed by a crew of astronauts—that were already possible with a rearrangement of funding and resources that already existed within NASA. By reframing, recognizing the positive, or what worked, and envisioning the repaired telescope, he was able to help orchestrate the unfolding of a series of events that changed the future.

Appreciative Intelligence is defined as “the ability to perceive the positive inherent generative potential within the present.” More simply, it is “the ability to see the mighty oak in the acorn. It is the ability to reframe a given situation (or person), to appreciate its positive aspects, and to see how the future unfolds from the generative aspects of the current situation.” These three characteristics form the foundation of appreciative intelligence. Reframing is about shifting reality by choosing what feedback we will ignore and what feedback we will pay attention to. Appreciating the positive is the ability to see the positive aspects of any given situation. To see how the future unfolds from the present refers to the ability to see what can be done instead of what can’t. Appreciative intelligence is the mindset that allows you to step back and access the situation and move forward instead of being thwarted by circumstances.

Appreciative intelligence can of course, be developed by consciously expanding your responses to situations as they occur. Asking yourself different questions by questioning your assumptions (what you know to be right), looking for positive and different meaning in what you experience, and becoming what Saul Bellow calls a first-class noticer, will help you improve your appreciative intelligence. Additionally, keep in mind the AI qualities of persistence, conviction that your actions matter, tolerance for uncertainty, and irrepressible resilience. As these qualities develop, so too will your creativity and success in finding resolution to the issues you face. Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn provides in more detail what I have outlined here. Tomorrow we’ll look at what Charles Pellerin has to say about leadership and project management. Additional Interest: The Prepared Mind of a Leader : Eight Skills Leaders Use to Innovate, Make Decisions, and Solve Problems Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work

Google has introduced a recommendations button that can lead you to sites of interest. The button, which looks like a pair of dice, is a new addition to the Google Toolbar. Click it and Google sends you straight to a site it thinks you might like. The recommendation is based on your search history; you can get up to 50 new sites per day. If it sounds a bit like StumbleUpon, that's because it is--but here you don't get to choose categories of interest or rate the recommended sites. Indeed, you probably won't want to abandon StumbleUpon anytime soon. In my tests, the Google recommendation button steered me to nothing but Palm- and Treo-related sites, even though I hadn't searched for anything similar in days. Of course, your mileage may vary, and if I know Google, it'll get this intriguing (and potentially useful) tool whipped into shape soon enough. The only place I've found to get the new button is within the blog post below; or you can click here to install it directly. —Rick Broida

Searching without a query [The Official Google Blog]

Filed under: Gaming

Another PlayStation 3 firmware update, another list of issues. Unfortunately, this seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme, and while users may not have found issues with last month's refresh, the v1.7 isn't as kind. Reportedly, the latest update enables the PS3 "to play PSOne titles that are already saved on your PSP," but numerous sources are suggesting that the feature, um, doesn't work. On a lighter note, PSOne and PS2 dual shock controllers will now shake, rattle, 'n rumble when connected to your PS3, and those with PSPs sitting around can also hit up v3.4 (required for the PSP-to-PS3 playback) on their handheld machine. So, dearest readers, we'll point the question at you: is your recently update PS3 playing nice with those PSOne selections? [Via Joystiq, thanks to everyone who sent this in] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

I worked with a client recently who has instituted "No Meetings Day" twice a month. How great is that? ...

Yahoo's Brazen Careerist suggests 4 tips for making bad job good - or at least bearable. For example:

1. Make a friend at work. People with one friend at work are much more likely to find their work interesting. And people with three friends at work are virtually guaranteed to be very satisfied with their life, according to extensive research from Gallup...

Some of the tips may seem a bit obvious, but that doesn't make them any less true. Naturally, if it's within your control, finding a better job is a sure bet, but that's not always possible to do immediately. Share your tips for making a bad 9 to 5 better in the comments. — Adam Pash

Four Ways to Make a Bad Job Good [Yahoo Finance]

Sometimes you read these little hacks and you think to yourself "Why didn't I think of that?". Check out this excellent hack to quick-compose a message in Gmail

Compose Gmail Quickly. Want to send yourself a task in Gmail but don’t have much time? Set up a bookmarklet for a quick compose:

1. Click on “compose” in Gmail, and then click on the pop-out button in the compose area to bring it to a new window;
2. Right-click on some blue space and select “Bookmark This Page” and save it in your Bookmarks Toolbar folder;
3. Right-click on the new bookmarklet you’ve created, select Properties and check “Load this bookmark in the sidebar”. Now just click on this bookmarklet at any time when you want to send yourself a new task, or send someone else a quick email.

Read more Gmail tips on Lifehack.org

With one tax season at a close, we're all motivated to be a little more organized for our 2007 taxes, right? Lucky for us The Simple Dollar weblog has posted a guide to organizing all of your important financial documents in a filing cabinet. A lot of us have trouble knowing which financial documents we should keep and which we can toss, which often leads to a sort of financial, organizational paralysis that leaves us completely disorganized (I wouldn't know, but I have a friend...). The Simple Dollar's guide not only gives you a good idea of what you want to keep, but also helps you understand how you might want to organize them. For a little supplemental reading, check out Gina's extreme makeover, filing cabinet edition. Give us a glimpse into your financial file system in the comments. — Adam Pash

A Fresh Start: How To Organize All Of Your Financial Documents In A Filing Cabinet [The Simple Dollar]