Archive for the ‘Products that Work’ Category
GTD
October 9, 2010The Back of the Napkin
August 7, 2008
Dan Roam
All the presentation really is, is the ability to have someone else grasp what we see in here, in our own minds, in there, in their minds. And to do that sometimes things like spreadsheets and powerpoints just get in the way and the back of a napkin really is all that we need.
Dan Roam presenting at Google
Expense tracking the iPhone way
July 26, 2008TED | Talks | Yves Behar: Creating objects that tell stories
May 31, 2008
“We bring intellectually property…we bring a marketing approach…we bring all this stuff, but I think at the end of the day what we bring is these values, and these values create a soul for the companies we work with. And its especially rewarding when your design work becomes a creative endeavour – when others can be creative and do more with it”
MacFusion – secure ftp that Works
May 26, 2008
I’ve used Cyberduck (which is very cool) and before that sftp and at some stage I even worked out how to use scp.
Recently I took on putting up a web site and for that I ended up using MacFusion.
The short version is that the file system where my ISP allocated space for the website shows up as a mounted disk on my desktop – which makes managing site content a snap. (As a bonus, by installing ntfs-3g I also get to mount NTFS volumes for read/write access)
The long version is a great example of how technical content can be presented powerfully.
Xero – accounting that Works
May 26, 2008 
Its not like there’s not enough accounting packages already out there. And its not like there’s anything special about Xero’s ability to do accounting functions. And its not like I need fancy reports or pretty graphs. I just want the hassle factor gone. So what is it exactly that has Xero work for me?
I get to do my accounts day by day.
Gone are the days of batching stuff up – waiting till the pay off is worth the hassle of doing the download/upload dance. With Xero its simple – by having Xero automatically upload my banking transactions overnight, there’s nothing to manage or do except deal with what’s outstanding.
Each couple of days I log in, I see that there are some transactions to reconcile, I click ok for the transactions Xero has guessed and I enter the details for the transactions it hasn’t. I see my account balances – do what needs to be done – and that’s it! I’m informed and my accounts are up to date.
No downloading from multiple bank accounts, no managing date ranges and no making sure duplicates don’t lie around undetected. Accounting – one day at a time – is what works for me.
