Atlantis in bits

I registered on Facebook several days ago and found it’s very interesting and useful. Actually, my friends invited me to join some SNS web sites not very long after those web sites were launched, but I found they were not very useful. Friends were connected on those SNS, but we were unable really get connected as the activities can’t be revealed from these SNS.

But on Facebook, it’s another thing. With Facebook applications, we could mash up many other web sites together. We could know what you complained on Twitter, what you expressed on Blog and even what music you frequently listened to. And especially the FriendFeed makes me keenly aware of the power of mash-up.

So these days, I am quite enthusiastic for Facebook, I tried to add more friends into it. But I have to confess that Facebook is not very common in China. At present, I only has 17 friends on face, while I have more than 250 contacts on my mobile phone.

I adopted the GTD methodology almost one year ago, even before I own a Palm Treo 650. I tried several software to make GTD work more conveniently and effectively. Through some practices, I believe probably I could establish my GTD system “officially”.At first, let’s review the original GTD conceptual diagram from David Allen’s book at first:

From the above diagram, we can conclude four types of utilities which may be necessary if you are applying GTD with a digital device (PDA or PC or UMPC)

1. Inbox
2. ToDo List
3. Calendar
4. Project Planner

And then look at my own system diagram:

The major software I am using to apply GTD are:

• Natara DayNotez: 

I take this as the main inbox. We can type words into it directly, and if your hands are not free for typing, you can just take a photo or record a piece of voice.

DiddleBug, BugMe, Slap are also recommended. No one is the best, just use the one you like.

• Life Balance:

It’s an awesome ToDo List application, but not only a ToDo List. With the context support, we can easily get what we should do at a particular time and spot.

• Iambic Agendus:  Datebook, Contacts
• Natara Project@Hand: A client on Palm for MS Project files.
• Natara Bonsai: A outline utilities, if need to plan a project with few resource and dependency, this is enough.

The detailed process is:

1. When some ideas, tasks and other stuff come out in my brain, I just open DayNotez and type into it or take a voice record. I map DayNotez to “Opt+Hardkey2″, so that it can be accessed quickly. These coarse stuff are put in the “inbox” category. If I am free for a while, I will process those stuff in the “inbox” category. If it is not actionable, change its category to “Reference” or “Maybe”.
2. If it is actionable and can be done in 2 minutes, do it right now and change its category to “Processed”.
3. If it can’t be done in 2 minutes, but also a one step action, I will create a todo entry in Life Balance with a particular context and category.
4. If it can be broken down, use Bonsai or just Life Balance, or MS Project on PCs to break it down, and then create entries in Life Balance.
5. When I am changing my context(spot, time or target contact), I will change the context in Life Balance as well and do the next action according to the order.

The contexts in Life Balance:

I use three flags to make up a context. The first one indicates whether it’s a next action or a “waiting for” action. The second one tells the spot or target contact. And the third one is just a category which is used for import and export. Some example are: !NextAction@Computer$FamilyLife, !NextAction@LvQi$Career.

I was working for IBM as an intern student From last July to this Octomber (more than 1 year). I planed to stay there, as IBM really provides a flexible and friendly working place, though its salary was a little less than others’.

A good friend of mine who is a PHD also received and accepted the offer from IBM. I asked him to help me to check the salary for Master at the offer briefing event. He asked several Master guys and told me that the range is about X000 – X500 ( I am sorry, but I have to conceal the actual number due to the privacy things) . Two days after the briefing event, I received the official offer letter from IBM, and was vey amazing to find that my salary is 500 less than X000. I asked other intern students in our department, they were given the same number, 500 less than X000. We realized that proabably different department will have different salary. I was kind of depressed and I was not sure if I need to working for this department, Now, I am writting this post and decide to leave IBM not for the 500 bucks but I think we are not much recognized.

I wiil come to office next Monday, and will say goodbye to Christine, Karik and all you guys I was working with for more than 1 years. I love you all, I enjoy the time with you. And I really appreciate all the helps and trusts from you.

I am blogging with u*Blog on my Treo 650. Previously, I used HBloger as the blogging client on Palm. But there was something wrong when posting to a wordpress host and I can’t specifiy the title of each entry, saying nothing of the tag support and category support.

U*blog is quite cool, smaller but more powerful. The most exciting thing is that it supports tags. However, also some limitation exists, as it only supports three types blogs.

Actually, I haven’t tested it on my blog. It will be proved if you can see this post (Oh, you have aleady reached this line).

Okay, more convenient for me to blog.

I am writing this entry by Microsoft Windows Live Writer. I installed it and hope it could help me to post blog more conveniently. And I am finding it really does. It can support several types of weblogs and can preview the entry as it will be. 

I purchased a virtual dedicate server in GoDaddy.com this April and planned to develop an interesting web2.0 web site. But actually, I was too busy to start this project, eventually, the VDS became a very expensive blog host and file sharing host. So I decided to move my blog and other web sites to a shared host. As the version of the wordpress on this host is higher than what I used before, some bugs occurred with tags clouds and probably other things.

Okay, welcome to my new host, probably I am not updating my blog very frequently, but at least I am planning to make change.