An Bui, Spelled An With 1 N

I spent 15 minutes talking to Michael Martinez today, a luxury I hadn’t had in a long time. We caught up a bit – we talked about my professional progress and the use of various social media applications, including Twitter.

Michael also gave me two pieces of unsolicited advice:

Advice #1 from Michael Martinez:

Blog more often than once every two weeks.

I got scolded. Perhaps that wasn’t Michael’s intention, but that was the communication I got loud and clear. My current boss once gave me feedback: “Communication happens at the receiver.” I can be as clear and unambiguous as possible, but the communication really happens when someone receives the message I’ve put forth. No message put forth? No communication, because I dropped the ball. I took took Michael’s feedback as a scolding, because I needed a kick in the pants. In trying to manage my time and life better, I’ve allowed things to slip, such as this blog. I haven’t been on Twitter as much either, which leads to this vague, disconnected feeling.

Between various applications I use to manage my time and life, I’ve also found I’ve added some analog to my life.

The short list of applications includes:

• Jott which I use to send myself SMS and email reminders in an effort to keep myself together
• Xobni which gets me more excited about my work email than I deserve to be
• RescueTime which provides analytics about the applications in which I spend the most time on a weekly basis
• Whrrl which tells me where to go for dinner. Because I’m that decisive.

The short list of analog includes:

• Moleskine Notebook for the times it’s not polite to Jott
• Multicolored Gel Pens because they’re pretty and provide a quick visual way to convey an additional layer of information. You know you love color-coding!
• Sticky Notes, for the notes I want to ensure stay on my desk.
• MyLackey.com because I rather do something else other than pick up dry cleaning.

The glue that keeps it all together for me is coffee. Even after twelve glorious hours of sleep, I jones so badly, I still have my giant coffee of the morning.

So I’m back in the saddle. That means Advice #2 is another post for another time.

A few days ago I did a good thing - I downloaded Xobni and made Outlook something I’d want to use. Generally, I find Outlook slow, sluggish, and great at hiding my messages. We’ll pretend that folders to organize emails don’t exist in my reality.

Outlook with Xobni is still slow and sluggish. The benefit of Xobni is that my messages become magically unhidden! I spend less time in Outlook looking for things, which cuts down the number of actions I’m taking inside of Outlook, which minimizes loading time for opening emails and ultimately, saves me time.

I use Gmail. I love Gmail. I use and love Gmail because it’s email made stupid easy. I have zillion MB’s of storage. My email box is my own personal index that I can take a Google Search bar and find the relevant emails that I’m looking for. Using Outlook made me wish I could just forward all email to Gmail.

So Why Use Outlook?

Business. It’s just business. The company email goes to the Outlook, and Xobni makes the Outlook like Gmail on crack. Not only does Xobni thread email conversations, it also pulls out the attachments, and provides analytics around email exchange frequency and time of day these email exchanges happen. Xobni also includes social connectivity information for your contacts. Hence Gmail on crack.

I’d like to thank Chris Apollo Lynn and Marie Williams for hooking me up with Xobni. You guys rock! How did I hear about the Xobni? Via my current favorite microblogging app, Twitter.

It All Goes Back to Twitter

Twitter and Xobni have gotten it right in so many ways. Twitter makes expressing yourself stupid easy. Some might think just stupid, but really, it’s stupid easy. It’s so simple, you really aren’t missing anything. There’s only so much complexity that 140 characters can hold. Xobni approaches the stupid easy a little differently - it’s only fairly intuitive and the sluggishness coupled with my impatience creates a different experience from that high energy, zippy thoughts flying around on Twitter. Xobni’s strength comes from enabling you to find the messages you need easily.

I’ve got 4 Xobni invites left - leave me a comment or send me an email with a funny story about email and I’ll pay them forward. Or as always, tweet @anwith1n