technology

A New Outlook…Or Maybe Not So Much

2009 has been a long year. It has also been the most prosperous year I’ve ever experienced. It has been a year of shifting perspectives, innovative tools, unexpected hardships, and unexpected blessings. It’s a year that I’ve spent re-acquainting myself with me in order to move forward with a new outlook on life and how I live it.

It’s funny that I should say that I have a new outlook on life because this article is precisely about how I’ve eliminated one outlook that I couldn’t seem to work around. And when I say outlook, I literally mean Outlook…Microsoft Outlook.

For years I’ve used Outlook as my primary communication tool. Calendars, Contacts, Tasks, Notes, and E-mail all contained in one convenient location. For years I’ve cursed at my computer time and time again when what I believed to be the necessary evil (Outlook) would fail to open, crash, slow my system down, you name it. The only reason I stayed with it so long was because of Exchange Server. The two together make for a seamless integration of all of your devices, keeping all of your data in one location accessible anywhere.

Trapped in the confines of Microsoft’s infrastructure has been the only option until recently. And by recently, I mean within the past year or so. You see, the functionality offered by Outlook and Microsoft Exchange is not exclusive to Outlook and Exchange. It is a concept; an idea that all of your information should be in one location and you should not have to do things more than once, and that duplicate information is inefficient.

The problem has been that the only tools available require spending more money than any of us want to spend on these things. How much does a day-planner need to cost? That has changed.

I credit this personal shift to a conversation I recently had between Loren Kutsko, Director of Strategy and Information Management at Food for the Hungry, and Mark Kaech, Grassroots Campaigns and Special Projects, also at Food for the Hungry. It’s inevitable that when you put us together, we’ll talk about the latest tools and happenings in the technology world. When I expressed my apprehension about making some major shifts in how I manage my information, which ultimately translates into a more seamless transaction in the real estate contract process, I was met with the reality that I was still doing things the “Gen-X” way, and not the “Gen-Y” way and that the tools that I need are available at a fraction of the cost.

As someone who considers himself open to change, to be struck with the possibility that I’m not standing at the front of the technology-progress boat anymore caused me to reassess my ways.

The Challenge

I’ll keep this simple. I want my contacts on my iPhone to be identical to my contacts on my computer. When I read a message in my inbox and it’s marked unread, I want it to be universally marked unread so I never have to read it again unless I need to re-visit the message. I want my calendar on my phone to have the same information as my computer, and the same information as my online calendar at Google.

I want complete and seamless synchronization of all of my data so I can get to it anywhere, anytime.

The Old Solution

Microsoft Exchange Server in concert with Mobile ActiveSync, Outlook, and Outlook Web Access. If not self hosted at my own facility with over $6000 worth of hardware and software required, at the very least, paid for on a single-user basis at an exchange hosting company for about $10.00/month.

The New Way

This is so simple it amazes me that I didn’t think of it before. A note of caution. If you aren’t willing to rethink how you manage your information, almost completely, you’ll be very frustrated if you try to do this.  In fact, you may not be able to do this. There are also some pre-requisites that are assumed prior to making this type of change.

• You need your own domain name.  Lose the gmail extension, the yahoo account, the free e-mail identity.  Get your own domain name and start branding yourself personally so you never have to change it.  If your company gives you an e-mail address, use it for company communication only, and get your own identity.  you@yourname.com is far more valuable than you123@yoohoo.lame.com.
• You need a smart phone, and preferably, an iPhone.  More tools will emerge at lower and lower costs, but this is where I am today.
• I matters not whether you have a MAC or a PC anymore.  Entourage and Outlook are no longer needed.
• Please use either Firefox or Chrome as your primary internet browser.  Internet Explorer should only be used if the idiots on the other end of the website you need to use have failed to develop a more compatible site and it requires Internet Explorer to work.  Safari will suffice, but I personally avoid it.  Firefox is my first choice for now.

So What are the Changes I Actually Made?

I moved all of my data from Exchange to Google.  I moved my calendar to Google Calendars, my contacts to Google, and all of my e-mail to Google.  My notes are kept nice and neat using Evernote, my tasks…well, I never used tasks because we still need a good system that supports task dependencies and hierarchical action plans.  My website resides at another hosting provider, but all of the e-mail traffic is bounced to Google and handled by Google in a very easy to use Gmail interface.  No, I do not have a @gmail.com address.

How did I do this?  Well, it didn’t happen overnight.  I have lots of information that needed to be moved, and I’m still sorting out a few things here and there.  My website never went down, but my e-mail was interrupted for a few hours, so if you do this, you should make it a late night event.

All of these steps were accomplished in phases to ensure it was going to work, but there were some leaps of faith involved.  I made sure to get into the forums on Google to search for potential problems, then I dove in.

Before you do anything, backup all of your Outlook data.

Step 1: Establish Google Apps account for my domain.  (assumes you have a domain name already: www.godaddy.com to solve this problem.)

This is so easy.  Go to www.google.com/apps and sign up for Google Apps for Business.  It’s $50.00/year per user.  Go for the free 30 day trial (you can click here for that).

Step 2: Using the MX settings that Google gives you after you’ve setup your account, go to your domain manager at Godaddy.com or wherever you registered your domain, and modify the MX records.  Don’t screw it up and record the settings that were already there.  If you need to call someone there, do so.  They’ll help you do it.

Step 3: Watch the mail start rolling in.  It takes about 2 hours or so to kick in.

Step 4: Setup a new e-mail account on your iPhone using the gmail settings.  Now you have completely synchronized e-mail on your phone and through your gmail interface.

Step 5: Export all of your calendar data from Outlook or Entourage, or from wherever you keep it.

Step 6: Import your calendar from within your new Google account.

Step 7: Export all of your contacts from whatever program you’re using.

Step 8: Import your contacts into Google.

Step 9: Setup a new mail account using the Exchange option on your iPhone.  Follow these simple instructions to do so. Since you have already setup a mail account on your phone, make sure that your iPhone is set to sync only Calendar and Contact items, not mail.  The iPhone only allows one exchange configuration, so having a recent backup is going to make your life much easier at this point because you can delete your current exchange setup (if you have one) without losing your data.

Step 10: This is the last step.  Login to your Google Apps account (http://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com), click the Service Settings tool bar item and then Mobile at the bottom of the drop-down menu.  Make sure you enable Google Sync at the bottom.

That’s it.  Your e-mail will be delivered to Google, you’ll be able to use the Gmail interface to manage it, and you’ll have it on your mobile device on demand.  Your calendar and contacts will begin to fill up in your phone, seemingly magically, and everything will be synchronized.

Mashable.com recently published these findings regarding Gmail vs. Outlook. I stand with Google now.

Oh, and the very very last step.  Uninstall Outlook .

If you need some help walking through this process feel free to contact me and I can help you through.

technology

iPhone Tech Tip: Creating Ringtones for FREE

Real estate sales is a mobile business.  It has been since the 70’s.  No longer do we sit in an office waiting for the prospective buyer to walk into our brokerage and ask us “what’s for sale.”  In adapting to the world’s technology advances, the right mobile device makes the difference in how effective your communications will be.

This article focuses on a lighter side of technology specific to the iPhone…Ringtones!  How do we create our own ringtones.  Some of you might be nauseated by the notion of custom ringtones and I fully agree, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a billion dollar ring tone market.  The frustration for those of us who do like to have a custom reing tone is that we have to pay for them.  Well, I’d say paying for something of value isn’t really a problem.  But what about when we have to pay for it twice?

In order to create a ring tone in iTunes, it typically requires that the song you’re making into a ringtone be a song you purchased through iTunes.  I’m here to show you how to make a ring tone out of any non-DRM (that’s a song that is not digitally protected, in other words, a song you did not buy in iTunes) song.

I’ll credit this knowledge to my friend Loren Kutsko at Food for the Hungry since he is the one who rattled off the steps that are required.  On to the good stuff.

How to Create a Ring Tone in iTunes (Example performed in Windows Version, not MAC)

1. Open iTunes
2. Find a song that is not protected with digital rights management.  This would be a song that you did not purchase from iTunes, or one that you added from a CD.
3. Play the song and find a 30 second section that you’d like to become your ring.
4. Right click the song and click Get Info.
5. Click the Options Tab.
6. Under Start Time and Stop Time, enter the starting and ending time within the song that you want to become your ring tone.
7. Click Okay.
8. Right Click the song again and select “Create AAC Version.”  This will encode the 30 seconds of play time that you defined as a new file in the same folder as the original full version of the song.  You should see a little orange icon under your left menu heading “Playlists” for a short period and then you’ll hear the same sound you hear when you get a voicemail on your iPhone or when you rip a CD.
9. In the search field, search for the song you just converted and you should see two copies.  One will be the full version, and one will be 30 seconds long.
10. Drag the 30 second version from your iTunes library to your desktop.  (Note: You may want to adjust your folder options [ Control Panel --> Folder Options ] to NOT hide file extensions for known file types.)
11. Delete the song from the iTunes library, moving it to the recycle bin.
12. Right click the file you moved to the desktop and click Properties.
13. The extension on the file should be song_title.m4a.  Change the “a” to “r” so the file is song_title.m4r.  This will force iTunes to put the song in the ringtones section.
14. Now that your song is converted and staged for importing, use the File menu in iTunes to Add File to Library.  Browse to your desktop and select your newly created m4r song.
15. Confirm you have a ringtone by clicking on the little ringtones item in the left menu in iTunes.  Your song should be there.
16. Connect your iPhone to your computer and adjust the sync settings to include your ringtone.
17. When it’s done sync’ing, you should see the new ringtone on your iPhone under Settings –> Sounds –> Ringtone under the Custom section above the Standard section.
18. Congratulations!  You have a new ringtone and it was completely free.

technology

Perspective and Perception, Small Changes that Improve Productivity

Every day I discover something new, whether it be on the internet, in the newspaper, or by speaking with clients and prospects.  Following technology advancements is one of my favorite activities and it has led to a myriad of tools that I have implemented to make my life more productive, or so I thought.

E-mail, to this day, has been a great way to keep in touch, but there’s one downfall that I overlooked for a long time until someone recently turned me onto the idea of eliminating e-mail notification.  At the beginning of the summer, I made a few changes to Microsoft Outlook’s behavior in hopes of changing my own behavior.  I found myself impulsively checking my e-mail every time my computer chimed in.  I also found myself very distracted by it.  So, I turned it off.  Now, I don’t know when I have e-mail, and it’s liberating!  Much like disciplined business associates who set aside specific times during their business day to check their messages and return phone calls, I have developed a better habit by doing the same with e-mail.  No longer do I jump to my e-mail to read through each overwhelming topic in the middle of important tasks.  Rather, I return them in small clumps of time throughout the day.

Another change that I made to Outlook was setting it to open in a way that would lend to more productivity.  Why not have Outlook open directly to the calendar page instead of the e-mail page?  Great idea!  So now, when Outlook opens, it sits in the background and churns along on the calendar page where I can quickly gain access to my schedule without being distracted by the latest goofy joke or video.  I can save that for later.

Okay, so here’s another trick that I just realized will help me gain perspective on my finances.  I use Quicken frequently.  It’s the only way I know where I stand financially.  Perhaps I have a bit of a control issue when it comes to knowing where I spend my money, but I know that at any time I can run a quick report to determine where I have been spending my money and where I can change bad habits.  Whether or not I change them is the key .  If you’re a Quicken user, you are familiar with the annoying Cha-Ching that you hear when a transaction is recorded.  Well, I made a change to that.  I altered the sound from a misleading Cha-Ching (a sound that gives me a false sense of security because “Cha-Ching” is commonly used to describe income) to a more apropos sound.  Since I have more transactions that deplete my account than increase it, I figured a good sound would be the sound of someone swiping something out of my hand.

Voila!  Now when I record a transaction I actually feel the money leaving.  Who would have thought that a simple change like that would make a difference in spending habits.  We’ll see what happens .

Have you discovered any changes that you have made in using your computer that lend to greater productivity?