About Maremel
Maremel Media, LLC
Maremel Institute
P.O. Box 682, Monrovia, CA 91017
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What to Do with 2010’s Ideas for 2011 – Gems, Silt, Clouds, and Mañana
What can we do with all of our great, unwashed and un-rinsed ideas from 2010 as we head into 2011?
Is it a question of ignoring the silt of our lives? Or finding new ways to sift and regroup them at our beck and call?
I recently bought a DVD set from Judy Carter, which gave me some great ideas for 2011. She recently sent an e-newsletter item out about when and how to chase around new ideas. The December 2010 rumblings by Yahoo about closing or selling Delicious.com pushed me into shopping for new solution for this same question:
What should we do with all our ideas throughout the year?
I used to be queen of lists. I hate all my lists – I would write ideas for new projects and creative work down, yet would either consider them “done” or never find them again.
Cloud Tools: So far, I’m trialing both Evernote and Diigo in my search for the perfect cloud computing solution with all of my devices — cell phone, laptop, desktop (for video editing and research), iPad, and computers while at other people’s offices. I like the concept of cloud solutions with my own folksonomy of tagging. I can save and tag ideas from the web or emails, then actually FIND them again later by topic on ANY computer in the “cloud.” I can send them to the cloud from my phone, iPad, or whatever, with tags – so I can actually nurture them and find them when you want them. Each solution has its own quick buttons and macro key clicks to do this quickly, so I’m building new habits.They don’t help, however, with the 6” stack of idea notes that I’ve assembled and left unnurtured in 2010…
Do I read them all? Highlight? Scan and injest into the cloud?
Big Stuff: I do have another solution for my BIG projects, like books, research, video shows, and classes. For these bigger projects, I’m somewhat addicted to Microsoft’s OneNote on my main computer. I just print to OneNote2010 what I’m working on and have a gigantic archive of searchable items that I can ‘folderize’ and visualize. In any of these tools, I can tag or label things the way MY funky brain works and feed the beast when I’m looking for something cool later. These often are big squishy messes of ideas and details to wrestle with, so I benefit from a big, squishy tool.
Mañan a: What can we do with the “other” stuff? I am blessed with something that Julie Schulman and I coined a decade ago — mañana lists. We would create a mañana list of all the things we knew needed to be done that we agreed could always be done tomorrow. I love to use the tag “mañana.” That’s for the interesting things for “if I have time later.” It’s the “no guilt tag.”
I welcome other suggestions. Productivity software is one of the big growth areas in this time of tsunamis of information. Lots of services will help you filter what comes in from the outside. This challenge is what to do with the gems and silt from the inside…and how to think about re-gifting and sorting them with others.
Have a great 2011 with your new adventures. And may all your ideas be bountiful AND taggable.
Sleigh Bells — a safety device?
My husband, who shares my love of technology and history, pointed out a recent Los Angeles Times article on the sleigh bell industry. The article focused on the Bevin Bros., a Connecticut-based company that has been making sleigh bells since 1832.
I was most intrigued by the paragraph on how the industry grew in the 19th century. Sleigh runners were nearly silent and glided quietly along the snow. Many states passed laws requiring harness bells to announce the approach of sleighs to pedestrians and others.
Maybe we need them on Priuses?
Then, the bells became associated with Christmas due to James Lord Pierpoint’s “The One Horse Open Sleigh” in 1857 (link to Library of Congress copy), which became “Jingle Bells” two years later.
Who knew?
Holiday Letters = Progressive Trends + Gender Parity and Power?
As a socio-technology fan, I am intrigued by the morphing of holiday cards and letters with new technologies. This, of course, has been changing for quite a few years. Desktoppublishing has brought us pictures of our
lives within cards and letters for a while now. They almost are like the old portrait paintings, where you were pictured with your favorite objects that described to the future who you were by the things you liked. Here, we have pictures with kids and musical instruments, families on trips, and all the trappings of “who we are” in evidenced pictures.
Holiday greetings of the past
This year, I began to get holiday digital cards around Hanukkah from my Jewish friends, which became the harbinger of the full holiday season to come. I got a lovely anime self-portrait by one of the daughters of one of my long-time friends, superimposed on their home. Charming and original – and very current tech.
Then came the deluge of emailed jpgs to my business email from a swath of companies that I’ve never done business with, reminding me that they are thoughtful and cool this time of year. Who are these companies? What did they think I would do in getting their email? “Boy, I really did need that mailing list service — I should give them a call?”
Now, as we get closer to Christmas, Iam getting all of the digitized photo cards. In the recent past, creative- and technology-focused friends have created marvelous montages and nearly homemade lovelies that were a mash up of design and digital photography. This year, other friends seem to have found companies to do this for them. LOVELY choices, but an intriguing mix of the holiday card and letter, with professional services mixed in.
Here’s my headscratcher of the season: two nag holiday letters. Two female holiday letter-writers (who shall remain nameless) took the opportunity of their holiday letter to gripe at their husbands through the text.
- Is this a strange reflection of the gender bias in the role of holiday card creator? In my family and in many of the families I know, the wife in a duo is socially expected to create the card, update the list, add the handwritten notes, and get the darned things mailed out. She, in essence, becomes the family narrator. Here, two lovely ladies have taken that narration to a deeper level, providing (not flattering) holiday context to the letter.Power grab? Acting out? Attempting to add humor? All three? 🙂
- I had thought it to be a Facebook status warping of a non-Facebook medium, but then realized that neither of the women are active Facebook users.However, has Facebook and all of this constant update dialog changed the nature of the holiday letter? For many people, I know a lot of this information about them already from their posts and photos uploaded.
Collection of Digital Goodies This Week: Visualization, Productivity Alternatives, Download or Buy?
I’ve been playing the some data driven visualization tools, Delicious replacements, and Dan Gillmor’s new downloadable book this week.
Playing with Visuals: Two data-driven visualization tools caught my attention:
- Centuries of Books at a Glance: This week’s announcement of Google Books Ngram Viewer and the associated New York Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/books/17words.html.
I have been playing with things like searching for the word “technology” and comparing it to the history noted in Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants book, where he notes how recent technology is as a social phrase. Intriguing!
Rumors and Alternatives: I also spent some time yesterday finding alternatives to Delicious, a social bookmarking tool. The rumor of the demise of Delicious, which has been part of my own life since 2006. Various articles and shout outs from competitors have arisen quickly. I have been trying Licorize, Evernote, YourVersion, and Diigo as imports of my data. I have exported all of my bookmarks for future alternatives that may surface.
Download or buy?: Dan Gillmor’s new book, Mediactive, is now available online and for purchase. I did the download, I sheepishly comment, and will be reading it this coming week.