Everyone has a flash drive, right?
Beyond carrying important documents, like a scan of your passport, you can carry a complete office set up that will run on any Windows computer you can find, such as a spare at a client or the hotel’s business center.
Rather than worry if they have the right applications, carry them with you on your flash drive.
So a Continental 737 went off the runway at Denver International Airport this evening. The right wing caught fire and the plane was evacuated.
Fortunately no one was killed, although somewhere between 30 and 34 were treated for injuries, with some taken to local hospitals.
There was a brief notice on the bottom of the TV at the local stations, but mostly the network programming wen't on uninterrupted.
The local news has now started interrupting network programming, they are now getting reports from passengers on board.
A couple of months ago I wrote about training sales reps.
In that post, told about a video a manufacturer sent us that had no video "production value," but was valuable to us for showing how the product was actually used.
I just read on Presentation Zen about this video that won the best film award at Tropfest NY 2008. Tropfest is known as "the world's largest short film festival."
Sneaker-net—that’s what they used to call carrying a floppy disk between computers to transfer files. And the highest capacity floppy was 1.44 Megabytes.
In the last couple of years, sneaker-net has resurfaced using USB flash drives. My first held 16 megabytes. Now 16 gigabyte drives are affordable, 1 and 2 gigabyte drives cost less than $10.
And they are handy for more than transferring files. Back up those critical files each day and carry the drive home with you.
When I was in high school, Dad suggested I take a typing class. The reward for the class was a manual typewriter, what we used in first year typing. Then I decided that a second year of “college prep typing” wouldn’t hurt and of course for that class we switched to electric typewriters. So it cost Dad an electric at the end of that year.
I've already talked about using video in sales training.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth many more.
Consider one of my favorite products, the Wellspring Flip Note. In their catalog, or on their web site, they show a static picture:
Even organized, with 10,000+ files you are going to forget where you might have stored that file with Aunt Sally’s favorite cookie recipe.
That’s where a local search program comes in handy.
There are two free ones, Google Desktop Search (http://desktop.google.com/) and Microsoft Desktop Search (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/default.mspx).
I hate voice mail.
You have to call in to retrieve it, if it’s for your cell phone getting your voicemail is burning minutes.
A lot of the messages aren’t worth returning, and some people leave their whole life history in each voice mail.
I don’t do voice mail any more.
I switched over to PhoneTag (http://www.phonetag.com), until just recently called Simulscribe).
Just as I keep my 10,000+ files organized with a structured folder system, I do the same for the emails I keep.
I was working at my desk last evening and I got a notice of new Tweets from Tweetdeck. One of the messages was about the bombing in Mumbai. Then a couple of more popped up, along with a link for a Twitter search, which I followed. I read a few and went over to CNN.com, not much there. About 15 minutes later, my Google news alerted me that CNN.com had posted an article.
